Personal History
gaming & entertainment

Steve Burke of GamersNexus Reacts To Their Top 1000 Comments On YouTube

We searched through GamersNexus’ most popular videos, picking the top 1000 comments based on number of likes, first comments, and frequently asked questions. Then, we got Editor-in-Chief Steve Burke to sit down and take us down memory lane. Ranging from the earliest days of the channel right up to the present, we've woven together a personal history of GamersNexus on YouTube - and captured Steve’s reactions to the whole thing.

Released on 1/21/2021

Transcript

00:00
I think everybody in the audience who's ever
00:02
built a computer would be familiar with the pain
00:06
of trying to connect those stupid front panel IO headers.
00:10
I hate those pins, they're terrible.
00:12
That's probably the biggest challenge at this point.
00:14
Other than once you get into extreme overclocking
00:16
like handling liquid nitrogen or things of that nature.
00:23
The table is very cold now.
00:24
Hey, I'm Steve Burke and I run Gamers Nexus.
00:27
And today I'm responding to my top 1000 YouTube comments.
00:34
Yikes.
00:35
[energetic music]
00:41
The following comments came from your most popular video
00:44
on your YouTube channel.
00:45
What video is it?
00:48
It's got to still be the Walmart video, I think.
00:51
It is the Walmart video [laughing].
00:53
Yeah. So 4.2 million views.
00:55
All right.
00:56
What do you remember about making this video?
00:58
I remember while working on it
01:00
we were trying to figure out, okay,
01:01
do we do true out of box experience
01:04
like more reaction style to the build,
01:07
or do we do all the benchmarks first
01:09
and then come back to it later and talk about it?
01:12
So we went with a hybrid where the first half
01:14
was kind of reacting,
01:15
because we were really trying to make sure we
01:17
addressed people who were genuinely interested
01:19
in buying this thing
01:20
and not just trying to see a train wreck
01:22
from the enthusiast audience.
01:25
Then later we did some of the benchmarks.
01:26
And then later we came back with follow up videos
01:29
for testing the case, the power supply
01:30
which actually wasn't bad,
01:32
one of the best components of the system.
01:33
That's the main thing I think I remember about it.
01:35
Other than the fact that when I opened the box
01:37
it was actually the wrong computer.
01:40
They have three models, DTW 1, 2, and 3.
01:43
And we bought the most expensive one.
01:44
And then they shipped us the cheapest model instead.
01:46
The customer service agent we called was extremely good,
01:49
handled it very quickly and they did replace it.
01:53
So that part they did well.
01:54
Customer service, good job.
01:56
Building the computer not so much though.
01:58
Here's one of the first comments on that most viewed video.
02:02
This is F dash up.
02:04
If someone doesn't know about hardwares
02:06
then they are going to be screw.
02:08
Wow.
02:09
Eli, you are a hundred percent correct.
02:11
If somebody doesn't know about hardware
02:13
they would definitely be screwed
02:14
if they ended up with a computer
02:17
that was completely different
02:18
than what they thought they ordered.
02:20
When did you start buying prebuilt PCs
02:22
and consoles strictly for review and not personal use?
02:26
And how often do you buy those things now?
02:28
I started buying hardware for review
02:30
in probably about 2012, maybe 2013.
02:34
I want to say 2012 or so.
02:37
Consoles I want to say the first one I bought for review
02:41
it was probably a Switch or a more recent Xbox
02:48
or PlayStation, maybe like an Xbox 1X I think I worked on.
02:53
But those actually we we bought later
02:55
and it was for tear down.
02:56
So it was after I started feeling a little more
02:58
confident taking components apart,
02:59
which did take quite a while.
03:01
This next video is your earliest video
03:04
to reach over a million views.
03:05
And your second most popular video.
03:07
Do you know what it is?
03:09
Maybe thermal paste.
03:11
I've seen that meme going around a lot.
03:12
Is it the thermal paste video?
03:15
It is the thermal paste video.
03:16
And that is exactly why I thought it was probably
03:17
the earliest video over a million.
03:20
So that was pretty funny.
03:22
I really liked that one.
