March 28th, 2014 - The WAN Show Document

[LinusTech]

  News Items Facebook buys Oculus Rift

- $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock. which equated about 2$ billion

- stock fluctuations dropped the stock value by 112 Million, that being said it is already bouncing back

 

NEGATIVE ANGLES

- People on the internet don’t trust acquisitions

- They said they weren’t interested in being acquired before

- Being acquired due to kickstarter success feels like betrayal - Notch feels this way about $10k

- “The Internet” hates facebook(Facebook is “Creepy” - notch)

- People want Oculus to stick with its homebrew roots

- Why didn’t some other company buy them out

- Really? Whatsapp is worth ~10x Oculus?

- Omgawd farmville 3D and facebook popup updates everywhere

 

POSITIVE ANGLES

- It WILL drive some truly new and experiences. Ones that I’m not sure if I want in much the same way I don’t want many of the experiences FB already delivers, but there they’ll be.

- Increased funding allows for more hired talent like Michael Abrash

-They were already being controlled by investors

- They didn’t get purchased by another gaming hardware company and forced into a niche or proprietary system like Xbox.

- They can now afford custom hardware, they don’t have to scrape the waste of the phone market

 

It started off very rough…

Source 13: Original "The Future of VR" Reddit post

- we’ve received orders for over 75,00http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/0 development kits from game developers, content creators, and artists around the world.

- When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical.

- Facebook is run in an open way that’s aligned with Oculus’ culture.

- it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated.

- Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever.

- I’m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come so far so fast.

I’m proud to be a member of this community — thank you all for carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We won’t let you down.

-----

- NOTCH: You got my respect before I met you. You kept it when I met you. I understand that this happened because people sacks of dollar bill with investments in the company saw big s. I understand you're probably under a big NDA and stuck in golden handcuffs, and that this might be a frustrating situation.

I just hope you got your fair share. VR will live on. Thank you for being part of making it finally happen.

I really wish this hadn't happened.

- NOTCH: A lot of companies are working on VR now. This means competition. This means better VR, and a higher chance of mass market acceptance. This means even better VR.

It's going to be all right.

Maybe.

-You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness...

- Facebook is known for it's intrusive tracking of users

- Facebook, although undoubtedly a massive company, is beginning to lose a lot of its teenage population due to the more widespread use of it by the older population.

- The fact that Oculus has been acquired by Facebook, not partnering with Facebook. I noticed that in your post, you were very careful to use the term partnering

Source 13 Continued: Oculus Joins Facebook - OculusVR.com post

Source 15: Because they're dumb f*cks

- Very old school quote from Zuckerberg

Source 26: "Oculus has not connected with facebook"

- Oculus was not connected with facebook during their kickstarter

Source 21: The NYT is to blame for a lot of my rage…

- According to a person involved in the deal who was not allowed to speak publicly because he was not authorized by either company, Facebook eventually plans to redesign the Oculus hardware and rebrand it with a Facebook interface and logo.

Source 36: NOT being re-branded

Source 22: The Advertisement conference call - Also much of my rage

-29:01 In terms of our business model, we're clearly not a hardware company - we're not going to try to make a profit off the devices long term, we see this as a software and services thing where if we can make it so that this becomes a network so that people can be communicating and buying things like virtual goods. there might be adverts in the world but we need to figure that out down the line so that's probably where the business will come from but for the foreseeable future the main goal that we have is building out the product, using the different levers that facebook have to make the technology affordable and to make to ubiquitous. and to use the different technologies that facebook has developed to bring it to market as soon as possible.

 

clearly the plan is investing in the platform and making it successful that's gotta be the priority - if we are successful to build the platform we are aiming to build here there should be lots of different monetization opportunities and its too early to make any concrete plants on what our approach will be

Source 23: Oculus drops out of the Immersive Technology Alliance

- A non-profit games collective known as the Immersive Technology Alliance is helping to bring together members of the games industry to help foster the development of games using augmented reality, virtual reality, 3D and gesture control technology

- High-profile virtual reality company Oculus VR has recently dropped out of the alliance, however.

