Apple’s Wearable AI Pin Sounds Cringe - WAN Show January 23, 2026

Summary

The WAN Show Podcast Summary

Episode: Apple’s Wearable AI Pin Sounds Cringe
Date: January 23, 2026
Hosts: Linus Sebastian (A), Luke Lafreniere (B), Producer Dan (C)
Podcast: Linus Tech Tips WAN Show

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Episode Theme:

Deep Dive on Apple’s AI Wearable “Pin,” Tech News & Industry Shifts
Linus and Luke cover the new rumors about Apple’s entry into wearable AI gadgets ("AI Pin"). They discuss the historic challenges of such devices, Apple's innovation strategy, broader AI industry moves, YouTube updates for 2026, major shifts in the electronics market (Sony-TCL, Nvidia ARM laptops), and the fates of legacy tech (Ubisoft, Vimeo). The episode blends typical WAN Show humor, nostalgia, and sharp skepticism.

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Contents & Timestamps

1. Apple’s Rumored AI Pin Wearable (02:22 – 22:11)
2. AI in Daily Life: Frustrations & Use Cases (06:01 – 22:11)
3. Discussion: Apple’s Product Innovation and Future (14:14 – 22:11)
4. YouTube 2026: New Features & Stats (27:04 – 39:40)
5. Industry Shakeups: Sony-TCL & Chinese Market Moves (70:50 – 88:08)
6. Tesla Robo-taxis & Autopilot Subscription Changes (89:27 – 97:12)
7. Ubisoft’s Decline & Gaming Industry Reflections (106:01 – 117:10)
8. Microsoft, OpenAI, and the “AI Bubble” (118:08 – 130:16)
9. Other Tech News & Humorous Moments (137:02 – 154:54)
10. Listener Q&A and After Dark (176:28 – end)

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1. Apple’s Rumored AI Pin Wearable (02:22 – 22:11)

• The Rumor: Apple is allegedly working on an "AI-powered wearable pin" with cameras, mics, speakers, and a button, meant to be worn like a badge (arc tag-sized, aluminum and glass body, wireless charging).

• Previous Attempts: Linus and Luke quickly point out other AI pins have failed famously (“catastrophically failed”), drawing skepticism that Apple can succeed—unless the user experience is truly exceptional.

• Key Quote:

  “Is that a realistic number of AI pins given how other AI pins have catastrophically failed? And maybe the bigger conversation here is what would you even want from an AI pin?” – Linus (05:32)

• Comparison to Meta Glasses: Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are cited as a better form factor for AI-assistant wearables. Linus and Luke favor glasses over a chest pin for usability (e.g., easier to record POV, less awkward).

• Problems with Existing AI Assistants:

  • Unreliability of voice assistants in real-world tasks: “I want to put my fist through my dash every time I have to use my voice…” (10:20)
  • Limitations of integration and actual usefulness (“It just feels kind of useless...”) (09:45)

• On Materials: Linus points out Apple’s tendency for heavy, premium-feeling materials (“aluminum and glass,” “metal and rocks”) that aren’t always suitable for wearables.

• Market Comparison: Apple plans for a massive 20M unit production (!), when no other AI pin has cracked mass market apathy.

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2. AI in Daily Life: Frustrations & Use Cases (06:01 – 22:11)

• Observations:
  • Some users are outsourcing important life tasks (e.g., meals, relationships) to AI, raising concerns about overreliance.
  • Both hosts express frustration at how often voice AI fails at basic requests (navigation, search, calling contacts).
  • Linus: “Every interaction I’ve had with it has been so unreliable and so useless that I just—I don’t want anything like...”
• Memorable Segment:
  • Linus shares a story (07:27 – 09:45) about using AI to identify someone and finding current solutions hopeless.

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3. Discussion: Apple’s Product Innovation and Future (14:14 – 22:11)

• “Net New” Products:
  • Apple hasn’t had a major post-iPhone product hit since AirPods and Watch (and even these are more accessories).
  • Recent big launches (Apple Vision Pro) are considered lackluster or outright failures in terms of mass adoption.
• Apple’s Protectionist Ecosystem:
  • A continued pattern of making peripherals/experiences “iPhone first,” limiting cross-platform potential.
• Quote:

  “AI Pin just kind of feels like desperate thrashing, trying to find something new and some relevance in this AI-obsessed corporate world right now.” – Linus (16:02)

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4. YouTube 2026: New Features & Stats (27:04 – 39:40)

• Big Announcements:

  • Image posts supported in Shorts feed.
  • YouTube TV gets multi-view (up to four channels at once).
  • Simplified and more granular parental controls—particularly the ability to turn off Shorts for dependents (34:08: “That’s a huge thank you.” – Luke).
  • Improved monetization for vertical/short form and YouTube Shopping fully integrated.
  • AI transparency labeling—videos made with AI will be labeled.

• Stats:

  • 200 billion daily views on Shorts (!).
  • In 2024, YouTube contributed $55 billion to US GDP and “supported over 490,000 full-time jobs.” (30:25)

• Teachers & YouTube:

  • 79% of US teachers use YouTube to teach students—hosts are surprised at just how high the number is.

• Memorable Moment:

  • Linus jokes about the cycle of generational panic watches (“everything used to rot your brain, now it’s Shorts!” – 34:20).

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5. Industry Shakeups: Sony-TCL & Chinese Market Moves (70:50 – 88:08)

• Sony Bravia TV Business: Sony Sells 51% Stake to TCL

  • After decades of TV dominance, Sony cedes control to TCL in joint venture, leaving them with only 49%.
  • Linus is shocked (“Sony doesn’t control their TV business anymore, which is wild to me as a 90s kid.” – 01:06)
  • Discussion on whether TCL’s “cheap” brand perception changes the value of Sony Bravia going forward.

• Global Market Implications:

  • Leevers (“race to the bottom” for TV pricing).
  • Observations on how Chinese manufacturing has moved from “junk” to world class—and how even “premium” brands like Sony increasingly rely on Chinese partners.

• Quote:

  “Would I pay extra—would I pay the Bravia premium for a TCL TV with Sony’s special sauce, knowing I already wasn’t willing to do it before?” – Linus (81:55)

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6. Tesla Robo-taxis & Autopilot Subscription Changes (89:27 – 97:12)

• Tesla’s Robo-taxi Moves:

  • Tesla launches fully unsupervised robo-taxis in Austin… but reports surface that “supervisory” staff simply follow the vehicles in another car, undermining the claim.
  • “At what point do you think it would be easier for Tesla to just do the things they say they’re gonna do instead of pretend to do the things they say they’re gonna do?” – Linus (91:54)

• Tesla’s Feature Monetization:

  • Autopilot (previously included lane keep/cruise) now requires a paid Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscription with a longer trial (over $8000/yr for one-time).
  • Lane keep now “paywalled”—many cheaper cars include for free.
  • Older Teslas keep their features; change applies going forward.

• Cultural Commentary:

  • Skepticism over Tesla’s stated vs. actual progress; investor FOMO as possible motivation for the FSD ramp.

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7. Ubisoft’s Decline & Gaming Industry Reflections (106:01 – 117:10)

• Sharp Decline:

  • Studio closures, game cancellations (including Prince of Persia remake), severe layoffs, and massive drop in share price (lowest in 14 years).
  • Discussion on how “dysfunctional” legacy companies are losing talent, who create breakout hits elsewhere.

• Quote:

  “Have you found that TV [failure] rates have been going up?” – Luke (73:45, re: TV segment)

• Fan Advice:

  • If Ubisoft called for help, hosts advise to “listen to your fans, do another Assassin’s Creed like 4,” lean into what’s obviously working, and stop “wet noodling legendary IPs.”

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8. Microsoft, OpenAI, and the “AI Bubble” (118:08 – 130:16)

• Satya Nadella’s Candid Admission:

  • “AI could become a speculative bubble unless widely beneficial… tech companies will lose the social permission to take up energy unless it’s used for actually improving health, education, etc.” (118:21)

• OpenAI Adds Ads:

  • Despite previously claiming “ads would be a last resort,” OpenAI plans to add ads to ChatGPT’s free tier.

• Skepticism:

  • Linus is critical of AI slop, the breakneck arms race, and the ease of “norms” flipping and inviting more user-hostile monetization.

• Meta-Reflection:

  • “Most people don’t know or care about the energy AI consumes,” noting that tech industry bubbles rarely break through to mainstream consumer concern until crisis hits directly.

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9. Other Tech News & Humorous Moments (137:02 – 154:54)

• Google Gemini Personal Intelligence:

  • Google launches new AI that cross-references all user data—but claims not to “train directly” on personal data.
  • The hosts are skeptically amused: “Their pitch for privacy is ‘well, we already have all your data anyway.’” (137:31)

• Blue Origin’s Satellite Ambitions:

  • Amazon/Bezos’ Blue Origin promises a new 5,000-satellite constellation boasting impossible speeds (“6 terabit/sec!”), which Linus calls vaporware until proven.

• ASUS Pauses Phones, Goes All-In on AI:

  • Hosts mock ASUS’s “pivot to AI” as empty buzzword rebranding (“stock-pumping move”).

• Vimeo Gutted by Acquisition:

  • Vimeo sold, huge layoffs follow—discussed as part of an industry trend of consolidation and private equity cost-cutting.

• Trivia:

  • Linus shares nostalgia for Sony and Panasonic Walkmans; reflections on the bygone consumer electronics landscape.
  • Classic WAN banter over names for “merch messages” (57:35: “we are officially banning the word merch”).

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10. Listener Q&A and After Dark (176:28 – end)

• Topics Touched On:
  • Home renovations and paint tips (“I think painting a house right before you sell it causes an epidemic of blandness.” – Linus, 178:08)
  • Appliance quality and planned obsolescence
  • Projector cables/fake “wireless” TV marketing exposed
  • “What new tech are you excited for?”: Smart glasses (modestly), ARM laptops, home robots (if not “adware”)
  • Birds update (Luke’s budgies’ adventures) (190:04)
  • Tech literacy of “zoomers” (fun meme: “There is exactly one generation that can rotate a PDF and there will never be another. The knowledge dies with us.” – 195:00)
  • Programming culture (“At a certain point you should seek help”—Luke, 200:16)
  • Smart car controls: Linus actually prefers his touchscreen Porsche, Luke wants more buttons—debate.
  • Sub-zero $20K fridge chat and North American appliance woes.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Apple’s wearable:

  “Apple does tend to do that. They take something other people do kind of crappily and they do it better. If only anybody wanted that.” – Linus (00:00)

• On AI reliability:

  “Every interaction I’ve had with it has been so unreliable and so useless...” – Linus (10:20)

• On YouTube Short addiction vs. traditional learning:

  “I grew up with YouTube and I turned out okay. But these shorts, these shorts are bad. They’ll rot your brain. Except… they do seem to.” – Linus (34:20)

• On Tesla claims:

  “At what point do you think it would be easier for Tesla to just do the things they say they’re gonna do instead of pretend to do the things they say they’re gonna do?” – Linus (91:54)

• On Microsoft ‘AI Bubble’:

  “Satya Nadella admitted at the World Economic Forum that AI risks becoming a speculative bubble unless its use spreads beyond big tech companies...” – Linus (118:19)

• On generational tech skill:

  “There is exactly one generation that can rotate a PDF and there will never be another. The knowledge dies with us.” – meme shared by Linus (195:00)

• Classic Banter:

  • “We need more white dudes with facial hair circle jerking in the podcast space.” – Linus (171:00)
  • “I’ll just give up on all this and go be a gay frog somewhere.” – Linus (151:46)

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Tone and Style

• Cynical, Skeptical: The hosts have deep knowledge of the tech space and don’t hesitate to call out hype, artificial marketing (wireless TVs!), or shallow pivots.
• Nostalgic: Frequent references to the 90s/2000s, early days of digital tech, lost innovation, company rise-and-falls.
• Humorous, Sarcastic: Quippy, irreverent, inside-baseball jokes. Self-aware about their own receding relevance in some areas (“Are we just boomers now?”).
• Candid: Willingness to talk honestly about the limits of their own products, company challenges, and the frustrating blizzard of industry “AI” announcements.

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Summary

This WAN Show episode is a sprawling, insightful, and highly entertaining look at the state of consumer tech as of early 2026. Linus and Luke scrutinize the rumored Apple AI Pin from all angles—historical failures, questionable use cases, and Apple’s struggle for the Next Big Thing. That conversation segues into broader reflections on AI hype, voice assistants’ persistent mediocrity, and the rapidly evolving content economy (notably YouTube’s massive shifts and statistics). Industry changes are dissected through the Sony-TCL merger, Tesla’s robo-taxi reality vs. rhetoric, and the struggles of iconic companies like Ubisoft and Vimeo in a world that’s increasingly consolidated and AI-chasing.

Listener Q&A, product news, and after dark antics (from bird stories to fridge woes) ensure the episode is not only informative but loaded with the kind of “geek hangout” moments that have defined WAN Show for years. This episode is essential listening for anyone following tech trends, questioning mainstream narratives, or just wanting to feel connected to the deeper currents in hardware, software, and internet culture.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch fix online Personal styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size, style and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want. No subscription required. And he sends just for me pieces plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started [e-mail] Spotify. That's stitchfix.com Spotify. What is up everybody and welcome to the Wan Show. I forget which one was the headline title today. Ah, yes, of course. Thank you, producer Dan, for whispering my ear. We've got a lot of great topics for you guys today. Apple is reportedly working on an AI wearable pin because that worked so well. The times that other companies tried to do it. I mean, who knows? Apple does tend to do that. They take something other people do kind of crappily and they do it better. If only anybody wanted that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Also, yeah. Sony has given up 51% of its Bravia TV business to China's TCL and a new strategic partnership. Which sounds an awful lot more like a strategic. Well, you know what? When you give someone a controlling stake in your business. Look, I'm just saying that Sony doesn't control their TV business anymore, which is wild to me as a 90s kid. What else we got that was wild?

[B]

Speaking of wild and companies maybe like kind of not existing anymore. Ubisoft just. Are you okay?

[A]

Yeah, I just. I couldn't tell if our chair partner isn't okay.

[B]

Ubisoft.

[A]

I couldn't tell if our chair partner, Razor, has their armrests at a different level or if I am just a lopsided human. I think based on that, they both tuck under the table at the same height. It's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. Carry on.

[B]

Speaking about Lopez. Lopsided. I don't know. YouTube blog. What's new for YouTube in 2026?

[A]

Oh, I'm actually excited about this. Yeah, I saw one thing I liked and then I ignored the rest of it. And so hopefully the rest is good too. The WAN show is brought to you. Rove, Lab, Squarespace, Factor Meals and Odoo alongside our rap partner Dbrand and our laptop partner, Razer. They already got a shout out for the chair, so they don't get another one. That's all I'm contractually obligated to do. What do we want to get into first? How about we jump right into Apple reportedly working on an AI Wearable pin. The information. Great domain by the way. Great snag the information dot com. Fantastic work with that you guys. The information reports that Apple is working on an AI powered wearable pin. The pins tech features are speculated to be many packed with two cameras including a standard and wide angle lens, three microphones, a speaker and a physical button. Its shell is rumored because this is all. All rumors, functionally pure speculation at this point. Yeah, its shell is rumored to be aluminum and glass with a magnetic inductive charger like the Apple watch. And the target size is apparently a little thicker than an airtag with about the same circumference. Can I interrupt myself for one moment here? Yes, sure, no problem. Linus, go ahead. Thank you. I would like to point out that if Apple does go ahead and make this out of metal. Aluminum is a light metal, but it's metal and glass which is rocks. Thank you for that. Yes, let's flash our.

[B]

No, the AI pin.

[A]

What are you trying to. What are you trying to show the people out there?

[B]

You're really sending it on that one?

[A]

I mean, is it any deeper than I usually go? Yeah, well they have these great ads on these fantastic websites about, you know, improving your ability to. You know what? The point is that this wouldn't be the first time that Apple made a device that needs to be light for its use case and they just need to make it. And they go and they make it out of these heavy metal more. Yeah. And what if it was made of metal and glass? Anyway, to be clear, none of this is confirmed but I hope that they would think to make it out of something really light if it is intended to be worn as a pin of any sort. It seems that Apple is wanting this wearable to compete with a product that is coming from OpenAI's collaboration with Joni. I've later in 2026. However, allegedly the Apple product is not likely to launch until 2027. Um, our discussion question here is apparently Apple plans to produce around 20 million units at launch. Is that a realistic number of AI pins given how other a high pins have catastrophically failed? And maybe the bigger conversation here is what would you even want from an AI pin? What would be a useful AI pin to you?

[B]

I have noticed two separate people that I know really deep diving AI stuff recently.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I. Okay, I don't mean getting really into like how it all works and stuff like that. I mean really just letting it take over their lives completely. Including like some pretty important things. Just being left to like the AI autopilot as far as I can tell.

[A]

I gotta know. You gotta. You don't have to name any names. But like, like, what are we talking? Meals. Are we talking how to talk to their spouse? Like, like relationship?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so these are very important things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Meals. Honestly, I think for a lot of people, meals are not a deep dive for AI stuff.

[A]

Right, right, right, right.

[B]

Pretty common.

[A]

Like.

[B]

Okay, so although it does a terrible job and you probably shouldn't do that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

In my experience.

[A]

Right, right, right. Because it recommends something other than chicken, which that's obviously everyone knows is the 100% success meal.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, my meal plan might just be actually even more chicken moving forward.

[A]

Really? You're going to eat more. How could you eat more chicken?

[B]

Less rice.

[A]

Less rice, more chicken. Okay, good, good. Sorry, I'm just trying to. I'm trying to find something because I tried to use AI for not quite the first time, but one of the first times.

[B]

Okay, when is that video coming out?

[A]

Oh, no, not that one.

[B]

When is that video coming out?

[A]

I know that needs to come out at some point, but that separate conversation. Okay, so I was in this Ultimate Fighting Bots, like, robot fight thing and I'm trying to find the frickin ufb.

[B]

What?

[A]

What?

[B]

Hold on.

[A]

Okay, anyway, I was in it and I had to look up who. One of the other competitors because they, you know, they were super cool, they were super nice, but it was one of those things where I, like, I didn't catch their name at the very beginning. And we were hanging out for long enough that it reached the point where it was going to be kind of embarrassing if I had to ask again. So my brilliant idea was I took a picture of the. Of like the. The operator card, like little handout that they had, and I circled the person and I used my. Oh, this is a video. Good lord, here we go. Oh, of course it's a video. Everything's a video. Why is everything a freaking video? I just want a not video.

[B]

Video make, man.

[A]

Listen, I am doing my best right now, okay? I am not perfect. I'm trying Ultimate Fighting Bots five.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I'm just trying to find the post. You know what, it doesn't matter. The point is I. I held the button on my thing, I circled the person and I said, who is this? And it was like, sorry, I can't give you results about people. And I was like, this is literally a tech influencer. This is a public figure. I'm not, it's not like I'm. It's not like I'm discreetly snapping a picture of someone at the gym being like, give me her home address. You know, like, it's, it's not, it's not creepy. I just want to know, like, grok for that. Yeah, like, like if, if someone has hundreds of thousands of followers or whatever, I. I would think that it would just tell me, like, who is this? Sort of broadly speaking. And I tried it for myself too. It wouldn't even tell me who I was, which is like, where. So where's the. Where's the line?

[B]

It feels like an existential crisis waiting to happen.

[A]

It just feels. It just feels kind of useless. And so I'm.

[B]

Dude, I tried to call someone on staff while I was driving and I did like, hey, Google called this person and it called some like, random grocery store with a somewhat similar name. It feels like the same problem as Google. You've talked about this with trying to call your wife. It feels like a similar problem to like Windows Search where it's like, if there's a close match in my contacts list, maybe go with that first. Instead of a random grocery store.

[A]

I tried to navigate to a community center in Surrey and it tried to navigate to somewhere in like the States when I tried to use my voice for Waze. I am at the point now where I am just. I want to put my fist through the freaking dash of my car every time I have to use my voice to interact with Android Auto or CarPlay. I just, I'm so done with it. It's so much slower and so much less reliable than just being allowed to type a couple of letters and let the auto complete go and then, and then press the thing. I don't understand the completely freaking wrong thinking that has gone into these, these alternative interfaces. Whether it's the little like, like I draw on a touchpad here or I have a knob to go through the letters here, or I draw on a screen up here, or I use my voice, which is just, it's. It's so, so unreliable that it causes so much more distraction than if I could just tap what is usually just three or four letters and it will, it'll autocomplete wherever it is that I'm trying to go anyway, so, so what would, what would we want out of an AI pin? I guess. I guess my issue is that every interaction that I don't believe is going to work had with it has been so unreliable and so useless that I just, I don't want anything like, okay, another perfect example. And I know that this is something that is tunable by the car manufacturer. So I don't know if this is across the board with Android Auto, but I'll be having a conversation with my kids in the car and I'll hit my, my, my voice button on my steering wheel and I'll be like, hey, tell me about the, the, the Battle of Waterloo. And it'll be like, I'm sorry, I can't do that. Why? I can listen to audiobooks. I can listen to the radio. I can talk to other people in the car. I can.

[B]

The only successful things I can routinely do through voice controls is set alarms and start music playing. Even getting it to play really specific songs can sometimes be a problem. But I can just get it to like, just play music. And it will, it will generally do it.

[A]

So I'm just kind of sitting here going, I know how some of the people around here use their, their meta glasses.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For instance, like, start recording video, stop recording video. I guess that's something. But I can't think of any reason why I would want that to be on a pin rather than my, My.

[B]

My field of view feels objectively faster.

[A]

Point of view.

[B]

Sorry, Objectively better to be your glasses because the pin is effectively never going to be pointed or stable. Exact right spot. Yeah. There's the pro. Honestly, if it weighs almost any amount and like has a battery in it, so there's like a bit of a floor, it's going to tug down on your shirt. If you remember that. That AI pin that epically failed in all of their marketing and all of their test videos and everything, they were wearing relatively heavy clothing and pinned it on that. It was like, seemed pretty obvious as to why they were doing that.