03:23
We took a tube of thermal paste
03:25
and I just shoved the plunger down
03:27
until it emptied almost all of the thermal paste
03:29
into the CPU.
03:30
And that has become meme worthy on Reddit and Twitter.
03:34
So I think that's probably what got it over a million.
03:36
We used to do more PC builds.
03:38
And one of the most annoying comments that we would get
03:40
when doing a PC build was regarding the application
03:44
of thermal paste.
03:44
So we would show it, originally it was,
03:46
here's how you should do it.
03:48
And then later it was,
03:48
well I'm just applying throw paste anyway
03:51
and I'm talking about something else and we're filming it.
03:53
And eventually we got to a point where
03:55
I would ask the editors
03:59
or a camera operator to do it in a way
04:01
where we just wouldn't even show the friggin' thermal paste
04:03
because there were so many comments about it.
04:06
And it was always there's too much or there's too little.
04:08
Typically too much with how I do it.
04:11
I was getting sick of those comments
04:12
and I was pretty sure thermally
04:14
it did not matter.
04:15
So that's why we decided to just, well,
04:17
let's just benchmark this comment.
04:19
We benchmark everything else.
04:20
Might as well benchmark what the viewers say
04:21
and see what we can find out or prove.
04:25
Please reply to these comments from that video.
04:29
We're getting meta now.
04:30
So imagine someone actually trying to build a PC
04:33
for the first time and then watching this intro.
04:35
I remember this comment.
04:37
I think we made it pretty clear in the video.
04:38
But if someone is trying to build a computer
04:40
and they're like, hm, how do I apply thermal paste?
04:42
They type in thermal paste.
04:44
They click on this video.
04:44
And then they watch five seconds and they go, Oh, okay.
04:47
I get it.
04:48
I don't need the rest of this
04:49
however many minute long tutorial.
04:50
They would have a pretty messy CPU socket, I think.
04:52
What do you think is the best way to apply thermal paste.
04:55
Just to empty the whole tube.
04:57
No, I would say generally speaking, I like to do just an X.
05:01
So we do a lot of extreme overclocking.
05:03
There's liquid nitrogen on the table.
05:05
That's gonna make some noise on the laptop.
05:08
We do a lot of extreme overclocking
05:10
and I've found that so you can manually spread the paste.
05:14
It does help a little bit with XOC.
05:17
But once you're talking just a normal PC build,
05:20
doing an X on a CPU and applying the cooler
05:23
allows me to get CPUs up to 5.8 gigahertz,
05:26
six gigahertz sometimes.
05:28
No problems at all.
05:29
You're really just going for full coverage.
05:31
You're just tryin' to make sure there's full spread
05:32
of the paste.
05:34
This is by far your most painful video even to this day.
05:37
It's an absolute masterpiece.
05:40
Thank you.
05:41
It definitely, that's what I was going for.
05:44
I was going for.
05:46
So it's kind of fun with YouTube.
05:47
So behind the scenes is you're always thinking about
05:49
how do I make sure we get people interested
05:52
in the first 15 seconds?
05:53
Because if you look at your attention charts
05:55
for almost every channel
05:56
it's to be like a plummet right around the 15 second mark.
05:59
You want to get people interested so that they get
06:02
to the good information and don't give up too early.
06:03
So I'm glad you thought that it was painful to watch
06:07
because that's what I was going for with that intro.
06:10
Why do you think people had such a strong reaction to this?
06:13
So paste itself, the topic prompting the video,
06:16
it's something that pretty much everyone has had experience
06:18
with in our audience where most people have built a computer
06:20
in the audience.
06:21
Some people are brand new and that's awesome.
06:23
But most people built one.
06:25
And so they think they have a pretty good idea
06:27
of how to apply paste.
06:28
And so whenever they see someone else apply paste
06:31
they try to correct it.
06:32
As for such a strong reaction to the video we made?
06:34
Well, I think we used Kryonaut
06:36
so it was probably like $15 a thermal paste
06:41
that we dumped for that intro.
06:42
So that's probably, that's a pretty good reason
06:45
to have a strong reaction.
06:47
The following comments came from your third
06:48
most popular video on your YouTube channel.
06:50
What is it?
06:51
Is it the AMD factory tour? I hope it is.
