Everything Just Got More Expensive - WAN Show May 2, 2025

Summary

The WAN Show: Episode Summary - "Everything Just Got More Expensive" (May 2, 2025)

Hosted by Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere from Linus Tech Tips

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Introduction

In this episode of The WAN Show, hosts Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere delve into the escalating costs affecting consumers across various sectors. From recent tariff implementations to corporate legal battles and technological advancements, the discussion provides a comprehensive overview of the factors contributing to rising prices in the technology and consumer goods markets.

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1. Impact of New Tariffs on Consumers and Businesses

Timestamp: 04:45 - 07:10

The episode opens with an in-depth analysis of the recent elimination of the de minimis exemption on imports into the United States. Previously, shipments under $800 were exempt from tariffs, benefiting consumers purchasing from platforms like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. With the removal of this exemption effective May 2, 2025, prices for imported goods are set to rise significantly.

• Luke: "A lot of the new tariffs don't sound that big, but the elimination of the de minimis exemption is what's going to impact consumers day-to-day."

Effects on LTT Store:

The hosts discuss how their own LTT Store has been affected by these changes. Temu has shifted to a B2B2C model, with locally based sellers fulfilling orders to mitigate tariff impacts. This move has forced Linus and Luke to restructure their store operations internationally.

• Linus: "We're trying to keep T-shirts reasonably priced by subsidizing them through other regions, but it’s not sustainable long-term."

Fast Fashion Critique:

Luke voices concerns over the fast fashion industry's reliance on low-cost imports, highlighting environmental and economic inefficiencies.

• Luke: "Closing exemptions mostly benefit fast fashion and manufactured e-waste, which might not be a bad thing."

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2. Corporate Legal Battles: Apple vs. Epic Games

Timestamp: 53:40 - 59:00

The discussion shifts to the ongoing legal saga between Apple and Epic Games, emphasizing recent court rulings unfavorable to Apple.

• Luke: "Apple's continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated. Tim Cook can't claim ignorance about the misconduct."

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple executives, including Vice President of Finance Alex Roman, lied under oath, leading to potential criminal investigations and a mandate for increased transparency in App Store practices.

Implications for Developers:

Apple has updated its App Store guidelines to allow external payment links, providing developers with more flexibility. However, challenges remain in integrating these changes without incurring additional costs.

• Linus: "We had to remove our app from the store because we couldn’t properly inform users about subscription cancellations."

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3. Microsoft’s Price Increases on Consoles and Accessories

Timestamp: 11:43 - 19:25

Linus and Luke examine Microsoft’s recent price hikes on Xbox consoles and accessories amid global tariff adjustments.

• Luke: "The Xbox Series S512 has gone from $299 to $379, and the 2TB Series X is now $730."

Interestingly, while console prices have surged, controller costs saw minimal changes, except for premium models like the Elite Series 2.

Economic Strategy:

The hosts explain that maintaining certain product prices required absorbing costs from other regions, leading to a split in their online store operations between the U.S. and global markets.

• Linus: "We have to subsidize American customers by leveraging profits from other regions, but this isn't sustainable."

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4. NASA Funding Cuts and Space Exploration Challenges

Timestamp: 02:03 - 22:31

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to NASA's impending 25% budget cut, raising concerns about the future of U.S. space exploration programs, including missions to Mars.

• Luke: "Without the stepping stone mission, establishing the necessary infrastructure for Mars expeditions becomes nearly impossible."

Linus expresses his disappointment, given his passion for NASA and its role in fostering technological innovations.

• Linus: "NASA advancements have driven countless innovations, from cordless drills to memory foam. Cutting their budget hampers future technological breakthroughs."

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5. AI’s Role in Industry Layoffs and Future Employment

Timestamp: 48:13 - 72:05

The hosts explore the controversial impact of artificial intelligence on job markets, particularly in tech and manufacturing sectors. They debate whether AI-driven automation is a primary cause of recent layoffs or merely one of several factors.

• Linus: "AI is changing the landscape, but it's debatable if it’s solely responsible for the surge in layoffs."

Luke shares personal insights from managing the LTT Store, noting that while AI can optimize operations, it also presents challenges in maintaining employment levels.

• Luke: "We're not planning layoffs, but AI integration naturally shifts the workforce dynamics."

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6. Consumer Electronics Pricing Trends

Timestamp: 72:05 - 100:23

Linus and Luke analyze broader trends in consumer electronics pricing, citing examples like the persistent GPU shortages and inflated prices that have not normalized post-crisis.

• Linus: "The GPU market never bounced back from the great shortage; prices remain exorbitant due to lack of competition."

They also touch upon the upcoming release of high-end products like the ROG Ally’s full-size M2 adapter, discussing price positioning relative to competitors like the PS5 Pro.

• Luke: "Maintaining MSRP is crucial, but sometimes it means selling at a loss on certain items to stay competitive."

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7. Innovations and Future Projects at Linus Media Group

Timestamp: 114:37 - 210:43

The episode concludes with a lighter segment where Linus and Luke discuss upcoming projects, including advanced cooling solutions for their server rooms and personalized tech enhancements. They showcase their enthusiasm for maintaining high-quality operations despite economic headwinds.

• Luke: "We're working on a chilled water system for our server room to enhance cooling efficiency without exorbitant energy costs."

Additionally, they highlight community engagement through their Floatplane platform, emphasizing its role in fostering closer connections with their audience.

• Linus: "Floatplane allows us to engage more intimately with our most committed community members, offering exclusive content and behind-the-scenes access."

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Notable Quotes

• Luke Lafreniere [01:00]: "Prices go up, and it's not just the tariffs but how they're implemented that's going to hit consumers hardest."

• Linus Sebastian [08:47]: "Closing exemptions mostly benefit fast fashion and like manufactured e-waste, maybe not a bad thing."

• Luke Lafreniere [18:06]: "We are literally losing our shirts on printed T-shirts, which is what few we have in stock on the US Store right now."

• Linus Sebastian [53:40]: "Apple's continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated."

• Luke Lafreniere [72:05]: "I'm curious if there's any possibility of moving past in our polarized world with tools like this, with algorithms, like we encounter on social media."

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Conclusion

The WAN Show’s episode titled "Everything Just Got More Expensive" provides an insightful exploration into the multifaceted reasons behind rising consumer costs. From governmental policy changes and corporate legal disputes to technological advancements and their societal impacts, Linus and Luke offer a thorough analysis that equips listeners with a better understanding of the economic pressures shaping today's market. Their candid discussions, supported by real-world examples and personal experiences, underscore the complexity of navigating a rapidly evolving financial landscape.

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For more detailed discussions and access to exclusive content, consider subscribing to Floatplane or visiting the Linus Media Group’s official channels.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

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[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hi.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's up?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not much, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys this week. We're gonna be talking about tariffs. That's right. Prices go up.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're talking about tariffs. We are. We must be. The only podcast this week discussing tariffs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, and the only podcast hosted by a bunch of white dud dudes discussing tariffs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Discussing tariffs in their 30s. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Barely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Extremely. You've got a little bit. You got a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tariffs will still be here when you're out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But, you know, also, in other news, corporations lied. What? Apple lied. They lied in the Epic case. Actually, the Epic case has gotten a lot more epic over the last little while. I am pretty excited for this because I had a lot of people hating on me for being like, yeah, not a big fan of Tim Sweeney. Not a big fan of Fortnite. But they're like, obviously right about this. And it turns out even in America, at least one judge agrees things are about to get very, very good for consumers on the App Store. What else we got?

[Linus Sebastian]

Speaking about things getting bad, in my opinion, we're talking about the layoffs or.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The other layoffs or the AI taking over and then layoffs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Next. Try another one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

AI getting laid off.

[Linus Sebastian]

Debatable if that's better or not. Next one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what?

[Linus Sebastian]

NASA getting defunded by 25%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Actually, the biggest NASA fanboy right here. And how are you feeling? How are you, sir? How would you say you're feeling about NASA being defunded by 25%? Also, they're supposed to go to Mars somehow with their budget cut.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And. But without the stepping stone mission that was supposed to establish everything they needed to go to Mars. How would you. Yeah, I'd love to let you finish, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't even do a second topic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my back. Oh, that's much better. Oh. The show is brought to you by Vessi, Squarespace Forum, and of course, our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Secret Lab. Should we jump right into the headline topic? Yeah, I forget what it is. Ah yes, tariffs, import loophole closes and things are about to cost more. You see, I think a lot of people didn't fully grasp the magnitude of the tariffs that are going to be hitting U.S. consumers. And a big part of the reason for that is that a lot of the new tariffs that have been announced don't sound that big. They don't sound like that much, they don't sound like a huge deal. But here's the thing. The big change is not necessarily the amount that the tariffs are or the categories of products that they're on or even the source of the goods that are being tariffed. The big thing that's going to impact consumers in their day to day purchases is the elimination of the diminished exemption. So the de minimis exemption was well I guess exactly what it sounds like. It was an exemption on incoming shipments that were under the threshold of $800. And the idea behind it was that these small shipments clearly intended for non commercial use for individual consumers were not worth the hassle of dealing with, dealing with handling all these tiny transactions for all of these incoming shipments. And also I guess a way to reduce prices for individual consumers. So for, for years now there's been the ability for sites like Temu, Shein AliExpress, Temu. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I always thought it was team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, lttstore.com to ship items that otherwise would have already been tariffed into the United States without them being tariff as long as the total order was under $800. That is gone I believe. Yeah. May 2nd. May 2nd. So that is gone today and it is already resulting in some pretty interesting impacts. TEMU has said they will no longer sell imported goods directly to consumers. Instead there will be locally based sellers who fulfill the orders.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this is, this is a B2B2C or business to business to customer strategy that like a lot of people are employing now because of this change.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now I'm about to say something that's going to sound pretty flipping wild. Closing exemptions that mostly benefit fast fashion and like manufactured E waste, maybe not a bad thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm kind of okay with that. I mean if that's what they mostly benefit, those are things that are bad. So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well what who they benefit is is importers who are basically you know, burning jet fuel, drop shipping garbage, sending some like these, these, these small pieces of junk over the ocean one at a flipping time rather than consolidating them on container ships, sending them across the ocean that way and then having them distributed on the other side. However. However. Even though I am pretty anti fast fashion. Yeah, As a whole, like, one, one of our big core tenets for LTT store is that when we make a clothing product, when we make an apparel item, it should be made to last. And if for whatever reason, it doesn't last, there's always the trust me, bro, guarantee you contact our support and we will do whatever we can. Right. And. And I, I have. I have always been of kind of the mind that, you know, what does it matter if these pants are not the current style? Like, have they fallen off me yet? Well, then I will continue to wear them. But it has become a, I think it's fair to say, growing plague.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it fair to call fast fashion a growing plague? So where people are treating clothing as being effectively disposable after a couple of wears.

