Thread for Linus Tech Tips Video Suggestions

[TheCat74]

Interesting set of luggables:

 

https://acmeportable.com/products

 

I guess its the way to go if you need high power, storage and screens on the go

[ThatJonny]

What I would find quite interesting is testing ways to quickly erase data. You know, how they do in spy movies.

What could be useful and what would be needed to delete data within seconds. Is it enough to run a delete everything script?
Overwrite something? That takes forever. I am thinking about intentionally frying drives to make them unusable within seconds.
Does a magnet work for HDDs? Should I integrate a nailgun in my serverrack for data that I don't want to get in the hands of the wrong people?
Is there a way to do that without burning the house down? Something that could be remote triggered maybe?

With that shitload of old useless drives aquired lately, that might be a reasonable use case and the jank levels that would be possible if Alex puts his mind to it. ;)

[EliSy]

I would love to see a report on the NVIDIA Jetson TX1\2, which has already found itself a place in several military kamikaze drones (loitering munitions), from Russia's Lancet, to Israel's LANIUS and Turkey's Kargu. Really interesting how this piece of tech found its way to the battlefield in my country, Syria, and many others. 
Here are some sources:
Russian Lancet:
https://gagadget.com/en/226952-russias-lancet-kamikaze-drone-is-equipped-with-an-nvidia-jetson-tx2-computer-and-an-xilinx-zynq-chip/
Israel's LANIUS:
https://gagadget.com/en/uav/188354-elbit-systems-unveils-lanius-kamikaze-drone-with-nvidia-jetson-tx2-chip-gps-and-artificial-intelligence/
Turkey's Kargu:

and these photos from an attack here in Syria with the same Turkish drone:

[dhruvbhad]

Dear LTT,

I really enjoy watching your videos and seeing that you guys do a bunch of really interesting work all the time, I was wondering if you'll be up for a challenge. This involves my own personal computer not working. I have tried many times to fix it and try to recover the projects on it to no avail. Here is my story:

My PC was running fine a month ago and while I was using it someone called my name so I turned around to hear them because I had headphones on. Now one thing to note is that my PC is on the ground so when I turned, my foot hit the PC and then it shut off and turned back on however, it didn't give a single beep like it always does. Instead, it just kept running without anything being displayed and not showing up on the wired network. After looking into the PC it lead me into a wild goose chase. I first RMAed the motherboard but once I got a new one I saw that it didn't fix the problem. Then I thought it was my CPU so I RMAed that too. Afterwards, I RMAed the RAM which actually did slightly help. Once I replaced the RAM, every 20 or so reboots a screen pops up to reset the TPM chip. Although, every time I try to say Y or N with a keyboard, the system reboots and goes into the same no-boot thing. I have tried resetting the CMOS and removing all the drives to see whether that might make a difference but nope it doesn't. Currently, it is plugged into a monitor using HDMI and not powered with all the drives disconnected and no accessories connected. If anyone has experienced a similar type of problem feel free to give any sort of advice. My specs are listed below:
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600x
Mobo: ASUS B450 Plus Gaming
RAM: Patriot Signature Premium 32GB
Cooler: NZXT Kraken X73
GPU: XFX SWFT 210 RX6600
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow
Drives:
- Hitachi 2TB HDD
- Toshiba 500GB SSHD
- Samsung 256GB SSD
- Sandisk Ultra 256GB SSD
PSU: EVGA 650W SuperNova

I was thinking I could ship it to y'all then you could make a video on trying to fix it since I have not been able to. If you are able to fix it then you guys get content and I get my PC functioning again. If the PC still doesn't work then you guys will still be able to have content showing users how to diagnose their PC but I will just buy a new PC. If you are interested please respond and I hope to hear from you soon.

P.S. This could be a potentially high-viewing video, Linus 

[gunacorn]

I'm starting my freshman year of college and it would be nice to get another college laptop recommendation video before all the back-to-school sales start. It's weird too since my college apparently offers Virtual Machines for all the engineering software I need to use, so I don't know what to get. 