06:54
Oh yeah, no, that makes sense.
06:56
That's a very new video.
06:57
The Stop Doing It Wrong
06:58
about the closed loop liquid cooler orientation.
07:00
We were speaking with some manufacturers
07:02
and they had seen a surge in builds
07:07
that were doing a bottom mounted radiator
07:09
for a closed loop or AIO cooler
07:10
with the pump at the top of the loop.
07:13
And that's actually very bad.
07:15
All of the manufacturers of closed loop liquid coolers
07:18
and AIOs that we spoke to
07:19
which is a lot of them, like half a dozen or so,
07:21
basically unilaterally disagree with a pump
07:24
at the top of the loop configuration.
07:26
So that's the real encouragement we got to make that video.
07:30
What are some other ways that gamers can get
07:32
their system to ideal temperatures?
07:34
Buying a case that doesn't completely obstruct the airflow
07:37
is definitely number one for this.
07:39
And you do get into the territory where
07:43
there's noise and then there's thermals.
07:45
And those are really the two key aspects of a case.
07:47
And there is sort of frequency spectrum, too,
07:49
with a case, where you start talking about whether
07:52
the type of noise is more annoying
07:55
than perhaps the noise volume.
07:56
So if you have a lower frequency but higher volume noise
08:00
for a lot of people that's not as annoying
08:02
as a higher frequency lower volume whining noise.
08:05
But anyway, you're normally looking at
08:06
noise or thermals.
08:07
Generally speaking, if you focus on thermals
08:10
and you get a mesh fronted case or fairly open case,
08:14
you can manually bring the fan speeds down to get
08:17
equivalent temperature or equivalent noise, either one,
08:21
to a noise focused case while reducing the opposite.
08:26
So if you bring down, if you're noise normalizing
08:29
you can end up with better temperature
08:30
in a lot of instances with a more open front panel.
08:34
And if your thermal normalizing,
08:36
you can often end up with better noise levels.
08:38
The one aspect that you don't get there
08:40
is frequency spectrum.
08:41
So depending on the type of noise that you have in the case
08:44
like from coil whine, that may be a concern.
08:46
So definitely case is number one consideration.
08:49
And then other than the case,
08:51
I would say undervolting is a really good thing to do.
08:55
But you do need to validate the performance after
08:57
to make sure you haven't brought down the performance
08:59
by accident, because we've seen a lot of people do that too.
09:01
In this particular video, we had a really cool demo
09:03
that I was pretty proud of.
09:04
Of a cut open AIO that we could use to actually
09:08
show what was happening rather than me
09:10
just saying what the information was.
09:12
The one thing that I was unhappy about with that
09:14
despite being overall very happy with the performance
09:17
of it and the reception of it was extremely positive.
09:19
Biggest downside with this video was being used basically
09:21
as a weapon to hit other YouTubers
09:25
or new system builders and say your AIO is upside down.
09:29
And probably 80% of the time the comments
09:32
saying your AIO is upside down
09:34
or your AIO configuration is wrong,
09:36
those were actually incorrect.
09:38
Somewhere in there there was a disconnect
09:39
where people just, I think got confused
09:42
about which orientation was really the ideal
09:44
or the correct one.
09:45
And then they would go take their TLDR
09:48
and tell other people you did it wrong and use our video.
09:52
And it's just not really a nice thing to do to people
09:55
especially who are new builders.
09:56
It's really discouraging for them.
09:58
And it's especially discouraging
09:59
because that builder will probably go watch our video,
10:03
read the con, and if there's a disconnect
10:04
between the two of them, they'll be really confused.
10:06
So that's where you get people who, like this person,
10:10
like Ryan S, might be afraid of buying an AIO
10:13
because it's too confusing what the message was.
10:16
This is one of your first videos.
10:18
So it is indeed one of the first, it's not the first.
10:21
There are a couple of others like this one
10:23
that are hidden because I was making them
10:25
before I knew anything about what I was doing.
10:27
And I would use like backing music
10:29
and things that would get copyright claims, stuff like that.
10:32
So there's a few other ones that are secret.
10:34
So I never
10:37
I never went to YouTube.
10:39
It was a website first, like I said.
10:41
YouTube was secondary.