- Oculus claims they were never a part of it

- ITA claims they were a big, paying member, and that Palmer helped directly with the transition of  S3DGA to the newly named ITA

Source 28: Search for "sell out to a large company"

Source 29: 75Million$ investor works for Facebook Pt.1

Source 29 Continued: He's on the board of directors

- Marc Andreessen

- “Oculus had already sold out by raising venture capital” : founder Palmer

Source 27: "We sold out control a long time ago when we took on investors"

Source 37: Valve knew something was up on Feb 28th

- “The first demo stuck me in a simple room, whose walls were textured with financial data for Facebook from some website. An odd choice, yeah. There was a little red cube bouncing around the room, and the desire to avoid it was *extremely strong*. A dodgeball / laser field game immediately popped into my mind, but as I mentioned before, a tether really hurts this type of idea.

Source 24: Corporate Reddit attack or a framing?

- Looks fishy, but who knows what side is planting this?

Source 14: Please don't sell CIG to Facebook

- Fear is widespread, nearly every kickstarter project now being questioned

- Widespread worry for any future technology kickstarter

- “2 billion dollar stretch goal, prevent Facebook from buying CIG!”

- Some people joking, some people legitimately worried

Source 17: Another fairly noteworthy reddit rant

- John Carmack is now a Facebook employee.

- Facebook is an advertising company. They sell data so that their paying customers (the advertisers) can target their marketing.

- It wouldn't surprise anyone if, in a couple years, you won't be able to use it at all without supplying data to Facebook, wittingly or not. (Eye tracking, interests, really easy to tell if someone is actively looking and paying attention to something when the screen is strapped to their face).

Source 5: The community is mad due to the change of pace

- Previous message - “For a certain segment of the population, THE HACKER/MAKER CROWD, this is going to be awesomely cool to work with.” - John Carmack (CTO of Oculus VR)

- Current message - “We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by SOCIAL EXPERIENCES that connect people in magical new ways” - Brendan Iribe (CEO of Oculus VR)

Source 8: Are you done with vr? - Strawpoll

- I am done with Oculus VR. Dead to me. : 11032 votes (50%)

- I will withhold judgement for now and see how this plays out. : 9947 votes (45%)

- I am ok with the Facebook acquisition actually. : 970 votes (4%)

Source 25: Oculus CTO bails on GTC due to illness

 

Source 4: Notch on why he doesn't like the facebook buyout

- “I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.”

- I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.

Source 16: Scumbag Oculus Meme - kickstarters edition

Source 34: Palmer bounces back at Notch

- Had the rift for a year and never even tried the minecraft mod

- Easy to cancel a project that never started

Source 2: The hate, now directed at those attacking oculus

- “To jump to personal attacks in an emotional tantrum-esque way and abandon ship without actually realizing where this deal will go.”

- “Chill and let's all wait and see.”

Source 3: Blur Busters weigh in - Admin is a friend of Palmer and Carmack

Source 35: Cliff Bleszinski Weighs in

- These memes and animated gifs reek of shortsightedness

- People are very rear window in their thinking online “Oh now we’re going to get Farmville VR.”

- Oculus was making great strides, but they were not out of the woods yet. Someone somewhere needs to come up with a proper control scheme for it.

- Your device is only as good as the store and community around it; if users can’t say shut up and take my money, if developers can’t post their work then the device will ultimately flounder. Facebook can assist with this sort of thing, as well as having a multi billion user reach.

- Worried Facebook is going to ruin Oculus? Check out Whatsapp and Instagram…turns out they’re working just fine since their acquisition.

- Zuckerberg has said, himself; “Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate.”.

- While it might have been interesting for a dedicated gaming company to purchase Oculus it might have ultimately limited their potential in regards to the myriad of things that the Rift is capable of.

- Oculus crowdsourced traction from enthusiasts and then found the proper partner that can fund them and assist with bringing the platform of VR to the next level. Crowdfunding can only take you so far, especially when you’re doing something this ambitious.

- p.s. Notch, your cancelling Minecraft makes you look like a pouty kid who is taking his ball and going home. It’s a bratty and petty move and it saddens me greatly.

Source 7: Mark's post on facebook

- Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate.

- we're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games.

- Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

- But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences.

- These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.

Source 12: Palmer weighs in, gets attacked - and hugged

You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift.