[Linus Sebastian]

It used to be like a couple stores in the mall that weren't necessarily that popular, and now it's like massive online sites where it seems like genuinely a lot of people do their shop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which has led to a positive feedback loop where sellers are noticing that there is absolutely no benefit to their customer to building something that lasts, so they make cheaper and cheaper stuff. Which leads people to have expectations that things should be really cheap because realistically, it's only going to last a few wares and so on and so on and so forth until we've spiraled into this. This mindset both on the consumer and on the manufacturer side, that all this stuff is basically disposable and is good for, you know, part of one season before it should just be thrown away. And there's ideas for how you can solve the, oh, I'll just. I'll just donate all of my own clothes. But, yeah, I don't know if you guys have looked into that in the last five to 10 years, but the volume of clothing that exists to be donated vastly exceeds the demand for donated clothing. And as that clothing has gone down in quality, that has become a bigger and bigger problem. So, you know, to some people who are just kind of reflexively against anything that the current US administration does, that might sound like a controversial take, but for me, it is actually, at least on the surface, aligned with something that I think is not necessarily a terrible idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do think, okay, so that might be the majority of what it targets, and so it makes sense. Cool. I do think there are things that are going to get cleaved from this that were not under that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So my next words were going to be. With that said, do you think it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would be interesting if something could come through de minimis if it had like a really strong warranty, Long duration strong warranty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how you'd enforce that because it sounds tough to. Because, and this is something that I have, I have, I have clashed with our audience about before because everyone has a different perspective which is impacted by the people around you, the place you grew up, what you've experienced. Right. Your life experiences. And when I say things like, yeah, a warranty is only worth the paper that it's written on, it comes down to the willingness of that company to, to honor it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's because Canada is kind of more like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's going to be folks from Australia for instance, where they have strong consumer protection laws and they literally like actually have somebody that they can contact that actually has, you know, fangs that can go after these companies and be like hey, you actually need to refund them or whatever else. So here that functionally doesn't really exist.

[Linus Sebastian]

Practically civil court it as far as my understanding.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you could, you could maybe try to go to small claims court. You could basically you're going to end up spending more. Yeah, maybe not in money but certainly in your time to try to get anyone to honor a warranty that they just basically don't feel like honoring. So that's the perspective that I'm coming at it with. And with that in mind, I think companies that have absolutely no intention of in many cases even existing a year from now or two years from now or five years from now, they'll be like, oh yeah, this M2 adapter for a full size M2 in the first gen ROG Ally has a 1 billion years warranty.

[Linus Sebastian]

So yeah, they would just chat GPT a warranty, drop ship one huge thing worth of stuff, sell it all once it's sold, disappear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So anyway, there's a lot of babies in the bathwater and some of the impacts are going to be felt in the electronics industry. So Microsoft has raised the price of consoles, games and accessories worldwide. The 2 terabyte Series X costs more than a PS5 Pro for now. We've actually got a handy dandy little table here where you can see us pricing changes across the board for Microsoft. So let's have a look here. The Xbox Series S512 has gone from 299 to 379. Series X digital $100 increase 2 terabyte. A 2 terabyte Series X is now $730.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's interesting to me though that if you keep looking, some things didn't change. And it's pretty much controllers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, some of the controllers did change too.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Elites.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, no, you're right. Most of them, yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

The elite controller series 2 full went up. The core did not. I'm not sure what the difference between those is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So what I will say is because we've had to go through like, because we're not just reading about this in the news, we're living through this with LTT Store, is that the way that things are going to change is not necessarily going to be intuitive to the average consumer because this is a, this is a multivariable function here. So for instance, one of the things that happened when we, when we split. Oh, so this is, this is one of the big things on our side this week is lttstore.com is actually now split into two sites. So global lttstore.com will take you to a landing page and if you are visiting from the United States, you click the United States one. And if you are anywhere else in the world, you go to the global site. So I'm going to open up both of these because we are an excellent. Seriously, Right click to. I want to open in a new tab. Okay. I. Okay, well, hold on. I'm going to figure this out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Global.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Hold on. It's at the bottom. I know how to navigate this site there. Okay, so I'm on the global site and then I'm also on the US Site. Perfect. Okay, cool. What was I going to say? Right, right. So some stuff is not going to be particularly intuitive. Let's take T shirts, for instance. I don't know, I don't know if you know this, Luke, but T shirts, many apparel items actually have significant tariffs coming into Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't know that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you know that? No. There's other things like housewares, for instance. We ran into. We actually were. Had a complaint issued about LTT store by some jackass furniture store of some sort that was saying that we were, we were. When we were making those CPU pillows, remember those alpaca wool CPU pillows, they complained that we were. That we were dumping effectively. We were, we were like bringing in these pillows and selling them below cost in order to harm people like throw pillow retailers or something. And basically they accused us of like circumventing some kind of import restriction or something like that. And we're like, bro, this is not furniture. But. But furniture is another one that actually has, has, has Some tariffs that, that impact overseas furniture coming into Canada. So what happened with T shirts? So if you look at, if you look at the two sites here on the global site are mystery t shirts are 2499 Canadian. And on the US site, where's our T shirts? I think they are. Yeah, I believe they're $30. So I'll tell you this much on the Whoops. On the Canadian site, these shirts are making significantly less margin. And the only reason that they're priced this way, which is fairly aligned with what they were priced before. So 20 USD. The only reason that they're priced this way is because we're trying to go a bit Costco hot dog on them. We're trying to make the T shirt like a reasonably priced item on the store. Our cost is now higher on T shirts because. Hold on. And this is about to get crazy. The way that it worked before was when we paid duties on the import of T shirts into Canada before, because so many of them were going to be sold into a region that was duty exempt and didn't have any tariffs. We effectively were subsidizing our Canadian customers with the fact that we weren't going to pay duties on most of it. So we were just absorbing those duties to our Canadian customers, saying the line.

[Linus Sebastian]

Subsidizing our Canadian customers is going to make.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I'm about to get into how we're going to subsidize people in other regions as well. All right, don't worry, we're going to get there. So we were subsidizing the price of T shirts for our Canadian customers, keeping them artificially low because the overall amount of duties that we were paying was actually very low on the total shipment that came in because so much of it was being sold to other regions. Now here's a, here's another funny one. Some people have noticed that the shipping prices on the global store have been. Are a little higher. And the reason for that is because once again, America was actually subsidizing our shipping rates to the rest of the world. So they were paying maybe an extra, you know, 50 cents and their order volume was so much greater that we could have our shipping rate to, you know, eastern Canada be about $3 cheaper. And there's going to be people out there that like, don't believe me, that are like, linus shipping is like $30 on a $30 mousepad. I was like, yeah, because it is. Because that's like, like, go ahead, go ahead, key it into a thing. We don't operate at the kind of volume where we get, like, way better rates. We can't. We can't, like, walk in with our giant dong, you know, sticking down the. One of the legs of our pants. It just bulging down to the knee. Okay. Sticking out there. Sit down across the table from FedEx Men, spread and go, do you have any idea who I am? They're gonna be like, no. Also, like, keep it in your pants, brother. Like, they can't. They don't care. We are nobody.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got to answer with, I can't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We are nothing to them.

[Linus Sebastian]

So now shorts too short.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now let's talk about. Now let's talk about what's going on the US site. Our shirts went up from 20 to 30 US dollars. So you know why that happened?

[Linus Sebastian]

Terrifico.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because we decided to lose money on shirts. We are literally losing our shirts on printed T shirts, which what few we have in stock on the US Site right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you're going beyond Costco, hot dog.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because now not only are we not able to claw back the duties that we used to pay on those Canadian shirts that we then, like, sold into the US and we're like, actually, these weren't imported into Canada. These were imported into the U.S. but the duties, the tariffs that are now due on those shirts make the cost of them that high, which is going to be. Which is. Which is pretty wild. So we are actually subsidizing any American who wants to buy a shirt now. Like, keeping them at $30 is effectively taking money that we are making in other regions and trying to keep the shirts somewhat accessible.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think this for our customers directly into the pro tariff, like, playbook, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, maybe because the.

[Linus Sebastian]

The claim was that they were subsidizing everyone else, and now we are using everyone else to subsidize them, which is exactly what they wanted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how long we can. I don't know how long we can do that, though. Yeah, I don't know how long we can do that. So as you can see, we already have less selection on the US Store. Like, this is. This is not sustainable. Our hope is that this is a. This is a temporary.

[Linus Sebastian]

We believe that temporary measure even. Ooh, I don't know if people are gonna like hearing this, but it really sucks having two stores. And if all of this goes away, it is possible that we could go back to one store.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know that we necessarily would. Again, I think that it's rough having two stores internally. Internally, the conversation is that, you know, we want to we want to do a better job of, well, okay, I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Will add, because you might have this context, but they don't. So I'm going to add this as well. There is a way to do better localization within one store, so we could have the better localization that people gained from this. But I have it on one store. But we can't do that right now because of weird stuff that's happening. So if some of the weird stuff that's happening goes away, we could go down to one website, but more localized, which would be better for everyone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I just. I don't know if it's going to be possible to have the same. The same pricing. Just like, you know, it wouldn't be.