 

[Soid]

Collaborate with explore.org to improve their live stream infrastructure for the Katmai National Park Bear Cams

 

 

[Daniel-H212]

With regards to the most recent video in which Voicemeeter was talked about, I agree that Voicemeeter is a good way of cloning your audio output to multiple devices. However, for one of the most common uses of Voicemeeter, which is separating audio for content creation, Voicemeeter is inferior. 

 

Not only is it an external application that can use extra resources, but sometimes when system resources are being stressed like when a game is loading, especially on hardware that isn't high-end, Voicemeeter will "soft-crash" and all sounds through it will extremely static-y until you manually click the button to restart the audio drivers which also turns sound off for a few seconds.

 

Furthermore, it only provides the equivalent of 2 virtual audio cables in Voicemeeter Banana, and Voicemeeter Potato is paid software (though, iirc by donation so it's not expensive). While VB-Audio (which makes Voicemeeter) has its own virtual audio cables available (also as donationware but interestingly you can download them as long as you have the direct link, no donation needed), they suffer from the same static soft-crash issue as Voicemeeter with no way to restart them, and only offer 5 virtual audio cables maximum which have to be installed individually. Other companies have software that can offer up to 256 virtual cables, though that software has its own issues.

 

The real solution is OBS. For the vast majority of use cases like Discord, you only need one direct input, say your microphone. The only reason you'd actually need a complicated audio setup is for separating audio for recording or streaming. OBS has a beta feature in the newest versions called application audio capture, which you can add as a source and allows you to capture audio from specific applications, such as your game, Discord, Spotify, etc. By right-clicking the OBS audio mixer and going to advanced audio properties, you can then set which individual source goes to which audio track. Audio tracks are very powerful tools for recording. You can also have different audio sources for different scenes.

There can be a slight issue with this beta feature which is that it cannot capture any audio made by OBS itself. This seems unimportant, but things like the popular Streamlabs/Streamelements overlays which make sound when people follow/subscribe/donate will make sounds through OBS which you'd want to capture. For that, you will need to use the OBS plugin that inspired this OBS feature, a plugin called win-capture-audio, which works in much the same way but can capture audio from OBS itself as well. win-capture-audio can have its own issues though, such as not being able to differentiate different instances of the same executable by their window title, so you may want to use a mix of win-capture-audio and the OBS built-in application audio capture to suit your needs.

 

This kind of setup does several things:
1. You don't need to capture desktop audio as a whole, meaning things you don't want to be captured like certain notification sounds will not be captured.
You can take advantage of Twitch Stream/VOD track to avoid copyright issues with music on your stream by including your music in your stream track but not your VOD track.
2. It doesn't mess up any other part of your audio setup. You don't need to go into Windows settings to choose a specific virtual audio cable or whatever for each individual app to output to, you don't get everything messed up any time you need to switch anything around.

 

Additionally, you can have up to 6 total tracks in your OBS audio mixer, so apart from the stream track and VOD track, you can also have 4 extra tracks for separating audio in recording. This can be one track for your mic audio, one track for your game audio, one track for discord calls, and one track for everything else like your obs/stream overlay sounds. This doesn't affect streaming which only streams one track but if you are recording or clipping, and get a cool clip that you want to keep your mic and game audio from but your friend was streaming into their mic, you can just mute your discord audio track in whatever video editing software you use.

 