10:42
And I never went into it really with a goal of
10:47
quote unquote becoming a YouTuber.
10:48
That wasn't as much of a thing first of all, in 2008 or '09.
10:52
The goal was really just, I don't know.
10:54
I just started the website reviewing games
10:56
and doing feature pieces on games.
10:59
Really fun stuff like that, that I just enjoyed
11:00
from a purely gaming, non hardware standpoint.
11:03
So my plans for the channel, I think,
11:05
were basically to use it just as like
11:08
a dump for trailers and things like that
11:11
but have the article written content be the focus.
11:14
And then we'd embed the video.
11:16
As far as could I have imagined what it would become?
11:19
Definitely, no.
11:21
This is, what I'm doing now is what I do really enjoy.
11:26
And around 2009, 2010, I did have a job working
11:30
in a testing lab for a major computer OEM.
11:33
And that's all public and out there.
11:35
But I worked for them and I really enjoyed
11:37
working in the testing lab.
11:39
I don't think I left that job thinking I wanted
11:41
to build my own testing lab.
11:43
But now that's kind of where we are.
11:44
So it took a little while to grow into it.
11:47
Definitely didn't think it would go this direction.
11:49
I think I was always looking at it more
11:51
from a doing gameplay analysis or let's plays,
11:55
things of that nature, not really computer hardware as much.
11:59
This is one of the first comments on your channel.
12:03
I don't know what to expect.
12:05
It's from Kushan and who says nice breakdown.
12:09
Here's something you might have overlooked though.
12:10
The experience bar.
12:12
More importantly, the one at the very end of the video
12:13
is different to the rest.
12:15
Could this be a different game mode?
12:16
That's an excellent observation.
12:19
If I had continued working more on the game side of things
12:23
then I think this probably would have been
12:25
something I eventually picked up on
12:26
was paying more attention to things like that.
12:28
That's, I'm, I'm happy to see that was
12:30
one of the first comments,
12:31
because that's a an actually real comment.
12:34
This is one of the most liked comments on this video.
12:36
You gotta appreciate the skill required to
12:38
make a 2009 videos seem like it's from 2001.
12:42
That's funny.
12:43
I think there was probably a reason to that.
12:45
I'm almost certain it's because I didn't know
12:47
the encoder settings to use.
12:49
What were some of the biggest lessons you learned
12:51
over the course of your career?
12:54
Definitely still learning things every day,
12:56
especially as we grow.
12:58
Linus from Linus Tech Tips was previously
13:00
in the series with Ars Technica.
13:03
And I talk to him pretty regularly now,
13:04
just about how do you deal with the scope of the operation,
13:07
the core audience, the original audience
13:10
versus the new audience, especially with
13:12
a very quick period of growth for the channel.
13:16
So we just went through one of those where he picked up
13:18
a couple hundred thousand subscribers in a month or two.
13:21
And that's 10% of the total channel size in like a month.
13:25
That means 10% of your audience or my audience in this case
13:29
now doesn't necessarily have the history
13:30
of the channel or know what you've done.
13:32
So they're forming an opinion of what kind of content
13:35
you should be making based on one or two videos.
13:37
As soon as you upload something
13:38
that's a little bit different
13:39
than what you've uploaded in their tenure
13:41
versus the history of the channel's tenure,
13:44
there can be kind of a, Oh, I don't like this.
13:47
This isn't the gamers nexus that I know type of response.
13:50
So biggest thing I've learned from that is
13:52
just framing the videos, especially at the beginning,
13:54
as we increase the reach to new people,
13:58
framing them correctly so that people understand
14:00
this is something we've done for a long time.
14:02
Here's some past examples of it.
14:04
Here's what we're doing this time.
14:05
That way everyone's on board and on the same page.
14:07
I think other big lessons I've learned, definitely knowing.
14:13
So I talk about this a lot with other YouTubers.
14:17
Channels that blow up overnight versus
14:20
channels that take over a decade.
14:21
We're one where it took over a decade.
14:23
I think I've been doing this about about 13 or so years.
14:26
It took so long to get any amount of success
14:29
or being able to actually pay myself or other people
14:31
that I was able to learn in a pretty safe environment,
14:36
where if I make a mistake no one even knew about it.