Palmer: If I ever see ads on anything that I've already paid for, I'm done. That is a developer decision, not our decision. If someone wants to sell a game with built-in ads, they will have to deal with the natural consequences.

If I ever see Facebook branding on anything that's not optional, I'm done.

Palmer: Not really reasonable in a literal sense, but I get your drift.

If I ever see ads on anything that I've already paid for, I'm done.

Palmer: That is a developer decision, not our decision. If someone wants to sell a game with built-in ads, they will have to deal with the natural consequences.

Just promise me there will be no specific Facebook tech tie-ins.

Palmer: I promise. Why would we want to sell to someone like MS or Apple? So they can tear the company apart and use the pieces to build out their own vision of virtual reality, one that fits whatever current strategy they have? Not a chance.

-----

We have not gotten into all the details yet, but a lot of the news is coming. The key points:

1) We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.

2) We can afford to hire everyone we need, the best people that fit into our culture of excellence in all aspects.

3) We can make huge investments in content. More news soon.

------

Palmer said to devs of VR games: If anyone has trouble getting in touch with our dev relations/publishing team, email me at palmer@oculusvr.com and I will get things moving.

 

Source 19: Carmack himself weighs in

- Tweet: Everyone has had some time to digest the FB deal now. I think it is going to be positive, but clearly many disagree. Much of the ranting has been emotional or tribal, but I am interested in reading coherent viewpoints about objective outcomes. What are the hazards? What should be done to guard against them? What are the tests for failure? Blog and I'll read.

- Carmack has cited Abrash as a mentor and source of inspiration.

Source 20: Oculus hires Michael Abrash…

- The super powers rejoin

- In late 1994 or early 1995, John and Abrash met. John tried to hire him and Abrash said no. But John didn't get around to doing that until after he had talked for a good two hours about how he was going to build cyberspace, and by that time it was hard for Abrash to imagine doing anything else. John was as good as his word, and Quake was the start of a world of connected gaming that thrives to this day.

- VR wouldn't become truly great until some company stepped up and invested the considerable capital to build the right hardware – and that it wouldn't be clear that it made sense to spend that capital until VR was truly great.

-  Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can.

- It's great to be working with John again after all these years, and with that comes a sense of deja vu. It feels like it did when I went to Id, but on steroids – this time we're working on technology that will change not just computer gaming, but potentially how all of us interact with computers, information, and each other every day. I think it's going to be the biggest game-changer I've ever seen – and I've seen quite a lot over the last 57 years.

Source 30: Want to cancel your pre-order? Here are the terms

Source 31: Are you sure you want to cancel though?

- Many people are freaking out due to not getting replies for their order cancellations - chill guys I’m sure they will honor this… just mountains of emails

Source 32: Photo of "Facebook" item from previous HQ

- “WARNING: Facebook may cause loss of time, poor work ethic, obesity, social disorders, and possible interference of destiny. Use at your own risk. (Y)”

Source 33: The Oatmeal joke predicted it a year ago

- “Introducing... Facebook for your face!”

 

Shirt: We’re not sure if we feel this way anymore. Was designed as an initial reaction to the deal. If you guys feel very strongly you want one, we’ll make the Oculus Eye Facebook shirt:

https://www.districtlines.com/Linus-Tech-Tips

Titan Z

Source 1: theregister.co.uk

Source 2: blogs.nvidia.com

- $3000

- That's not such a high price, said Nvidia CEO and co founder Jen-Hsun Huang - After all, it's "about fifty cents a processor."

- For context a 750Ti is 25 cents per core, a 780ti is also 25 cents per core.

- Anantech estimates the Titan Z will be clocked at 700MHz, well below the 889Mhz (& 980 boost) of the Titan Black.

- The old titan was selling like hotcakes according to Huang. and those ‘hotcakes’ are going in large part to researchers writing CUDA code. "And the reason for that is that this is a supercomputer you could buy at retail," Huang said.

- Release sometime next month.

Asus B85 (Non gold motherboard)

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: brownninja97

Source 2: tomshardware.com

- Made for the new “gamer” lineup.

- LGA 1150

- Based on the B-series chipset so no overclocking.

