BlinkAndItsGone

Every once in a while Steve gets visibly upset about corporate misbehavior, but I've been watching GN for a few years, and the news segment where he was replying to Linus's dismissive forum post is the angriest I've ever seen him.

Here's the most important part IMO:

He admits that — in general — when AMD pays publishers to bundle their games with a new graphics card, AMD does expect them to prioritize AMD features in return. “Money absolutely exchanges hands,” he says. “When we do bundles, we ask them: ‘Are you willing to prioritize FSR?’”

But Azor says that — in general — it’s a request rather than a demand. “If they ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes.”

SO developers aren't forced contractually to exclude DLSS, but outside the contract language, they are pressured to ignore it in favor of FSR. That explains why these deals tend to result in DLSS being left out, and also why there are some exceptions (e.g. Sony games--I imagine Sony knows what features it wants its PC releases to have and has decided to push back on DLSS inclusion). I think AMD is being honest this time, and I'm surprised it admitted publicly that it's doing this. Hopefully the word about this will get out and more developers will insist on including DLSS.

I don't think the usual portrayal of the issue is that animals can exploit any other animal that is less intelligent; it's more like, there's a minimum level of intelligence or consciousness for human rights. You might call it a cutoff. Which could be seen as a contrivance to give humans the right to exploit other animals, but the problem with dismissing this view as self-serving is that the logic cuts both ways. Humans are the only animal that is expected to care about morality in the first place; nobody is getting mad at cheetahs for eating ostriches. So it's hard to argue that there is no cutoff relating to morality at humans, the question is exactly what that cutoff entails.

The specs are exactly the same as the ones that have been up on the Steam page for weeks/months, in case someone was wondering if they'd changed.

For those who aren't aware why errors are an issue because all they've seen is wacky LTT videos where they mess around with stuff--Linus is the most popular (and profitable) computer hardware Youtuber, and he's always done hardware reviews, but to some degree this whole scandal came about because of him wanting to be taken more seriously. Recently he's been using his millions in an attempt to become the most authoritative PC hardware critic by building and staffing a state-of-the-art testing lab. It was one of his lab technicians who made the comment about how their testing was better than that of more respected channels like Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed that kicked this whole thing off. And the whole lab thing makes the continuing inaccuracy of the videos seem that much more egregious.

Good article, lots of specifics as to what the accusations against TSMC are. Also, it appears there is a paper trail to back them up:

Earlier this month, after multiple health and safety complaints were sent to the state over the past year, TSMC and the state of Arizona signed a workplace-safety agreement. Both sides agreed to subject the company to higher safety standards than required at the federal level, including closer oversight and increased training and safety visits.

Feels like this was meant to be a TV commercial.

I agree it's generally good practice to ask the subject for comment, and Steve seems to know that because he explains at length why he didn't here. I criticized him for this when the last video came out, but I thought his explanation in this new video for why he didn't contact Linus first is pretty good; I'm not sure why you're being downvoted here, but since you are a former reporter I'd be interested in hearing specifics on why you disagree with it.

Not sure about India, but NASA has used GoPros on Moon-related stuff. Artemis I had 4 GoPros on the ends of its solar panels when it orbited the Moon last year.

The one real point that I thought Linus had here was that Steve didn't talk to him first. That part is getting a lot of ridicule, because it sounds petulant, but it's valid--it is accepted journalistic practice to give the subject of a story a chance to comment before publishing.

Since we can now see what that comment likely would have been, it doesn't seem to change the conclusion much. From experience I can guess at Steve's likely response--he would have tentatively given LMG credit for compensating Billet for the loss, pending verification and comment from Billet, and ripped all the rest of Linus's excuses a new one. But that still doesn't change the fact that Steve didn't quite live up to the journalistic standards that he touts on his channel.

That failure gives things a bit more of a "drama" flavor (It's hard not to suspect that this is primarily a response motivated by that clip of Linus's lab tech attacking GN's and HUB's testing methods). But of course it doesn't absolve LMG and its vaunted lab of milking the Youtube algorithm first and being a source of real information a distant second--which was argued pretty convincingly by GN and which a lot of us started to notice long before this video came out.

The article only has one line about this, noting that what platform this interview would take place on is unclear. I just checked and it looks like he's continued to do a show on Twitter despite Fox News sending him a cease-and-desist letter, so presumably it would be there.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65789916

Apparently it was a story told by an Air Force colonel at an aeronautics conference, who later retracted it.

It isn't strange to use your non-dominant hand for things, no. Maybe most people do lean toward using their dominant hand for everyday tasks, but I think it's a matter of habit for most things. "Non-dominant" doesn't mean "nearly useless".

I would say it is a bit strange for your friends to pay a lot of attention to which hand you use to unlock doors.

Understandable, but I think many people (including me) are fine with a little drama every once in a while as long as it's warranted and doesn't damage the substance of the content. Unnecessary drama can certainly be a problem, but unnecessarily making dramatic things boring is not necessarily the solution.

Returnal (PC) - Still playing the Tower of Sisyphus even though I beat the game. This is the most impressed I've been with a Playstation "exclusive" since the PS2, it's so good. I bet a lot of people give up on it pretty quick because of the difficulty, but I find it's less difficult than a Souls game once you get a handle on it.

Horizon Zero Dawn (PC) - I kinda want to get to the part where they explain the robot animals (Dr. Eggman?), but the half-assed combat and boring open world are making me not want to bother.

20XX (PC)- It's fun, but it's also giving me a new appreciation for how well-designed the Mega Man games were. You're not supposed to be hitting your head on the bottoms of platforms in games like this, lmao.

The term ‘AI’ (Artificial Intelligence) refers to computer systems that can perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence,

That's everything computers do, though, isn't it? Pocket calculators would have fit this definition of AI in the 1970s. In the '60s, "computer" was a human job title.

It's probably not 100% necessary; even Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (which was designed to use the PS5's fast loading speeds to switch between worlds on the fly, and supports the latest DirectStorage implementation on PC) can be played off a hard drive, tests have shown. But any PC recent enough to play Starfield on really should have an SSD.

This all sounds extremely familiar. Owning the libs as a show for their base of support back home.

Well, Nvidia isn't directly involved here at all, they've only commented on the issue once (to say that they don't block other companies' upscaling). The objections tend to come from users, the majority of whom have Nvidia cards and want to use what is widely considered the superior upscaling technology.

(if it really is one).

I mean, I'm not a journalist, I've just been reading them for decades. It's a thing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/

No story is fair if it covers individuals or organizations that have not been given the opportunity to address assertions or claims about them made by others. Fairness includes diligently seeking comment and taking that comment genuinely into account.

Just as an example that came up in a quick web search--the Washington Post is a major US newspaper and this is its stated policy. Seeking comment from story subjects is an important practice in journalism, and if you consider yourself a journalist and don't do it in a given case, you should probably have a good reason. This is why Steve felt the need to explain himself on that point.

It's a customary practice, and I think it's a good one because it makes the story less one-sided and can diminish the appearance of it being a hit piece if it's negative. Bottom line, it's natural to want to know what the person the story is about thinks of it and what their perspective is. Obviously not all journalists seek a comment from every subject, but if they do, they often mention that they asked for a comment even if they weren't able to get one, because people want to know that they at least tried.