14:38
'Cause no one watched or read my content.
14:41
Whereas now if we make a mistake, it's a huge deal.
14:43
And there's a lot of anxiety associated with it
14:47
'cause you have to figure out how do you deal with it.
14:49
This next video is your earliest video
14:51
with over 300,000 views.
14:53
Do you know what it is?
14:55
I'm not sure.
14:56
I really hope it's not the how to flash ASUS bios one.
14:59
Okay, good. All right.
15:01
I'm good with that. We're cool.
15:03
So that's Basic PC Troubleshooting.
15:05
I forgot about that video.
15:06
I bought like a folding card table.
15:08
I put a white bed sheet over it and that was my set.
15:12
And that was like a big deal to have that
15:14
because before I was filming computer builds on the floor.
15:17
So that's, I forgot this video existed
15:19
but that's actually a really good performance.
15:21
Why do you think out of all your earlier videos
15:23
this one has so many views?
15:24
This, I think this is around the period where
15:26
I started doing a good amount of tutorials.
15:28
So we did stuff like this and we had a couple
15:30
of outlets cover some of our earlier videos like this
15:33
that helped get them successful.
15:35
This particular one I think is probably a matter
15:37
of Google searches.
15:38
A lot of people had a power supply they were trying to
15:40
figure out if it was that are not.
15:42
Please reply to these comments from that video.
15:45
Lol, so what if all of my wires are black?
15:47
What then, mate?
15:48
This is a good point.
15:49
I probably didn't even consider that.
15:50
I will answer that though.
15:52
If the wires are all black,
15:54
then you can look up a pin out diagram for the cable.
15:57
And as long as it's the side that plugs into the computer,
16:00
it's completely standardized.
16:02
Another thing you can do is take a digital multimeter
16:04
and probe one side versus the other
16:06
and do continuity checks.
16:07
But pin out diagrams work great.
16:09
My power supply just moves a little and the CPU
16:12
turns too for like one second, and it stops.
16:15
Does this mean the power supply is broken?
16:17
I'm assuming they're talking about the power supply fan.
16:18
Almost definitely.
16:19
If the power supply itself is moving
16:22
you should probably get rid of it because it's possessed.
16:24
But if the fan's twitching,
16:26
I'm guessing that this particular user probably
16:29
didn't have the EPS 12 volt cable plugged in.
16:30
I've made that mistake a lot.
16:32
That's exactly the behavior.
16:34
It could also be something like the power supply, yes.
16:37
But back to the other point, though,
16:39
when we talk to power supply manufacturers,
16:41
they tell us that their most common reason
16:42
for RMA is because people think that the fan's dead,
16:45
when it's actually a feature.
16:46
It's supposed to stop spinning
16:48
so that it doesn't make noise under certain loads.
16:50
So they started adding this other feature where
16:52
the fan will twitch every now and then,
16:53
to tell the user like, hey I'm the fan and I'm alive
16:56
but that has also caused support ticket issues.
17:00
So it doesn't seem to be a great solution
17:02
to a silent computer that doesn't make people worry
17:05
that the fan's broken or something.
17:07
What do you wish companies would do to
17:08
increase power supplies' reliability?
17:10
This is a pretty fun question, I think.
17:12
The most common RMA reason, I've asked a lot
17:16
of the PSU makers this, most of the large brands,
17:19
including some of the factories that we've been to,
17:22
like in Taiwan and China.
17:24
And the most common RMA reason is dead bugs
17:27
in the power supply.
17:28
Normally, dead roaches.
17:29
How do you increase reliability with that?
17:32
I have no idea.
17:33
I don't know if they, they pre-install traps
17:36
or if they have to try and close it off more.
17:38
The following comments came from your
17:40
Tour of the New, Empty Office: GN Moving Vlog Part 1 video.
17:45
The new empty office that is now the couple of year old
17:48
completely filled office.
17:50
Please reply to these comments from that video.
17:52
Rare appearance of Steve's legs from API Cars.
17:55
Now and then people will joke about in the comments about,
17:57
like take a shot every time Steve takes a step back.
