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hammerquill

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  1. Just watched the Noob vs Pro PC Build Challenge, then rewatched Sarah Butt's build. Both were very entertaining, but I think a better challenge format, and more useful to the audience, would be to find someone in your giant company who is as game as Sarah and the others, but is actually interested in building their first PC, and follow them through the whole process, with their POV (not necessarily literally, but with them explaining why they chose to look at this or that video, where they started from, what they wanted, what info the sought from where, what was hard to find, etc.). With the size of LMG these days it should be reasonably easy to find someone who is a Mac or console person who wants to get into PC gaming or someone who just has never had the opportunity to do their own build. But have them choose and build their own computer, for themselves (or for their little brother as was the fiction for Secret Shopper Sarah), with real world constraints and real world interest in the process as well as the result. Sarah's video was almost this, but didn't give the impression that it was her initiative, so it wasn't as much like she was representing the audience.
  2. I just watched the Noob vs Pro challenge and then rewatched Sarah Butt's first build. From the latter, I think a very useful TQ would be "What is PC Part Picker and why (and how) should you use it?" Linus cringed that Sarah didn't seem to realize PCPP was not a retailer. Other people building their first PCs may find a bunch of build videos but never encounter tools like PCPP, or encounter references to them but not realize how useful they can be. When I built my first computer I didn't find out about it till I was pretty much done. And to me (and a lot of people, I think), the LEGO part of the process is much less stressful than learning enough to choose the parts well. You can of course get in shoutouts to the LTT forums as well.
  3. Yes, but that's the difference between personal use on their part and accepting a sponsorship. Linus has talked about many things where he personally, let alone other members of the company, loves the product, but they can't accept them as sponsors anymore because of problematic practices. And beyond that, it's an image question. If we accept at face value the LMG promise to vet every sponsor, that should mean that, having refused to accept supplement advertisements in the past due to the untrustworthy nature of the industry as a whole, their acceptance of AG1 should mean they have passed a high standard of review. On the other hand, if for any reason a person was suspicious of LMG, as a lot of people are recently (for reasons based in truth even if largely blown out of proportion), the fact that LMG is accepting AG1 as a sponsor despite the (alleged) problems with the company and the major problems with the industry will immediately be seen to reflect poorly on LMG and its brand vetting practices. Frankly, it tarnishes their image for me. It was much smarter just to keep the old ban - no supplement sponsors, no way.
  4. I'm curious as to why AG1 doesn't have its own thread here requesting info. Given that Linus said on several occasions on the WAN show that he was uncomfortable with taking supplement sponsorships, a lot of people were surprised and disappointed to see one suddenly appear. I was even more surprised (and disappointed) not to hear some discussion of the reason behind the change of heart or the making of this exception. And especially when it seems not to have a topic here for the discussion to be carried on in. A search of the forum reveals a couple of people raising concerns about the company and product, based on published sources. Even without that, given Linus's previous statements, I would have thought that LMG policy would have been to at least make a supplement manufacturer pass a much higher bar than other sponsors, given the legitimate suspicion under which the industry as a whole is held.
  5. Early in the time when LMG was starting to get into serious product design and manufacturing, Linus mentioned one thing he really wanted to try to make was a battery charger, since there were so few good ones out there. This is something I've complained about for years, and it has kept me from using rechargeables as much as I would like to. I hope this can be brought forward from whatever distant back burner it has been put on. I think it could make a big difference to helping people use fewer disposable batteries to have a charger made with all the right engineering and bells and whistles, in the LTT mode. Personally would buy three. One for me, one for parents, one for my work studio. Requirements for a good battery charger (to me): The ability to handle AA, AAA, and ideally (since it doesn't actually take much different in design) C cells. The ability to charge them singly or in pairs. The ability to charge at least four at once, but 6-8 is better. High quality set-and-forget charging (so it doesn't matter if you leave the batteries in place). A built-in, super-quick battery tester that gives actual V info. The ability to mount it on a wall or a desk. Visual indicators of full charge. Ideally, also, some circuitry to do whatever revival of overused batteries is possible with the current generation of NiMHs.
  6. I and everyone I know started pronouncing it exee within maybe a year of getting used to DOS, which in my case started when making the switch from the Commodore, in the late 1980s. It seems weird to spend the extra time to pronounce each letter. "Dot Eye En Eye" is even worse. I truly think the WAN show is the first time I've ever heard anyone spell that out, except maybe on tech support where they have to assume you don't know what you're talking about. I certainly have never said it except to clarify to someone unfamiliar with computers.
  7. I know this topic has been preempted by this week's controversy, but I was just listening to this particular WAN show and wanted to weigh in. I hope LTT people are still reading this thread and thinking about this issue. Among other things, it is the kind of thing that will potentially help avoid major missteps like this week's trainwreck. I suspect a lot of people here are also space nerds, so some may already be aware of this, but I think the model currently used by EverydayAstronaut is an excellent one. In his case, he releases scripts to his patrons on Patreon ahead of time, for them to fact check. Then he releases a mostly-edited video for a final check, again just for a certain level of patron. The comments are in google docs comment style, so anyone can see them, but it's not really working in real time, so you avoid the stan aspect that Linus was concerned about in the editing space. You'd have to ask him how well it works, but he seems to do well with it. I suspect you could do the same with simply releasing the video to floatplane and soliciting corrections, then editing the video for corrections before release to the public. And as for rewards, I think the name in the credits would be plenty for most people to give them an actual reward - if you're a techie who cares about getting correct information out to the community, then getting your name displayed as a thank you for correcting LTT is something you could potentially even put on your resume. If you really want to reward them more, you could also put them on lists that allow them to buy samples and the like that are being sold. Sorry, didn't mean that in a too soon way, just struck me as a good idea when done right.