[A]

And then the other main use case is that kind of. Just tell me about this. What's the. How many US dollars is this? You know, and it's in some other currency or whatever, like, like that sort of thing. Which again, I would much rather have on glasses from my point of view rather than like what I'm going to. I'll like hold stuff up to my pin and hope that I have it framed correctly and it has the, you know, enough situational awareness to understand what exactly it is that I'm asking it about. I don't know this just.

[B]

And I understand, like, some people aren't going to want to wear glasses, but I don't think the answer to that problem is pinnable things.

[A]

We also have to remember that Apple has enough R and D budget to buy the Earth and all the heavens. So they could conceivably R and D this entire product all the way to manufacturability and then just go, hey, that was a really great learning experience. Let's make it into our glasses.

[B]

Yes. That makes far more sense to me personally. Or they can just pull another Apple Vision Pro. What's the last.

[A]

I don't think they do want to pull another Apple Vision Pro.

[B]

I don't think anyone does. What's the last product that Apple released that was net new that went well?

[A]

I mean we talked about this.

[B]

Was it Watch.

[A]

We started to talk about this on the show earlier and it's been, it's been tough. Apple has been. Tim Cook has done a lot of things really well. Like Apple is a supply chain management monster. Like they're absolutely incredible. They have executed on the yearly cadence for iPhone with precision. So good you could set your Apple Watch to it. You know, like they've come up with accessories for the iPhone like the apple watch.

[B]

Guys. AirPods 4 is not a net new product. I'm talking new product line.

[A]

Well, airpods I would say is net new and hugely successful.

[B]

But was that after or before the Watch?

[A]

But again, post Watch. But again, it's an iPhone accessory. Right. It's not a completely new category of product in the way that I think you're. You're asking me?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Apple silicon is unbelievable. Absolutely incredible.

[B]

It's a component of.

[A]

But it's a component of a MacBook which was already a thing that existed. And I think honestly, AI Pin just kind of feels like, like, like, like desperate thrashing trying to find something new and some, some relevance in this AI obsessed corporate world right now. Frizer says Mac Mini. Yeah, there's a new Mac Mini, but the Mac Mini, that's not a new. Existed forever and it's just a computer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When did the first Mac Mini come out?

[B]

We're essentially drilling down to 2006.

[A]

No, 2005 apparently, according to AI. Yeah. Wild. Wait, was there a Mac Mini? Holy crap. There was a Mac mini before Intel. PowerPC G4. Mac mini support.apple.com is the source. I think I'll take their word for it. That ATI graphics brother. So yeah, Mac Mini is not, is not what would count as a new product for Apple. Apple tv. Yeah, I'll accept Apple tv.

[C]

What?

[B]

It even looked like surprisingly modern.

[A]

That's pretty cool.

[B]

Like this is the back of it.

[A]

That's pretty cool.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

Huh? Okay, HomePod. Yeah. But we were asking for successful products like they've really struggled to come up with a new thing. They worked for years on that car project and then just canned it.

[B]

The watch came out one year before the AirPods. You write AirPods came out Kimoda after.

[A]

AirTag's cool, but I stand behind. That's an iPhone accessory. It doesn't work without an iPhone. Anything that doesn't work I do. Okay. This is interesting. One of the things that I've gone off on multiple times is the way that Apple treats buyers of their products like second class citizens if they haven't bought enough of their products. And I do start to wonder if that's something that culturally at Apple could be holding them back if they're afraid to make something that isn't an iPhone accessory. Because AirPods don't have to be an iPhone accessory. They could have all the same functionality. They could on Android or on a PC. They could, but they decide that they don't. They decide that you can't even so much as update your firmware unless you have an Apple device to connect it to. And, and so I, you know, I'm thinking, you know, you know, AirPods, how many more AirPods could they have sold if they were cross platform and you, you could just use them with anything.

[B]

I don't think that much more. Which might be an unfortunate answer.

[A]

Maybe a lot.

[B]

I know that have Androids just also have AirPods and just deal with them being crap.

[A]

Yeah, no, that's fair. Yeah, I've heard of Libra Pods. Super cool project. I haven't actually started using it correctly but yeah, that whole mentality that they have that you're not really an Apple user, you're not really like a customer that we need to take care of and provide basic functionality that we advertise for the product or the ability to keep the, keep its software firmware up to date. Unless you've, you've bought more of our products, you have to buy, you have to buy more of our products. You really should have an iPhone. The fact that you, I mean you don't have an iPhone, why would you need to be able to. Man, what was it? I was trying to, I was trying to like cancel a subscription on my Apple TV and it was like a super, super tedious, roundabout process. If I didn't have an iPhone for some reason or another, I forget the exact details around it. Ah yeah, I don't know. I don't think AI pin is the answer. And it, it really does seem like they're just at sort of a loss. They've become Kind of a follower like Vision Pro has been such a disaster. And I, I think I can say that objectively at this point. When's the last time you saw somebody using one? This is an Apple product. Like, if it doesn't move millions and millions of units, it's. It was not worth them lifting a finger to. To develop it. Yeah, Apple Mac Pro wheels, those were new, you're right. But I don't think those are going to go down as a major success.

[B]

Yeah, I do think glasses would kill.

[A]

Yeah. Assuming they're good.

[B]

If they had good, smart glasses, they would destroy.

[A]

I mean, it's not like anyone that I know of loves meta. Yeah, you know, I don't think that Facebook, slash, meta slash, Oculus slash, whatever you want to sort of call what they're doing with their augmented reality stuff. I don't think anyone is rooting for them to win. No, it's just they happen to have a product that is admittedly quite appealing. Like, the video quality out of those glasses is mind blowing to me for how compact it is. Like, super cool. Personally, I haven't found myself craving them. And I. And I do. I am starting to wonder if I'm just becoming a bit of a boomer because I've been. I actually saw there's a post on the Reddit asking Linus, where the heck's your Garmin smartwatch video? And part of the reason that I haven't done the short circuit yet. It's going to be a short circuit, is that I just haven't interacted with it very much. I don't really care about it. I. It got my attention today because I left my. Accidentally left my phone in my office and I ran to the washroom to pick all of the mucho burrito out of my braces after lunch, because that's part of my life.

[B]

Fun experience.

[A]

Yeah, it's good. It's nice. There's a whole second meal in there.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Anyway, so someone called me on teams and I was like, oh, shoot. So my. My wrist starts vibrating and I. And I realized I was like, oh, I can't actually interact with this because they're calling on teams and all I can do is decline the call. I can't send a message. I can't accept the call. I just. Okay, so I'll just run back to my desk then. So functionally, it didn't. It didn't do much. It didn't change. It didn't really change my life. I use it to set timers when I do Badminton training on Monday nights.

[B]

I feel like everything for you and me is like that, that whatever that TV show is where there's a little robot and it's like, what is my purpose? And for us, it's always just like, you set timers. It's like all the AI systems just suck at everything else. So we're just like, whatever. You set timers now, Rick and Morty.

[A]

Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You pass butter. Yeah, I just. And the glasses. I feel like it would be the same for me. There's. There's. There was one time. Well, we're starting a family vlog, so there you go. There's that.

[B]

Neat.

[A]

So there was one time we were. We were playing volleyball at the, at the, on the beach. And I realized afterward, man, I brought metal glasses with me on this trip so that I could, like, try them. This would have been a perfect use case for it. So like, like vlogging or something like that. Yeah, I could, I could see having a camera mounted to your head all the time being super useful.

[B]

I haven't seen a lot of. Maybe this is my sphere of. Of content, but I haven't seen a lot of, like, video filmed with meta glasses content.

[A]

Maybe you didn't realize. I don't really.

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

Okay. It's really good, though. Like, shockingly good. I was really surprised by how good the quality was when I used it.

[B]

I just actually don't really think so, though. Are like, are you. Have you guys. Is there big creators doing this? Have you guys seen anybody?

[A]

Yeah, let us know. I mean, everyone's talking about adult content in chat because. Classic degenerate chat sense. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. Because I just. I don't know, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't. But then I also wonder if that's more on, like, the short form content realm, which I generally try to stay away from.

[A]

Haven't seen it either. Shorts creators DNA.

[B]

I'm not. I'm not like, seeking out videos from people who have them. To be clear. I just haven't actually, like, seen a lot. So if it's. If it's mostly just short creators, that makes sense because I kind of avoid that. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I got a browser add on that removes shorts from my YouTube page.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

They're just gone.

[A]

How's that going for you?

[B]

Great.

[A]

Cool. I tried the. I tried the official way, which is show me fewer shorts.

[B]

Doesn't work at all.

[A]

I've. Yeah, I've heard that, but I don't think I've used YouTube since I clicked the button, so I haven't noticed.

[B]

Yeah, no, I tried that. Didn't do anything.

[A]

Which browser add on is it?

[B]

I don't remember the name.

[A]

Cool. Apparently there's a pilot, according to dense one in floatplane chat that does some cool long form videos with metal meta glasses.

[B]

That would be awesome. See that's like a cool use case that I think those are probably particularly good for because like a GoPro in that scenario would be very annoying to.

[A]

Oh yeah, wear. Oh yeah.

[B]

In a lot of scenarios they're pretty annoying to wear.

[A]

Yeah. Pain in the butt. Amaria says my show fewer shorts button works for like a week and then they come back. Well, it's probably because the sun came out. Nice.

[C]

I thought there was a follow up pun.

[B]

Yeah, it. That was a fairly weak ding, I think. Well listen, we need like a ding damper so you can get like the first like beat, but then it doesn't.

[A]

No, no, that would be so unsatisfying. Gross. Yeah, gross.

[B]

No, that's what that deserves.

[A]

I refuse.

[C]

Great pun, Linus. What's the opposite of Pavlov? So now that we've trained you to have a dopamine response to the good.

[A]

Ding, what's the opposite of dopamine?

[C]

Probably like manslaughter.

[B]

I don't know, I'm not sure. All right, I'm not gonna unpack that one.

[A]

Speaking of YouTube, YouTube CEO Neil Mohan published a blog post on January 21st about new things coming in 2026. Some of the notable ones include shorts feed changes to allow image posts. YouTube TV will be getting multi view, allowing users to watch up to four different YouTube TV feeds at once. That's right, my friends, you can have quadruple the brain rot on your tv.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

There will be updates to parental controls and they will be simplifying parental controls, which I am very much in support of. There will be more monetization options for vertical streaming, which actually probably makes a ton of sense right now. Updates to YouTube Shopping, including having purchases baked into the app instead of redirecting to another store. That'll be really good for people who are interested in selling things on the platform and really bad for people with impulse control problems. Yeah, uh, we've got tools for creators to swap out their baked in ads and then resell and replace those ad spots at later dates. Which is going to be an absolute gold mine for like very evergreen content creators. I don't know that'll be as useful for us. But if you make Videos that are about the War of 1812 for instance.

[B]

Very good.

[A]

Then absolutely nothing would prevent you like. Oh, actually a perfect example of this would be. Oh man, what's his name? He does the Q. Oversimplified is a perfect example of someone who could benefit from this immensely because he does those like, like limited edition merch drops in his videos. So if he could go back and replace his entire back catalog with whatever his current merch drop is. Wow, that could be. That could be pretty. That could be very powerful for creators like that. What else? We got some AI transparency labeling to help users identify when videos are made with AI. Assuming they can even tell combats to AI slop. Didn't get into much detail there.

[B]

I like the idea. Hopefully it executes well.

[A]

They also gave some stats for YouTube. 200 billion views every day on shorts alone.

[B]

I really wonder how they calculate views on shorts.

[A]

Yep. According to a 2025 Kantar survey, 93% of 18 to 27 year old US viewers agree YouTube helps you learn new skills. I wonder what the other 7% are.

[B]

Probably not shorts as much.

[A]

Maybe they've never heard of YouTube. 79% of US teachers are using YouTube to teach students. $100 billion was paid out to creators, artists and media companies in the last four years. That is a truly astronomical number. And then in 2024 in the US YouTube says they contributed 55 billion to GDP and supported over 490,000 full time jobs. That's wild. Almost half a million full time. Maybe not creators. Right? Because there's a lot more full time jobs than just me like here at ltt, but like half a million full.

[B]

Time jobs, I could see that for sure.

[A]

Yeah, I guess. But like, I just never really thought about it that way.

[B]

It's interesting.

[A]

Creator economy, man.

[B]

Wonder how they calculated that. But I'm not too stunned by the number.

[A]

Eggnog in April says yeah, I don't believe half a million jobs. I mean, why not?

[B]

I kind of do.

[A]

I know so many creators that have enormous teams. When I say enormous, I don't mean like a thousand people, but I'm talking like 10 or 20. And there's the amount of like so.

[B]

Many two to three people. YouTube Teams is like endless huge.

[A]

Like it used to be not that long ago, back in my day, man yells at Cloud that you could literally take all the YouTubers with a million subscribers and put them on stage at once and. And give them giant YouTube play button plaques. That was a thing. Whereas now like how many channels are there with a million subscribers. How many YouTube channels have a million subscribers?

[B]

Quite a few. You also don't need a million subs to hire people and make a team. Especially in modern YouTube I would argue where there are certain like crazy niches where you can be super successful with 20,000 views a video. It's just an audience that like supports really heavily or monetizes really heavily. Like they'll buy the things that you're talking about a lot and you get big affiliate revenue or whatever else.

[A]

Okay. See I don't know. The AI overview estimates around 69,000 channels. Nice. As of mid-2025. But I haven't actually. Awesome Creator Academy says 69,182 as of when? In 2025.

[B]

Okay. So out of date. It's 2026 now.

[A]

The point is a lot. Now obviously not all of those are in the US but as we already talked about, a lot of those channels probably are either directly or indirectly responsible for the full time employment of a lot more than one people. One people? One person. Like LMG for instance directly employs like a hundred plus. I think we're at sitting at around 120 right now. Does that sound about right?

[B]

Yes, ish.

[A]

But there are also people who are indirectly full time employed who don't necessarily work for us. Like for instance our, our third party logistics company in.

[B]

That's one of the reasons why I said it. I wonder how they're counting it because.

[A]

We'Re over half of their business. So by that logic half their head count is. Is.

[B]

Do you count some amount of employment for all the services that support us?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Internet.

[A]

I would think so. Oh.

[B]

That'S not going to be a whole person.

[A]

That's getting pretty fuzzy.

[B]

But it's part of a person.

[A]

Yeah. Here it says YouTube supported over 490,000 full time jobs. So it's very.

[B]

I think it has to be more direct employment.

[A]

Unclear exactly what they would mean.

[B]

But then you're counting the shipping thing.

[A]

Yeah. Which I think is.

[B]

I think is fair.

[A]

Fairly direct.

[B]

Where is the line though?

[A]

Yeah, not sure, not sure. I think the biggest one for me was actually that for the parental controls I can now I have the granularity to turn off shorts or limit shorts directly for my dependence. Which is.

[B]

That's a huge thank you.

[A]

Because I don't mind my kids using YouTube at all. I do mind a lot them doom scrolling shorts.

[B]

Shorts is a different thing. It's a different beast entirely.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like. I do feel a little bit like every generation goes through this. Books were Once the devil and an idle pastime that rotted your brain. And then it was radio, then it was TV and then it was video games and then, and then, and then, and then. And so, you know, I'm sitting here going, well, you know, I grew up with YouTube and I turned out okay. But these shorts, these shorts are bad. They'll rot your brain. Except I mean they do seem to.

[B]

Kind of actually though. Yeah. Anyways, I, I really like the learning new skills and the viewers agree that YouTube helps. Sorry. Teachers are using. 79% of teachers using YouTube to teach students. I was kind of wondering. Time for business meeting on wan show time. There was a thread on the, the Reddit's recently of.

[A]

About the Vimeo thing?

[B]

No, a tech quickie episode. Oh, being used in a classroom.

[A]

Yes, I lost it.

[B]

It's somewhere in here. But that, you know, that happened. We'll get a little Reddit post about that every once in a while.

[A]

Every once in a while.

[B]

A consistent thing for a long time. Have you ever thought of like working with some form of curriculum or something like that to make content like for classrooms?

[A]

Oh, interesting. That's not where I thought you were going. So YouTube actually has features where educational institutions can license your content for YouTub in Classroom. Yeah, we've always opted out just because I don't, I don't care, whatever, just use it. Yeah, that's always kind of been my stance. As for like, like supplemental materials that are specifically designed in partnership with, with some kind of educational institution, I think that's super cool. I'd be.

[B]

There's a neat idea.

[A]

Yeah. And like, obviously, you know, if the ideal for us would be that it's stuff that we could still upload on YouTube. So I wouldn't want to go into much more depth than something like a tech quickie already would. But if it was meant to be like, hey, here's the new unit we're working on today. Here's a fun, fast paced, engaging top level primer of what we're going to dig into over the next two to three weeks of our coursework. I'd be. Be super interested in that. Yeah, for sure.

[B]

Awesome to me.

[A]

Yeah, that'd be great. You should make a comptia rival just to troll them.

[B]

You can certify yourself.

[A]

No, I wouldn't need to do that.

[B]

That's that there it is.

[A]

I mean look, you've got the paper.

[B]

It's good enough. Last time. There's like a lot of spiders on the back of that. Just a heads up. No Seems like you're probably fine.

[A]

There's a dead one. Listen. They can take away the actual certification online, but they can never take away this piece of paper that I printed for myself.

[B]

You should pause the video and freeze frame that and then zoom in and replace the name Linus Sebastian with your name and print your own.

[A]

Nice. You should not. We would never endorse such a thing. What stands out to you from the YouTube blog?

[B]

I mean, I didn't even see it in here, but that thing you told me about shorts and being able to control your kids feeds is amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm. I'm actually surprised that 79% of US teachers are using YouTube to teach students.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Like, I know we get those posts every once in a while. I didn't think it was going to be effectively 80% of teachers.

[A]

I mean, so many teachers are like friggin millennials now. Like, they're.

[B]

Of course, I get it. It makes sense. I'm just surprised that it's that high and that, that number is why I thought of the like, man, like, maybe we should support this more. I don't know if that's a desire from anybody, but I mean, it does seem like our videos get used. I have usually seen our videos getting used in universities. That's usually what people are talking about when it comes up. Or technical colleges or whatever. So I don't know if maybe we'd need to aim differently to show up in high schools or whatever.

[A]

But stay the path says, yeah, I have a bunch of friends who are teachers and I'd be very surprised if they never showed their kids YouTube videos.

[B]

Yeah, okay, cool.

[A]

Makes sense.

[B]

Yeah, I used it as a military.

[A]

Instructor for airplanes, says Bordaga.

[B]

Sweet.

[A]

I mean, if somebody else did the work.

[B]

No, yeah, I get it. I just like, I don't remember, you know, they'd roll out Bill Nye every once in a while, but it was, it was like pretty rare that we watched things in class.

[A]

Yeah, I guess that's true, isn't it?

[B]

So like, is that more common now? I would say probably more ubiquitous.

[A]

I mean, our school only had like a handful of like AV card.

[B]

This is my point. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So like, I am, I'm just super out of touch with high schools, I guess because they probably, I'm assuming, do they just all have projectors now or like, what's the.

[A]

I think so, actually. I think so. I think my kids school. All the classrooms have projectors in them.

[B]

So our schools, like my huge client for projectors.

[A]

Like when the. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Like BenQ, Ben Q lives or dies on like how many school projectors they sell.

[C]

Like big, big university projectors.

[A]

And I was gonna say, yeah, like I was helping out in one of my kids classrooms. They had like a parent helper day. This was a few years ago. My kids are all a little bit older now, but it used to be when they're younger you could go in and you could like help run like a unit that they were doing or whatever. It was a nice way to just kind of see your kids in their environment at school, see how they're doing, see which of their friends probably we like shouldn't invite over, you know, the rabble rousers. Anyway, like, so I happened to be there when they did the morning announcements and it was like a video. Oh yeah. So like the principal was like on video in the classroom and I was like, oh, I guess that's pretty smart.

[B]

Was it a live stream?

[A]

I don't know. I, I didn't think about it.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

But like they definitely all have like, you know, projectors in their classrooms.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And like if you think about it, like. Yeah, why not?

[B]

Yeah, no, it makes sense. I just, I just.

[A]

Yeah. Projectors.

[B]

Back to high school.

[A]

Since high school projectors. Like a few hundred bucks a grand. You got to throw a little screen on there and like some networking. Like it. Yeah, there's. It's nothing that, I mean, you know a person who worked in school, it. Yeah. For quite a few years. Yeah, it's nothing that guy wouldn't have been able to figure out.

[B]

I mean he probably did. I just mostly talked to him about like server stuff. So we never got into like what are the like classroom configurations that you have. But yeah, it's really interesting. I. The, the whole story is very long, so I probably won't go through the whole thing, but I was recently on a trip that ended up a little haphazard and I ended up in a location I did not expect at a very, very, very small town. And I have.

[A]

Are you not going to talk about the town visit? I was going to ask you about it later on this show.

[B]

Long story.

[A]

Yeah, sure, fine. Maybe later.

[B]

Maybe later. But something that I did think of was the Internet. There was much so, so, so bad that I kind of had this thought, like, I mean, there was none at the airport. There was no cell signal. There was no whatever at the airport. You had to drive into town to like get signal solid. I had this thought of like, it would be kind of fun to Do a. I don't know if it's a series or a one off or whatever, but you're doing tech house. Could there be like tech tiny town where it's like you are just trying.

[A]

To push this Linus Town thing we set up?

[B]

Oh, I didn't think. That's brilliant.

[A]

No, it's not brilliant.

[B]

That's great idea.

[A]

Great idea Linus.

[B]

That's fantastic idea. This is why you there. You're the mayor of Linus Town. That makes sense. He's so smart, he's so intelligent. That might be one of the best ideas you've ever had.

[C]

Our greatest dear leader.

[B]

You could totally just buy a tiny.

[A]

I'm getting cookies.

[C]

What a phenomenal idea. Always one after the other.