If you want to stream and record at the same time, and 4 tracks worth of audio separation isn't enough for you for recording, you can even use another plugin called Source Record to use all 6 tracks for audio separation in your recording, while still using 2 of them at the same time for Stream/VOD track on Twitch. To do this, you simply install Source Record, restart OBS, then set up two scenes, one for streaming, and one for recording. You need two non-identical sets of audio inputs, though everything else can stay the same (non-identical as in not copy-pasted, so you need to remake the same audio sources with different names), one set for each scene. Go to one scene and set up your audio for streaming with the Stream/VOD tracks. Go to the second scene and set up all the audio from that scene to split into the 6 different tracks available (including the ones you are already using for Stream/VOD track, don't worry, they won't actually overlap). Right-click the second scene, go to Filters, and click the + at the bottom to add Source Record as a filter. For the Source Record filter, set the Record Mode to "Streaming", so that it will always record this scene when you are streaming (even if you are streaming a different scene, as long as you are on the same scene collection in OBS), and set up your encoding settings for the recording at the bottom. From there, you just stream your first scene, and your second scene will be recorded at the same time, with all the audio separation you need. You can also use Source Record for your Replay Buffer, but if you want to use Replay Buffer, I'd instead recommend always recording and using Replay Buffer in OBS itself, and adding Source Record as a filter to your streaming scene, leaving the Record Mode blank and setting the Stream Mode to "Recording" instead, to achieve the same thing.

 

With such a setup, the only situation one could possibly need something like Voicemeeter or virtual audio cables for is if there's some audio that you want your stream or recording to hear (though for recordings you can always add after the fact in your editing software) but you don't want to hear yourself. In that case, just install any Voicemeeter version or virtual audio cable. In Windows 10, you'd go to sound settings and find App Volume and Device Preferences at the bottom, in Windows 11, you use the drop-down arrow on the right side of each app in the Windows Volume Mixer, and you set the output of the app you don't want to hear to go to the input of a virtual audio cable, and add the output of the virtual audio cable as a source in your OBS. This can be useful if you want different music to play for your stream than for yourself.

 

This could actually be a very cool video that LTT could make, since I haven't seen any modernized videos showing the complete way to make a streaming audio setup like this. It's definitely one of the coolest tech tips I know.

[Kcazm]

This wild accessory for a racing simulator, review of the product and a breakdown of how it works.
 

 

 

[Hornetman]

'The Office' meets the 'IT Crowd'

 

You have so many good hosts and staff that both the acting skills and comedy delivery are excellent, to say the least imo.

 

Why not have a show, once a year, that tells a comical or fun story of how LMG became what it is today? You have years of happy, sad and heartwarming stories!!!! You have writers, the equipment and you have the product placement right there on shelves, plus you have high production values... oh and this segway to your sponsor.

[schism404]

Why mobile phone signal reliability has become worse with the implementation of 5G and why are some companies locking their customers out of selecting a specific mobile band?

 

For example: I have a Samsung S23 ultra on Verizon's network and I find my phone switching from 5GUW, 5G and 4G LTE every 5-10 mins. During these hops I will have 2-3 bars but my data connection is non-existent (emails, RCS texts, etc time out with connectivity errors). Device reset and airplane mode have no effect. When I looked up how to get my device to focus on a specific band, I found Samsung has removed that option from their settings and all workarounds are being actively shut down as fast as they come up.

[Phantasmagoria]

linus sebastian should make a video about making a computer with watercool parts with rads, but with no fans bringing air in and out of the pc case, but also add a closed loop automobile ac, to cool the rads and the inside the case. linus sebastian can make this happen. linus sebastian should also use the pc case called, lian li o11 XL.

 

thank you

[Matt281]

Long shot.  But I love your channels.  But I’m also in another hobby. Where we need people like you guys.  As there’s lots of tech that’s cost lots of money.  And no one is doing honest reviews.   It’s a niche hobby. So it’s probably not worth it for your channel.  But I’m sure tons of people would love it.  
 

The reef keeping hobby has a ton of new tech.  And computer controlled setups can cost 1,000$-10,000$.  It would be great if eventually you guys used the awesome new lab to hold the manufactures accountable and honest.   Would be great to see you guys and gals dive into controllers such as the Neptune Apex, Ghl Profilux, and the Hydros.  
 

When you have computers controlling life support systems, and pets that can live 20 years.  It’s would be nice to know what manufacturers are actually building good products that’s won’t potentially kill our pets.  Would be nice to see someone actually test them in depth.

 

And not using cheap 5$ wifi dongles in a 1,000$ device (true story).