[Linus Sebastian]

The adjust price anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it wouldn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You can. You can set different pricing for different regions and all this kind of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got it. There's.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's other reasons why the store has to be split in half. It's not that interesting. So I'm not going to bother to go over it. But, yeah, my order history stuck on the US Store. There are casualties with this change. This is one of the reasons why it would be nice to use localization options on one store.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But we just can't for. For a variety of other reasons of stuff that's going on. So it is what it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some stuff. There's nothing we can do. The precision screwdriver is way more expensive now. It's $70 for the bundle of the.

[Linus Sebastian]

How much was it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the reason. And it comes down to. It comes down to categories, basically. Right. So on T shirts. Right. I already explained, we're going slim on both sides. Right. And we're trying to. We're trying to keep it somewhat accessible so that people can, like, order a shirt. But on something like the screwdriver, it just. Or the precision screwdriver, specifically, it just. It is what it is. We. To maintain the MSRP that we had before, we'd be selling it at a loss instead of at a profit. And that's. That's not an area where we want to Costco hot dog it. Like, I've always been like that about T shirts. So I think some people are getting a little bit up in arms about, you know, oh, subsidize this, sell it a loss. That T shirts have always been something that we've gone kind of slim on. And I think that's probably why you guys are seeing an outsized impact here, because we didn't have any room to play with. Like, we can't if we were, if we were, if we were selling into the US at our old price, which was 1999, for printed T shirts, shirts that are manufactured overseas but printed here in Canada, we would be losing. Yeah. Anywhere from like 9 to $12 a shirt or something like that USD, which is like obviously stupid.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then if we hadn't made any adjustments on the Canadian ones, if we'd gone, if we are sorry, we didn't make any adjustments on the global site, we went to 2499. And that is extremely slim. Like extremely, extremely slim because there's functionally very little clawback now because anything that is brought into that inventory pool is destined for a predominantly Canadian and to a lesser extent global audience. So basically the point of going through this was just to kind of talk to you guys about how depending on the category, like, like apparel was impacted in a way that was multifaceted, multivariable, and any assumptions that, you know, that companies were making in the past about how the goods are going to flow, how the money flows back the other way and what taxes, duties and tariffs are due have functionally been thrown out the window over the last few months. And it's possible that I got a couple details, a little off on percentages of markup or margins or whatever else. Realistically, we have a wonderful team that works through this stuff for us. And my job is basically to get a high level executive summary and go, no, I want to go more aggressive there or no, I really don't think we can absorb that here and kind of, you know, provide my guidance for, you know what, my tolerance for losses, you know, like if I, if, if.

[Linus Sebastian]

They come to me thing to have guidance on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, because if they, because I can tell you right now prices were going to be higher across both stores. Before I went through the spreadsheet, I basically went through and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, lower it. And margins are going to be pretty slim on both sides. So almost across the board it's like.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'Ve been keeping the team strong. We haven't been doing layoffs throughout this. We're not planning on it, all that kind of stuff. We're doing good. So that effectively just means he gets less money. Well, yeah, everybody else here is fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So he's just electing to have less money? Well, yeah, just to frame it because I don't think people got that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, I thought that was pretty clear.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just, I don't Know, I'm just making sure. Well, I'm not trying to over glaze them anyway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what I tried to do when I went through and basically ripped up the proposal that they worked on really hard was with a couple of exceptions, I think there's a couple of items on the Global Store that went up like a dollar or two just because they were going to end up at like a weirdo price point that didn't make any sense. With just a couple of exceptions, the pricing on the Global Store should be pretty much what it was before or a little bit less. And then on the US side, I tried to keep things as close as I could, but understood that, you know, in cases like the Retro Monitor Pet cave, it just couldn't possibly make any sense to sell it at the old price and, and be losing like very, very substantial amounts of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's a gamer question on every sale that I don't know if you want to talk about or not. How are sales on the US store now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's been 24 hours. Ish. 26.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's really hard to say for a couple of reasons. One of them is that as far as I can tell, the report is still combined.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I'm unsure. Wait, really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Is it not?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think it would be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this just one of the stores? Because. No, nobody told me that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which. What. Where are you looking at the report?

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Admin.shopify.com I think that's one. Yeah. This says all channels, right? So is this just.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are the difference?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Online store. I mean, is there a separate Shopify dashboard? Is that why I think sales are terrible?

[Linus Sebastian]

I could be wrong. I don't actually know, but I would think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, I know about the one for like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you saying they're separate? They should be separate. It would make sense to me that they would be separate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, for crying out loud. Well, okay, I'll give you two answers.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you didn't know that, I'm assuming it's pretty okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, it's not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But and even if, even if global sales are like about what they typically are, sales are terrible over the last couple of days.

[Linus Sebastian]

But we did just come out of a huge sale.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not freaking out about that because it's pretty normal to have like a cooling hangover. Yeah, as. As we'd kind of call it when you have like a big sale event. And for the last over two weeks, I Think we've been running the Shipstorm sale event and we did. Like, I gotta. I gotta thank you guys for your incredible support over the last little while because we. We beat our entire Q2 projection in the first three weeks of April.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In terms of revenue, it was less profitable because we were eating the shipping on orders over $150. But still, we are positioned to give ourselves time to kind of breathe, get these two stores launched, reassess, and then take any action that we see fit to make sure that the business stays healthy and that we're doing everything we can to take care of our customers both, you know, south of the border and throughout the rest of the world. Because at the end of the day, right, like, trade war or no trade war, like, I am not personally at war with LTT store customers, Right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, quite the opposite.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like, not. Not even a little bit. And I don't think an LTT store customer is, like, at war with me. So I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure there's at least one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, you're being so unhelpful. Just like, with the cheese thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'S for the content.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So basically, you know, I'd like to think that on both sides, we're going to, in good faith, try to, you know, weather this. And I'm already. I'm already seeing some cracks forming in the US Administration's, you know, hardline stance on tariffs. We're already seeing China potentially rumored to maybe be thinking about possibly coming to the table and figuring this out. So I'm just. All I can really do, like, let's face it, Canada is not a global superpower. Right? So all I can really do is kind of sit on the sidelines like I do and kind of hope that the big kids are going to figure it out and that mom and dad are going to stop fighting so that ultimately people can get better prices on their fine quality merchandise from lttstore.com and Xboxes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And also disposable crap from Shein and Temu. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's kind of a. That's kind of a bigger conversation though, right? Is like, how would you. How would you deal with that? What would be. What would be your solution? Right? Because it's easy to say, like, yeah, this is terrible implementation, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. Right? But, like, how. How. How would you try to change a consumption culture that has. Has leaned so heavily into disposability of functionally everything? Like, dude, what. What are you going to buy in a dollar store anymore if there's, you know, 150% tariffs on, you know, literally everything that's in there. Like, are you gonna go, Are you gonna destin. Destin from Smarter? Every day he made a. He made a barbecue scraper that's made in America just as an experiment to see how bloody difficult it is to make a barbecue scraper that is, that is made in America. To make anything in America. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna bring it up because I forget exactly. Here it is. The Smarter Scrubber. Here it is. And what he discovered was that it is flipping difficult. Yeah, here he goes. For years I've wanted to make a product, a high quality product in America to prove it can be done and compete with overseas manufacturing. And I would say it's pretty clear that he is competing with overseas manufacturing in terms of the design and quality. What he is not competing with is the price. When you have to talk about your barbecue scraper for this long before you scroll down and find a price, I guarantee you that it is not going to be a super attractive price. And this is, I mean, this is the same challenge that we ran into to a degree with the screwdriver. The screwdriver is a much more complex product, but is priced $10 more. And that's what happens when you do your molding in Canada, when you shoot your plastics in Canada. You do final assembly and packaging here in Canada. So it's amazing how fast those things add up. And there is good news for anyone who is worried that the pricing of the LTT screwdriver is going to go up in the States. It's not. I believe we are either very close to or we have finished getting it certified Made in Canada, which we had a pretty good idea that we could.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do before, just never bothered to go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Through the work because it didn't matter. We knew how much of the transformative value added work that we were doing here in Canada, but it didn't matter from a cost perspective for our customers. So we weren't going to burn cycles on that. But anyway, back to the Smarter Scrubber. Would you buy a barbecue scrubber for US$60 knowing that it could very well last a lifetime and that you'd never have to buy another one, but knowing that you'd be spending $60 for a barbecue scrubber?

[Linus Sebastian]

How much is an alternative barbecue scrubber? As a person who does not own a barbecue?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I am a fellow monitor owner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is going. I hate this website.

[Linus Sebastian]

Trash I love these. Like, absolutely could be solved by an oh, my God. But we're farming you for training. Little widget things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it that one? Yes. This one? Okay. Is this like a cup? Is this a bowl of noodles? Like, what am I even doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's so good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. Stop.

[Linus Sebastian]

Train our AI for access to this website, please.