[B]

Look at them go walking off the stage. Not running this time.

[C]

The wounds. The wounds.

[B]

Okay, so my, my thought was basically like, you know, we could probably partner with somebody. We could partner with ubiquity, whatever. But because ubiquity has those point to point dishes. Right. So like could, could we make this a little bit better? While I was there I speed tested which probably brought the whole thing down. But I speed tested and I got 2.4 megs down and it just crit failed on the upload. Nothing. It didn't give me a report. Speed test just gave me the download. I've never seen that before. And it also had 900 latency to the closest server a second. Yeah, but not only that, it felt like it was like on an analog on off switch that was constantly running. Because if I sat there with a web page open on my phone and just refreshed repeatedly, it would load and then like fail webpage not found and then load and just rotate that constantly.

[C]

Interesting.

[B]

And apps like basically didn't function because it wouldn't have like the continual connection that an app would expect. It was really bad. Like I don't think I've experienced Internet that bad in decades. So I was just thinking like is there something we can do to like help basically? And is this interesting? And like to me it's kind of interesting. I'm. I'm trying to get into some home laby stuff recently and whatnot. That's why I thought Ubiquity because I was on their website looking at different things that they had and I saw their point to point things.

[C]

They've got really good and affordable point to points.

[B]

They do. And I don't have a use case for it, but I find those things fascinating.

[C]

They're super cool. We have one on the ceiling Here.

[B]

Still going to.

[C]

We might have gotten rid of it. It might be a backup link now.

[B]

Ah, that makes.

[C]

But for the price, that's like, crazy cheap for what you can do with it.

[B]

Yeah. And this. I mean, this isn't. This isn't a ubiquity ad.

[C]

They also are a sponsor.

[B]

So are they sponsored now?

[C]

I have no idea.

[B]

Who knows? This has nothing to do with that. But they just. They have some cool stuff, and I thought it could be an interesting experience to. To do some network connection stuff for future Linus Town.

[A]

You're still talking about this?

[B]

I tried to time it for your return. I think it worked.

[C]

Nicely done.

[A]

Jeez. Because of you, I had to get two packs of cookies.

[B]

Two packs of cookies to deal with my stress.

[C]

Oh.

[B]

Part of the park benefits of Linus Town is if you're feeling particularly stressed out, you get free cookies.

[A]

You get two packs of cookies.

[B]

You had a hard day.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Have two packs of cookies. Yeah.

[A]

These will make you feel better.

[B]

Very temporarily automatically deducted from your monthly Linus bucks.

[A]

All right, let's double your daily portion of food. I guess that's all we need to say about the YouTube announcement. Dan, that was topic, too. So what are we supposed to be doing now?

[C]

Well, we've got 10 minutes. We could do merch messages now. We could do another topic. That was quick. We've got lots today.

[A]

Sure. Why don't we do a quick topic? Let's do a quick topic. What's a quick one? Oh, yeah. Okay. So I have a proposal. Microsoft needs to have their new Coke moment. Sorry.

[B]

I read this before the show and got really excited because I like, can't agree more.

[A]

They think about it. Coke was having trouble with Coke. Okay? So they come up with new Coke. Everyone hates it. They bring back Coca Cola Classic. Everybody loves it. Sales go Hockey stick. Okay, Right. Brilliant. Microsoft has this kind of problem with their. Their helper monkeys, their assistants, you know, you know, back when Clippy was their current helper, I mean, even. I think. I think the. Which one came first, Clippy or the dog? The search dog.

[B]

I genuinely don't know, but I thought.

[C]

It was Search Dog was xp.

[A]

That was xp. And then. But I thought Clippy was Office xp.

[B]

Clippy was also xp.

[C]

I think they were like, that was their character's era.

[A]

Clippy was apparently word 97. Whoa.

[C]

Damn. I'm old.

[A]

Says, says Pankrax. Okay, well, whatever. The point is, at the time. At the time, everyone freaking hated Clippy. Oh, yeah, right. Everyone hated the dog, right? Until they gave Us, Cortana. And then all of a sudden, I felt nostalgic for Clippy. You know, I was like, oh, the dog. I remember the dog. That dog that never found anything that was so cute, right? The flashlight would go like this and. Oh, no, the dog was after the flashlight.

[B]

The point is, wow, the dog was first 1985.

[C]

It didn't get better.

[A]

They gave us Cortana. We hated Cortana until they gave us copilot. And now I'm sitting there going, how much would I love to just have Cortana back?

[B]

Okay, but. But seriously, do you think back positively nostalgia nostalgically for Cortana?

[A]

I think compared to copilot, yes. I think it's all relative.

[B]

It's easier to get out of the way.

[A]

I think Microsoft just needs to completely new Coke this, throw away the copilot branding entirely and make their big AI push around Clippy.

[B]

I would unironically want to try Clippy.

[A]

I would too.

[B]

And this is why when I read this, I was like, no way.

[C]

AI pin called Clippy. You clippy it to your shirt.

[B]

If it was just a big paperclip, that would actually go so hard. That would be amazing. That's a genuinely incredible product idea. Holy crap.

[C]

All right, take out the stream.

[B]

That's wild. We should make an AI Pin. It's not like it's hard. Actually, though, there, it's all just Arduino.

[C]

Arduino hot glue.

[A]

Look, if we want a baby Luke, if we want a grift, we all know that the answer is an ICL. Oh, the answer is gonna be a coin.

[B]

Both Linus Town and coin.

[A]

And let me tell you something. We've had some conversations lately. We've had some conversations. Don't be surprised if in the next, you know, two months and a bit, we have a coin. Don't let it surprise you. That's all I'll say.

[B]

What is it for?

[A]

That's all I'll say. What is it for, Luke? It's a coin. What do you mean, what is it for?

[B]

So it's for rugs.

[A]

It's a coin. No, no. Oh, God, no. Heavens, no. No, no.

[B]

It's the. The unrugged coin.

[A]

It's a coin. That's all. That's all I can say. And we'll have an offering. Okay, that will be initial. Stay tuned.

[B]

The first ever coin offering. Initial.

[A]

Stay tuned. Look, you can tell. You can tell he's not sold. You can tell he's not sold. But. But he hasn't seen all the details. Yet he doesn't know the details. Tell me now. Are you sold?

[B]

Yeah, kind of.

[A]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[B]

Oh, that's actually awesome.

[A]

See, this is what I'm talking about. It was that. It was that easy to get him on board. You guys will get on board.

[B]

I will buy one Linus coin.

[A]

You'll. I mean, if you're lucky.

[B]

I mean, I should have bought1bitcoin20 years ago or whatever. Not quite. I will buy one Linus coin.

[C]

I'm not going to lose this hard drive.

[B]

Oh, Dan.

[A]

All right.

[C]

Oh, damn.

[A]

Dan. What are we doing again?

[B]

I think.

[C]

Was that the whole topic?

[B]

The message?

[A]

That was the whole topic. Yeah. Okay, let's do this.

[C]

Go to CW announcements and things.

[A]

Oh, okay, so where's that at the very top.

[C]

Okay, we have no main topics today.

[A]

When you hide things from me at the very top, I can't find them. Dan.

[C]

They're supposed to be in the middle. I didn't write the topic.

[A]

We talked about this. Why are you so.

[B]

You gotta put it on a lower shelf.

[A]

This week's launch, that's what Luke gets.

[B]

I like it more, baby. Which is so not good.

[A]

Okay, do you want to fire up the store and then we'll screen share. This week's launch takes the old cleanup wizard from your computer and gives it a full on fantasy makeover. The collection includes. How cool is this hoodie, you guys? The cleanup wizard T shirt in solid black, plus a limited run tie dye version. Oh, I have that. Hold on one sec. Yes. We are still trying to get rid of the last of the LTX tie dye shirts.

[B]

That's sick though. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.

[A]

Yeah, brother. Limited edition only. The LTX 23 tie dye shirts that we have remaining. We printed cleanup wizard on the rest of them. And so we've got it in black, we've got it in the tie dye. And then we've also got it in our zip up hoodie printed on the back. You can shop the collection. Oh, here we got Luke laptop. You can shop the collection at lmg.gg cleanupwizard.

[B]

Some of these photos, the ones where they actually like try to be a real wizard. Like, oh my God.

[A]

Jordan goes super hard with props. So sometimes like he. He's the one who made our. Who made the trophies for the last crap yard wars.

[B]

That's so good. Oh, there's another one. Amazing. Sorry. I really like these. Oh man, that's great. Now I need to hide my camera so I can buy a tie dye.

[A]

One before they really cool design. I believe this one was either entirely or predominantly a Lisa innovation who technically works for the fashion team, not the design team. But she obviously has a design background. And this. Basically, I think I asked for, like, a couple small tweaks, but pretty much she showed it to me and I was like, amazing. Print it.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

It's so cool.

[B]

Old, old Microsoft mascots that were awesome. Everyone loved the Wizard. Yeah, everyone loved the Wizard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Even when it was current.

[A]

And this is like, cool, gritty, reimagined wizard. And like, I love that it looks like a band shirt or something.

[B]

I thought, okay, Dan was walking in in front of me and he was wearing the hoodie, I'm pretty sure. And I saw it on the back and was like, huh, like, you know, never heard of that.

[A]

That's a cool concert hoodie.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

When did Dan start dressing?

[A]

Well.

[B]

It just. And then. And then I think he told me. He's like, oh, yeah. It's like, you know, a reference. I was like, oh, obviously. Because, yeah, I thought it was a band shirt. Crazy. Now I need to continue trying to buy one. Thank you.

[A]

Before we move on, a quick reminder about the LTT True spec cables drop.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

They're going to be available in USB A to C and USB C to C with plenty of speed and length options for a cleaner setup. You can check out our signup page at LMG GG cablesignup to get more information and features and to get notified as soon as they go live. I would not probably screw around if you want to get exactly the length that you want because we ordered somewhat conservatively on the first round, and I can't guarantee that all sizes will stay in stock unless we nailed it and we got the mix exactly right. And we. Are you leaving a merch message? What? The call. The call is coming from inside the house. Like, what are you gonna.

[B]

I'm a customer.

[C]

He's within his rights.

[B]

Leave a merch message.

[A]

I mean, you're entitled. Yeah, you're entitled to leave a merch. I mean. Sorry. Don't let me stop you. Go ahead and leave a merch message.

[B]

Well, now you know I'm sending it, so now I need to send something different.

[A]

I mean, you're not subtle. Everyone can tell when you're on your phone on the land show. I'm not trying to.

[C]

I'm not trying to creep here.

[A]

It's that big. You think I don't know what our own store looks like?

[B]

I didn't know you could actually see My screen though.

[C]

Linus, what if somebody else wanted to send a merch?

[A]

What do they do? Right. Okay. All they would have to do is head over to lttstore.com where they could pick up some great merchandise. Like last week's Crash out shirt, which I actually love. How. How cute. How cute is the little sad face here? Or you could pick up the cleanup wizard collection. Just drop something in your cart. How about this one? Let's go with this. Add to cart. And then in your cart you will see this checkbox right here. I would like my order to appear as a merch message on the LTT stream. You can do it anonymously. You can change the color however you like. See that one was purple. The one that just faded away in the top up there. And then you can type a merch message. That merge message will go to producer Dan who will throw it down there if it's just like a shout out or something. Or reply to it himself if he knows the answer. Or it's one we've seen a hundred times. Or he might curate it. That is to say, he will put it in a queue for me and Luke to address later on the show. We like merch messages because they're a way for you to throw money at your screen like you would with any other streamer. Except instead of just throwing money at your screen and getting I don't know what senpai noticing in return, you also get high quality products. By the way, I've been using the M word and we had a meeting this week. Yeah, the M word. We had. We had a We're not going to call it merch meeting anymore. We had a product meeting this week. We are officially banning the word merch because it's not merch.

[B]

What are these things called that?

[C]

Checkout chats. We talked about this months ago.

[A]

Yeah, we're going to call it something else. Let's call them checkout chats.

[B]

So it has the same abbreviation as C Cleaner. I like it.

[A]

Okay. We could call them.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

Okay. What would be. Mm. Help us out here, guys. Yeah. Stop it. Money makers. Says McBain.

[C]

Well, Conrad does get final say and he says ram me Dan's. So we're going with that.

[A]

No, we're not calling it that. Mercantile Messages. Thank you for that.

[B]

Market Manipulators.

[A]

Money messages. Stream shouts is kind of cute. Says when. Bingo. Chronified.

[B]

Mandatory meetings. Moneymakers.

[A]

I think we could go with checkout chats. Send your Cox. Yeah. Elemental exposure. Thank you for that.

[B]

Perfect.

[A]

Okay, check. Let's go with checkout chats. So nice. Yeah. Well, it might take a week or two, but let's get the rebrand in here and let's call them checkout chats from now on. Because we got to stop calling this stuff merch. It's not merch. We do product development. Like they were. I think this might have actually been Lisa as well, but she was telling an anecdote and someone was getting like a tour through there and they were like. So with like all this stuff you guys do, would you consider this more like a. Like a fashion department? And she's like, uh huh. Like, wow. You guys did like so much testing on like the, you know, like the materials and the finish and everything. Like, you get every. It's not. Yeah. So we've just. We've got to just stop calling it that. Yeah. We got to respect ourselves enough to call it what it is.

[B]

Merch really does just mean merchandise, though.

[A]

I know. Like, but it has that connotation of just being cheaply reproduced. AliExpress stuff with a silk. Silk screen logo on it.

[B]

Just how all language is cyclical, though. People just get like, tired of a word so they decide it's bad and then you just make a new one that does the same thing. Loot messages.

[A]

As long as the words don't start with R, I won't get confused. Calm down. I don't know if his mic was.

[C]

On, but I could hear him losing it over there. Just giggling through gritted teeth. Do you want some merch messages to read? Sorry.

[A]

Check out chat. Damn it. Show me. Show me your.

[C]

Shall I. Shall I show you some of these I got sent?

[A]

Talking of, this could not go poorly.

[C]

Talking of, can we get a sock update?

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Oh, yes. Am I wearing them today? I'm not wearing them today. I'm wearing old prototypes today. I am so happy.

[C]

Oh, man.

[B]

Are you excited to. To do timestamps. Every week?

[A]

Curated cox. I mean, at least.

[C]

Dan's best Cox of 2026.

[B]

Poor noki dude. Oh, man. Okay, sorry. You keep going.

[A]

Sorry. Yeah. Sock updates.

[B]

Working on the cock.

[A]

I'm super happy. I'm with how the latest samples are going. They're really durable. They're really breathable. They're not the softest socks in the world. They're. They're like a merino wool blend. We found that the percentage of merino wool was not what the manufacturer told us that it was. Cool. Which is why we do all this materials testing and stuff. That makes us. Yes. Like a company with a fashion Team, not just a merch outfit. And so that was super cool. Tatiana, full credit for that. And what we decided was that we're going to stick with the composition that it is because it's great, it's very wearable, but that just is going to affect the way that we advertise it. I had a meeting with Dave, Adam, the head of customer care, Tatiana, so the material specialist, and Bridget, who's head of the fashion department. Not merch department, fashion department.

[B]

And.

[A]

Or head of fashion design. I can't remember her exact title, but basically the Honcho. And we.

[B]

That's the new title.

[A]

Yeah, the honcho, the haunch. You know, Bridget and I are pretty chill. I think if I was like, yeah, we're printing you business cards that say honcho on them. I think she might actually be down. I'm not 100% sure on that, though.

[B]

So Riley's.

[A]

She's the kind of person who you definitely get approval before you do something, but if you do the wrong thing, she'll tell you in the nicest possible way that you have royally it up. So I'll let her decide what her job title is.

[B]

Riley's badge for CES said the han. I think it was honorable.

[A]

Yes, I know.

[B]

That was amazing.

[A]

I know charades was doctor Cause of course it was. Anyway, the point is, I had a long meeting. Not long, short meeting with those folks. And I think the socks are going to be the third. Fourth, fourth entry in the. Trust me, bro, limited lifetime guarantee family. To be clear, everything on the store, we stand behind it extremely, you know, strongly. But this is one where we're looking at it going, this is going to be a very premium sock. I think people are going to have for the price that it is, very high expectations for how long they should last. Everything is within reason. Just like I've discussed before with the. How a limited lifetime warranty works. Whether it's the backpack or the screwdriver or the socks or the cables or whatever else, there's going to be language in the warranty that limits it. That's what a limited lifetime warranty is. So, you know, it's not going to cover things like flagrant abuse of the product and it'll have wording in there that basically gives us the right to weasel out of whatever it is we don't want to do. Which is exactly sort of my point on the whole warranty thing in the first place. But what we're going to be doing through calling it that is sending a very strong signal that this is a product that we expect to last for an extremely long time if it does not get abused and that you will be extremely happy with the value that you'll get out of it and that we are going to stand behind very strongly. I'm extremely excited for this product.

[B]

Oh, that's pretty good.

[A]

Sorry, what are you looking?

[B]

Check out messages. Comms. I like it. Being comms. Comms is pretty good. I don't know if we can go long term with Cox.

[A]

I mean, speak for yourself.

[C]

Only if you use these.

[B]

It's just a fling for me.

[A]

Comms is probably better.

[C]

You could just say checko chats. You could, you could have the long one rather than the short one.

[A]

But there's no way you didn't do that on purpose.

[C]

Yeah, it was on purpose, but it's pretty good. Pretty good of a switch.

[A]

Honestly, I like it.

[C]

Checko jets. Let's have another one here for today.

[B]

They're checko jets.

[A]

Oh, they sure are.

[C]

Ah, let's just do the one at the top. How about that? Hey, wonderful tech bros. I know in the past it's been said that ram slots on GPUs wasn't going to happen, but with the RAM pocalypse here now, does that change your answer? Sell cheap GPUs with bring your own RAM?

[A]

No, it doesn't change the answer unfortunately. Because the reasons that they are doing things the way they're doing them are economical or, sorry, our technical reasons, not economical reasons. In order to get that memory running at the kind of speeds that they need it running at, the traces need to be extremely short. And every time you add trace length or you add an interface so a pin and a spring or anything like that, you are contributing to signal loss that will ultimately result in not being able to run it as high of a speed. That's why the faster the gpu, the more important it is that we bring the memory closer and closer to it. So you look at something like HBM where they're bringing the memory right onto the package versus a typical GPU where your memory dies are laid out around the GPU and you notice they're never far away. Like they would literally rather have it double sided on the PCB especially look at like some more, some higher capacity cards where they'll have memory chips laid out around the GPU and you flip it over and there's memory chips all over the back. Excuse me. It's the same reason that that AMD requires Strix Halo to have the memory soldered to the board. So that's their ryzen AI AI max 300 series. Whatever the actual brand ry is an AI max and AI max plus if I recall correctly is the branding for it. But Framework took some flack for making the Framework desktop with Strix Halo and having soldered memory on the board. But the cold hard truth is the reason that that memory is soldered is because to feed that high performance integrated GPU, it has to be. You could put socketed DIMMs in it, but you'd be giving up so much performance that you're basically defeating the purpose of the product in the first place. Socketed GPUs were a thing, but it just got to the point where it just wasn't worth it. It didn't make any sense. And the vast majority of the time it was pretty clear pretty much how much memory was needed for that GPU performance in the kinds of applications that it would be running. There are certainly exceptions where just having way more could allow you to run a way larger AI model. For instance, now, today. But from a gaming standpoint, Nvidia, amd, intel, they have a pretty good idea how much memory that GPU could really benefit from. Before you're getting into games that need way more memory, but would also just need way more GPU horsepower.

[B]

I also think they have a pretty good idea of how they can push people into higher price bands through manipulating that.

[A]

Absolutely. But that's a separate conversation, not a wrong conversation. Totally valid point, but is not the reason why we don't have socketed GPUs at this time.

[B]

Was that two merch messages?

[A]

Sure was. Okay, flew by. Time flies and you're having fun.

[B]

Sure did.

[A]

Do you want to pick one?

[B]

Yes, I do. I do want to pick one. Sony gives up 51% of its Bravia TV business to China's TCL in a new strategic partnership. Very, very odd. This is done with the aim of leveraging Sony's high quality picture and audio technology which includes some class leading image processing. Sorry, I didn't wince to that statement. I wince because it's like interesting that it's going that direction then which includes some class leading image processing and tcls. And then this is crossed out. Advanced display technology, global scale advantages. Oh, okay. I see. Industrial footprint end to end cost efficiency and ver supply chain strength, also known as cheap manufacturing. In a joint press release, Sony said the joint venture will will operate globally handling full process from product development to design to manufacturing, sales, logistics, customer service, everything. Sony has partnered with numerous other companies to manufacture their TVs in the past. Maybe not to this degree. I'm not necessarily sure on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is to this degree.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. They gave up 51% of their business.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no. But like they, they, they have had other factories oem manufacture their tv.

[B]

That's not. Yeah. What I was talking about was giving up 51% of their business because doing that repeatedly is confusing. Sony has partnered. They partnered with TCL's own China Star Opt Electronics Technology CSOT. At least for now. The Bravia name will continue to exist, but in this new arrangement control the manufacturing process of Sony's TVs and likely their soundbar, speakers, AVRs and turntables. The aim is to have definitive binding agreements signed by the end of March 2026 and for the new company to commence its operations in April of 2027. Dang. Does this news surprise you personally?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, big time.

[A]

Definitely. This was a major surprise to me because Sony's TV business has been. Seems pretty strong in dire straits at times.

[B]

But not right now.

[A]

Right, but it didn't seem like it was right now. Now admittedly, Admittedly every time I've gone out shopping for a TV in the last little while, whether it was you asking me for a recommendation or whether it was my grandparents needing a new TV and me just like going and buying one, Sony hasn't been in my consideration at all. So Sony has been in kind of a weird place for me where they have a lot of mind share with me. I see it as a high quality product, but I'm not willing to open up my wallet to pay the premium for it. But Sony's been in that position for the better part of my adult life. So I guess what I'm just trying to understand is what changed? Is it maybe, is it just even further tighter pressure to consolidate? Like it's.