  8. Apropos of the Borg cube case... This would be a big project to do right, but I'd love to see the workshop people create a serious guide to what you need to know if you want to create your own case. I mean create completely from scratch, as a maker with tools and skills, who has built computers in normal cases, but never having made a computer case myself. I have some cool ideas, but I can see it would be a big project that would likely to fail at numerous points due to ignorance of silly little details. I'd love to see a really thorough job of this, where you go through things to watch out for with different materials, things you have to think out in advance, lots of things not to do, and suggestions for resources for some things (including places like OSHpark/OSHcut for creating the precision parts if you want to go that way). It would also be useful for serious case modders.
  9. I think it would be worth having a Machine Learning subforum here. I suspect a lot of people here are interested in the topic and do something with it on the side, or are looking into getting started with it. I was looking for a place to ask questions about ML-focused reasonably budget builds for my wife to experiment and study the topic to see if she wants to go bigger in it. Of course I can ask on the main forums about build suggestions, but a hangout for ML and related topics specifically would be more to the point. With the attention ML/AI is getting right now, including and especially on WAN show, I think it would be great to have a place here for people to gather and discuss this stuff.
  10. As far as I can tell they missed my merch message suggesting this: I for one think Luke's discussion of the monumental steps in AI/ML/GPT right now need more time, not less. I would seriously subscribe to floatplane just to watch a podcast style show with Luke and maybe guests talking about what's going on, and keep that discussion going after the point where Linus always wants to move on. I think everyone watching the WAN show is at least half a step ahead on this subject just from Luke's attention to it, and I'd love to see more of this, because both Ls are doing a great job of monitoring it and talking about it in interesting and important ways.
  11. Quick question - when I built my pc (the first I built myself) I left room for improvement later when I had money. But it's a lot later now. I want to know if people think it's even worth upgrading the CPU to the best my motherboard can handle, or if I shouldn't bother. I currently have an i5-6500, with 32GB of ram (which I use), and recently upgraded to a 3070. My motherboard can handle up to an i7-7700K. I do not do much with heavy duty modern games, though I might try them from time to time. I do some 3D modeling, but not fancy renders. I also will do some video editing with DaVinci Resolve, but neither of these things is every day or an important part of my work. On the daily, I use ancient freestanding Photoshop and InDesign which I actually own, and some unbelievable number of tabs in Firefox... 7700 and 7700K are not a lot different in price right now, and can be had in the $150 range. Is it even worth upgrading? If so, should I bother with the K version? Will I even notice the difference? Or should I not bother until I'm ready to build a new machine? Thanks in advance.
  12. Recently (last week's WAN show, I think?) Linus replied to a merch message or something asking about whether they would make LTT/LMG accessories for the Framework laptop. He went into an explanation about how little overlap he thought there would be in the Venn diagram of Framework owners and LTT fans. (Which really underestimated his own influencership, but anyway.) Even assuming he's right that it's not economically reasonable to do a real, manufactured product for the Framework, the Framework-LTT fandom could easily be represented in two simple stickers in the sticker pack. One would be just a small, round LTT logo designed to fit inside the gear logo on the back of the laptop. Pretty obvious. The other would be a copy of the gear logo with LTT inside it, or else a gear of a different size that would nonetheless mesh with the one on the back of the laptop (and with the LTT logo inside it). This would have great symbolic value, and would also be usable to represent both fandoms (yeah, I know Linus doesn't like the word) when the sticker is used on other things than the laptop.
  13. There are a lot of people trying to build standards for use of multicolor fonts for computers, but as far as I've seen there is no agreement yet on standards for this, and any support for the existing systems will be very limited. That said, some use the SVG standard and could therefore potentially be supported widely, even in a very preliminary state, and plugins might be made for something open source like this, or proselytes of the new multicolor fonts might be convinced to write such plugins to show off their ideas. Search multicolor fonts or chromatic fonts to find what there is. Some info on this page: https://www.colorfonts.wtf/
  14. Linus talks about them making up their own certification, and says approximately "Shouldn't 90 Plus Platinum, if it existed, be Platinum colored?" But the "Certification" on the PSU doesn't even say 90 Plus Platinum. It says "90 Plus Platitum" ...really. Go back and look at 2:31. And I don't think Linus knows any better than the rest of us what color platitum is supposed to be.
  15. I was thinking, if more cards become available to the VAG program, LTT might consider doing a collab with someone like Blender Guru on YT, to get a few of the cards out to people working on teaching themselves 3D design and animation. They have also been left out in the cold in the GPU shortage. And that channel is pitched just right - he's a good teacher and the community is good, and has lots of scrappy young freelancers as well as people just starting to learn. A 3D artist gauntlet co-promoted with Blender Guru or someone like that would be a cool addition. Dunno if LTT people are reading this thread regularly, but I thought I'd throw that out there, especially since on the videos that mention VAG there are always a bunch of people asking if you could include the 3D artist world a little. I don't represent Blender Guru, and am only barely on the edge of that community, but it struck me as a worthwhile idea.
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