[Dan]

I know, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, Barbecue the scrub Daddy barbecue brush.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Somebody said one piece portable, multifunction outdoor.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wouldn't buy. I'm assuming it has lead or something from there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I can. Hold on a second. I could literally buy 30 of these, though. I could buy an actual platoon of one piece portable multifunction outdoor barbecue cleaning tool for the price of one smarter scrubber. And I'm not saying that you should. I'm just saying that you could.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And. And look, I don't actually need your answer because it doesn't really matter. It's not really the point. The point is that in general, it's a lot consumers have answered that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Over the last 30 years.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you'll have. You'll have the loud people. And I tend to like those loud people and prefer to think the way that they do. But that'll be like, oh, I'd rather buy less things, but buy quality things that I will be able to keep for a long period of time or whatever. But most people don't do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cody N7, do you have a source for this? Said there was a store owner who kept getting told that people will spend more for Made in America products. So he went through the process of finding US Suppliers, then listed both on the website Made in America and Made in China with a 10% price delta. And almost nobody spent the extra money to buy the US One. Do you. Do you have a source for that? Yeah, probably free Freelancer. Oh, Athena did a made in US side by side search. Athena, showerhead tariff. You know what? I'm gonna get you guys, I'm gonna get you guys to look that up. Okay. Would you pay 30 times the price for your barbecue scrubber, knowing it's safer.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I thought the other one had lead in it? Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, I'm like, the little bristles can come out and they can, like get in the meat and they can actually be dangerous if ingested. I am personally kind of of the mind that you have to be like, kind of not very careful to not, like, notice that. But. But I mean, hey, I thought that you could melt like regular cheddar cheese from, you know, Costco on a burger.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some things are really Hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's impossible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some things are incredibly difficult. Difficult. And I think you need to understand that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just because you have your $700 barbecue scrubber and have never experienced a bristle in your life doesn't mean that there aren't others out there on the grind set dealing with these problems every day. Almost dying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cody N7 says my memory was incorrect. It's almost double the price for Made in America. So. Yeah, I could.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes more sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was the Athena shower head. Okay. So that's apparently the one that. That Coty was referring to.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I found the source.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we ran an A B test.

[Dan]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's actually. That's actually really interesting. Add to Carts Asia. Add to Carts usa. Whoa. We tested everything. Zero purchases, color copy layout. We ran it over multiple days in traffic sources. Same outcome every time. For a moment we thought we'd made a technical error. We hadn't. Man.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is zero purchases USA is wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's surprising to me, actually. I. I genuinely would have expected. You know what? I bet it is. I bet it's the product category. Because if it was like a gun or something, right? Like if it was something that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cuz it's like a water purifier. So they don't care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn't a shower head or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's a shower head water purifier. Isn't it Athena? What do they make? Filtered shower head. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay. So it's some. It's some filtered shower head.

[Linus Sebastian]

It makes my hair nicer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That realistically, people have a hair. Well, no, I don't. Oh my God. Don't. Can you not generalize? You can call it a bald eagle.

[Dan]

For a reason, Linus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We don't actually want to be assimilated. Annexed. Whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I. Realistically, I'm saying that they're buying like, you know, products they think are gonna last and standing behind things that are made. I'm not against that purchasing style to be completely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying that I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If anything, I don't think there's anything particularly that speaks to the. To the American identity about a shower head. Whereas I think if you were going to make it a barbecue scrubber, I think you'd probably get more than zero sales.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, I do agree.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like you. You take a. You know, it's Fourth of July. You do a $10 discount on your $60 barbecue scrubber. You have a compelling sales pitch behind it. It's safer. It doesn't have these bristles. You put an American flag on the back of it. I think you can actually sell a few of those. But I think the difference is that this is clearly a commodity item in the eyes of the people who were shopping for it. And when it comes to a commodity item, I could certainly see people having less brand loyalty. I mean, I certainly have less brand loyalty for things I perceive to be a commodity. Like, I have been. I've spent my entire life completely bewildered by people who have a preference for gas station.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like I have a preference for gas station.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have a points program?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Costco?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's, it's just, I think they're, they're cool. It's Clover Hill. It's where we sold those berries that one time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. Okay, that's different. I'm talking about like multinational, literally one chain gas station.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can't even pay at the pump. There's a little sign that apologizes for it. They're like the pump upgrades, really expensive. So if you could just come inside, that would be great. So I go pay inside for my gas. They have little, like, homemade muffins that you can buy and stuff. They still sell DVDs and I don't exclusively go there, but I like, I like, it's, it's like Willow Video. I like bringing my business to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, that's totally fine, but it's also not what I'm talking about at all. And you know, it's. So anywho, like, I, I, I can definitely, I relate to people not really having a preference when it comes to commodity.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so how do you, how do you what? How do you. Because this is an over a hundred dollar item.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, this is a very cheap item. Are we talking about barbecue scrubbers or what?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the filters.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, how much is it?

[Linus Sebastian]

The, the cheap one, the. Manufactured in Asia. Asia one is $129 and the other one's like 250. Let me see if I can find it. So $129 for made in Asia and $240 for made in USA.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so about, about double the price. Oh, man. Yeah, I guess that's another factor too, is it's not just the, it's not just the percentage difference in price. It's the actual like raw dollars. Like I am paying right now out of my pocket for American labor. But realistically, they're people I've never met to have the same shower head.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you think the way that they Ran it, twisted it at all? Because I'm looking at this and I see this one, same design, two options. You choose made in USA or Asia, and they have a little flag for Made in USA and stuff. This. This may. Okay, cool. But then you see the actual cart page. And made in the USA is the default selection for one. For two, it shows $300 slashed out to 129. And then there's like, important note. The quality is identical regardless. This might even be true, but I'm just wondering if it twists things. The quality is identical regardless of where the shower head is manufactured. While our USA made shower head is indeed made in the United States, some of the materials used are still sourced from other countries as they are not available in the usa. And that almost like has to be true when it comes to certain, like, minerals or whatever else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that is what it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I could. I could see that impacting. I could. Yeah, I could see that impacting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that. I think that if they were slightly less transparent in the running of their exercise, they might have gotten more convincing. It might have been a less honest presentation, but it might have been a better experiment, if that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe. Yeah. Because I. Most people that I know of that are buying nationally are buying nationally because of quality more than anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mm. But then do you really have doubts about the raw quality of like, you know, a copper tube before it was, you know, bent into a faucet or whatever it is?

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people do. I guarantee you some people do. Yeah, but then there's like the whole like. Like Chinese steel versus whatever other steel argument. I have no idea if that's real or not. I know nothing about it, but I've heard those freaks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But wouldn't you rather somebody tell you, like, hey, if anyone else says that they're using American this. They're. They're not. It, like, isn't a thing. Like, it does seem like the more honest way to present it.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I prefer it being presented this way, to be clear. I'm just saying. I wonder if that change anything. I also think it's interesting that made in Asia is selected by default.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, didn't they say they tried. They tried different. Different forms.

[Linus Sebastian]

They don't show it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Either.

[Linus Sebastian]

Either way, graph is crazy. Sorry, one last one. You can't. You can't even, like, see, looks like the whole graph is just on the left. But no, there's. There's two more columns here. Two separate additional columns right here. Yeah, one of them is just not actually existent because it's at 0.00, but it's. There's the section is there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's wild. Did you see, do you see Sony just like increased prices everywhere to, to subsidize the U.S. yeah, yeah, yeah. And to pay for the tariffs.

[Linus Sebastian]

But this is, this is. I. My problem with that is if you're.

[Luke Lafreniere]

PlayStation wall against Mexico is going to pay for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. If you're trying to go against the whole idea, you're, you're playing into exactly what the, one of the taglines was at one point in time, which is that America was subsidizing everywhere else. And now a lot of companies are flipping that, which is theoretically what they wanted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you're trying to go against it, you're playing into what they wanted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just to make this completely clear, we have not increased prices on our global store to account for tariffs. We have increased prices on our US Store. There is one key difference and that's something that I talked about on the shipping side where, because we were consolidating all of our shipments and routing them through the US Our US Costs were quite a lot lower, but our international costs were a lot higher to the point where we would basically sell nothing internationally before. And so, yeah, we did play, we did play some games with the, with the shipping costs a little bit to help kind of balance the playing field a little bit. And I think maybe that's something that is going to be upsetting to some people. And I again, back to what I was saying earlier about everyone having their different perspectives. That's something I'm really used to. And so maybe that's something that I kind of dropped casually. And for other people it was like a complete bomb because like, for instance, my, my first exposure to this concept was when I started working at ncix and I learned that any postal code with a zero in it is a super expensive postal code. Did you know that?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're rural. And so at ncix, the way that our, the way that our pricing algorithm worked for shipping was that we would subsidize zeros with urban postal codes. Because otherwise, literally, if someone ordered a computer case for $100, they could pay $350 in shipping because that's just what.

[Linus Sebastian]

It costs driving a huge box out to the countryside.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And in the interest of, you know, equity and making sure that, you know, other people in the country have access to computer parts at all. Scrappy. DP 601378 Rural. That also isn't A postal code, for crying out loud. That is a zip code. Okay. Wow. I love our American friends. I really do. But you are not the only country in the world.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It really. It really does, like, wow, seem to be a uniquely American thing to just get very confused sometimes by things that are not America. Like when we're traveling overseas, like at Computex or whatever, and we upload videos at different times of day, it. I don't. It's a funny thing because it is almost exclusively people in the Eastern time zone that are like, what are they doing posting a video? It is this time. And you. You ID yourself by telling me what time it is where you are. And it's never the. It's never west coast, it's never Central Time. It's always east coast, predominantly usa, that just have absolutely, like, no concept of other time zones. And it's funny because I get it. You're not used to it. Like, do you remember when a hotly anticipated television program, second character being a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Zero, indicates a rural region?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Okay. Anyway, I was telling them. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Okay. So do you remember when you were a kid and some hotly anticipated.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you just did the America thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did, Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was talking to them and you were like, I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Sorry. I thought you were telling me.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you're good. I don't care. I just think it's funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So do you remember when you were a kid and there'd be a hotly anticipated television event?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And they'd be like, at, you know, 6:00pm, 4:00pm Central, and they wouldn't even bother with the Pacific time zone. Literally. We've spent our whole lives, we're just used to minus three, having to having to do minus three hours on everything. And so I understand how people who live in that particular time zone, whether they're American or Canadian, I can understand how they might get the idea that they are the only time zone on Earth, but they're not. So postal codes are not zip codes and do not work the same way. I do not. I do not purport to know anything about how zip codes work because I'm not American and I don't care. It doesn't really matter. But I learned many years ago that in Canada, that zero indicates a rural.