18:01
I think I do that so much because
18:02
I didn't have the freedom to actually move
18:04
in the old set 'cause we were right against the wall.
18:07
How has the channel and your onscreen presence evolved
18:10
since you started?
18:11
The channel has evolved a lot.
18:13
And that one relates back to some of the earlier questions
18:16
about starting with games,
18:17
moving into computer hardware over time.
18:19
That's the single biggest change where we went from,
18:22
I was really proud of series
18:24
I made like, we had this Greenlight Spotlight Series
18:27
that was about Steam's Greenlight program.
18:28
We had one that I called, um, Heat Signature.
18:32
That was the first one I had a custom animation for.
18:34
Actually by Andrew, who now works here on product design
18:38
and development for the store and on video editing.
18:41
So heat signature was cool.
18:42
But these were feature pieces we're really proud of
18:45
where it was just talking about cool indie games
18:49
coming out that we thought deserved more attention.
18:52
I say we out of habit, but it was me working on those
18:54
pretty much exclusively at that point.
18:56
And then later on we started
18:59
getting into the computer hardware.
19:01
But early on it was reviews of games.
19:03
Like I had Martin Baker on the team doing game reviews
19:06
that were really good.
19:07
And then we sorta hit this period where I went
19:10
to PAX prime 2012,
19:11
and I met some of the hardware manufacturers.
19:14
And that was really the turning point.
19:16
I went back.
19:17
I decided to drop out of school and basically committed
19:19
to this full-time and started working with
19:21
all the hardware companies I had met at PAX.
19:23
Is there anything you miss about the original set-up?
19:25
Yes. The set wall in the background.
19:28
I really liked that wood set wall.
19:30
I still have it actually in the same spot in that house.
19:32
And once we eventually moved to a bigger space
19:35
my plan is to bring it back in and set up another set.
19:38
You definitely lose some of the,
19:42
I don't know if it's like, what exactly it is.
19:44
Some of the character I'll say,
19:46
As you get out of like a house environment.
19:49
But we couldn't do stuff like work with liquid nitrogen
19:53
overclocking where I get 180 liter tanks delivered
19:55
to an office.
19:56
They won't bring that to my house, believe it or not.
19:57
Snowflake, my cat, who has still appears
19:59
in videos for B roll.
20:01
She is not in videos as much now
20:03
because we don't film at the house.
20:04
So I do miss that because that was a lot of fun to have
20:06
like there's one video where she grabbed the script
20:08
out of my hand and started eating the paper
20:10
because I talked about Nvidia and we dubbed her
20:12
the senior AMD analyst at that point.
20:14
So that stuff I missed but we found ways
20:17
to make it all balanced.
20:19
But definitely there's a few things I miss
20:20
about the old setup, yes.
20:21
We've learned a lot of behind the scenes stuff
20:24
for efficiency.
20:25
Andrew was the first employee.
20:26
He still works here and does all the, like I said
20:28
product stuff and editing videos.
20:30
Andrew and I both have really messed up sleep schedules.
20:32
So it worked out well where I would tell him,
20:35
Hey, I'm gonna have this video ready at about 7:00 PM.
20:38
Can you come in and edit it?
20:40
And we would be done editing at maybe five or 6:00 AM.
20:43
And that's really true, like small company.
20:45
That's just how it works sometimes.
20:46
So that is obviously not sustainable for anybody.
20:51
So as we got into this office
20:53
we're able to speed up the efficiency enough
20:55
where we could have videos ready
20:59
kind of as people are already working.
21:02
So now I'll film, let's say a section of charts
21:06
that I have a pretty good calculation on
21:08
how long it will take someone to edit those charts.
21:10
How long it will take me to voice the amount of words
21:13
that there are.
21:14
And we'll film that.
21:15
So while the person is, normally Keegan, working on editing
21:18
I can work on the next piece.
21:19
We couldn't do that at the house.
21:21
It didn't work that way.
21:22
Wasn't enough space and we couldn't
21:24
get more people in there.
21:26
So that was the biggest problem.
21:27
Speed Round.
21:28
Answer the following comments as quickly as possible
21:30
because otherwise we'll be here all day.
21:33
A hundred percent true.
21:33
So this one is from Celeritas from 2019.