[B]

I think that the TV game for a long time has been raced to the bottom with prices. Well, yeah, and they just probably can't compete that way anymore.

[A]

I mean, you look at what we saw in that hisense factory tour where they were talking about how important it was that they had this new automated glue dispensing machine for adhering the thing to the thing that saved some percentage of glue. And I'm like, well, is it expensive glue? They're like no. And I'm like, well then why does it matter if you save like a few milliliters of glue? And they're like, well, because we make a lot of TVs and I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like they're, they are squeezing every penny that they can save out of these things in order to keep TVs getting bigger and prices staying similar or in many cases going down.

[B]

Here's a question. Have you found that I'm not much of a TV guy. Have you found that TV failure rates have been going up?

[A]

I haven't experienced it personally. I've heard people anecdotally talk about it.

[B]

Yeah, okay.

[A]

But like, I don't, I can't remember.

[B]

The last time I heard anyone say that their TV died of like natural causes.

[A]

Like actually.

[B]

So that doesn't seem to be happening because I have a, my, my fridge at home is having a problem and just because I, everything is at my place apparently right now. We had an appliance guy come in and he was basically just like, okay, yeah, I mean I can fix this, but realistically, this thing's old enough. You should just buy a new one. To that I was like, huh? My parents have had two fridges that I can remember my entire life. This fridge does not seem that old. What are we talking about? And I did a bunch of research, also known as, I looked up threads on Reddit and this is like a thing now.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

People are like, oh yeah, fridges last like five, ten years now. Ten years on the high end, five on the like average. And I was like, what?

[A]

Wild.

[B]

It's a big box of cold.

[A]

Now there are, there are TV longevity issues. So for instance, ratings did that really great investigation into Edge lit TVs, finding that especially if they were on for very extended periods of time at high backlight power, what was happening was it was like melting and discoloring the diffusion layer behind the LCD screen. And that was like a widespread issue with budget TVs, for instance. But what I was going to point out was that you and a lot of people in your social circle are probably more middle class.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And therefore have not the, the cheapest TV that makes sense. And so it seems to me that you still can buy a quality product that lasts for a while.

[B]

A lot of my friends that aren't necessarily. A lot of my friends, the two that I've been in their living room and seen what they have, have not opted to go buy a cheap TV from the store. They've opted to get used stuff so they have higher quality things that might be slightly older, but like, and they.

[A]

Let someone else pay the initial depreciation.

[B]

Cost, which on a tv, because they're so cheap, it Seems to be like you got that crazy TV for what was a hundred bucks or something. Crazy for Scrap Head Wars.

[A]

No, it was more than that.

[B]

I don't remember what it was, but the deal was crazy. Whatever.

[A]

I think it was four, I want to say 400 Canadian dollars and it came with a free sound bar. Or $600 and it came with a free sound bar.

[B]

Whatever it was for the quality of TV that you got, it was fine, fantastic, totally acceptable. Our Scout Wars TV was 550 with a hundred dollar free sound bar. But it was worth way more than Kratz. So like there is the used market for TV seems pretty good. I think you'd really.

[A]

We bought that one new though, as a warning.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Which puts pressure on the used market as well. When new TV's just.

[B]

Goodness.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. We bought it from like open box warehouse. But it wasn't open box. I know, right?

[B]

Crazy. What was I gonna say was if you're gonna buy a tv, use check for burnin.

[A]

But Eddie Coldrick says TCL is probably one of the very cheapest TV brands available in the uk. It's weird to see them taking on what I would consider as a luxury TV brand, especially Sony Bravia Pro line. And this is one of those things that I think, I think I've been guilty of many times in the past as well. This perception that Chinese brands or Chinese manufacturing or low end brands can't make something better. A lot of the time it's that they choose to make like a budget crappy one. Sometimes it's because they can't make something better. But a company like tcl, like I was, I was blown away when I first got that one 15 inch TV like two years ago or whenever it was. And I was like, this is not Only the biggest TV I've ever seen, this is one of the best TVs I've ever seen. I was not expecting that. And it has still held its spot in my theater room to this day. In spite of heating up competition in the ultra large TV segment.

[B]

Yeah. Which is crazy.

[A]

Kind of wild, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, and like going back even further, remember how we used to go to CES in the early days and Hisense always had the booth right next to intel right at the entrance of the central hall. Yep. And I'd be like, who the F are these guys? Like I know who intel is every.

[B]

Year for a while.

[A]

But who the fuck is Hisense?

[B]

Why does. What is the perspective back then? Relax.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like junk TV company have this like massive booth I didn't even know who.

[A]

They were at all the first time I saw them because my first CES was like 17 years ago now or something like that. I literally didn't know who they were. I had to look it up and it was like, oh, it's like a weird Chinese TV brand that literally doesn't exist in North America at all. What are they even doing here? And now they're battling it out with tcl. Another brand that I wouldn't have heard of at all at the time for number one. Number two, if I recall correctly, is Samsung, is Samsung still up there? Top TV brands brands us Is it.

[B]

Hisense and tc measuring it by sales.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Would be volume of sales or like total dollars.

[A]

Hold on. Bet. No, I don't want best. Yeah. Top selling TV brands from Accio. Accio statistics. So average star rating, last month's sales volume, high sense tcl, Sony. That's a cheap Sony. So I guess that makes sense. Samsung, lg, Vizio, Samsung, Samsung, Samsung. Oh, we're into.

[B]

What are these?

[A]

I don't know how reliable this is. Last month sales volume.

[B]

There's no way.

[A]

What is this? Okay, you know what? I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be able to find this. But the point is they absolutely have a very strong presence in the US market. We can say that with certainty. And I guess, yeah, where I was going with this is that there's nothing about TCL's budget low end TVs and them not being very good. That means that TCL doesn't have the manufacturing expertise.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

And facilities to make a high end tv. Yeah, for sure. And that's how a lot of these brands ultimately make their way to having a retail presence is they're oeming for much more recognized bigger brands. And then they eventually kind of go, sorry, what do I need these guys for? And they start making their own stuff and their own stuff kind of sucks. Not because they don't know how to build a better one in many cases. Sometimes that because they don't have the color science down or they don't have the good processing chips or whatever the case may be. And then other times it's because they just recognize that they're going to have to lucky gold star it and start at the bottom of the quality and perception pile and work their way up until their manufacturing volumes get higher and their expertise raises and then all of a sudden they're LG and they're like a globally dominant electronics brand. As for how I feel about buying a Sony tv at this point, there things are a little bit more confusing. Sony still owns 49% from my understanding. So Sony is still going to be literally, like, very invested in Bravia TVs being really good. But would I pay extra? Would I pay the Bravia premium for a TCL TV with Sony's special sauce, knowing that I already wasn't willing to do it? And also that nothing's really changed because TCL may very well have been manufacturing them before anyway. Like, the whole thing is. It's funky, it's changing. But is it changing?

[B]

Most people aren't gonna know that ever happened.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah. 100.

[B]

I. I think this might be somewhat Sony throwing in the manufacturing towel. I mean, this, this gets talked about a lot where people would be like, oh, Apple, Apple or Coca Cola. Coca Cola is not a, not a pop company. They're a logistics company, whatever. Tcl. I think if you're making that argument about other companies, I think you can make the argument about them being logistics and manufacturing and efficiency and stuff like that. Not necessarily a TV company.

[A]

So if at a certain scale, it's very true though.

[B]

Totally. No, I'm not even countering that. I'm just saying that you might also. I don't know enough about tcl, but you might also be able to apply that same logic to them. And if so, Sony might just be like, look, we just want to step back and be like a really premium technology and R and D group that can contribute that to really good TVs that these other people can pump out.

[A]

And if they're getting, you know, if they own 49 of, of the joint.

[B]

Venture, a big part of the pie. Especially if they don't have to mess with the manufacturing side of things and logistics and everything, they leave that alone. Like it. It might be fine. I don't know if I want to be too doomer about this. As someone who has never purchased a Sony tv, it doesn't necessarily matter that much to me.

[A]

Yeah, Sony was always like an aspirational brand for me. Even going back to like, like portable CD players and stuff.

[B]

It was like, they're usually quite premium, actually.

[A]

Hold on. No, I did have a. I did have a discmin. I remember I had a discmin. And Panasonic was actually the more premium brand around the time that I finally got one. I didn't get an early discman. Like, I didn't get one when they were square. I got one when Sony had kind of started to have their, their Ability to compete in the premium space eroded when they had the rounded ones.

[B]

The conversation we had on wan about rechargeable batteries reminded me that I probably needed a few more. So I treated myself to one of those, like the Eneloop kits.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

It comes with the charger and the adapters and stuff. It showed up. I'm pretty happy about it.

[A]

I wonder which one I had. This looks a little bit too squared off to be mine, but this display looks extremely familiar. This. This branding came way later.

[B]

I don't think it's there anymore, but I remember when there was a Sony store in the Willowbrook Mall, and I used to go through there all the time. I never own anything from Sony, but I always thought it was cool.

[A]

This was absolutely directly competing with, like, Panasonic's. Look at the time. These. These early square ones were pretty. Pretty wild. Oh, I think this is the one. I think this is the one I had.

[B]

Scroll down, like, one row.

[A]

Digital mega base, one row. What do you have the, like, orange.

[B]

And black one at the top of your screen?

[A]

Oh, yeah, this guy.

[B]

I don't know if I've seen that before, but that looks awesome.

[A]

Is that relatively new? Like, is that, like, going for, like, a retro vibe? Can. Can this not be here? I'm trying to. Oh, my God, it moved. Stop. 2023.

[B]

What?

[A]

Wait, no, vintage. Vintage. Oh, yeah. Okay.

[B]

It looks awesome.

[A]

Late 1980s. That's pretty wild. That's pretty cool.

[B]

That's quite a vibe going on there.

[A]

The kid. The kids whose parents loved them more had had Panasonic, though, with their better anti skip.

[C]

It's true.

[A]

Did you have a Panasonic?

[B]

No, my parents loved it.

[A]

Then your parents didn't love you that much.

[B]

I don't know about that. That sounds fishy to me.

[A]

I remember there's this one kid in my class who had, like. I don't remember exactly, but it was one kind of like to see. Dan's parents loved him.

[C]

Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure they didn't buy it. Probably a repair.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

We never bought anything electronic ever. It's like, oh, this is too much to repair. We'll just fix it.

[A]

I remember this kid in my grade seven class showing off his Panasonic shock wave. And basically his demo was that he would, like, give you his headphones and then he'd be like, okay, now start shaking it. And you'd, like, you'd shake it for as long as you could before you, like, got tired. And it would keep playing the whole time. Because I think it had 45 seconds of read ahead. So, like, you, you would have to, like, you'd have to shake it for almost a minute to get it to finally skip, which was probably terrible for it, like, probably awful for it, but totally.

[B]

But a fun demo.

[A]

But it worked. Yeah, it was a cool demo.

[B]

He didn't buy it.

[A]

Yeah. What does he care?

[B]

Yeah. I don't know how to feel about this. It might be fine. It might not be fine.

[A]

Cool. Good chat.

[B]

The 51% of its Bravia TV business is also interesting because as far as my understanding goes, if you're a foreign company and you want to work in China, you just have to do that. And they said the new company will start operating. Oh, yeah, hold on a second. Definitive binding agreements will be signed by March of 2026 for the new company to commence. So they didn't just like, sell part of their company, they made a new company. And in China, if you're going to make a new company, a Chinese company has to have majority. They have to have at least 51%. So this is, this. I don't even think this was like a negotiation. They wanted to start a new company in China making TVs, and they just had to partner with somebody and they partner with tcl.

[A]

Well, I wish them luck with that.

[B]

This is part of. Do I want to talk about this? Because I don't know enough of the facts. You might know some of it. This is part of Carney's plan, as far as my understanding goes, is 51 for the Canadian side. He's trying to do effectively the same thing they're doing when, when an outside foreign company wants to come to Canada.

[A]

And do business, especially like natural resource extraction. Yeah, it's been a, it's been a real problem for Canada for a long time that we have foreign entities coming in, setting up shop, doing a bunch of mineral and natural resource extraction and then funneling the profits outside of Canada, where there's no contribution to Canadian taxes.

[B]

Historically been extremely permitted by Canadian leadership to the point where there's like, almost certainly backroom deals happening. But yeah, this is discussion about car companies coming in from China to Canada, potentially essentially setting up manufacturing and whatnot. And a Canadian company would need to have a majority ownership. It's, it's. And that's, that's not a, you know, amazing new playbook idea. That's just, hey, China did that. It worked really well for them. Let's do the same thing.

[A]

So, yeah, I mean, I, I see nothing wrong with learning from our geopolitical rivals. Hardly rivals.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, from the big dogs.

[A]

I mean, listen, every Pokemon game, you meet your rival. I know. I'm going to crush him. Still a rival.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

All right. Hey, what do you want to talk about next? How about. Tesla's robo taxi service actually goes full robo for the first time in Austin. Since launching in the summer of this year, Tesla's robo taxis have come with a safety monitor in the car who can hit a kill switch in the event of an emergency. But now they've started offering unsupervised trips in Austin, Texas.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

They apparently plan to phase out the safety monitors and move to a fully autonomous fleet over time. I mean, yes, that. That has been the plan for that. That's been coming in two years for quite some time now.

[B]

It's coming in two years, is it? Yep.

[A]

There have been approximately eight crashes in the five months since the service launched, despite the safety monitors, which, depending on how you interpret that number, is either really great or really not as great. I remember reading about some college student who created an app that pings their service constantly from a bunch of different locations to find out how many robo taxis they actually have deployed. And it turns out it's not very many, which was pretty interesting.

[B]

Good job.

[A]

Anyway, the cyber taxi program still has a wait list for new riders, but the company is pushing to open in more cities soon.

[B]

There's a full play. I asked them for a source, but there's a full plane chatter that said this is not true. And supervisory safety monitors are in following cars.

[A]

That's hilarious.

[B]

I don't have, like, a source for this or anything yet, though.

[A]

At what point do you think it would be easier for Tesla to just do the things they say they're gonna do instead of pretend to do the things they say they're gonna do?

[B]

It's impossible.

[A]

I'm just wondering.

[B]

Impossible.

[A]

I'm just wondering.

[B]

It'll be too uncharacteristic.

[A]

Like what? Like, would it be easier for them to actually make a useless.

[B]

I can change him energy.

[A]

I mean, for a trillionaire, it's worth at least trying. Luke?

[B]

Yeah? This is a Futurism.com article. It says there's reportedly a car secretly following every Tesla. So this is not like, I don't know if this is real or not. And it says when Elon Musk said there would no longer be a safety monitor in the car, he didn't mention the other car. I don't know. This doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe it's true.

[A]

Maybe. I mean the whole thing basically doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's been pretty clear that this rollout has been a desperate attempt to prove that they're actually, definitely for real, definitely actually going to do self driving this time.

[B]

Meanwhile, speaking of which, are we transitioning to the same?

[A]

Sure, yeah, go for it.

[B]

Tesla Autopilot comes to an end in North America Tesla has quietly removed Autopilot from all vehicle purchases based on what Elon has shared in the US And Canada, replacing it with Traffic Aware Cruise Control or TAC TACC as the default driver assist feature. The change follows Tesla's recent announcement that full self driving Supervised is moving to a subscription first model. Existing owners won't lose Autopilot, but new buyers now have to pay for FSD or full self driving if they want features like lane steering. Oh boy. Tesla is offering a longer 90 day FSD trial, but after that it's 99 bucks a month or a one time purchase is available until February 14th of 11,000 Canadian dollars or 8,000 US dollars. Autopilot has been a core part of Tesla's value proposition and removing it means even basic lane keeping is now payroll, really something many cheaper cars include by default Yoix. Is there going to be, AI kits for Teslas?

[A]

That's a thing?

[B]

Oh really?

[A]

That's. That's a thing? Yes. This is pretty wild to me because a huge part of the, the Tesla package from my understanding has been the, the advanced software. And it seems like this, this push to making it all a subscription is either.

[B]

Oh my God, it is.

[A]

It either means that they're actually ready this time and it's actually working and they're finally like yee, we can actually charge money for this because it's not just alpha level software running on beta level hardware. I shouldn't say beta level hardware, but it's not working as advertised. They've been, they've been making claims about full self driving for many, many years with respect to the capabilities and the timeline that have simply not turned out to be true. That we can all agree on. So either secretly they're like really ready this time and they're like yeah, we can charge for it now. Or this is a desperate attempt to FOMO people into buying a bunch of full self driving right now so that they can juice the numbers for their next investor call and talk about how much people love full self driving and how much they just bought of it. I, I can't, I can't tell if, if every move in this chess Game is just a way of staving off the ultimate crash of this stock for another quarter. Or if it's something else. Can't tell.

[B]

Yeah, it's. I don't know. It's. It's. It's interesting because they. I mean, they've got something like I. I sat in a car with somebody who was driving a Tesla, and driving is like in enormous air quotes because their. Their legs were crossed in their seat and they were like clearly on their phone and showing me the, the how they know the limits of when autopilot will get them to, like, pay attention again and how they, like, play within the limit so they just never have to do anything. And it drove them all the way from where we were to the next location with no intervention whatsoever. Yes. Yeah, I don't want it to come back to that person. But there was other stuff going on as well. Like, it was. It was honestly quite impressive. But then that's still not technically the advertised full self driving. But the thing that gets me is the removing of even things like lane keeping. Like, that's crazy because clearly they have something like that was. That was quite an impressive experience, to be honest. But to just rip it away, it's like, yikes, man.

[A]

To be clear, everyone who has autopilot, which is advanced cruise control with lane keep. Not without it. Everyone who has it in their existing vehicle already will still have it.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay, okay, okay. So they're not taking it away from anyone who does have it. They're just not providing it as an included, included option on vehicles going forward. So you'll have to pay a subscription to unlock it. Okay. Just like you've had to pay to unlock the heated rear seats in the past, for instance.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that still kind of sucks then. But that's not as bad as I thought. I. I misinterpreted this. I thought they were taking it away and I was like, what? Like if. If that was my experience, which, you know, maybe you shouldn't do that, but if that was my experience, I'd be kind of pissed. Going back to like a fully manual car.

[A]

No, definitely not.

[B]

Okay, cool, cool, cool. More Elon news.

[A]

Yeah, let's do that instead.

[C]

That sounds like a better idea.

[A]

Float plane announcement this week on Float Plane. Do you want to bring it up?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Is all about what Linus does when he's not in Linus YouTuber mode. Oh, okay. Interesting. The Tonight show behind the scenes vlog is finally out showcasing what happened during the event, including the parts where the laptop did, in fact, work. And a quick meeting with Jimmy Fallon himself. Yeah, Luke got to meet him too, this time. Yeah, it was cool. He didn't chat with us for as long this time as he did the first time.

[B]

It was pretty sure, but he's a busy man. I'm trying to find the laptop opening.

[A]

You'll find it. We didn't end up capturing how frustrated I was right after the segment, but you did get to see how depressed the room felt, so that's something.

[B]

Oh, yeah. He must have been filming in there.

[A]

I talked to Sammy about it and he was like. Yeah, I was. I've never actually seen you, like, really upset before. And I was, like, scared to film you. And I was like, sammy, you still haven't you. Well, I didn't say that. I was like, sammy, even if I say don't, the right thing to do is to film me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because later. Yeah, we can always. I can always tell you later when I'm like, not upset anymore. Let's not do that. Let's not upload it. But we can never recapture a moment. And the example I gave him was when One X server suffered that enormous data loss incident. And I was like, actually, like, I. I think I snapped at. I think it was Taryn Van Heemort, like, put away the camera. Like. Like, was like, not okay in that moment. And he basically was like, I disagree. This is very important in that way that he sometimes did, which I didn't have time to argue with him about. And ultimately I came to him afterward and I was like, you were right. You were right to capture this moment because this was really great, very real content that I wasn't in the mood for making at the time. But I'm very grateful that we have captured now that I can look back on it after the fact. And so I basically, I told Sammy that story about how, like, even if I tell you no, the better thing to do is capture it. We can always, always not use it. We can always even delete it.

[B]

If anything, I would take it a sign to maybe be less intrusive with the filming, but keep filming.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Anyway, what else was I going to say? We also had Sammy following follow me around during my day at CES to see what it looks like when I don't have 12 shoots at the show floor. This ranged from troubleshooting an inconsequential laptop all the way to some behind the scenes of us at the robot fight event. Also funny moment at 1919 to 1929.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. 19. 19. Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay. Audio. Dan, do we have audio? I'm not gonna yuck your yum dad.

[C]

I'm gonna show my dad what a.

[B]

Father figure looks like.

[A]

Like. That's a fire quote. That's a fire quote.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Wow. That's a huge. Yikes. If you. If you prefer Riley, though. Riley and Bjorn sat down to talk about the behind the scenes and some insight on how to make their fun creative sponsor spots.

[B]

I saw that. I'm excited to. I haven't watched it, but I saw the thumbnail. I'm excited to watch that.

[A]

Stay tuned because next week we have a floatplane exclusive product, not clothing. That is very cool. That's launching lmg GG fpwan go check it out. Do you know about this?

[B]

My brain just went to, like, cables.

[A]

Nope.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Oh, I love that you don't know about this. This is gonna be so much fun. It's gonna be a great surprise.

[B]

I can't speculate, though.

[A]

I'm not gonna tell you nothing right now. Absolutely nothing. Stone cold poker face.

[B]

How do I. Okay.

[A]

I can't. No, I can't. Okay, I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna try again. Okay, you can't put it on me, Dan. You can't put the camera on me. I saw you do that. No, you can't. Okay, he's gonna do it again.

[B]

I'm actually really surprised you can't do this. Are you. Are you. Are you throwing for content?

[A]

What? No. Why would I do that?

[B]

Because it's so easy.

[A]

Fine, you do it. You're so smiling.

[C]

Stoic man.

[A]

Zoom in on him here. I saw him. I saw him twitch.

[B]

I didn't laugh at you, though. That's not fair. I did not laugh at you. I got. I got. I had a more difficult version.