[Linus Sebastian]

Postcode, to be clear, when working for a Canadian retailer shipping to Canadians.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. And so that was my first sort of. That was my first introduction to the concept of, oh, my God, if we don't do anything to try to level the playing field out a little bit here. We are basically just cutting off a very, very significant portion of the country from being able to order from us at all. And so, yeah, like. And it was a small amount, like, literally on the order of pennies because most people do live in those urban centers.

[Linus Sebastian]

So almost no impact to most people, but a significant positive impact to the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People for the handful of people that are. That are on. On the outside, you know. You know, realistically, you know, like farming the food that we all need to eat. Urban centers, right. Like, it's. This is. This is about. This is not about, you know, taking advantage of someone. This is about making sure that we are doing enough for people who are not in a. Not in a fair situation. Right. Because that's just the reality of it. That's what fuel costs. Right. They weren't going that way anyway, so. So that's how much it costs. Right. What are we talking about? What do you want?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I. The problem is. This is a good question because I have no idea. I think Xbox stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Tariffs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Xbox stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What about it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's what we were talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's our topic still.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, Dan, should we do another topic? What are we supposed to be doing? What even is this show?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't.

[Dan]

I mean. Yeah, you were talking about how Xboxes are more expensive because there's tariffs. And then now we're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I think the real question is who's buying Xboxes and therefore, who cares?

[Linus Sebastian]

See, that's a pretty good point.

[Dan]

They're putting their games up too.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a pretty good point. And actually owns them, so.

[Dan]

Thanks, Nintendo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I. Dude, I forgot. I actually forgot that I had wanted to shift to that as an angle for this conversation. How long do you think Microsoft's been waiting for an excuse to increase pricing? How long do you think Sony's been waiting for an excuse to increase pricing? If. If the US And China and everyone else just kind of kumbayas and is all like, everything's good, forget it. What are the odds those prices drop.

[Linus Sebastian]

If at all?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Give me my odds. Give me my odds.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ceremonious. I think they might drop, but they'll drop by a very small amount. I don't think they will return.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Chat says 0%.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's got to be close to 0% that they would return.

[Dan]

It never happens. This is the problem with trade wars because then it just becomes all profit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, this is what we went through.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're Never. It's never going to be the same.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is what we went through with the great GPU shortage. They literally just never came back down. A top of the line GPU is still $2000 MSRP and realistically goes for considerably more than that. Yeah, yeah, it just never went back down. As soon as customers will show that they're willing to pay, you know, $25 instead of $10 for those shein pants, they're gonna be like, oh, neat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Until somebody else potentially lowers it. In the GPU market, there was and is no actual competition there, so they can just keep it up forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I mean, I almost feel like this should be like a weekly segment, but this week on Intel Watch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's a B580 Onyx Odyssey. I don't, I don't know who the heck Onyx is.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that, that video, the Dear Intel CEO guy is really good. More people should watch it, but it's very good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Views on the channel genuinely, really extremely based.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Based. Conclusion.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I was really happy with how that ended, to be completely honest. It was an extremely satisfying way to end. That plus was sick. Absolutely sick. I gotta say. I don't want to spoil it, but David's was. Yeah, Art. It was art.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I wanna.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cinema. That's what people say it was. Cinema.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, I. Kino. What? Kino.

[Dan]

Kino.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good job.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that what people say?

[Dan]

That's above cinema.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do people say that?

[Dan]

Absolute Kino.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn't Kino a lottery?

[Linus Sebastian]

No idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you make this up or is this a thing?

[Dan]

No, this is. This is a thing. Absolute cinema.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolute Kino, though. But people say Kino.

[Dan]

Kino.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't tell if he's being real or not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kino is cinema in German.

[Dan]

Apparently it's better than absolute cinema.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, why don't we do another. Why don't we do another thing? Is Tim Apple going to jail? That is a. That is an extreme. I think I just got clickbaited on my own document. No, but Apple Inc. And at least one senior executive could be facing criminal investigations after being found in willful violation of a 2021 injunction. That was a result of the Apple vs Epic Games case. Man, the Apple Glazers during that whole time were just insufferable.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was extremely hard. Basically, man, do you have any idea how many accounts with like Apple cartoon like profile pictures that I had to ban over that, like six to 18 months that nobody would talk about anything but Apple versus iPad?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was, it was wild. It was like, dude, like, I would read the comment, I'd be like, it can't be. Yep, Apple, Apple cartoon profile picture. I like, I couldn't believe how strong the correlation was. And I'm not saying that absolutely everyone who uses those profile pictures is a doofus. That is not the case. I'm just saying that there was a strong correlation between doofuses and people who had those profile pictures. There were lots of people who used those profile pictures who were not doofuses. Just there were a lot who were.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a fun. Required caveat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But anyway, anyway, yeah, it was, it was really, it was really tough to sit through because it's like, I get you want to cheerlead your favorite corporation that like, you know, wants all the money from your wallet and doesn't care about you at all. Beyond that, like, I get it. I, I understand the, the urge to, to cheer for corporations, but it was very obvious, like how, how antitrust Apple was being in all of this and how you might not agree with Epic about everything, but how very obviously correct they were, at least in spirit, even if the letter of the law did protect Apple to a significant degree. Anyway, Apple is finally getting a smackdown laid on them for all of that. In an 80 page ruling filed this week, U.S. district Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that a few things here. Apple is in willful violation of the 2021 injunction, found that to hide the truth, Vice President of Finance Alex Roman outright lied under oath, and that neither Apple nor its counsel corrected the now obvious lies. They did not seek to withdraw the testimony or have it stricken, although Apple did request that the court strike other testimony. Thus, Apple will be held to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this court.

[Linus Sebastian]

Damn. Damn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dang. The judge doesn't pull any punches, and the ruling is full of quotable lies like, this is an injunction, not a negotiation. Whoa, I need another one of those. Sorry. Dang. Apple's continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated. There are no do overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.

[Linus Sebastian]

Damn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The ruling also makes it clear that Apple CEO Tim Cook can't make any claims that he didn't know what was going on, and notes that Cook chose poorly. The ruling also details multiple ways that Apple thwarted the injunctions goals, including a new 27% commission on outside sales. Oh, I guess we've never really updated you guys on what exactly it was. So the one thing that Epic, like won outright was that Apple couldn't stop app developers from directing users to an outside payment processor. They did say, look, epic, you guys can't just like build your own payment processor into the Fortnite app or, you know, any other app. But yeah, you can direct people to an outside payment processor. But so, so the way that Apple, like got around it was they were like, okay, sure, you could do that, but we're going to take a 27% commission on that, which would amount to a 3% discount compared to just paying the 30% to Apple, which is not a discount at all, because you're probably going to be paying 3% or more to any payment processor that you're going to be using off of Apple's platform. You can vouch for that, right? Is that about what we pay on Floatplane?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it sounds very.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So basically what Apple did was they introduced a brand new fee that made it not economically viable to use an outside payment processor. They also added UI changes and limitations to mislead users and scare tactics like full screen warnings when the user tried to click through to an outside payment solution. The court has referred this issue to the USA for the Northern District of California to determine. To the usa, probably. I think they mean Court for the Northern District of California to determine if criminal prosecution is warranted. Apple says they will appeal the ruling, but in the meantime has updated App Store guidelines to allow links to external payments, which affects us.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so much better for us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because you guys might not realize this, but the reason that it sucks so much to manage your subscription from within the iOS app is that Apple doesn't allow us to do that within the app unless we pay them a 30% commission.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we're not allowed to tell people why. We're literally not allowed to explain what's happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Literally weren't allowed to tell people why.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got em.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is actually so good. Even if it's literally just to tell people. That was all I really wanted. We had our app pulled from the store because it was like we tried to tell people the same way that Netflix does, and they said no. And then I screenshot Netflix's version, which I just, sorry, Netflix directly ripped off, and they were like, no, and you can't use outside comparisons.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was like, what does that even mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

So we had to just take everything back. And then we got a ton of users telling us that we were being evil because we were trying to hide people being able to cancel their subscriptions, which sucked, because we really just wanted to tell people how and why we weren't allowed So I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A USA US Attorney for the Northern District of California. That was what they abbreviated here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this is good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, this is fantastic. App makers, including Stripe and Spotify, have already updated their apps to take advantage of the new guidelines, while others, like Patreon and Proton have announced they are working on doing the same with Proton CEO Andy Yen announcing a price cut of up to 30% for iOS users. Because, yeah, it turns out the App Store fee was just a tax. It was an Apple tax. Literally, the Apple tax. And you know what? I get that Apple wants to make a profit on the, you know, the platform that they built, and they should make a profit on the platform that they built. It's called the, like, $1,500 that it costs for a freaking iPhone Pro Max. That's the profit, Apple. You made the profit. And if someone wants to use your payment processor, then by all means, provide that as a service. All EPIC was ever asking was for competition in payment processors. Payment processors should not be locked in. I mean, and again, I fully comprehend the Apple Glazer argument. Well, Apple built the street, right? They built the street that you set up your shop on. So then you should use their payment processor. But it's like, what if we do? Actually, seriously, though, what if we take that? What if we take that into the real world, right? So because my local government, you know, paves a freaking road, and then like, I, you know, I lease my shop there, do I have to. Do I have to use their. Their pay? Do I have to source all of my goods from them as well? Like, what is this communism? Like, what are we actually even talking about here? No, why should I have to use someone's payment processor? Like, yeah, the software is running on their hardware, but show me an analog feature.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to pay an annual fee to have an app on the App Store. Yeah, if they really wanted, they can upgrade up. They can up that. But then there would be competing stores. Someone else will make the road, you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's a terrible competition. I'm over it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can understand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My analogy sucked.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can understand needing to benefit the platform that you're using to some degree, but then there's going to be competition there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, guys, I'm joking. I know. Oh, man. Linus sees capitalist greed. What is this communism? No. Oh, no. I know, I know. Is is joke. Is joke. Sees anything you don't like goes. Is this coming? Okay, okay, look, the point is. No. Just because Apple happens to own the land on which I operate, my store does not mean that they get to 100% dictate the terms of what I can sell in my store and you know, what services that I can use in order for, in order to take payment from people. No. And now that is.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a rough analogy. Just don't worry about it now it's law there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's all you need to know is that now you can expect your in app purchases on iOS devices to be more affordable. And if Google's smart, they're going to look at this and go and make sure that they're aligned with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hopefully that happens. Slack messages here. Handyman has been saying that there's more to this story, including some crazy Slack messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tim sp says there are some malls which try to force vendors to use certain payment processors so they can do whole mall gift certificates. So one thing that does break down in that particular example is that customers can use cash. They have the option of using something else on the app Store. That was Epic's whole argument, is that you only have one choice and you don't even so much as have the ability to put up a little sign that says, hey, there's a, you know, 3% discount to use cash. You have no choice whatsoever there. That's actually a much, much better way of illustrating the problem here.