- strawpoll: Is your system overclocked? (Here’s one I made earlier - Dom)

Nvidia Preview (Pascal)

Source 1: hardwarecanucks.com

- Named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal

- 2016 release

Pascal will include:

3D Memory

- 3D Memory has been talked about for a while now and it will be instrumental within Pascal.

- NVIDIA claims they will be able to provide several times greater bandwidth, more than twice the memory capacity and quadruple energy efficiency.

NVLink

- Picture

- NVLink, a proprietary interface which augments (but does NOT replace) PCI-E as the primary communication bus between a CPU and the graphics processor.

- When connected to a CPU that does not support NVLink, the interconnect can be wholly devoted to peer GPU-to-GPU connections enabling previously unavailable opportunities for GPU clustering.

- “Twice as efficient as PCI-E 3.0”

- NVIDIA calls this “feeding the appetite for big data” but it can also be considered the next logical step for SLI.

Vircurex has frozen bitcoin balances

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: KoKaoDj

Source 2: venturebeat.com

- Starting Mon 24th, Vircurex plans to freeze all user accounts.

- Statement from Vircurex: “Unfortunately we had large fund withdrawals in the last weeks which have led to a complete depletion of our cold wallet balance and we are now facing the option of either closing the site with significant unrecoverable losses for all or to work out a solution that allows the exchange to continue to operate and gradually pay back the losses.”.

Bitcoins now considered as property

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: SangeetKhatri

Source 2: techcrunch.com

- The IRS has officially stated that bitcoin is a property – similar to any other valuable commodity (such as gold) rather than a currency.

- “A payment made using virtual currency is subject to information reporting to the same extent as any other payment made in property.”

- Wages paid to employees using virtual currency are taxable to the employee, must be reported by an employer on a Form W-2, and are subject to federal income tax withholding and payroll taxes.

- Payments using virtual currency made to independent contractors and other service providers are taxable and self-employment tax rules generally apply. Normally, payers must issue Form 1099.

- The constantly fluctuating value of BTC…. How to manage this? Would you pay taxes on BTC gains in BTC? Bwuh… Le Disaster...

Portal Shield

Source 1: blogs.nvidia.com

Source 2: engadget.com

- Nvidia is teaming up with Valve to bring the critically acclaimed Portal to SHIELD.

- Last gen console grade gaming experience coming to handheld. Now.

 

Wolfenstein: The new order - Panzerhund edition

Source 1: store.bethsoft.com

- (No comments as requested)

Shield Updates  - Linus

Source 1: shield.nvidia.com

Source 2: www.polygon.com

- Gamestream outside of house - need 5Mbit up & 5Mbit down - STRONG connection for a good remote streaming experience. Not expecting it to work well in a coffee shop on a share connection on a slow router.

- wake on LAN & remote login

- Notebook GPU support

- Bluetooth kb/mouse support in console mode

- New Tegrazone

- kit kat

- better FPS and bitrate controls

- better gamepad mapper

- $199 for 1 month

 

DX12 NVIDIA Update - Linus

Source 1: gizmodo.com.au

- proprietary APIs are not the way forward. New DX driver coming to improve performance across the board in DX

- Star Swarm better with new 780 Ti drivers vs 290X with Mantle

- Thief better on GF than Mantle 780 Ti vs 290X

- 79% of DX11 GPUs support DX12, 39% support Mantle

- 100% of NV vs 40% of AMD cards with DX12 support - The cards that support DX12 are the same ones that support Mantle

- NV working on DX12 for 4 years.

- Unreal Engine 4 will support DX12

 

Facebook Solar Powered Drones - good news?!?

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Gonzkewl

Source 2: theverge.com

- Engineers are working on developing a fleet of solar-powered drones that can beam internet access down to people in remote regions of the world.

- The drones would fly autonomously for months at a time at an altitude of 20,000 meters (roughly 65,000 feet).

- It uses solar panels to charge up during the day, and battery keep it flying at night.

- Facebook has hired aerospace experts from Ascenta, a company that's built solar-powered drones, as well as others from NASA.

- They will use lasers to send messages between the drones and the ground. If they pull it off, the tech could offer speeds comparable to fiber optic cables.

- If they can pull it off, the two-thirds of the world without the internet might finally come online.