[A]

Sure. It's actually a really great trick for photographing kids. When you have. When you have a bunch of kids and like, like, they won't smile or whatever else and you just try it.

[B]

For the love of God, be serious.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, everybody. Everybody make the most serious face. Nope. I. I'm telling you, you've got to be completely serious right now. That's not. That's not serious enough. Hey, I'm warning you. They'll all crack up. I guarantee it. Every time. Super cool hack. I remember I was probably a teenager, so I still had young siblings. And a photographer pulled that move on us for, like, our family portrait that year or whatever. And I was like, I'm a file that away because that's going to be useful.

[B]

I don't know why this made me think of this, but I saw somebody recently who fed, you know, pills to their dog and they did so by accidentally dropping like a piece of meat off their plate. But it was the, like it had the pill in it. I don't remember what it. Maybe it wasn't a piece of meat but like something off their plate.

[A]

But their dog is like super fast about.

[B]

Yeah, that's actually pretty smart.

[A]

That's really smart.

[B]

It's pretty good.

[A]

Okay. The show is brought to you today by ROV Lab. Moving and assembling furniture is one of those headaches in life that just seems inevitable. But our sponsor, ROV Lab wants to help with one of the most annoying things to build and move your couch. Rove's M1 sofa eliminates all the hassle and frustration that comes comes along with other furniture regardless of your living space. There's no heavy lifting, no tools, no need for instructions. Just open the box, let the couch expand and just like that, you have a place to sit in comfort. It's expandable and modular, which makes it the sofa that keeps on giving. And the M1 comes with a 100 day trial and lifetime warranty to give you peace of mind. Unbox [e-mail] wanshow and check out their Flash sale for a limited time. Sit back, relax and enjoy M1. The show is also brought to you today by Squarespace. Every brand and business needs a website to have as a home base for their products and messaging. Well, Squarespace is an all in one website building platform that can help you get your business up and running. Running, it's straightforward to use with plenty of pre made templates and a drag and drop interface that'll get you up and running in no time. Or you can add a little more pizzazz and personality thanks to Squarespace's design intelligence AI tools. Start by brand or website name. Choose the personality that best fits the image you're going for and you're off to the races. And when it comes time to sell your service or product, everything can be done right on their platform. We've even used Squarespace on our Linus mediagroup.com website for years now and it's so easy that Colton can use it. Start building your website today and get 10% off your purchase by visiting squarespace.com wan all right, a couple more topics, shall we?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What do you want to talk about, Mr. La Friendo?

[B]

What do I want to talk about? What do you want to talk about Ubisoft?

[A]

Ubisoft? Do you really want to talk about.

[B]

To be honest, but I think we should. After announcing a sweeping company restructure that includes the closure of two studios.

[A]

Yikes.

[B]

The delay of seven titles and the cancellation of six more.

[A]

Yikes.

[B]

Including the Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake.

[A]

No, that was. Oh, I was. I loved Prince of Persia, Sands of Time. I mean, I wouldn't have given Ubisoft money for a remake of it, but whatever.

[B]

Ubisoft's lowered its financial year expectations by £330 million. € euros now.

[A]

€. It's singular fun fact.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Why did they do that?

[A]

I don't know. Because they're a euro.

[B]

Now. A 1.5 billion euro with an operating loss of around 1 billion euros. Shares dropped 34% in value on Thursday. An approximate 95% loss from five years ago and the lowest point in 14 years.

[A]

How do you get to keep your job as CEO at that point?

[B]

Well, you're the family that owns the company, I think.

[A]

Oh, right. So the same reason I. I've kept my job.

[B]

That's pretty good. You're not the CEO anymore, though.

[A]

That's true.

[C]

That's.

[A]

Wow. That's a wow, huh? How about that?

[B]

That decline doesn't exactly look like it's stopping either.

[A]

Well, I mean, that's the thing about, you know, stocks is they can, you know, they stonks. They can stonks or they can stonks. They can kind of.

[B]

They can upside down stonks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Discussion question. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemont is calling you right now and says, I'll do anything you say to save this company. Please help me. What do you tell him to do?

[A]

He could try. Oh, man. What would I do to save Ubisoft at this point? I gotta say, I don't know necessarily enough about their problems. Like obviously they have the problems with the product that they're delivering, but I don't know enough about their product, I don't know enough about their problems internally. Because you can, you can have like a super toxic company that's hyper dysfunctional behind the scenes, but manages to churn out good product even for like a very long time with that dysfunction. And you can have a company that is very harmonious behind the scene, behind the scenes, but has bad luck and is not ultimately successful. Obviously there would be a correlation between companies that are operating harmful harmoniously and are executing and are making money and succeeding, but it's not a guarantee. So I don't I just don't know enough about how. I don't know enough about what's wrong with them. Like, obviously I'm. I'm playing Expedition 33 right now and it seems like the kind of game that Ubisoft could have made.

[B]

Yeah, it really does. Externally. Like.

[A]

Yeah, so much. Like, where are those. Where are those guys from anyway?

[B]

33. Yeah, they're from France.

[A]

Yes, I know from France. Hold on, team. But where's the. Oh, no way. No way. Okay, Wikipedia. The ideas behind Expedition 33 originated in 2019 with Guillaume Broch, an employee of Ultimate Ubisoft, not long before the COVID 19 pandemic began.

[B]

I can't. I can't just keep taking all these W's from my videos that no one cares about on. On Flow Plane. My. My little series on gaming things. Have you watched any of them? My whole point is that way back in the day with Atari and stuff like Atari's slow death was the thing that spawned companies like Activision. And my whole argument is we're going through that again right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And this is my example as to why is these types of things keep happening. This is an offshoot from Ubisoft Embark Studios. The guys that made Arc Raiders another game of the year. But for multiplayer winner this year is an offshoot from Dice.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like all these companies that are releasing like these like new feeling companies that are releasing amazing games are very often people leaving these giant no longer properly functioning companies of effectively the past now and making new hyper successful. Often.

[A]

That's basically what happened with Zip Tight tuning.

[B]

Oh my, oh my. Are you the Activision of YouTube? In relative years it might make sense.

[A]

I think I'm still doing all right.

[B]

Get owned.

[A]

We've got a fun collab coming with them. By the way, I'm very excited. I shot it Monday.

[B]

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that's sweet.

[A]

Yeah, we.

[B]

That's exciting.

[A]

I think, I think, I think this is. I think, I think it's going to be a very exciting future. You know what? I won't say more than that. It's going to be an exciting future.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I could talk for way too long about all the things that I think Ubisoft could do to. To fix themselves. I have lots of opinions on this. I don't know if it makes sense to talk for an incredibly long time on that topic. But I think, I mean, some of it feels like really obvious to me. Like we can start with Skull and Bones. That was like clearly an obvious massive failure when Everyone on the planet told you exactly what to do, and you were like, no. Like, maybe just listen to people. Maybe you should have just made another like. And I think they're remastering it as well. Do that. Assassin's Creed 4 was one of the best things you ever made. Remaster it, sure. But also make another one. Make a single player pirates game. That is awesome. No one cared about the Assassin's Creed portion of Assassin's Creed 4. All they cared about was the boats. Make a single player boat combat game. It was sick. Just do it again. Oh, my God. Your. Your obviously best Assassin's Creed games were two. And then the Brotherhood and. And Ascension. I think I got the names right. Go back to Ezio. Make a, like, Return of Ezio. It's been, I think, over a decade. I think it would be okay. I'm sure you can find a way to slot another story in. In his, like, some age gap. He got. He got pretty old, if I remember correctly. Between Brotherhood and Ascension. Find some stories in the middle there. It's probably fine. You can do it again. There's. There's like a version of this for every single franchise. You're telling me you can't make a Far Cry game based around what's happening in America right now? Are you kidding me? Far Cry was always the, like, political tension game. You think there's political tension right now in the States? Like, find a way. There's a way for all of these things. It feels so obvious.

[A]

Have they made any, like, Rayman games recently?

[B]

I'm not sure. Like, they did some weird collab with Mario like forever ago.

[A]

Rayman.

[B]

They did already. One of the Far Cry's was said in America, that's not current year problems.

[A]

I mean, a lot of America's current year problems are not exactly new.

[B]

Mostly fair. There was some. There was a little bit. It was a little bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I kind of like that one. I still have one of the figurines from.

[C]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[A]

Mario Rabbids, Spark of Hope. It doesn't even have Rayman in the name of the game.

[B]

Rabbids. Just Rabbids.

[A]

Oh, whoa. Seriously? Yeah. They haven't done like a mainline Rayman game in freaking forever. Who cares about Rabbids?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

Splinter Cell seems like a huge dropped ball. Lots of potential there.

[A]

Well, am I missing something here? Yeah. Rayman Legends apparently was. Was the last one.

[B]

Whoa. I just. I'm looking at like, some of their franchises right now, and it's just there's like so much potential and it just feels like they've like wet noodled every one of them. Like Far Cry, when Far Cry was like banging with like Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4. Around that area. They were very topical, right? Very topical. And they've just ditched that.

[A]

What are their other ips? Just kind of curious.

[B]

The new Anno doesn't seem like it's reviewing super well. I do wonder if that has like an expansion fatigue problem where the previous AI and things.

[C]

A lot of the, like, I don't know if they've fixed this yet, but it came under fire a lot because all of the like loading screens and stuff like that, the painted backgrounds seemed to mostly just be AI generated.

[A]

Damn.

[C]

It might have changed, you know, but a little disappointing.

[B]

It feels like a classic Ubisoft decision though. So it's just like.

[A]

I don't know. So here's some. Here's some Ubisoft IPs, man. A lot of these have weakened a lot.

[B]

All of them, I think. I'm pretty sure every single one.

[A]

Anno was strong until the very most recent release. Anno 1800 was an absolute banger.

[B]

One in the photo was Wicked.

[A]

Man. Beyond Good and Evil has been. I don't know if that's been relevant for a really long time.

[B]

If I was. I understand this is like literally not the point. If I was running the Steep project, I would probably do like, I don't know what you would call it, like a remix version where you go back to like SSX Tricky style gameplay and release one of those. Remember when they released that Far Cry that was like Blood Dragon. Yes. I would do like a Blood Dragon for Steep and make it more like the like old Snowboarding games like 1080 and SSX Tricky and release a version of that. If for no other reason to like just get people talking about your studio in a potentially positive way. Like, there's answers all over the place. They have so many legendary IP under Uber Ubisoft and it just feels like every time they just have to piss them away and it makes me want to scream. The. The skull and bones thing was such an insane disappointment. It was such an auto win that they just spent incredible amounts of money on making sure it would fail horrendously. So frustrating. Okay, we're good.

[A]

Do you want to talk about Bethesda now? You seem like you're on it.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Maybe we could talk about the decline of Blizzard.

[B]

Oh, am I like, oh, no.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Oh, you're not serious. Okay. I thought there was a Bethesda topic. And I was like, I'm gonna. My vein's gonna pop out of my head. No. Okay.

[A]

All right.

[C]

Test six is actually set in the Starfield universe.

[A]

Oh, no.

[C]

My mic was unmuted.

[A]

I wasn't supposed to.

[B]

You get to the. The game, and you have to just delete your entire save and start over again. Because for some reason, that was a good idea. It takes you do that again into.

[C]

Starfield, and then you have to play that.

[B]

Nice, nice. And then.

[A]

It's a prequel. It's a prequel. Yes.

[B]

Good. Good, good, good. Hey. The worst mechanic in the entire game. Let's make them do that again.

[C]

Let's.

[B]

Let's do that another time.

[A]

The Microsoft CEO. Microsoft CEO acknowledges that they will lose social permission to waste electricity on AI unless they do something useful with it.

[B]

Wait.

[A]

In a surprising moment of self awareness, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted at the World Economic Forum that AI risks, and this is a direct quote, becoming a speculative bubble unless its use spreads beyond big tech companies and wealthy economies. He also said that AI companies will quickly lose the social permission to take something like energy unless it's used for improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors, small and large. For this to not be a bubble, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread. And he also said that the telltale sign that AI is a bubble would be that only tech companies were benefiting. So it turns out they do hire really smart people to be CEOs of tech companies. They just.

[B]

Way to go.

[A]

They just never say the quiet part out loud. Except when they do.

[B]

Except for this time. Man, Davos and the World Economic Forum.

[A]

This year were just absolutely fire.

[B]

So bangers. Absolutely.

[A]

Who needs the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills when we have Dappos in the World Economic Forum.

[B]

What a wild couple events.

[A]

I mean, I guess that's what happens when you hire a reality star to be the head of the world's largest economy. You end up with reality TV in your politics.

[B]

It is. I mean, the ratings are high. Everyone's watching.

[A]

They have the best ratings. My friends called me. They said, you've never seen ratings like this.

[B]

They haven't. He's right. Way to go.

[A]

All right, so this comes after Microsoft reaffirmed investments of tens of billions of dollars into building AI data centers. And after Nadella asked the public to stop calling AI slop slop, to which the public responded by changing Microsoft branding on things to microslop. Because of course that was gonna happen. It's so easy now that they can just do it with AI.

[B]

Ah yes, yes.

[A]

Anyone can meme on Microsoft. Now our discussion question is should big investors into AI be sweating? Yeah.

[B]

Unless you think you can time your exit really, really well. I mean like I think we talked about this on Wancho before and I've heard this argument elsewhere as well. But like I don't think a lot like a lot of like the, the Googles of the world, whatever man. They have so much revenue flowing in. They're gonna be fine. The Microsoft's of the world, they're gonna be fine.

[A]

Oh yeah, they have real revenue.

[B]

Do we have. They have a real business ad thing in here.

[A]

An OpenAI ad.

[B]

So OpenAI is talking about putting ads into their like free tier and stuff.

[A]

But there's a, for ChatGPT, there's a.

[B]

Quote, there's a quote from Sam Altman talking about how putting ads into the service would be like a last financial resort. And that quote was like not that long ago. And now they're adding ads into the service. And the discussion around this is, is a little bit nuanced because some people are going like okay, well he said last financial resorts or are they failing? Like is this, is this the beginning of the end?

[A]

Here's a source from PC Gamer Dot. Whoa, what site am I on again? Which one?

[B]

Just in Casey, I didn't know.

[A]

Yeah, one's called it a last resort. But Chat GPT is about to get stuffed with ads.

[B]

Yeah, but the, the counter.

[A]

Oh, sorry. Oh my God.

[B]

Yeah, it's a pretty good one.

[A]

Oh, because Sam Altman is such an ethical person.

[B]

Always, always, never. Otherwise even if they don't sell the data to the companies, they can still target you to all hell. So just be ready for that. But there is a counter argument that while it might actually genuinely be a last resort, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily failing. If you look at, I mean they might have been, but this move might literally be significant enough that it actually solves their problems because there is just so much frickin money in ads. And like if you look at. This is a direct argument from Doug Dug I believe, which was basically like if you look at, if you look at Facebook and Google, clearly ads be banging. So like this might actually be enough to just bring them all the way up. It'll be interesting to observe because I really wonder how they're going to implement it because. And will this open the door for all the other ones to do the same?

[A]

Absolutely. As soon as I Mean, this is why I always go off about Apple doing something that's anti consumer because the second Apple does it, it gives everybody else permission to do it. It's not because I will even necessarily use the Apple products product, it's just because everyone else blindly follows once something becomes a norm because there's another dollar to be made by not including a cable or a charger or whatever else is in the box.

[B]

So if the household name LLM service has ads in it, then everybody else is, it's, it's easy and they don't have to tank the reputational hit because OpenAI will just do it.

[A]

Somebody else did it first.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yep. Yep. Our next discussion question is haven't these companies already lost their social permission to burn energy?

[B]

No.

[A]

No. I mean that's the thing. So this was written by David who I think is a very, he's a very dialed in person. He knows, he knows stuff about a lot of stuff and he's, he's got a high, high awareness level, you know like high, high awareness intelligence you might say. AI Sorry David, I would never say something that rude about you without it being a joke.

[C]

Clearly a joke.

[A]

But anyway like David has a high level of awareness and I think that, I think that often we, and I'm talking to you guys too right now. That's right, you, I'm talking to you.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

You guys, very serious. We live in our bubble. We, we hang out. A lot of you probably work in, in the tech industry. A lot of you probably gravitate towards people in your lives who, who keep up with and are interested in talking to you about the tech industry. You're watching. How long have we been, how long have we been live. You are, you're two and a half hours into a podcast that is at least loosely, I was going to say loosely. Like maintains a facade.

[B]

Yeah, there you go.

[A]

Technology, right. And so I feel like we end up with this inherent. I don't know if I would quite call it an echo chamber because I would like to think that we are open to new ideas but it's definitely a self reinforcing perception that the things that we're knowledgeable about are the same things that everyone around us is knowledgeable about and more importantly cares about. But no, like my sister in law doesn't know how much power chat GPT is using. She doesn't even know. It wouldn't even occur to her to ask.

[B]

I, I think there's a lot of people that are just going to be like, you know what I Am invested in the, the stock market in general. I, my pension is invested in the stock market in general. I want these companies to do whatever they're going to do to make money. And I think a lot of people aren't going to say that out loud.

[A]

And that's even a tier of awareness above, like what we're, what we're talking about here, where we, where we care about the technical details of which Nvidia accelerators and how much VRAM they have on them and what impact that has on the supply of silicon wafers that's going to Micron or SK Hynix for the price production of consumer memory and how that's affecting the pricing of the steam machine. Like that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about on this show with the assumption that you guys are all kind of sitting there going, yeah, yeah, I have all the context to kind of follow along with this. But there's other people who are like way more interested in nutritional supplements or in the. In min. Maxing the performance of their truck or whatever else it is that they do and they're passionate about and they care about. I'm not saying that these are not aware people. I'm just saying they might have a lower level of awareness.

[B]

Particular topic.

[A]

Yeah. About this particular topic.

[B]

I don't know what's going on and probably whatever they do.

[A]

Me either. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you who makes the best drill right now. Yeah, I don't know. Milwaukee.

[C]

Makita?

[A]

Makita DeWalt.

[B]

I'm on the team of the probably not Ryobi company that I have the battery compatibility with.

[A]

Yeah, exactly right. To the project farm.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. To be honest.

[A]

Exactly right. So I'm. So none of this really surprises me that. Or none of this surprises me that. No, people haven't gotten fed up with what AI companies are doing. Unless these companies are operating in their backyard and, and emitting a bunch of, you know, toxic gas and smoke into the air that's like drifting over their, over their house or whatever. And no, it doesn't surprise me either that David probably lives in enough of a technological bubble that to him it was like obvious that this is bad. And to a lot of you guys, like a lot of your, your, your adamant opposition to AI is based on understanding exactly what's going on right now and being kind of powerless to stop it. I mean, we talked about this in the, in the Bright side of Tech video where it's like, yeah, you're, you're 100. Like, we got the, I got the messaging wrong when I talked about it live on the WAN show where I was like, we need a perspective adjustment. A lot of people bristled at that wording. And so we, we avoided that wording when we did the Bright side of Tech Video.

[B]

But it was thank you for beta testing our video.

[A]

I know, right? It was, but it was, it was the same, it was the same point. The point was that you're 100% right to be mad. 100%. You're 100% right to feel powerless and frustrated. 100%. But just, okay, can we direct it to the right places? That's all. Can we just, can we point it in the right direction? Was kind of what I was trying to, what I was trying to get across and, and, and directing it at this, at this, at this all in bet for the next, the next 5G, the next IOT, the next big tech trend that will make the stock market go, go, go hockey stick higher at the expense of, you know, anything else getting better for the, the average consumer. Yeah, definitely be mad about that. But, you know, maybe not, maybe not everything we, I don't, I just, I don't think we have the energy to be angry about everything.

[B]

I don't, it's also just like really bad for you.

[A]

You. Well, yeah, objectively, this is, this is, this is based in true.

[B]

Yeah. Pick your battles and avoid the ones you don't have.

[A]

Yeah. Andre B. Says the Bright side of Tech Video was a somewhat surprising video. Really appreciated it. Yeah, I, I, I wasn't sure how it was going to go. It was one of those ones that we talked about a lot in the writers room and we kind of, we knew that we were doing something a little bit risky. It's a lot easier to go. I am a consumer advocate. I am that was on paper mad on your behalf. That is effective. It's not effective. It doesn't do anything. It can be, it can be if it's done in a way that is effective. But I haven't, I have no seen it with respect to anything around what's going on with AI right now. Like being mad about Micron shuttering the crucial brand is not going to change that decision.

[B]

I think the biggest impact we've seen actually is in gaming with a few companies coming out and saying that they'll limit their usage of it or whatever.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is interesting.

[A]

And also, I don't know how much, I don't know if I believe it's going to last. Man.

[B]

And I also have heard that that is causing some issues within a couple studios. Not one, I've heard more than one where some of the workers are actually.

[A]

Really frustrated by not being able to use it. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.

[B]

Because there was certain cases where the higher ups didn't even know to what degree it was being used and then made statements being like, whatever, dude.

[A]

I, I found out, I found out about an AI tool that we were using yesterday in a meeting with an external company. I had no idea. So apparently, you know the, the safety pass on our videos where we check for exposed email addresses.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

IP addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers.

[B]

Are you doing an automated run of that as well?

[A]

Apparently there's an automated run of that before a human goes in and checks it.

[B]

Yeah. So you do the classic, you don't actually remove the human step, but you add in that one to help it be easier.

[A]

We've tuned it to be extremely sensitive. So out of 20 positives, probably only two of them will be real apparently.

[B]

But then when the human check happens, they can just verify those things.

[A]

But I literally didn't even know we were doing that. And a member of our team, James, was telling this other entity that we were chatting with and sort of sharing. Exchanging trade secrets basically.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Learning from each other. He was like, yeah. And like the best thing about it is that for a 20 minute video, it doesn't take 20 minutes to watch it. It can do it in like a few seconds. And then you can just be surgical about what you're then reviewing as a human. It's like. It doesn't surprise me at all then that the leadership at these companies literally just had no idea what the employees were doing. Because at the end of the day, as long as the work output quality is high, the way we're going, it's just going to, it's going to be another tool whether you like it or not.