[Linus Sebastian]

So apparently these internal Slack messages are, are just about like the language of different things. This one says an employee who said that some of the draft language for leaving the app to pay for something didn't sound scary enough and they want to scare users a bit to raise questions and hesitancy when clicking on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's amazing stuff. That's hilarious. In Slack communications, like if you're on.

[Linus Sebastian]

The web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website because external website sounds scary. So execs will love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's hilarious. It's amazing how just like, yeah, duh. But also just, yeah, like they actually, like, they are exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

As I will also say though, like, if, if you're surprised by that, like, damn, dude, that level of stuff is happening at these companies all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every day. Yeah, every day. I mean, honestly, like to a certain degree, if you just want to compete well and be a reasonably smart company, you're making decisions like this. Okay, Smash champs. When we designed our internal flow for how people walk in and out of.

[Linus Sebastian]

The building, exit through the gift shop, it's like the most classic business thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We have another door that we could have used that people could walk straight onto the court and we barred It. Because we want people to walk through the pro shop and walk past the concession area before they can get to the courts. And then we want them to walk past the concession area and through the pro shop before they can leave the courts.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is very standard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is business 101.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was. Yeah, those messages, like, yeah, they're bad, I guess, but that's. I'm very not surprised. I've seen way worse stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, they're bad because of the monopolistic nature.

[Linus Sebastian]

Think about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what's bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally. But think about, like the, the Tesla stuff when they're like, sharing footage from people's cars and stuff. Like, we've seen way worse things. We've talked about way worse things on the show before. But like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the key. The key.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I get it. It's bad. I get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is the monopoly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the key.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And they're trying to push the monopoly anyways, despite losing the thing by using scary language and stuff like that. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying we've seen a lot worse. And if that's like, surprising to you, like, dude, businesses do be doing business.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Top Gear 1224 says they do force vendors, not try to. Customers don't have the right to use cash. Most places are card only because they don't want to deal with cash walking off. But that's. That's not the same thing. That's not the venue dictating that customers can't use cash. That is the store deciding not to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Take cash, which benefits his argument.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, that is exactly what I was saying. The store should have a choice. There should be a lower cost alternative.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that can absolutely be a reasonable choice. Especially in, like, high crime areas.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you want to have a little sign up that says no cash on premises and you want it to be real, you need to not take cash.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, are people mad at me about my. About the exit through the gift shop thing? Oh, actually, no. Not too bad. Not too bad. The pro shop's doing great, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In case anyone's wondering, I noticed you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Guys were low on rackets, which is a good thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Well, and a really bad thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You got to get more, but it's a good sign that you're actually selling them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are we working on an update for the float plane app?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. It'll be a bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. And realistically, it's less of an impact for us because we already were not charging a 30 Apple tax because we literally just. That's not, that's not compatible with our business model at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was not going to be a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thing like float plane does not. If we, if, if we were just like, yeah, 30% of gross receipts. Here you go, Apple. What would have been, what would have been left?

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke, it's already a thing that splits multiple ways. Splitting it another way is like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because it splits between the creator and the platform. Right. And also the payment processor which we like still have to pay. So. So that's why you can't subscribe in the app. That's why you can't unsubscribe in the app. So we've just had people sign up on the website, like on the web, and then just like use their account to sign into the app. That's the only way we've been able to do it. So it'll, it'll work like that until such time as we can get it updated. This is interesting. Yeah. Context Menu says in the UK they're talking about introducing legislation to maybe force companies to accept cash. Oh. As digital payment methods are disproportionately impacting older people who still use cash as their primary or only payment method. Yeah. It's not just elderly. Like, maybe that's kind of the spin on it in the uk, But I know that over here a lot more of the people that I've encountered who are like cash only people are more like, they don't trust banks or they. Yeah, it mostly comes down to like not trusting banks or not wanting their purchases tracked. Like, it's kind of more of a privacy argument. And I see it, I see it both of those ways, both from like an accessibility and from a like privacy standpoint. The challenge though is like, man, like, have you seen some of those, some of those wild tiktoks of like McDonald's restaurants that have been turned into freaking fortresses because they're in these like super high crime rate areas and they're like, everything's barricaded off and stuff. Like, oh, dude, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to handle cash if I was working in a place like that. So I don't really know how to reconcile that. Man. I don't have a solution. I definitely see this one both ways. Personally, I, I have been, I've been almost zero cash for so long that someone handed me a $1 coin, someone handed me a loony the other day, and I was like, whoa, this is really Light. Because it turns out they actually changed the composition of them since the last time I held one. Like, I just. I just do not use cash anymore. But I definitely understand why some people prefer it.

[Linus Sebastian]

There is at least one place that I go decently often that only takes cash, which is really annoying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it that gas station you like?

[Dan]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, haircut. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, during COVID most of the cash only places like the holdouts switched to taking digital payments.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dealing with cash at that time was tough. I'm not sure how to read this. People are saying that the Apple thing only applies to American stores.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, for now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But that means we would not be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Able to update, couldn't we, for American customers?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what I'm trying to figure out. So the line is link to other purchase methods developers may apply for entitlements. Apply keyword to provide a link in their app to a website the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to purchase digital content or services. So sure, no problem. We could link to the flipping's website. That's fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

These entitlements are not required for developers to include buttons, external links or other calls to action in their United States storefront apps. I genuinely don't know what that means. I might just be dumb.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, we can always try.

[Linus Sebastian]

These entitlements are not required for developers to include buttons external. Oh, so you don't have to apply if you're a US Store, but you can apply if you're not a US Store?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, we'll see what happens.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we can apply, but they might just say no or just never respond to it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could absolutely see that being a thing as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Especially now that their internal Slack messages and emails and everything get perused.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On a seemingly somewhat regular basis around this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Should we. Should we. Have we only done two topics already?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that. You seem pretty cool. You seem unfazed by that.

[Dan]

I have a hard out from you. So we're on track to make.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're quite far from the heart out. The heart outs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, actually I think. I think my hard out time might have also been wrong. So that's something.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Dan]

What is the actual heart out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have we been bamboozled?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, see, I don't been lied to. I don't know. Okay, technically I think I'm supposed to be somewhere at 8, but I also don't really like what. It's not. It's not that hard though.

[Linus Sebastian]

We were told your heart out was nine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's kind of soft. It's soft.

[Dan]

Okay, let's do some merch messages. We're still fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pre hard out.

[Dan]

We're still frying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I swear. I swear this has never happened before.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can go. You can go grill some cheese. I'm stealing this from Chewy. It's Chewy's joke. I'm taking it. It's mine now. Oh, Chewy.

[Dan]

Chewy. Fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm not doing it. You explain merch messages. I'm on temporary strike if you go on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, is it on both? I don't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do merge messages work? Hold on. People are sending them, right, Dan?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

They work. Yeah, they're on both. Sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good job.

[Linus Sebastian]

What a wizard guy.

[Dan]

Amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Please do it stuff. There isn't 100. Not everything's absolutely perfect. Like you can't float plane sign in on the global store and stuff like that. But like, it's pretty. It's pretty good because you got considered time constraints. It's pretty good. But yeah, merch messages. You go on LTT Store, global or not, add something to your cart, and in the cart you will see this box right here. If you click the little check there, you can send a message and it will appear at the bottom of the screen. And that guy up there might respond to it or he could curate it for probably Linus, but one of us to respond to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a curated one for you this week.

[Dan]

Yeah, but you have to go to the bathroom or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I can do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That still aligns with what I said. Have fun Wee weeing.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gotta go Nintendo.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, Luke, what's up?

[Dan]

What are your thoughts on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now I'm.

[Dan]

On top of you. Question for Luke. What are your thoughts on the legitimacy of. Of the why is when late series? Considering the judge is under the payroll of one of the contestants.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've raised this as a concern multiple times. This is a problem. I think. Not only is that a problem, but I think the judge's natural inclination towards interesting content instead of legitimacy and accuracy brings to question the results. When the results lean towards someone who has a proven history and has an extreme record of precedence for not showing up on time, and somehow even when he doesn't show up on time, still gets marked as a win. It's. It's. It's. It's concerning. To be.

[Dan]

To be clear, I would agree completely. The problem is that we don't have anybody to complain to because he also pays our bills.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, tough. It's a tough one. How much you can do about it.

[Dan]

Oh, no. He sent his minions.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you were gone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am an unbiased guy.

[Dan]

Sammy. Sammy. Come and defend your honor.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am unbiased in wise.

[Linus Sebastian]

Manly. I didn't realize it's not even six yet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I keep it professional. I have high morale. Is it.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. I have high standards for myself.

[Dan]

Morals, morals, morals.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have good. I have morals. But you wouldn't say high. You say, like, strong morals. I have strong morals. There you go. Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Subscribe to full plane.

[Dan]

Most of them are.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got, like, jump scared by Sammy.

[Dan]

He just appeared. It's just orange.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably ran. That was wild.

[Dan]

So that's. That definitely sells it, that he's definitely weighted towards Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah. Totally.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least a little bit.