 

Example. Shady stuff that would make Linus freak out.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/neptune-apex-controller-usb-replacement-rtl8812au.899159/

[Phuqr]

I am trying to get my mom off of satellite tv, she pays over 100 bucks a month for basic (local channels mainly) I have no clue how to go about it and I think a video explaining how to use the existing coax cable in a house(or other solutions) to run from a box/pc with local channels, dvr, etc would help out a ton of people.

Most of what I've found looking into this is predatory stuff trying to trap elderly people. 

[MattyMobile]

Just watching the latest WAN show and L & L starting talking about hot sauces. How about a WAN Show After Dark "🌶Hot Wing Challenge Edition"? Dan reads a new Merch Message and L & L have to eat a hot wing, getting hotter with each message. 

[packersfan]

On 2/28/2023 at 3:00 AM, JClark said:

Hey guys, I would love to see more content about oled monitor and the hybrid use of productivity and gaming. In this post covid working I am working on my gaming monitor. Specifically I would love to see more about the LG oled flex.

I concur with this suggestion, as I was about to write my own LG Flex oled request and found this from 4 mo ago, since your videos are always much better than the competition. Anyways thanks for all your videos!

[Guest]

I don't know if anyone else would be interested in this but I'd love a study of why WiFi has relatively bad lattencies wrt ethernet, and much worse jitter. Is it interference? What happens if you connect you PC's wifi card with an SMA directly into the router? :)

[RecklessThor]

I know that you sometimes do off the wall PC builds and I have an idea for a project but not a lot of money or know-how. Basically my idea is to have a laptop where the chassis is replaced by a CNC'd Titanium piece with silver plating on the inside for thermal conductivity and durability. The bottom third closest to the user could be coated in carbon fiber or something to reduce risk of burn. I'm a doctoral student and would be willing to lend my laptop if my laptop could be the experiment. It's a 4090 Lenovo Legion 7i pro.

[nhand42]

14 hours ago, mgo said:

I don't know if anyone else would be interested in this but I'd love a study of why WiFi has relatively bad lattencies wrt ethernet, and much worse jitter. Is it interference? What happens if you connect you PC's wifi card with an SMA directly into the router?

I have done large WiFi installations for private enterprise - 600+ access points - and oh boy that's a simple question with a not so simple answer. I've done multiple courses and certs and I reckon I'm maybe 5% of the way towards understanding WiFi. I'll probably never learn it all. The more you learn the more you realize it's a damn miracle it works at all. There are some difficult engineering concepts like radio waves and multipath propagation. What I'm saying is it's not something that's easily explained.

 

Interference is only one of the reasons. Look into the concepts of duplex, beacons and CSMA. Then look into the concept of MCS and consider how that works as you add more devices to the WiFi. Because it's not just interference that can cause a packet to drop. The nature of WiFi means devices can interrupt each other and that's normal behavour. When it happens you get jitter and it's unavoidable. All you can do is make the jitter smaller.

 

If you are having jitter there are some simple things you can do. First, don't use 2.4GHz. If you have older WiFi devices get rid of them. Set your minimum station speed to something reasonable (broadcast packets must transmit at the lowest speed typically 1Mbps unless you set a higher minimum). Turn off 802.11b/g/n only use 802.11ac/ax. Use narrow channel width (20MHz) you'll get less bandwdith but also less jitter. Ensure you have line of sight between the PC and the access point. If you must have older WiFi devices consider having two WiFi networks, different frequencies and ESSID.

 

Or the simplest solution - and this is what I do - run an Ethernet cable to your PC.

[nhand42]

On 7/20/2023 at 3:49 AM, ThatJonny said:

Overwrite something? That takes forever. I am thinking about intentionally frying drives to make them unusable within seconds.

There were stories - don't know if they're true but hope they are - that some of the more paranoid hackers would have thermite charges attached to their HDD. If the police ever kicked their doors in they'd detonate the thermite and turn the HDD into a pool of molten slag. Might be a myth but cool story anyway.