[B]

And for a lot of people already is.

[A]

And for a lot of people it has been for a long time as well. Like, there's nothing you could do as, you know, let's say Larian. There's nothing that you could do as Larian to prevent your concept artists from generating a bunch of AI slop on their computer at home. Being in and then being inspired the next day when they come into the office. You literally can't.

[B]

Yeah, you can't actually technically control it. You can, you can set like a tone for your company. You can, you can try to set like a general expectation and Then people would have to work around that and be sneaky and dodgy about it, which will significantly reduce it potentially to zero. But you can't actually guarantee that it will be at zero. The. The cat's out of the bag. This is the same argument I've made in the past about, like, the AI regulation stuff is like, I don't know what you can do at this point. Like, and I'm a very open to ideas, to be clear. I'm not saying don't do anything, but like, the, the models have already been trained and then open sourced. They're out there. There's no. We're. You can't turn this off. There's no turning the faucet to close. It's. It's, it's out there. People are running this in home labs. You cannot take it fully away anymore.

[A]

And in fairness, a lot of the ideas are really good. Like, look at this. Tiger, polar bear. Can you imagine? Can you imagine Star wars with creature design of this caliber? That is what AI is.

[B]

It's just so sad, man.

[A]

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Pawn crackers goes, oh, no, not again.

[B]

It's so sad for so many reasons because, like, that obviously just in and of itself is depressing, but then just seeing what has happened to Star wars and then seeing that, that is a genuinely, like, praised idea coming out of that camp just is. So.

[A]

That's not even the worst one. This is the worst one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is by far the worst one. Yeah. They're all so bad though. Like a.

[B]

He looks, he even looks, if you scroll down, like, he actually just looks sad. He does. He's like, why did this happen to me? This one is. This one is sad that he has to wear that costume.

[A]

What is this?

[B]

Why did they put weird dots on?

[A]

Why did they ever show this? Just show. Don't show it to no one. Show it to no one and talk about it. Not at all. That would be the solution.

[B]

Pat them on their head and tell them to run off to their cubicle again and go do more productive things. RIP Star Wars.

[A]

Speaking of open sourcing algorithms, Elon Musk has been talking about open sourcing the recommendation algorithm behind X since before he bought Twitter and attempted to rebrand it X. Earlier this week, news broke that it was finally happening, but the story evolved rapidly, with the target date shifting from next week to March 31st.

[B]

No.

[A]

There is an existing GitHub repository purporting to be the code behind the algorithm, but most of the code is from before X was X. With the latest Changes coming back in September of 2025. I wonder if when they open source it, if they ever do, we'll be able to find the part where his tweet is always at the very top of my feed regardless of whether I follow him or not.

[B]

Yeah, probably not though.

[A]

Probably not. Probably not. Google begins rolling out Personal Intelligence beta for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. Gemini with Personal Intelligence hopes to combine the data from across many different Google products. Gmail, YouTube, Photos Drive, Search Calendar, etc. To provide highly personalized answers. Google's pitch as to why you don't have to worry about privacy is literally and because this data already lives at Google securely, you don't have to to send sensitive data elsewhere to start personalizing your experience.

[B]

Which love it I have to insert is just true. They already have it all anyways. They're not like it's maybe this is a quiet part out loud thing, but like I read that and I was like yeah.

[A]

They also promised that Gemini doesn't train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library, but they will train on prompts and responses within Gemini. Okay.

[B]

And I think a key word there.

[A]

Is directly for example, when prompted, Gemini will tell you where it pulled the information from so you can verify it and you can correct it on the spot. I. E. I don't like golf or I just dropped my son off there for work. It will also filter out or obfuscate what it deems to be personal data. Well, good luck with that.

[B]

Yeah, sure. It definitely will definitely do that. Also, AIs have no history of gaslighting or telling you things that are false ever. They definitely would never do that. This is not a problem.

[A]

I'm kind of tempted to try it just to see it if like it does anything useful at all. But I also just feel like it's.

[B]

Going to end up being probably set an alarm for you.

[A]

Just one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The fact that like set timer and set alarm are not just like running locally on my device and I have to wait around for the cloud delay is nuts.

[B]

In 2026 I I didn't have networking on my phone and I tried to set an alarm and it just sat there spinning and I realized why and I was like oh my God, I want to smash this thing. It would be so simple to process that locally. But no. But no.

[A]

Okay, our next topic gigs in Space and the first note for this from Mr. Jordan Block is sorry, I've been rewatching old Muppets shows that's kind of based really good. I I forget how old I was, but I was an adult. I. I didn't watch the Muppets as a kid because it was a little before my time, but I. I did watch the old the Muppet Show. It's so good. It's like so funny and subversive and I am old enough that I at least know who a lot of the people they're making references to are. Yeah, it's. I don't know that younger people would enjoy it. I think like mid to elder Millennial is probably about as young as you'd want to be, but it's. It's really good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the reboot movies were good too. At least the first one or two were on Wednesday. This week, Blue Origin the Bezos founded space technology company announced their upcoming Terra Wave, a network of more than 5,000 satellites in low Earth orbit that they say will deliver symmetrical speeds of up to 6 terabit per second anywhere on the globe. I'll believe that when I see it. The new network is expected to serve up to 100,000 customers globally and will offer both RF144 gigabit per second and optical 6 terabit per second connectivity options. Current low Earth orbit constellations are serving millions of customers with asymmetric speeds up to 1 gigabit per second download and 400 megabit per second upload, with the main one being, of course, Starlink. There is another one. What is it called? Galileo. Galileo. How many satellites? But I think Starlink is like way ahead of the others. AI overview says as of late 2025, the Galileo Figaro.

[B]

What is this a. Is this a reference to. Yeah, I heard of that.

[C]

Oh, you got. I got duped by a float plane.

[A]

Kerbal space program mod.

[B]

That was a good one. Chat. I like that. That's good.

[A]

Dang.

[C]

I haven't had egg on my face for a while. Tastes good.

[A]

Yeah, apparently there's really not a lot of Galileo satellites up there yet. No, Galileo is also. People are saying Galileo is GPS equivalent. Well, hold on a second. What does. Hold on, hold on. I'm gonna figure this out. I mean, it's definitely. It's definitely a thing. LEO satellite. Go, Go. Galileo. Broadband connectivity for every airframe. Like, it's definitely Internet connectivity. High speed, Low latency Internet to business aircraft. I don't know how many. I don't know how many satellites they have.

[B]

Apparently Galileo is Europe's gps. So maybe it's just a double naming thing. Maybe there's two companies.

[A]

Go. Go. Galileo uses the Utel SAT1WE orbit satellite constellation which consists of somewhere around 600 satellites according to the AI overview. Okay, so it's the Utelsat OneWeb. How many OneWeb satellites are in orbit as of early March 2023? According to Wikipedia, there are 584. Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. Well, anywho, a discussion question. Could this be a viable solution for remote ingest of footage when we're shooting on location? I mean, potentially. But it's all going to depend on like Starlink, what the power requirements are and the, the fixture requirements are for the, for the base stations, which I haven't seen yet.

[B]

What is Starlink operating over?

[A]

Like what frequency?

[C]

Or.

[B]

Well, this was saying RF or optical.

[A]

Starlink's definitely not optical.

[B]

Yeah, I feel like optical is going to be tough. They're. They're trying to talk about the, the 6 terabits per second, but optical. So it's like. Yeah, I don't know, dude, sounds pretty awesome. But like, I, I wonder does your, does your transfer get canceled if a plane flies overhead or if there's a cloud or a.

[A]

What if a complicated flies overhead?

[B]

It's very interesting to me though. That's crazy. Like, it sounds kind of pretty epic. I would like to know more. I'd like to know what the complications are and stuff like that.

[A]

How much of a difference is it in latency if you're at like 40,000ft versus if you're on the surface of the earth for like a, for like a low earth orbit Internet connection? I wonder, huh. Like how high, how high in feet are.

[B]

Satellite to satellite is optical for Starlink. That makes sense, but am I, am I misreading this? Is their optical. Just satellite to satellite?

[A]

Okay, they're like 1.8 million feet, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

[B]

Are the notes of this like, kind of weird? Is it not optical down to Earth? Is it just optical to each other's satellites?

[A]

Yeah, it can't be optical down to Earth.

[B]

So then it's our. The way it's worded is. Anyways, whatever. We're moving on.

[A]

The show today is brought to you by Factor Meals. James from the business team has been going through his third playthrough of Final Fantasy 6. Oh, good. This time the pixel remaster. And he says he lost track of time trying to get the Ultima weapon last weekend and didn't end up making dinner until well past 10pm okay. My generation called it Atma weapon. But that's fine. This wouldn't have been a problem if he had a bacon, shrimp, Mac and cheese from Factor Meals ready to go in his fridge. Factor Meals are made by real chefs with plans designed by dietitians, delivered to your door and ready to heat and eat in just a couple of minutes. They have a hundred rotating meals every week with lean proteins, vibrant veggies without any artificial refined sweeteners. And unlike the esper in the Narshi cave, Factor Meals are always fresh, never frozen. Hey, try talk. So head to factor meals.com wan50off and use code when 50 off to get 50% off your first factor box plus free breakfast for a year. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. The show is also brought to you today by Odoo. There are many aspects to business management and signing up for multiple subscriptions and services can get messy fast. Our sponsor Odoo takes all of those aspects and puts them into one user friendly and customizable platform. Things like invoicing, email marketing, designing a forum, or building your own app can be done in one place. So save time and money while building a community with their forum app. Wow, they have a forum app now? That's pretty cool. Or. Or use the accounting app to help track your budget and make sure your business is staying out of the red. And if you really only need one of Odoo's many features, you can use it for free. As a wise man's once said, all you gotta do is Odoo. Use our link below to book a demo to see how Odoo can help your business and get a free 15 day trial. No credit card required.

[C]

That's a reference from one of Riley's CSPs for Odoo.

[A]

If you haven't seen it. Yes, Dan, we know.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic.

[C]

Should go and watch more advertisements. We'll play chat.

[B]

Yeah, Flow plane. I have, you know, I have seen people have ads. I've seen people asking like, can we have like compilations?

[A]

Yeah, we should do a 20, 25 compilation probably. Oh man, I'm sore.

[B]

You good, bro?

[A]

I did badminton three days in a week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I just wrecked myself. I'm just, I'm not as young as I once was, old brother. I mean, in fairness, I went pretty hard. I think even when I was younger I probably would have wrecked myself pretty good doing this. But I think I like, I kind of like pulled something in here. My left arm ironically. What's up with that? Yeah, right. See, that's what the face I Made.

[B]

In the back get real weird.

[A]

The US government will be taking a 25% cut of AMD and Nvidia's AI sales to China. The US government has decided it will take a 25% cut of revenue for certain AI chips that AMD and Nvidia sell to China as part of new tariff rules. This isn't just a tax, it's tied to a broader export policy that now lets those companies export advanced AI processors like Nvidia's H200 and AMD's Mi325X to China after importing them into the US first. So basically, yeah, there isn't actually a problem with our geopolitical rival having access to these advanced processors. They just need to like pay a.

[B]

Bit more and be shipped around for no reason.

[A]

Or chips only qualify if they meet specified specific performance and technical thresholds. Exporters must prove to the prove that the US market is fully supplied first and that shipments to China can't exceed half of what's sold in the US all of which limits how many GPUs will actually move. The idea behind the cut is to let US firms get back into China's AI market while the government extracts revenue instead of outright banning the sales. This policy is unusual and is meant to survive legal challenges because it applies only to certain chips that meet specific criteria. So good luck everyone with all of that. That seems like a perfectly good plan. Meanwhile, the US Department of Health and Human Services is worried about the dangers of radio signals and has removed web pages that assert that cell phones are safe. Really nice. So at the highest level of the world's largest economies government, we're actually like 5G paranoia.

[C]

Really nice.

[A]

This is this, is this real, this timeline that we're on?

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Yeah. Mew says. Back to this again. An HHS representative directed by the MAHA Initiative said that they removed the web pages that had old conclusions that required more research to identify gaps in knowledge in radio wave safety. A lot of the 5G hate that's out there is based on a handful of studies like one that showed a link between the persistent use of cell phones, which resulted in the formation of tumors and nerves surrounding the hearts of male rats, but not female rats or mice. Optional editorializing, says our notes from Mr. David Gautier. Most scientists see this study and say that the field requires more research. But many conspiratorial social media health influencers see that as the most convincing proof they've ever seen because they've never seen real scientific proof before. Or if they have seen it, they wouldn't recognize it. I added the last bit. Kenneth R. Foster, PhD, professor emeritus of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a 2018 article that people have been using cell phones for decades and so far there's been no notion noticeable increase in brain cancer. Dr. Foster said this means that the risk, if it occurs at all, is too low to detect with any reliability. So that's basically where we're at on that. And we have apparently moved backwards now in terms of understanding of all of this, which is pretty neat. Tylor says There was a lawmaker in Florida posting about chemtrails this week. So here's the thing. It's so chemtrails is one of those ones that's super easy to logic your way out of, because the conspiracy theory is they put chemicals in the air for mind control. To which you reply okay, then why isn't it controlling your mind and how are you able to see through it?

[B]

Ah, I have superior lungs, I guess.

[A]

You should test that. Try putting a plastic bag on your head.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

And then seeing how long you can breathe in it for.

[B]

I can resist that because I have resisted the mind control. I am undefeatable. You will never win.

[A]

See, that's the problem with using logic to argue with illogical people. They're impervious to it.

[B]

It's remarkable. I am impervious because I am undefeatable.

[A]

I can mute.

[B]

I am impervious to the mute. You would have to mute yourself as well. I could not be defeated.

[A]

Maybe I should just give up on all of this and go be a gay frog somewhere.

[B]

I did not see that coming at all.

[A]

They never see the gay frogs coming.

[B]

Oh my.

[A]

Asus smartphone development is apparently on pause while the company shifts its focus to AI. ASUS Chairman Johnny Shi has stated that Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future. Instead, Asus will focus on developing AI products such as robots and smart glasses. With that said, existing phones will continue to receive software updates and warranty support. Our discussion question from Mr. David Pankra has there really ever been an Asus phone that you would actively recommend anyway? Is this a huge loss?

[B]

I strongly believe a significant amount of companies are branding fairly obvious company and operational and directional changes as we are pivoting to AI in a hope that that gets enough attention to pump their stock. That's it. Same thing as people branding layoffs as return to office. I think it's the same thing. I think it's just companies doing company stuff and just Branding the company stuff in the most stock pumping way possible. And I think that's it.

[A]

Megor in floatplane chat says is he still made phones.

[B]

Yeah, but this is my point. Like why were they still doing that?

[A]

I don't know. It's a good question.

[B]

So if you're on their side, maybe you want to stop.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And maybe the way to stop is be like we're going to do AI stuff instead.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

When you probably could have done both.

[A]

Yeah. But it seems to me Red Magic has sort of like a monopoly on gaming phones that actually make any sense.

[B]

At all for sure.

[A]

Is there, is there anyone I'm missing?

[B]

I think, I don't think there's a massive market for it.

[A]

I mean, Red Magic exists and as far as I can tell, they don't have. They don't do anything else.

[B]

Sure. Yep. I've also never seen one in the wild.

[A]

I have. Oh. I've actually also seen an ROG phone in the wild and not one that someone won at our Christmas party. I was quite surprised to see it. Someone took a picture like at a Taiwanese tech mall or something and they like had an ROG phone. I was like, what? There you go.

[B]

It feels a little unfair that it was at a Taiwanese tech.

[A]

Well, I don't make the rules.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I think that's all this is. Personally, I don't blame them for the change and I don't even blame them for trying to market it in a way that pumps the stock. It's just companies doing company stuff.

[A]

So what will be our AI pivot?

[B]

We don't benchmark anything anymore. We tell the AI the specs and we tell it the historical performance of various things. We inform it that companies generally go after price bands. We tell it what the cost of the device will be and then we ask it how it performs.

[A]

That sounds really cheap. I'm in. I'm convinced. Let's do it. Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Vimeo is laying off staff globally after its 1.38 billion dollar sale to bending Spoons after being bought by Italian tech firm Bending spoons for about 1.38 billion. Vimeo has cut a large chunk of its workforce with former employees saying it felt like almost everyone was let go, including reportedly the entire video team. Which isn't that like what Vimeo does video? Established in 2004, a year prior to YouTube, Vimeo has carved out a niche as a high end video hosting platform, catering primarily to professional creators and businesses rather than viral entertainment. It's Actually the second set of job cuts in a few months back in September, Vimeo trimmed about 10% of their staff before the acquisition wrapped. Bending Spoons has a bit of a history of buying tech platforms like we transfer Evernote, Meetup history and then making deep cuts afterward, which makes this feel a little less surprising.

[B]

I think you could. I think calling this a bit of a history is completely fair for the person who wrote this. But I will editorialize a little bit and say this is what they do. They. They enter into spaces, purchase companies up, consolidate, simplify, layoff, fire, take profit, and then who knows after that. Yeah.

[A]

Acquisitions. I'm just trying to see like, who they. Products, Vimeo, Evernote, Eventbrite, Wetransfer, meetup, Komoot, aol, Streamyard, isu, Mileiq, Harvest, Break, Cove and Remini. Apparently they have a thousand employees.

[B]

Wow. Wow indeed.

[A]

Wow, indeed.

[B]

Private equity. Go.

[A]

Brr. Yeah, no kidding. So here's a question. Doesn't Dropout use Vimeo?

[B]

Yes, they do.

[A]

Should they use Float Plane?

[B]

That'd be pretty sick. That'd be pretty sick. I've always seen getting them on float plane as the, like.

[A]

The.

[B]

I don't know, the special artifact, the Holy Grail, whatever. I always thought that would be really cool. I really like what they do over there. Are we ready? I don't know. I think we could be. We need to do some work to make our thing more like what I think that they want. I'm not sure.

[A]

Like that'd be. I. I wouldn't obviously think that they would just upload to Float Plane. That would be stupid.

[B]

But.

[A]

Well, Vimeo, if they were to do something like Sauce plus where they had their own.

[B]

But they, they do, I think.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I haven't dove into this in a while, but I, I would make the assumption that Vimeo is just delivering their video.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

So their site is actually just. Just theirs anyways. Man, they have so much cool stuff. My goodness, they make so much content. It's actually mind blowing. They're an extremely interesting company. It's funny because they have a crazy amount of subscribers from what I've heard. I don't know if it's real or not, but they have a wild amount of subscribers claimed at least they have a insane amount of like, shows and originals and different things that they make. But they're so like, not super public because all their stuff is paid access.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's, it's just fascinating how like, successful they've been at this model. Yeah.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

They're a cool group.

[A]

I wonder what that would even look like. Like us just doing infra. Infra and not doing the platform.

[B]

It would look like yet again something we've never done before. We could do it. We've. We've like theory crafted scenarios where it's something like that. But that's not a. Like becoming Vimeo was never a target because Vimeo existed, you know, like it was.

[A]

Oh wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This was just linked by Max O Drive in floatplane chat websites using Vimeo. Download a list of all 2,115,701 current Vimeo customers.

[B]

Oh yeah. Built with is a really cool website.

[A]

Oh, that's super cool.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Built with is awesome actually.

[A]

Huh. I mean is it at some point, should we like try and make it fly or should we just like not really bother?

[B]

You know, one of the problems, and this is like it's a problem and it's also a big part of the reason why we still exist. So I don't know, I don't know you want to call it, but some of the original tenets of Flow Plane was basically like it should always be either neutral or paw or profitable as much as possible.

[A]

Oh yeah, you better believe that it.

[B]

Needs to be as independent and self reliant as possible. All these other types of all of those pillars that we initially laid out strongly resist explosive growth. How do you build to scale when you can't out higher your profitability?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like we set up the pillars to be the least Silicon Valley company possible.

[A]

We really did.

[B]

While still making a software tool. So the team's like tiny.

[A]

Yeah. And incredible by the way.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Throwing that out there.

[B]

The fact that it exists at all, at the size of the team is like fascinating. And I've had long conversations with people that have talked to me about how it actually doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, well, it is a thing. So I don't know what to tell you.

[A]

Gibberim says their platform website is a Vimeo website website with a Dropout skin. They need active platform support rather than just a backend.

[B]

Interesting. Okay.

[A]

And Rysa says Dropout allegedly surpassed a million subscribers recently. Handle that kind of load. I mean I don't see any reason why we couldn't scale to a.

[B]

We could scale to that. Yeah.

[A]

Like Float Plane is. It's small, but not because it has to be. It's small because it keeps costs manageable.

[B]

So I don't know what features they have and stuff. Stuff though like, it's. I, I deep dove this a while ago, but it's. It's been a while.

[A]

I would think they would have a lot more in the way of like analytics and tracking than we do. Like, we're pretty loosey goosey.

[B]

They can give subscriptions.

[A]

Yeah, we should really have that.

[B]

We should, we should do that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And also trial subscriptions and stuff.

[B]

Yeah. So like there's, there's things we would.

[A]

Whenever you get to it, Luke, we're not. Whatever's convenient.

[B]

We're not ready this second. I would have loved to be. I wish this happened a little bit later because I would love to work with them. Not even because the million subscribers thing, obviously company hat on. That's really cool. But like, I just think like, man, there's such a unique. Like I find talking to creators at event fascinating. Like Open Sauce is one of my favorite events to go to because you can just hang around with a huge variety of different creators all the time and just talk about like what they're doing and how it's working. And man, is dropout unique. Like, my God.

[A]

Rysa says they've been getting some flack for low quality merch. Maybe you could help them there too. I don't know. We're like, we're in this weird. We're at this weird kind of inflection point where I think we kind of have to decide where we're going. We. We're not really continuing to scale the way that we used to years ago just on our own. And we're not really. It would require a large investment and a huge leap of faith to become like a service, a creator services company in the way that I think you guys are kind of envisioning as a future for, for LMG CW float plane. And. It's not an easy decision. Right. Because I've gotten pretty comfortable. Do I want to bet it all again? Do I want to convince my wife to bet it all again? For what? Yeah, it's tough. I don't think it would change my quality of life if LMG CW FP was a 10 times larger company.