[Dan]

Totally, totally, Totally.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least a little bit. I'm still gonna win, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Because you're actually here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I.

[Dan]

Which is the point.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was early today. I got a new work laptop, and I'm literally thinking, like, I'm just gonna schedule the show up, like, way early and just work on set.

[Dan]

We could have been on time today, but he was talking about cheese. I even gave it a countdown. I gave a countdown on everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

I reminded you. Were we late?

[Dan]

We were late because he wouldn't listen to me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had this thing.

[Dan]

It was. We had. We were gonna be on time perfectly for the first time for, like, ever.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's funny. Tinker watch says it should be Yvonne that is in charge of wise when late.

[Dan]

That's worse.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly. No.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah. That's right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Knowing of what, she would probably vote for me to the point where it might be unfair the other way. Yeah.

[Dan]

I want my husband home to spend time with his family.

[Linus Sebastian]

It should be Luke's mom. No, I love my mom. She would definitely vote for me more often. Yeah, it would be unfair.

[Dan]

I don't know why it's not me. Because when you parked illegally in the handicapped spot sideways the other week, both of you left to go and insult each other outside, leaving me alone with still no title or thumbnail. So I think you both lost on that one. Because he could have stayed here, done the title and thumbnail, and then it really would have been your fault for making us late.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did he. Did he not lose on that one?

[Dan]

I think he thought he lost, but we were more late because of your antics.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should have both lost on that one.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm okay with us both losing.

[Dan]

I don't know. Oh, it's my turn for that. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

There you go.

[Dan]

Over Here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Handicap spot. That's not cool. I didn't even realize it was there. I'm sorry.

[Dan]

That's how little he cares.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. My God. He's just very loudly getting snacks. I mean, I think he's trying to make it louder. Can you guys hear that? I'm convinced he's trying to make it louder. Why is this such a process?

[Dan]

You can come back now.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many snacks? Just two bags of chip. For all that noise?

[Dan]

They're a mix.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't judge me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why was this so much noise, though? You wanted specific bags. He had to dig for them.

[Dan]

Yeah, it's like a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not gonna just take a random flavor of chips.

[Linus Sebastian]

I knew something was going on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even calorie worthy if they're not the right flavor.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's true. I still. I don't even agree that that's the right flavor still. But you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sea salt malt vinegar. Kettle chips is not the right flavor.

[Linus Sebastian]

The boxes that we get don't have the right flavor.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My cheese. My cheese Takes are no longer the most controversial food.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ms. Vicki's jalapeno is definitely the best.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, we don't have that, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what I'm saying. I don't think the boxes have the best flavor.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are you even talking about then?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think any of them are calorie worthy. Nobody wants plain chips. I didn't say plain chips. Ms. Vicky's jalapeno. What is this?

[Dan]

Why are all of them like this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why do you love submarines so much instead of plain chips? They don't even fit in our products.

[Linus Sebastian]

Someone should.

[Dan]

Miss chips.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Plain chips.

[Dan]

Good one. That's actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's. That's solid. That's solid. What are we supposed to be doing? Right?

[Dan]

You're gonna do a merch man. No, you're gonna read it.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's your. There's your consumable brand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you were doing one merch message the whole time I was gone.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't. I don't think we even did one.

[Dan]

Yeah, that was the merch message.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that was. I thought you just asked me that.

[Dan]

No, that was the merch message.

[Linus Sebastian]

We did a merch message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good job.

[Dan]

They specifically wanted Linus not here now. You do an announcement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did they ask for that?

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huh. So that was oddly convenient.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can do announcements.

[Dan]

We told him to leave and then he did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I thought he just went to the.

[Dan]

No, I spaced out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get your head in the game. I'm losing it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Flow plane announcement. Get a glimpse of the day to day at Linus Media Group. With this week's exclusives, you can meet Emily Seddon, one of our post production supervisors that help release all the amazing LTT videos you watch. You can learn about her favorite memory with Linus. What? A little bit more about the gamer van that we built her and much, much more. So we've got that here for meet the team. What do people say? No. Okay, I'm. I'm going to have to watch this. I'm extremely curious what Emily Seddon's favorite moment would be. We also have Sarah's Q and A coming up. You can submit your questions for her Q and A. Behind the Scenes creating the Alex week trailer. That was. That was so cool. That was flipping awesome. Yeah, fire is more your thing. You can watch Alex, Andy and Sebastian play with a lot of fire in this week's behind the scenes. If you're with our insurance company, please look away. No one snitch.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so we're supposed to watch from 9:14 to 9:30. One second here, let me just fire this up. I have not watched this yet either. Am I about to see something?

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you smile like a maniac? Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. Like, like mad scientists.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yes. We are making the best week ever. He honestly did a really good job with that. Stop it. There you go. He did a really good job with that. He actually killed it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, asking Alex to act like a mad scientist is like.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was great. Okay. I don't know what to do. I scared people at a restaurant recently. There he goes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, perfect.

[Linus Sebastian]

I went over lunch with Lucas and Nick from the lab to do like a labs leadership lunch thing. And I don't remember what was said but somebody said something and I, I got a good one in and like everybody jumped and I, I like apologized.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you in Langley? Vietnamese?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, where were you guys? Should I be embarrassed if I go somewhere? Like, do they know? Do they know we're affiliated?

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't remember the Ruby Siam.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Never been there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. All right. There are certain restaurants locally that like a lot of LMG Creative Warehouse float plane staff go to where they like, you know, know, you know who we all are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know. Yeah. But they also probably wouldn't have been surprised by you, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Dan]

Yeah, they would have known.

[Linus Sebastian]

Experienced it already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, you can check this all out at LMG GG/ floatplane or on our members page on YouTube if that's more your cup of tea. All right, Dan, what Are we supposed.

[Dan]

To be doing another merch message?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, did we not do the second one yet?

[Dan]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good lord. All right, hit me.

[Dan]

Hi, I recently watched your home server room build videos and was wondering why you did not install a water to water heat pump to increase the heat that you take out of that room and put into the pool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so for starters, that would have been harder. I mean, with all the various iterations of what we ultimately ended up doing, it wouldn't have been harder. Would have been much easier to just do it properly in the first place. But what I was hoping was that I wouldn't have to expend electricity on the heat exchanging situation other than just pumping the water. And I have discovered that no, in fact, that will not be easily very possible.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I currently don't actually believe that anyone who mentions heat pumps on the Internet is not a technology connections watcher. I have basically decided this. Anytime anyone mentions heat pump, I'm like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just confused that people, like, didn't. Like, it was like years and years ago that I just like read some basic article that was like, air conditioner versus heat pump versus radiant heating. Like this is probably like 20 years ago or something like that. And it was like, heat pump is the best. And I was like, okay, heat pump is the best. And then I've just been kind of sitting around like waiting as people like figure this. Like, it seems like this has just been a known quantity for like a really, really long time. Like when we were talking recently about how they've been kind of demonized in Germany on WAN show. Yeah, Remember that? I was like, what? Demonized what? Who doesn't like efficiency? There are. They're not perfect, the Germans.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently they shut down all the nuclear plants. Got him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm actually upset.

[Linus Sebastian]

That hurt. Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes.

[Dan]

The mood goes to zero.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. So anyway, I found the whole thing kind of confusing because I thought just like everyone knew that heat pipes are kind of sick, but it seems like a lot of people still don't know that. Yeah, anyway, so heat pipes, no, I did not learn about them on technology connections. But I love, I love that. I love that he talks about them a lot and says how cool they are because they really are cool. Like, it blew my mind when I found out that it costs so much more to heat with resistive heating compared to like the multiple times more efficient that using a compressor and, and a heat pipe. A heat pipe, a heat pump can be for, for, for heating. And then also the fact that, whoa, no way. They can Also, like, do cooling as well. Like, he heat pumps are super cool. Um, that's. That's what I installed in my old place and that's what I didn't want to install in my mechanical room downstairs because I didn't really want to pay to run an air conditioner all year round. My hope was that in the winter with the pool running at like 10 degrees, which is kind of what they recommend, that it would adequately cool the room. And it does. It works great. Unfortunately, in the summer with the pool in the like mid to high 20s. This is Celsius, by the way. Yeah, not so good. It does remove all the heat from the room. Like, I can close the door. It's an insulated room and it does remove it all. And it works way better than it used to now that we have it right at the back of the rack. But it's pretty uncomfortably hot in there and it kind of sucks. So I actually was chatting with Jake today, and I think the plan is to actually use a yacht AC because they're designed for liquid to liquid on both sides. So what we're going to do is we finally. I hate it when this happens. So you know that janky video that we did recently where we made a water door for the server room over at the lab?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. We did that video and literally, literally, one of the companies that we reached out to to try to get a proper one and was like, nah, forget it. Got in touch with us after seeing that video and was like, hey, yeah, like we could send you one. I was like, oh, come on. We wanted to do it properly in the first place, but because we're not ordering a hundred of them, you know, no data center supplier was interested in building us any water doors.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So anyway, now I'm getting a water door for my basement because we already have a functioning one here. I guess we're just leaving it there. I didn't actually ask Jake that. Maybe we should get. It doesn't matter. The point is we're getting one for my basement. So we're gonna run a cold loop there off of the cold side of the ac, which will probably be a heat pump, because a lot of ace. A lot of air conditioning units are just heat pumps. So we'll run that off the cold side and then the hot side will go off of the pool loop. Unfortunately, that means that I have to pay to run the compressor all the time, which I don't know. Realistically, with like, modern efficient compressors is honestly probably not that bad. So that's the new plan for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kind of sucks, but I think it makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we'll have a chill.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does cook.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We'll have a chilled water water door at the back of the server rack and then we'll try to capture as much as we can of the heat coming off of the systems inside. I don't know how those water cooled systems are going to figure into all this because there's honestly no point having them water cooled if you have a chilled water door. You would just take the hot air coming out of the back of the systems. You would blow it through your water door. But also typically the fans that you're using in a setup like that are super loud. Like high static pressure, like server fans, which I don't want in that room. I quieted down that room like very intentionally recently quieted down that room. So maybe, maybe chilled water to the surfers. Probably not. Probably what we would do is we would take the, the ultimate version of the chiller.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everything comes back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So I have something I'm really excited about.