[Change16]

I just came across this short and im curious if this is actually possible. The guy in the video claims that if you lose the antenna for your wifi card and can still get slower wifi speeds that you can just roll up tubes of aluminum foil and double your speeds. Is that a thing that can happen? Id love to know how it stacks up to the actual antenna, maybe if thickness or length of the foil makes a difference, and if aluminum on the actual antenna would provide any kind of boost. I couldnt find any LTT videos on it and i think it could make for atleast an interesting short/couple of shorts if its something simple

 

 

[Zephyr0418]

Hi team! Long, long time viewer of LTT but first time commenter on your forums. I didn't have a video suggestion but I did have an idea/question.

Has LMG ever thought about creating your own TV channel? I see that there is the 24/7 tech tips stream up, which is fantastic. But what about an actual TV channel?  
My thought was that if you did, you could put content from all of the LMG channels on it as it's released, run older content for your "re-runs" and maybe have different themes set to different times (say like have  the content of new and upcoming tech from 5-6pm, content of you upgrading someone's rig from 7:00-80pm, or something similar.)  You could also expand LMG content to include things like game reviews, and maybe an attack of the show type show, and sponsor and stream competitive game tournaments. Heck it might even be possible for you all to team up with other well established youtubers and incorporate their content into the channel. Say you pay them a certain price for a non-exclusive deal where you stream their content on your platform, and you keep the advertising revenue.  Expanding their audiences and your content library.

It could be similar to G4, but possibly more successful as gaming has become more and more popular in the last decade, and it would include content not just for gamers but tech nerds and those in the tech industry, and those just looking for something funny to watch.

Hope you all are well!

 

[416_a-dem_iwasleetb4u]

OK hear me out,

over YEARS of gaming from laptops, to built pcs, back to POWER laptops, back to watercooled pcs. we all know HEAT is a degradiong factor. with ALL the stuff you guys have there now on the west coast, theres gotta be a way to look at and subsequently, if valid, start benchmarking gaming laptops that DEGRADE in quality over time from heat damage. RECENTLY ive started using an acer nitro 5 i7 in my work truck as a pool guy for running a lamotte spinlab and using our companies networking / CMS syatem on the road. what about comparing a laptop that LEFT in AMBIENT heat, and ones that have degraded from running high thermals from operation? and i know so many will have soloutions such as cleaning out the laptop ( not really an issue here as i do ) but also re theral pasting them. we could even say when one completely breaks that at that point thermal pasting it saved it so this may be (if youre a gaming laptop user) when you should opt to do so. 

theres gotta be a great video run here. even starting very selective. Lets say comparing an economy decent laptop to a gaming laptop for thermals. 
THEN bumping to comparing gaming laptops alike with a decent and pro desktop setup as a further comparison benchmark. 

think about all the prospective buyers currently deciding to go desktop or laptop. they see this and think about the value for money long term based on thermal operation weather ambient or internal. this TOTALLY has an effect on the hardware longevity. and you guys TOTALLY have the means to test and log the data! LFG! 

please give credit for this one to your canadian pool and hot tub guy in toronto that wishes he had as much time to game as he use to, but still finds time to watch some good ol linus in the truck. <3

[StiggyAzalea]

Video/company idea, but since you always say that best data security practice is to have an off-site backup, I think it would be cool if you did a video setting up a server that you divide up and give each employee there a set amount of data to use for their own private stuff as said off-site backup (the site being their home). I'm sure that's an administrative nightmare but I think the video would be super cool, not to mention the practical benefits for employees. 

[EliSy]

Do a review on the gaming bed from Bauhutte
https://www.bauhutte-g.com/layout/gaming-bed/

[fungus2k]

I work for a company in Ontario that builds welding robotics mostly used in the nuclear and aerospace industry. We have welding power supplies that are capable of precision control of the weld pulse frequency. Using this pulse frequency control we have been able to turn your run of the mill TIG welding torch into a speaker. Unfortunately the video attached could not be uploaded to YouTube due to copy write. Thought you might be interested in checking it out though some Deadmau5 being play through a weld arc though.