21:37
It says RGB.
21:39
The word that transcends all known bounds
21:41
of language barriers.
21:42
Yes, that is from our Huaqianbei SEG e-market tour
21:46
in Shenzhen in China.
21:47
I was trying to communicate with the shopkeeper.
21:49
I didn't understand a lot of what she was saying
21:51
but then I heard RGB.
21:53
I was like, I know what that is. That I know.
21:56
Oh, it's great to see Windows XP
21:57
still kicking around in 2019.
22:00
Also from a factory tour.
22:01
Windows XP very popular in factories.
22:03
I'm only here for Steve's 2014 hair.
22:06
It's almost angsty.
22:08
By Tech Inspected.
22:09
I mean, it was fine for then, but
22:12
we'll stay away from that haircut for now.
22:15
Dave R says Yaskawa robots!
22:17
Good to see the robots I program
22:18
on a daily basis are featured in a GM video.
22:21
That's so cool to hear.
22:22
Why did they make BIOS updating so complicated and
22:25
potentially dangerous?
22:25
It's ridiculous.
22:26
I tried updating BIOS wants and my computer went haywire.
22:30
Fortunately with modern dual bios and with bios flashback
22:33
it's gotten a lot safer.
22:34
There's a lot lower risk that you'll break the system.
22:36
Congrats to you.
22:37
Been here since 5k subs.
22:39
If you've been here since 5k subs,
22:40
you've seen pretty much the whole evolution of the channel.
22:43
So I'm always curious what people who've been around
22:47
that long think about how things have turned out.
22:50
If they're like, I'm mad it's not just games anymore.
22:53
Or if they like how it worked out.
22:54
Final Questions.
22:55
What are you excited about these days
22:57
and what's on the horizon?
22:58
Definitely expanding the testing operation
23:00
is the thing that I'm the most interested in.
23:02
The most excited about.
23:03
I'm currently looking at some really expensive
23:05
like thermal chambers.
23:07
I want to build a semi anechoic chamber.
23:09
We would need more space for both of those things.
23:11
They're huge.
23:12
There's a fan testing, a fully automated fan tester
23:15
that I really want to get.
23:16
We would never make money back on it.
23:17
Or if we did it take several years, but it'd be cool.
23:20
Which video or series of videos
23:22
has been your favorite and why?
23:24
For sure, it's the factory tours.
23:26
They are some of the coolest content.
23:28
We spend a lot of time working with a lot of experts
23:30
on the ground at each factory.
23:31
There's normally translation involved.
23:34
So, it takes quite a bit of time.
23:36
It's easily a day to get through a complex factory.
23:39
And it might be like half a day to get through
23:41
fan manufacturing, which is another tour we did.
23:43
That's my favorite series.
23:44
It did extremely well in 2019.
23:46
2020 in March, right before things got crazy,
23:50
we did another tour and ended up
23:54
having a ton of logistical challenges
23:57
because stuff started shutting down all around us.
23:59
So we barely got out of Taiwan
24:00
before they closed the borders.
24:01
But we do have some videos yet un-uploaded
24:05
from that series that I've been kind of holding on to.
24:07
So keep an eye out for more of those.
24:09
How does it feel looking back on your career
24:11
and do you have any messages to your fans
24:14
who have supported you?
24:15
It's interesting because there's so,
24:17
I'm still at a stage where
24:19
I think Louis Rossmann has the phrase about,
24:22
he calls it hamster wheel work versus real work.
24:24
You have to keep running or the wheel stops spinning.
24:26
So we're still in a stage where that's a lot of my job,
24:29
but it's getting less so that way.
24:31
I'm really happy with how we've been able to
24:34
really take that core, literally the first ideal
24:39
I had for this setup, take the core of
24:44
I want to be sort of journalism focused
24:47
to the extent possible.
24:48
This is why I respect Ars Technica and all of their peers
24:51
in the space where you kind of focus on the reporting of it.
24:54
Telling a good story. Telling a fair story.
24:56
And then you build the rest from there.
24:59
Having viewers who support us directly
25:01
even if it's just watching and sharing the videos
25:03
that's what makes it possible to do all that.
25:05
So thank you.
25:06
[energetic music]