[B]

And that's the thing. Like we could, I don't know, it's.

[A]

I don't love the idea of bringing in venture capital to take a chunk to inject the cash to build and scale this thing. Managing people is the thing I like least about my job. To be clear. It's not that I don't like the people. I actually, I love the team that I get to work with every day. That's. That's one of the most privileged things about my life, actually.

[B]

Turns out managing people is not hanging out with people.

[A]

Yeah. So lame. I hate doing that. And nothing that I can. Yeah. I don't know. Hi. Biz says a company I worked for hit about 60 employees and stopped growing, and it worked. Well, I don't think chasing more and more is always the best. I really liked working there. Yeah, but I bet you outgrew it.

[B]

So that's another thing. It's. It's. There's never a perfect answer. There's people on the team that will not want to grow. I mean, I've been rather outspoken about not having wanted to grow. And then, I mean, I think we've felt the pain of that growth. We've also reaped the benefits of that growth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not. It's not a simple answer, but there's some people that won't stay if you do that. Forced growth. And there's people that won't stay if you don't.

[A]

Yeah. So it's like Stephen J. Asks, have you ever thought of putting CW outside of the merch space? Not that we call it merch anymore. You have such quality products. I just bought a bunch of the plain shirts, and when they arrived, my thoughts were like, why aren't these just a product? And they are, from our point of view. And, yeah, we'd love to, but it's like, it's not that. It's not that simple. Like, from a logistics standpoint, from an economic standpoint, like, you'd be you. Like, on paper. Right. It seems simple. Luke. Luke. Underscore, Laugher.

[B]

Twitch.

[A]

Twitch. Streamer. Yeah. Right. I mean, well, like, yeah, not lately. Yeah, but, like, okay, sure. So Luke.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Luke.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Gets this cleanup wizard shirt from LTT store, and he goes, oh, sorry. Who makes this? And do the label say CW yet, or do they say LTT still?

[B]

It looks like it does. Yes. Cw.

[A]

So he sees this label, and he goes, oh, wow. Creator warehouse. I'm a creator, and I wear things, and I. I'm in a house. Wow. It's like it's a match made in heaven. And he goes, I'd love to. I'd love for my. My Luke laugher. I'm gonna make a burb shirt, and it's just gonna be a budgie on the front, and the budgie is gonna be looking like this, and it's just gonna be thinking. It's gonna have a thought bubble, and it's gonna be, like, burb and, like, War. Sure. You know what? Love it. Burb wore. Burb wore shirt and yeah. Yeah. 10 of 10. Jeremy says I would buy one sale. Okay. Yeah. Luke has this idea. He has this shirt that he's like, this is pretty cool. How do we get that graphic on the shirt? How do we get it onto a website where you will buy it? How do we manage Luke's exposure to this inventory?

[B]

I don't want any exposure.

[A]

No, he doesn't. How do we manage the lead times of the inventory? That we will. I guess we what we have to carry now so that he has blank shirts for him to print bourbon once in a while whenever he feels like it. What will be the minimum print quantities for the print shop that we work with? We don't own our own print shop. We work with a local company and then there's another print shop in the states that we work on next to our us. Us3PL that's going to be helping us out in the near future. They actually some really nice prints recently.

[B]

I'm going to be the. The chat just print on demand dummy.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. Who. Who will do it? What will be the costs of that times? Yeah, like silk screening is way more cost effective over a certain quantity and print on demand direct to garment printing is way more cost effective for very low quantities. But these are going to be really expensive shirts and that's just.

[B]

Oh, I meant like lead times. Like how long will it take you to get the shirt?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh, dude, it'll take you longer. Take a minute. It's Hurley time says just open your own print shop. I mean, yeah, if I had a casual. I think the last time we looked into it is around 400,000 to $600,000 worth of equipment. Plus we need a space. If I and people here are going to be managing it, it's going to need to be a space around here which is money. Staff. Like. Like nothing is that simple. How will. How will we make sure that the customers that are buying from Luke all paid the taxes correctly and all the like customs and whatever nonsense on their shipment and we make sure that. Are we handling Luke's accounting now? Will he remit all of those correctly and properly?

[B]

Is that our responsibility or is that his Bingo. Said print to orders. The only real solution have a three to five week time on all orders. Like yeah, I'm sorry. I don't know if I want the shirt that I just bought to show up in two months. Like huh. I. That's always been really frustrating for me about print order Stuff is like, I don't know, am I a spoiled. I have it now dopamine machine? Maybe. But, like, five weeks lead time, I'm assuming that's just production, and then they actually have to ship it and stuff. Like, I. That's a really long time to wait.

[A]

Yeah. And to be clear, these are all things that are solvable. So everyone who's suggesting solutions, you are 100% right. But the question is, is that where we want to invest our time and is that where we want to invest our capital? Because we have a limited amount of both of those things. What if instead of doing any of that, I just made another video every week? That'd be kind of cool. Probably higher profit margins.

[B]

And we have room for that.

[A]

And I already know how to do that.

[B]

We have upload slots.

[A]

Yep. Or we just make another really cool product for LTT store, and then we don't have to split margin with another creator.

[B]

We do another podcast.

[A]

Yeah, we'll do the. We'll do the White dudes with facial hair podcast.

[B]

There isn't enough white dudes with facial hair podcasts.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

We should add another one. You're 100% needs.

[A]

I just. I agree.

[B]

Market is asking for it.

[A]

I agree with you so completely that, like, if I agreed with you any more, we'd probably start beating each other off. We need more white dudes with facial hair circle jerking in the podcast space. Maybe we could. We could innovate by having three white dudes.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, we could get another chair. I could sit in the corner.

[A]

Yeah, well, no, you can't be in the corner because we'd have to be in a circle, obviously. It's just physics, Dan.

[C]

Yeah, but I mean, technically, like, a triangle fits into a circle.

[A]

Oh, he wants a cock chair. Thanks, Dan. See you later. Yeah. Didn't get it. Didn't get it.

[C]

That's fine. That's okay. I got more cocks for you later.

[B]

Anyways. Yeah, I mean, would. I mean, we had a conversation about, like, how cool it would be to be the back end for dropout, like, a month ago in, like, a float plane staff call. And everybody was like, yeah, sick. Also not quite ready for that right now, but, like, that would be sick. We want to focus on our app. We want to actually get a TV app out there. Like, we're. We're not blind to the people, to the things that people have been asking for. We want to get those things figured out. We've been having some trouble with our app where we're there's a new head of do I talk about it? I don't name them, but I can say that it exists. The new role that was hired.

[A]

Go for it.

[B]

There's new head of HR in here and I've already talked to them about hiring for app dev for flow plane. Like it's we want to figure that out. If that's figured out though, there isn't like a ton left. Like we're not ready, but we're not far from being ready.

[A]

And we spent like a solid like two years, you know, dealing with a bunch of the like early days tech debt and stuff to the point where.

[B]

We'Re in a pretty good spot, pretty.

[A]

Modern in terms of like the tech stack. We're pretty scalable. The team, like I said, is super smart and I think would be like ready for a challenge as long as they're as they're resourced appropriately. Like I'm we're just small. Yeah, it's small.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We have one more topic, by the way. David's answer for what was the last relevant Ubisoft game is he thinks other than 2023's Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, which was great and then the team behind it was disbanded, the last great or majorly relevant UB game in his opinion is Assassin's Creed odyssey back in 2018. 2018, which is rough.

[B]

Odyssey was sick and in my opinion, underrated.

[A]

Last topic for today. New leaks show Nvidia's N1X gaming laptops are reportedly set to debut this quarter, with N2 on its way for 2027. A new Digitimes report says that Nvidia's N1X windows on ARM laptop chip is back on the internal roadmap with a Q1 2026 consumer launch, followed by three more variants in Q2 likely aimed at the enterprise. This lines up with reports of an unreleased ARM based N1X CPU being spotted in a shipping manifest for an unnamed Dell laptop. N1 and N1X is confirmed to be the same silicon used in the DGX Spark, Nvidia's AI workstation. That kind of looks like a Mac mini on steroids. Considering that sources say that the next gen N2 series is already on its way for your Q3 2027. It seems a little strange that N1 wasn't even mentioned at CES 2026. I had a little off the record conversation with a fellow tech journalism bro that that I respect a lot. I'm not going to name him because I don't know if he was at liberty to talk about any of this, but basically, apparently this silicon has been an absolute cluster bomb over at Nvidia. And none of the. None of the external unimpressedness with the DGX Spark was a major surprise to. To my bro. I remember Carmack, like pretty much the first thing he said about it was like, does this thing overheat? Or something like that. That was. That was a pretty epic burn. Yeah. Yeah. So DGX Spark has, has. Has not been quite as impressive. And the. These arm ARM on Windows gaming laptops have been. I think the first time they were supposed to Launch was like CES 2025. Or was it Computex before that? I can't remember the first time they were supposed to launch, but they've been punted down the road multiple times at this point. Lol. Inverse says DGX Spark is great for concurrency. Lol. All right, well, there you go. I think it's time for After Dark. Should we do this thing? Let's do this After Dark thing. Wow, you guys are loving the Cleanup wizard merch products. Damn it.

[B]

Haha. Got him.

[A]

Yeah. Cleanup Wizard T shirt is killing it. A lot of people picking up Linus cat tips. Pins.

[C]

Pins are great.

[A]

Love the pins. They are. They're so cute.

[C]

I requested a couple of the mousepads as well for a friend of mine and.

[A]

Cool.

[C]

I might steal one too.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

All right, talking of mattes. Hey, dll question for Linus. Will the mod mat have ESD protection? If so, what are you using to test it?

[A]

Yes, and I'm using Tatiana to test it also. I think the CW engineering team was involved in that as well.

[C]

Linus, how often should one paint the walls of their home to maintain it for selling later on? And are there any renovations that provide a lot of value to a house buyer? Mom renovating house right now.

[A]

So this is a funny thing, right? Because there's a. Oh man. There's a lot of different. There's a lot to unpack here. So many people wait until the moment that they're moving out of their home to freshen it up for sale. And I have to imagine that people do this because it's a tried and true strategy to maximize the value of your home. I have to assume that I don't know that for sure. And if it was me and I was shopping for a house, I would actually much rather they didn't paint it. I would actually much rather they had. As I walk into this house with scuffs and dings everywhere on the Walls. One of those paint chip books, and it just included fresh paint because then I could pick the color which would obviously be more likely to be a color I wanted.

[B]

Oh, wait, Interesting. So you're saying, like, we will paint it for you before you even get the home, but you get to pick.

[A]

What color because I'm paying for it anyway, so I might as well get a color that I actually want. Nope.

[B]

You get white.

[A]

I think that painting a house right before you sell it is causing an epidemic of blandness. Yes, because resale white is the only color that anyone's gonna want to paint on it to make it look fresh and open and bright. And as soon as you move into a new home and I've done this that's been freshly painted, you kind of go, well, it was just painted. I'd be an idiot for painting it now. I'll do it later. You're never gonna do it until finally you move out, having spent the last 10 years of your life living in, like, dinged, dented, messy wall land, only to go, oh, wow, man, this place looks so great. I wonder if we should have just lived here for longer. Maybe we should have just spent money on the house at a time when we would be the ones to enjoy it instead of these new people who are moving in and they don't even like that color.

[B]

Yeah. Nice.

[A]

I'd say the most important thing in terms of what I'm looking for when I shop for a home is that I'm not gonna suffer from, like, death by a thousand cuts, but I don't know that that's the norm. Like, I'm. I'm looking for, you know, hey, is this a place that looks like they didn't just slap a coat of paint?

[B]

Sorry. I saw a Reddit thread that. That I think is actually a brilliant idea. They. They said that you should get Electroboom out to come check out the tech house.

[A]

I did see that. I don't know that another video, like, going through it again would add a ton of value, but I think with.

[B]

Him, it would be frickin sick.

[A]

I'll cons I'm considering it.

[B]

Oh, I think it would be cool.

[A]

Very cool. Love, Mehdi. Always love collaborating with Mehdi.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

He is a walking content machine. And he's such a nice guy. Just like the most genuine guy. You guys love Mehdi.

[C]

What happened to the Linus does vibe coding video?

[A]

It's coming. I actually. I actually don't know. It's. Yeah, well, at some point it will. It will happen.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Our writers have a lot of balls.

[B]

They do.

[A]

Predominantly male department. Mm.

[B]

They do.

[A]

And they gotta juggle them sometimes.

[B]

You gotta.

[A]

How many balls do they have? Terrible. Stop. Don't hesitate. Get move on. Hey.

[C]

Hey. L.D.

[B]

You do a seated floss. Oh, what is he even doing? What is he even happening? What is happening?

[A]

He's blanking.

[C]

This man's blanking.

[B]

I genuinely did not see that coming.

[A]

They never do.

[B]

Oh my. Jeez.

[C]

Hey, lld Linus. Since Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster has sold a million copies, do you think there is hope for a sequel or prequel to it? It maybe pick up Orlando's story and would you play it?

[A]

I'd play the crap out of it. I mean the fact that it took this long for them to. It's good but like not super high effort. Remaster. It is. Is remarkable and gives me no faith. But also, hey, they sold a million friggin copies. So that seems like for a financially motivated company like Square Enix, like hello, Hello. Maybe you should do more of this kind of signal. But that maybe they'll just completely ignore. I mean don't. Isn't that. Yeah, that's in Square Enix. The one that has that activist investor that's like hey, you guys are being really stupid and like you actually need to stop being stupid now. So maybe they'll listen, maybe they won't.

[B]

Maybe Ubisoft needs one of those.

[A]

Yeah, maybe they do. Won't be me. I mean I probably afford to buy a significant chunk of the company at that share price, but it would. I want it. And to be clear, no, I can't. Dude. That is is joke. Ubisoft is still worth so, so so much more than you own their ip.

[B]

We could do some cool stuff.

[A]

Ubisoft, we do some sick stuff. Total value. What's their total value?

[C]

The bar is pretty low, Luke.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's so good.

[A]

Linus Studios sure would not call it that. I would not call a company my name again.

[B]

If you had Ubisoft, you could probably employ enough people that it would make sense to do some form of like.

[A]

Stop it.

[B]

Housing development.

[A]

Okay, Dan, next one.

[B]

I've given you Linus Town.

[C]

Maybe I have given you frameworks in the past for just that.

[A]

Linus.

[C]

And he ignored me.

[B]

Variancy. Looby soft.

[A]

So what? We do all X rated games.

[B]

You'd make some money, dude. Oh man.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

Oh, that's good.

[A]

Hi.

[C]

Dll question for Linus. Which LTD merch item do you think didn't get as much love as it deserved? I love some of your one off products, like the ram stick scarf.

[A]

That one is so cute. I saw mine the other day because Yvonne and I, we're getting ready for the ski season and we were sorting our outdoor wear and I was like, the ramstick scarf. That's. That's, well, probably a little depressing to look at for people these days since it's the only ram that they might be able to afford. But. But it's so cute. It was so cute. What didn't get as much love as it deserved?

[B]

I'm gonna answer this, even though it was specifically asked to Linus, but that all black 3D printed down jacket.

[A]

Oh, the 3D down, yeah.

[B]

Is genuinely like an incredible jacket. And I think it was like too expensive for a product that people don't get to try on first because everyone that actually tried that jacket on was like, oh, this is very nice.

[A]

I love that jacket.

[B]

But it.

[A]

Yeah, the dropout hoodie.

[B]

The dropout hoodie.

[A]

I love very legit, this hoodie.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

They don't let me wear it because it's not for sale anymore in any like, sizes that matter. But I freaking love that hoodie. Just the. And I just, I love the idea behind it. The. The multiple layers of the meaning how it looks like a university or college hoodie, but I didn't graduate, so it just is ltt and it's like, I don't know. I. I love it. And. And also just like in the tech space, that whole drop out but be successful anyway thing is such a thing. Like I just. And also LTT is sure entertaining. But also this may surprise some people on some corners of the Internet, but we do actually like teach people stuff as well.

[B]

Definitely educational.

[A]

So I just loved all the, all the layers of ltt. School of hard knocks. Like. Yeah, exactly. Charge Nuclei hoodie. And it was also just such a cool quality garment. I love the, the fit and fit, the feel of it. And I just. Yeah, yep. Wanted that to do better. We ended up having to liquidate a lot of them, which hurt because it was just such a good product.

[C]

Wouldn't it be easier to like burn them rather than like melt them?

[A]

Nice.

[C]

Hi, Dll.

[A]

No, no, you got to do it for yourself too. Low quality. Ding. Get out of here.

[C]

Hi D. What is a new completely new hardware that, that you are excited about that's not just an improvement on other hardware? For example, for smartphone, for smartwatch.

[B]

Is this asking us to like invent a device?

[C]

I don't think so.

[A]

I think this is something that's like, coming.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What is a new thing? Can you name a new thing?

[A]

Kind of, I think Apple topic.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I think the Valve Steam frame is kind of a new.

[B]

But that's an improvement on other hardware.

[A]

It is sort of, but it's like. It's a standalone headset, but also it's a. It uses the onboard computer to do wireless streaming better than it's ever been done before for VR. And it's a VR. It's a PC VR headset, but it, like, has like, really good quality and mobility. And you can also play, like Windows x86 games on the ARM CPU. It's like, okay, fine, it's an improvement. Yeah.

[B]

First smartphone, first smartwatch.

[A]

Theoretically, I'm still excited about smart glasses, but I just, like, can't motivate myself to put a pair on. So I don't know how to reconcile.

[B]

If ASUS figures it out and make some cool ones, that'd be kind of neat.

[A]

But Asus on the software side, though?

[B]

Yeah, I kind of doubt it. Sorry, guys.

[A]

They've done some stuff that's been better than expected. Like, their software on the Rog Ally is much better than I expected it to be.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Their overlay stuff, it just. It just works. And that, from my understanding, is not that simple.

[B]

I think if there's a robot that can do my laundry and do the dishes, that would be huge. And not like fall over or smash things while doing so and not be. Not be remotely pirated or piloted. My goodness. That's also a fairly important one. I'd also really like it to not be calling home about every single detail of my entire life, including the layout of my house and where I am at all points in time.

[C]

HomeKit smart robot.

[B]

See? Yes.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

It could turn off your lights for.

[B]

You properly walking over to it, pressing this.

[A]

That is so smart. Switch with extra steps.

[C]

That's so. So retro.

[A]

It's so vintage. Literal steps.

[C]

Literal steps.

[B]

I really like that. But yeah, if it's. If it's a home kit, I. I control it. It's. It. It doesn't phone home everything that ever happens. And it's a robot and it can do my laundry, do my dishes, and other various annoying things like that. If you can take out the garbage, stuff like that. Huge.

[C]

You could ask.

[A]

The garbage would be amazing.

[C]

Ask it to set an alarm and it would grab your phone and then just. Just do that for you. See, that's. We just revolutionary. We just need, like, more Boston Dynamics robots because they can just do everything that the the things can. This is where we're going.

[A]

How much do you think the robot that isn't just adware is gonna cost? And then everyone buys the one that's just spying on you and serves you ads?

[B]

$25,000. Oh, more.

[A]

There's no way. No, no shot, Luke.

[B]

I did. Cheap car.

[C]

It's really, really hard to buy a non smart TV right now. Oh, yeah, I'll put it. I'll say.

[A]

I'll say that that's the only way they reach these prices.

[B]

It'll probably be impossible to buy a. Yeah, non always Internet connected smart home robot, but I would like it to be a thing because I don't know.

[A]

That'S how you break it. I was wondering why it was broken at like that spot of all places.

[B]

There's no way I did that too.

[C]

No, that' so the problem is most likely the table or the chair.

[B]

One of the two.

[A]

Then why isn't mine broken?

[C]

Skill issue.

[A]

All right, what do we got next, Dan?

[C]

Oh, yeah, my job.

[A]

Hey, lld. Luke.

[C]

My wife wants to know how your birds are. I don't, but she wears the pants. Thanks for all the fun.

[B]

Okay, well, cover your ears and I'll talk directly to your wife.

[A]

I wouldn't let him do that. Especially don't let him make her chicken.

[C]

There's birds involved. Get out, man.

[B]

They're doing all right.

[A]

Don't get out. You can sit on the chair in the corner. Yeah, we can be friends.

[B]

Oh, my. Yeah, they're. They're doing good. Actually, the one of them was recently sick again, but it was very, very short lived, which is great.

[A]

The bird or the sickness? I can infer.

[B]

I'd hope so, but yeah, they're. They're doing good. All three of them. Now, for people that don't know that update, which I think is a decent amount of people know that one, but maybe not everyone. There. There's three birds now. One which was. We had already like purchased it from a breeder to be a buddy for our previous bird. And then our previous bird passed away. So then the time window from having a bird to having a bird again was like really short because there was a bird that we already receiving because we bought it, and then we bought that bird a buddy. And then there was a bird that was out in the wild in. In.

[A]

Was in the park in Langley, right?

[B]

No, it was in Richmond, but it was in a park. And this would be the second bird that Emma recovered, but this one, no one claimed it. And we. We tried very hard to scream from every rooftop possible that we had this bird and no one ever claimed it. We talked to our vet about it and they said it was fairly telltale situation of someone just kind of threw it out a window because they didn't want it anymore. There was other reasons why they thought that it did make sense, but I'm not going to go into all of that. And now we just have third bird. But third bird is female bird and other two birds are boy birds. So birds cannot mix. I don't know how they can necessarily tell. They look pretty similar to me. But the second there is a female bird in vicinity of the boy birds. It is party time. They are very excited and go a little nice nuts. So it is very obvious that we can't necessarily let them all kind of hang out together too much. So that adds some complications and whatnot. But yeah. Anyways, long story short, birds doing all right. Birds are good.