 

UK to Legalize Ripping Media for Personal Use

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: MatheusSanzo

Source 2: torrentfreak.com

- Changes go into effect in June/July

- Permitted to make personal copies to any device you own

- Not permitted to share or distribute or even give others access - how does this work for families…?

- Can resell the physical copies, but required to delete backups.

- Also updating “fair dealing” (US fair use equivalent in commonwealth countries) to broaden rights to quote from or parody the works of others.

 

HTC One M8 Initial impressions

- dual cam setup?

 

Strawpoll link: http://strawpoll.me/1397443

Better than Bieber Titanic II

Source 1: nydailynews.com

- Pictures of interior in source 1

- Will feature cramped conditions in third class just like the original that sunk in 1912.

- The 1000 first class passengers will be historically screened for lice upon reaching New York.

- The ship is being built in China  and its maiden voyage is planned for 2017.

- First and second class will feature the same “opulent creature comforts” as the original including: fine dining, Turkish baths, smoking rooms and sleeping quarters akin to “mahogany mini-mansions.”

 

[linusforsell]

Posting topics from Lukes basement? Impressive!

[Fred Castellum]

Linus the text is unreadable in the night theme! x.x

[Flyguygamer]

Thanks. I had to go to dinner with my family so I missed it.

[DeViLzzz]

What I learned from The Wan Show this week? Many wishy washy people that are going to give Facebook a chance to make Oculus right. Don't bother getting mad if you are just going to cave in and accept the crud that Facebook will throw at us. Sorry good or bad I won't accept this Faceboculus. No way in hell ever.

[LOST TALE]

So on the Directx 12 part.

 

You guys compared:

 

Less expensive card running mantle with less performance

More expensive card running directx 11 with more performance

 

I missing something? Are you guys high? Using this like some sort of revelation statement, it appears.

Ok Mantle doesn't overcome the price difference, but you seem to have said it implying much more.

[LOST TALE]

On the new Recording equipement:

 

I watch your videos in 480p usually, because datacaps.

I do have plenty of bandwith for higher then 1080p easily.

 

So I don't think I will see any difference on my already downsampled download.

[papeles]

 

 

Asus B85 (Non gold motherboard)

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: brownninja97

Source 2: tomshardware.com

- Made for the new “gamer” lineup.

- LGA 1150

- Based on the B-series chipset so no overclocking.

- strawpoll: Is your system overclocked? (Here’s one I made earlier - Dom)

Nvidia Preview (Pascal)

That is a lie Linus. I was kinda sad that you said that. I don't know on what you are basing that (intel website?) but it's a straight out lie.

 

Here are some points, wich you could have seen in the same thread you quoted:

-B85 can overclock. The limitations are: you can't change the fsb (you can only mess around with cache and core multipliers), You are limited to 1600MHz RAM.

 

How does this not fit a gamming branding(not ROG, i consider that Gammer-enthusiast level)?

If you read around a bit, forums and stuff, you will realise (and with a tad of speculation from me) that most gammer-overclockers do not mess around with FSB, only with multipliers, core and input voltages. Also, and quoting yourself, games don't benefit so much from faster ram.

 

This being said, answer me these questions (and defending myself a bit, since i own a B85 motherboard on wich my 4670k sits at a stable 4.4GHz clock (67ºmax, on air)), how can this not be considered a gamming motherboard?

Why do i need a z87 for a gamming pc?

A person who chooses to pay ~80€ for a ASRock B85 Killer can't be considered a gammer?

 

To me, a "gamming" branded motherboard that allows some overclock and has nice features (sound, network, etc) at around 80€ has a place to be and makes sense. The marketing has made it so much that consummers define gammers as enthusiasts, so your strawpoll kinda made sense.

 

Sources? You can easily check Asus ROG page announcements, saying that h87/b85 mobos allow overclock. Asrock has b95 that overclocks. Gigabyte and MSI also. I know that Intel announced a microcode update in 2013 saying it would block all the overclock but it didn't happen i guess?

 

Other then that, great show as always.

[Adorable Cat]

On 3/29/2014 at 12:15 AM, LinusTech said:

- Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

 

[Adorable Cat]

On 3/29/2014 at 12:15 AM, LinusTech said:

You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift.

better quote, missed it because the text is pretty unreadable in dark mode