[A]

Cool. Follow up.

[C]

Luke, question. You mentioned earlier that you're building out a home lab. What kind of things are you thinking of setting up?

[B]

Ah, dude, I want to do lots of stuff. A decent amount of this is just like I feel like it is hyper overdue. I want to know more about the people on about what the people on my teams do. So I. Some of the goal is to use similar things that we use here so I can get more experience and have a better understanding of what they're talking about and the like the issues that they run into and just things like that.

[A]

Good. Keep going. Making adjustments.

[B]

So why.

[A]

I don't know. Like it better this way.

[B]

Perfectly level. No one's not perfectly level though.

[A]

That's fine. Just relax. I like it this way. Stop it.

[B]

It still works. That's fine. Now they're both crossing. Yeah, they both have a high point.

[C]

Yeah, it's very nice.

[B]

I. I want to get a Plex server up to live stream home videos to my family.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Yeah. I also I'd like to do some local LLM stuff. There's just a lot of things that I want to do that it's. I feel like I'm very overdue on. Really actually pushing.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

As a student and IT worker at a university, I've noticed that the newer generation is less tech literate. Do you think the oversimplification in hand holding has contributed to this issue?

[A]

Hold on. I've got something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I've got something to share with you guys. This is a great meme I came across and something like phone or tablets.

[C]

Because I heard like what's a file System for a lot of people because they're mostly interacting with like a phone or a tablet or, you know, an application. They don't have to know what a. What's a D drive or a C drive or like, what's a network.

[A]

Share. Okay, Dan, I just sent you like my favorite meme from the last week. I want a YouTube app on my computer. Shut up, Pugboy. Get out.

[B]

I actually do.

[A]

Why?

[B]

I wish less things were just browser.

[C]

Here's Linus's favorite meme.

[A]

Favorite meme of the week.

[C]

I'm training a zoomer kid to use the computer at work and it's exactly like training a boomer. There is exactly one generation that can rotate a PDF and there will never be another. The knowledge dies with us.

[A]

So good.

[B]

It's kind of true. Go Jellyfin and swim upstream. Yeah, I don't know if I want to duplex or not, but I want to do like, you know, video home video distribution to multi houses. Yeah.

[C]

Hi.

[A]

When.dlo I just want to jump in and say, generally speaking, our staff has actually been really good. Like we have younger people on staff and there are absolutely zoomers and younger people who are very capable technically. I just want to throw that out there that these generalizations are just generalizations. They're not universally applicable. Okay, carry on. Very good.

[C]

Hi, Wan dll. I'm a high school chemistry teacher. The Green brothers have a bit of an empire with YouTube. Education content, vibe, Crash course. Do you have connections with them? Would love education focused collab.

[A]

I don't think I've ever. I don't think I've ever met either of the Green brothers. I. I admire them from a distance. One of the ways that I can find out is just checking my inbox. No, I have never corresponded with either of the Green brothers. Downer. Maybe I should try and do that. You never know unless you try, right? Thanks, Luke.

[B]

Yeah, very, very deep.

[C]

Yeah, sure, bud.

[B]

Very deep comment. Yes.

[C]

Hi, Dll. Question for Luke. As a software developer, I come across other developers who see errors as something only others can solve. Any tips on how to encourage them to see errors as opportunities to learn? This was a little bit confusing.

[A]

Any tips on. No, no, I. I understand.

[B]

I understand it too.

[A]

Okay, go ahead then.

[B]

That's a tough one. Some people. I don't know if you'll ever really be able to get that through to them. I think if you are leading or managing those people, I think you make it very clear that this is a required part of career progression. But to a certain degree that's just a performance issue. Some people will never resolve that and it will make their careers halt in progression. And that's sometimes where people just sort of stop is because they can't get their minds around that. It's, it's a very difficult thing to have as a programmer. I find a lot of people that, no, that train of thought doesn't make a ton of sense. I, I think like solving errors is a natural constant state of a software developer. So if they can't do that, they're going to be hyper limited in their career. And if you try to communicate to them that to them, hopefully they absorb it and grow. I've seen this happen with people. It's not that it, it doesn't happen. I have just also for sure seen it not happen with people and.

[A]

You.

[B]

Can'T save them all, so do what you can. But yeah, I think I would, I would tie it pretty directly into like, look, you will stop progressing if you don't figure this out. So you have to figure this out.

[A]

Apparently John Green said that I gave him a computer recommendation. I don't remember that, but I recommend computers to a lot of people, so that would be a little embarrassing. It's like, oh yeah, you like built a server for Santa Claus. You don't remember? Like, oh yeah, sorry to slip my mind. How do you forget something like that? I don't know.

[B]

That's a, that's a big, you'd have to be more specific moment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And like the villain is like. Or the, the protagonist in a movie or whatever is like, you killed my dad. And the villains, like you'd have to be more specific.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

You recommended a computer. You'd have to be a lot more specific.

[C]

So is, are there programmers that just program and then don't fix it when it doesn't work? Is that what this is talking about?

[A]

You've used a lot of software in your life, Dan. Do you think there are programmers who just program and don't make sure it works?

[C]

That's why I was a little confused because it's like, okay, we have errors. Like doesn't compile. Well, you just haven't done your job then.

[B]

No, it's like if they're struggling to accomplish something, they'll just give up.

[C]

Oh yeah, that's so much worse.

[B]

I think that's what I think.

[C]

I think that's a crux of it.

[B]

This is how I'm interpreting it. So they'll be like, I mean, problem hard and then they'll try to Just go to someone else and. I mean, sometimes that might make sense. We try to do a thing where, like, you should try to grind on it for a bit and try to solve it yourself. But at a certain point, you should seek help because you're just kind of wasting time.

[A]

You heard it here first. At a certain point, you should seek help. Luke 20:26, the extremely deep.

[B]

But you should try to solve it yourself.

[A]

Not wrong words.

[C]

Do you see a need for wireless TVs that they had at CES? Wires are still needed, regardless of what they say.

[A]

Well, you answered your own question, didn't you? This is kind of like. Okay, this is my favorite thing. Hold on. I'm just gonna search for. We're gonna go. We're gonna go on a little journey together.

[C]

Are they like, battery power?

[A]

I'll search for projector. What the hell are the Bigley brothers anyway? That doesn't matter. The point is, we're gonna go to, like, a mainstream type of projector brand. Seriously. Okay, let's. Let's. Let's go. Let's pick on. Let's pick on lg. Let's pick on LG Cinebeam. Okay, let's pick on LG Cinebeam. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna click. Shut up. You ain't gonna click. Oh, my God. I'm gonna try to use your prompts. Stupid website. Okay, let's click this thing. Wow. What a great design. That. I'd love to look at that. Wow. This is such a. Oh, wow. This is a shockingly honest deployment. Except it also isn't, because. Where's this cord going? Where is this going? This is your couch.

[C]

Is there.

[A]

Like, you. You're completely ignoring the fact. Look at this. This. It's not plugged in in any of these situations.

[B]

It's also not one of those times in a position that you would actually want it.

[A]

Minimal cue design. Right. But it's all bull. Unless it actually runs wirelessly, which, as far as I can tell, it doesn't.

[B]

There are so many. They hide the cable behind a coffee machine. A coffee thing.

[A]

I don't drink coffee.

[B]

But it's cool that you're talking about far right.

[A]

That. Oh, yeah.

[B]

Behind. What is that? Like a battery bank?

[A]

So they're showing. Yes. So it can be used with a battery bank, but they don't even show.

[B]

The cable going into the battery bank.

[A]

But, like, where is the. Where's the projector in this shot? That's awesome. This is clearly just complete horse.

[B]

Oh, yeah. That's amazing.

[A]

And So I have a very similar issue with whatever you were talking about. Yes. Wireless TVs. I have a very similar issue with wireless TVs, as I have with this type of projector marketing. It's all fantasy, it's all pie in the sky. What if everything was wireless? Well, it isn't wireless. It's not wireless. So what are you even talking about? If I want to play on my switch, well, I'm going to have to have power for my tv because I definitely need that. I'm going to have to have HDMI into some box somewhere because as far as I can tell, the switch doesn't have magical lala. Wireless display transmission. I'm gonna have to have power for my switch, so I'm gonna need a media console anyway. So I might as well just have one then.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So basically they're stupid. And I think they're stupid.

[C]

I do Glan and Dynus.

[A]

I could totally see myself putting one in the tech house, though, just because we can.

[C]

Yeah, Drill some walls.

[B]

Drill some walls.

[A]

Heck yeah.

[C]

Hi, Duke Lanadinus. Is there any tech you'd like to see added to modern car suites? Shout out to my wife for letting me do some gear shopping.

[A]

Honestly, buttons, some dials, I don't even. You know what? Some switches I'm about.

[C]

More Piano black.

[A]

I'm about to have the hottest of takes. Don't need them.

[B]

We need less, actually.

[A]

My car is.

[B]

Please, less.

[A]

My car is almost all glass and I love it.

[B]

Oh, I know. I don't like it.

[A]

I, I, I don't. I, it's interesting to me because I, I hear a lot of people talk about how much, how desperately they need their climate controls, for instance, to, to be physical switches. And I'm sitting here going, why are you touching it? The fan is set to auto. You set a temperature you're comfortable with and then you never touch it again. Like.

[B]

You also have discussed how your significant other will change the things, but then you have to change them back. Yes, but so just because you think her opinion is wrong does not change the fact that you still have to interact with it.

[A]

It's so little though. It's like, I just, I'm just saying.

[B]

The, the point doesn't really land.

[A]

That's fair. That's fair. But it also just, it still. I don't know, man. I don't know what to tell you. It just doesn't bother me at all.

[B]

I was on a touchscreen Rivian not that long ago and had to interact with the touchscreen and it just felt like the dumbest thing in the world. Why are these not buttons? I. I don't think it needs to all be buttons again. I think you could have some stuff in the menus, but like, all I.

[A]

Would want to see is just sort of more. More thoughtful. I'd love to see Android Auto and CarPlay be more reliable. That's something I'd basically, I would just love like a minor feature and bug fix pass on my car and otherwise it'd be perfect. So, for example, I have a couple of programmable buttons. I have one on my steering wheel and I have one that's like up on the dash here. If both of those supported alternate functions with long press and double press, I would be happy as a pig in.

[B]

That'd be pretty sweet.

[A]

If my. If my Android Auto didn't occasionally just like fail to Bluetooth pair and have my audio not work. Or if, if, depending on the. The audio source on my phone, the volume wasn't either way lower or way higher. Like, if I could just send Porsche a list of all those sort of various minor, tiny, insignificant inconveniences, like the fact that I can't have it just automatically start up the car and the driving profile that I always use. I always drive in sport mode, so why do I have to turn this dial every single time I get into my car? It's stupid. Just don't do that. Um, then I would just. I would just love it. I would be. I'd be. I wouldn't want anything else. I honestly just don't want my car to really do anything other than when I press this thing, it goes that way and when I press this thing, it stops going that way. Except when I also press a different thing and then it. Sometimes it goes that way.

[B]

When you do what thing?

[A]

When I press this thing, sometimes it goes.

[B]

When you press a different thing. Can you do that one again?

[A]

Do you press a different thing? Yeah, I. I don't. I don't even know what I did. Okay.

[B]

Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah, I want a dumber car and I want to pay a lot less for it.

[A]

Well, you're never gonna get that second thing, so.

[B]

No, it's a thing.

[A]

I mean, well, the slate looks pretty cool.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And there's like a bunch of them globally. Like Toyota has some truck that. That is not sold in North America but is like very affordable.

[A]

Well, that's what I'm talking about though.

[B]

Like, but it's not sold in North America because of North American regulations. On, like, lane assist and stuff.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. It has nothing to do with Toyota's decision making.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah. There's, like, a certain reason with. With certain safety laws that a bunch of cheaper cars globally are not allowed to come to North America.

[C]

It's so irritating.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Especially because, like, an insane amount of cars on the road don't have these things.

[A]

Yeah. Because they're just older and like, dude.

[B]

Oh, my God. Driving Emma's car. The lane assist is dangerous.

[A]

Oh, it can be like.

[B]

It's not. Okay.

[A]

And not just lane assist, but the emergency automatic braking I've had. God, I've had at least three times that my Taycan has almost killed me because I decided to go to turn left and it was like, there's a car in front of you. I'm going to stop. And it stopped in oncoming traffic and in a really jarring, startling. I need a second to figure out what the heck is going on and why my car isn't moving.

[B]

Foot plant.

[A]

And I need to hit it again to get out of the way. Like, absolutely insane.

[B]

I don't want these things. I understand they might make it better for some drivers out there somewhere. I think a lot of people on the road, it's not helpful for. And I know a lot of people just turn them off. So, like.

[A]

And my lane keep. There's a particular spot between Smash Champs and my house that it's just like. And just tries to rip me out of the lane.

[B]

Yeah. I don't want any of this stuff. I don't want any of it at all. So, like, the fact that I'm not allowed to buy one in North America that doesn't have those things is crazy. I don't. I don't like that. I would love this. What. What is the super cheap. I'm hoping this brings it up. Toyota truck sold outside America. Can I find it?

[A]

Is it the Hilux? It's what people in chat said.

[B]

I think it's a Hilux Champ.

[A]

I think that's the right Champ. Nice. Yeah.

[B]

This thing they have a bunch of different versions of. Looks a little, you know, like a LEGO truck, but you can configure it in a bunch of different ways and stuff. And look. $10,000 pickup.

[A]

Wow, bruh.

[B]

Like, let me buy the cheap truck thing that people do crazy stuff with.

[A]

Whatever that's super cool.

[B]

It's a $10,000 platform that has an engine in it and you can drive around. Cool. There's. There's a bunch of these things. It's not just this Toyota truck. There's other variants as well, but it's just like the cheaper cars aren't allowed to come here. Frustrating.

[C]

More TV focused questions. Howdy Wan. With TVs being so competitive, nearing a race to the bottom economics, creating millions of pounds of e waste. Should we have a minimum price floor on certain electronics? Is quality the winner?

[A]

Generally speaking, I'm pretty pro free market. A regulated free market that provides, prevents monopolists from taking advantage of their position. But I don't think, I don't think you're ever going to get me advocating for minimum price for a minimum price on, on something. I think that, you know, my job is educating people to make sure that they buy something that is going to meet their needs for an extended period of time in hopes that there will be less waste overall if people consume, because they will consume, but consume the right things so that there's less trial and error involved. And I just, I just don't see how you, I don't see how you'd implement this. Like, it's not like it's a, you know, terrible idea on the surface of it. Right. I, I'd say you'd be better off creating like a, like a warranty minimum so a minimum amount of time that they, they have to support the product to, to incentivize them to do the right things rather than regulating it directly.

[B]

I like that. That should also spread to more products. The more I'm learning about washer, dryer, refrigerator, dishwasher, all that kind of stuff. Like holy crap dude. The sheer amount of waste in not, not even the electronics portion, but just the metals and everything else that is involved with this people just have to toss out because it's not worth repairing is crazy. And the fact that we're getting into three to five year life cycles, like I'm used to people just not replacing appliances ever.

[A]

Yeah, it comes with the house.

[B]

Yeah. Like how is this turning into something that I'm going to replace more often than my tv?

[A]

We were going to get new appliances when we moved into our current place and the guy who came in looked at one of them when we were, what was it it, the motor and the washer went or something like that. And basically Yvonne was like, oh yeah, I don't know if we want to bother with repairing it. And the guy's like yes you do. I will put a new motor in this and this will last for another 25 years. If you went and you bought a new one, you would be replacing it in five to 10.

[B]

Yeah. And like, I. So, like I said earlier in the show, my fridge is going. So I was like, all right, time to do some research, because this is a pastime. What can I buy? What should I get? All of everything. Like, there was literally. I can't remember the exact comment. Oh, I could probably find it on my phone. But there's. There was like, an appliance guy basically saying, like, the world is ending and I hate everything because, like, he can't recommend something that's actually good.

[A]

Yeah, my. I forget what brand it is, but my mom bought a new fridge from someone that, like, for me growing up, was like, oh, that's a reputable appliance brand. And they've been out, I think, half a dozen times to. To fix it. And she's been like, at what point is this a lemon? You guys have spent more than the cost of this fridge coming here and fixing it over and over and over again. Are you ready to acknowledge that it is broken and that you're not able to fix it? And it's just like, the whole thing is so grossly inefficient.

[B]

The. The comment was appliance tech. Here. It's all just. It's all plastic, disposable crap. Life is pointless and the planet is doomed because of the waste we produce. Refrigerators within your budget are not. Buy it for life. And it was like, oh. So then I was like, okay, well, this person's listed budget on this particular Reddit thread didn't seem super high. Can you spend more than this and get something that's not just portable E waste? Apparently, yeah.

[A]

Nice. But is it, like, commercial?

[B]

Basically, you're talking sub zero and stuff, which I've only, like, sub zero heard of.

[A]

Like. Like, sub zero wins.

[B]

I don't know if I've ever actually even opened a Sub Zero mutt fridge myself, but I've heard of them. There's another one that I don't remember the name of it, but there's another brand as well.

[C]

You do have to be careful sometimes, because not like manufacturers just make for all the manufacturers. Yeah, I mean, if you want like, commercial commercial, but those go a bit of money.

[B]

No listed price. Very interesting.

[C]

Sort of like, you know, there's, like.

[A]

Qualifies for luxury kitchen savings event required accessories. Excuse me, I have to buy my own drawers for a thousand dollars each.

[C]

Well, what if you wanted it in stainless steel by now?

[B]

With live chat, you need to discuss.

[A]

Your purchase with flush inset door panel with tubular handle. Where's the. How do I wait Is there?

[B]

No. Yeah. No. You have to buy now with live. Live Chat. You have to discuss your purchase.

[A]

What the hell is Fisher and Paykel?

[B]

I don't know. Never heard of that. What.

[A]

Now? With Live Chat. But where's the starting price? It. Does it not have one?

[B]

I can't remember the name of the other brand that I found, but it was.

[C]

There's Wolf. For stoves I know are pretty typical, like a high end install. I don't know if they're actually. Actually worth it.

[A]

How much does a Sub Zero fridge cost?

[C]

What?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

But there's a ton of people on Reddit saying that These things last 25 years and are highly repairable.

[C]

Yeah, that's like how much a fridge should cost for how insanely complicated some of them can be.

[B]

The other brand is just called True. Those were the two that people were talking about. True and sub zero.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So do you spend.

[A]

No.

[B]

11 to $20,000 on a fridge or do you replace the same genuine piece of garbage and fill landfills with, you know, a thousand dollar bridges? I'm guessing. I don't know what the prices. I haven't actually.

[A]

Especially because when you sell your house with that Sub Zero fridge, the new buyer will not.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

Assign any additional value to it. So you're basically just paying for yourself to use it. Most people are not going to be in a position in their life where they can afford a $25,000 fridge and have enough of their life left that they're going to use it for the whole time. And that's just the cold hard truth. Now for some cold hard truth about B580s being available at MSRP they're not.

[B]

Doing on the lab site. You freaking nerd.

[A]

How am I supposed to do that? Do you have the gun near Intel Arc? Didn't think so. Yeah, you have this one right here.

[B]

It's from Newegg. Always a versioning thing.

[A]

Cool. So don't worry. We're gonna. We're working on that and it's gonna be awesome.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know if we're working on that.

[A]

Someday, someday we will. So, lowest price in 30 days. Okay, whatever. You know, 299. That's not that bad. It's not.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

It's not great. And this one doesn't have the holiday bundle for some reason, so I don't know what's up with that. Maybe contact Newegg before you buy this one. LMG gg. Newegg. Right. Do I remember this now? The Asrock Steel Legend Is, ah. It was 259 for a long time and it's 299 now. But the Intel Holiday Bundle is still there, so Free Battlefield six, I think you could say with a straight face, if you wanted Battlefield 6 and you get Battlefield 6 with it. It's pretty close to MSRP, but it's. It's not what it was just a couple weeks ago where you could get it for 249. 259 and get the holiday Bundle, which was an outstanding value. Man. What about 5070 ti? Are they just. Are they just dead? Are we cooked? What's up?

[B]

Dad's in the chat.

[A]

Oh, hey.

[B]

He said take it with you when you move up, Rob.

[A]

Nice. So you assuming your new kitchen layout accommodates the exact width of fridge depth? Yeah, Hacksaw. We ended up. We ended up having one option for oven when we needed to get a new oven for our kitchen at our. At our place because we didn't want to completely redo all the cabinets and everything. And they weren't wood, they were like some kind of like mellow. Whatever. Whatever. They were like that kind of plastic covered thing. And so they're not like easily modifiable. And it was like a top, bottom stack one. So there was. Yeah, there was one option. So a lot of the time it's. It's dictated by like the space you're in more than the. Oh, man. 5070 ti is a really expensive.

[B]

Dad, if you're continuing to comment. I can't tell because my computer is restarting because. Nice security or something.

[A]

Nice. What's your dad's username? Liquidus. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Take it with you when you move. I would make it work. Well, we know you would, but I'm not as handy.

[B]

He would.

[A]

All right, Dan, hit me.

[C]

Okay, last one I got for you today. Hey, Wan Dll. Were any of you impacted by the telecom bubble and the fall of Nortel? Loving the mechanical pencil.

[A]

I'm so glad you like it. No, I was. I was. Man, I was still. Yeah, I was still a young boy.

[B]

That's not us.

[A]

When did Nortel fall?

[B]

The history of 2000. Super interesting.

[A]

Yeah, I was 14, so I wasn't really like. I wasn't really like. Workforce in it up yet?

[C]

Sleeping on those investments.

[B]

Yeah, you should have bought a house and invested in Nortel very temporarily and then sold right before the crash.

[C]

Right, right, right, right, right, right.

[A]

Yeah. Hindsight. Thank you, Captain. Captain Hindsight.

[C]

That's really appreciate 2009.

[A]

And now it's time to put this wan show in hindsight. Thanks for watching. We'll see you again next week. Same bad times, same bad channel.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Sam.