[Linus Sebastian]

You just gotta get Yvonne to buy the like heat pump for you or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's way better than my old chiller. So Luke's referring to the time for one of my birthdays that Yvonne bought me a window mounted AC unit so that I could dismantle it, dip the cold side into just like a giant like igloo brand cooler reservoir and then pump windshield de icer to my CPU and GPUs as like a 247 sub zero setup.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's pretty sick. That's what he's referring to. You can, you can check it out in the staff reacts to Linus's old janky rigs video that we did a while back. No, no, we're going to take it to a completely different level. So I'm not going to name any names because you know, the timeline is TBD and you never know, things can, things can fall through. But I am in touch with someone who back in the day created phase change coolers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. This is so sick. I know about this, but I can't say anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, cool. Phase change coolers that I lusted over in my, in my post adolescent pants and he hasn't done one in a long time. But we offered to do a collab slash commission build and he's super down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is so sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So what my goal is is to make a 247 is to turn my system 247 phase change cooled. So sick. So I think we're targeting like somewhere between minus 20 and minus 50 or something like that, like minus 20 to minus 40. And if we can build a high enough capacity unit, then I could potentially do CPU and gpu and we could make blocks that could be adapted to future sockets and future GPUs and then just. I could carry the forward. So what I would like is to have it fit in a rack mount form factor right under my gaming rig. And so my rig would essentially be like sub zero cooled. And then all the other rigs would just be water cooled off of the pool water. Not the actual pool water. The water that runs through the loop that goes through the walls of the pool and is isolated from the chlorinated water. Don't worry, just chill.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then all of the other heat in the room will be dealt with by the water door.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you intentionally do that one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Oh, just chill. Well, yeah, only a little though. I was just going to ignore it and keep moving. It's kind of like how you'll. You'll hear me. Anytime I'm working with a case, you'll say whatever. I'll say whatever the case may be, or in this case, I like, go out of my way to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not talking about a case right now, Dan. So, yeah, I am.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's sick. Like, I didn't actually realize that's what it was for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also. You know what? I'm gonna. I'm gonna spoil this one. And you guys are gonna be so disappointed if now it doesn't work out. I'm gonna spoil this part. But because we're gonna be working with like H Vac stuff, this could be. If it aligns. If it aligns with him. Traveling to the Vancouver area could be an opportunity for us to hang out with Brian the electrician again.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which would be pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That'd be pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. We haven't collabed in a long time, but I, I would be. He. He's got all the certifications that he would need to help us charge these systems. And, you know, just be there, make sure that even though the. Our collaborator has experience working with this stuff, he's not technically certified. So Brian would be there to make sure that everything's on the up and up, capturing all the gases correctly, and he can all also get access to some of the more exotic gases that we might need if we were to take things to another level potentially in the future. Nice Is he still an electrician? No, but I mean, do I still give tech tips? Debatable. Sometimes. Sometimes a nickname just sticks, you know?

[Linus Sebastian]

You did earlier. You helped me with my function key problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's true. I did do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You gave me a tech tip.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was a tech tip?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're welcome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What else are we supposed to be doing, Dan? Was that a merge message?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Let's just talk.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even know what the question was. It doesn't matter.

[Dan]

Why didn't you put a heat pump in your pool?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm okay. That's fine. I will. It's all good.

[Dan]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you want to talk about some AI news?

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Researchers from the University of Zurich are facing possible legal action due to running an improper and highly unethical experiment. As one of Reddit's lawyers, Ben Lee, has described it, the researchers deployed AI chatbots to a popular.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is crazy. Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To a popular debate subreddit called R changemyview, which is primarily a place where users post their hot takes or opinions and have an open conversation in the comments. The bots made more than a thousand comments over several months, pretending to be real people in order to debate in these discussions, with the kind of. The idea behind it being to find out if an AI is effective at changing a real human user's mind. However, where things get a little sketchy is that these AI chatbots were diving into sensitive topics such as racial issues, domestic violence, and more, with some bots even going into the OP's account and trying to determine. They were explicitly instructed to determine who it was that they were trying to debate so they could make a more tailored comment in order to debate them more convincingly. So they were. They were. Oh, man, Dude. It's not in our notes, but they were. They were asked to, like, go through and try to profile them, try to figure out their age, race, area, where they lived, what their interests were, and then. And then told to crap out an argument that would try to change their mind. This is a note from Elijah. He says reading this part actually scared the. Out of me. Yeah. Reddit was not made aware of this experiment, which is the reason that it is considering a lawsuit. Any thoughts?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this is an interesting one for every.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, go ahead.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's. There's been a lot of stuff about AI manipulation going around lately. This was a big part, another big one. And I noticed this too, but didn't really fully put it together until I saw other people start talking about it. But a lot of different AI chatbots in. In my example and most examples that I saw, because I think it's probably Most commonly used ChatGPT, but other ones as well have started just like, really gassing up the human in the interaction. Like, no matter what you do, they're like, oh, you're so amazing. That was such a smart thing to say. I was asking it questions about the Canadian election, trying to get ideas of the policies of different people and stuff like that. And every single time I would ask it a question, it would be like, that was a good. No, very good question to ask. And I was like, this was a really basic question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, why is it somewhere in a data center, you know, carbon is being emitted in order to produce those words? Yeah, I mean, maybe it was a really good question to ask, and maybe. Maybe it's better than asking those questions after the election. Like, we saw spikes in interest after the November elections in the states.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's rough. But yeah, apparently this was like, why.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did I just vote for again?

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently this is totally a thing. Recently they started really, really, really, like, just being crazy positive and just pumping people up super hard. And a lot of it's because people like that. So that's going on and apparently it's gonna be dialed back because it's a little bit too obvious. It's too much. But I suspect it's still gonna happen at least a little bit. And people are starting to realize that when you are talking to these chatbots, they are actively looking at your entire history of conversations all the time. So that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't actually necessarily realize that a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lot of people think a new chat is fully isolated. It's not. They will like, like, you can ask it things about yourself. Like, I will ask.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, though. Is this, like. Is this, like, identifier cookie based? Because, like, I don't even have an account, so if I just, like, go use it, then theoretically, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mine is within my account for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right, okay, okay, okay, Carry on. Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I can ask it something about, like. Like, does this seem like a good fit for me? And I can ask it that with no context other than that I cannot define myself. And it'll be like, yeah, because blah, blah, blah, blah. And it'll bring up things about the lab. It'll bring up things about floatplane. It'll name floatplane just out nowhere sometimes. Like, I'll ask it about some technology thing. It'll be like, this could be good for floatplane. And like, I haven't talked about float plane in maybe a couple weeks, but it still recognizes that because I've talked about float plane before.

[Dan]

It happened to me a few days ago and scared me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Because I had completely forgot this was a thing and I was asking some innocuous question. It's like this thing that's related to extremely specific things that you asked another time. And I. It was destabilizing. I'll put it that way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm the security risk.

[Dan]

Then maybe I shouldn't be posting all of our data into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, maybe you guys shouldn't be chatting with AI so much. I gotta confess, I feel like don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do it that much. Really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like this is somewhere that I'm kind of falling behind a little bit because I don't use.

[Linus Sebastian]

I honestly use it most often for experiments. Like, somebody told me recently that, oh, they're hallucinating, like way less now because I was making this argument that we will all become dumber for using it. And I think my biggest example of that has been people calling on chat bots on Twitter, X or whatever the. Like at grok, is this real thing? And then just always taking the answer of that at face value.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I saw. Oh, I saw a really interesting one that was. Someone asked Grok if it's true what the current U.S. administration said about increases in military recruitment. And Grok's like, yep. And they're like, hey, Grok, isn't it true though, that any increases in recruitment now are a result of Joe Biden's policies? And Grok's like, yep. Right. But doesn't that seem like important context that you kind of left out Grok? But. But that's the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's the problem with, like, I'm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even saying that GROK is somehow, you know, politically leaning one way or the other.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just that that's clearly a flaw in any kind of AI system because there's no way that it's going to be able to provide all of the relevant context because if it was, then it would just crap out a link to Wikipedia every single time you asked it anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if it tells you when it makes them. Night Author. I don't fully believe that, but sure, it says that's a specific feature called memories and it tells you when it makes them. And it's quite literally never told me that it's made a single one. So I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's just not very Obvious, I don't know. But either way, I'm not necessarily trying to turn it off either, but it's just interesting. So I ran a thing where I tried to do at least one query a day and I would fairly intensely fact check it every time to try to see how often is it more or less hallucinating. And it's still really often.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

People just take it fully at face value. It's so crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nippleless cage in floatplane chat says I absolutely grok something about Elon Musk. And it said that's because he was the founder of Tesla. And when I corrected grok, it was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, oh, yeah, yeah, but that happens like all the time. Like people are really only correcting it on the things that they automatically detect as wrong. But it's wrong a lot more often than you probably think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yvonne and I have been car shopping recently and like, like I said, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

It doesn't mean it's not helpful. To be clear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like I'm falling behind the times in a sense, because I wouldn't, it would never occur to me to just. She typed up a profile of herself and was like, what car would you recommend? You know, a cool car for cool moms. Kind of, here's what I do with it. Here's how many kids I have, here's what I'm driving right now. Here's what I like about it. Here's what I don't like about it. She like kind of gave it a whole thing and to its credit, it crapped out basically the same cars that I had painstakingly narrowed our search down to, but it also got a bunch of little things wrong about them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And because I had done all of.

[Linus Sebastian]

That research you very recently, you actually knew.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I knew.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it looks really legit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's really convincing.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you didn't already know, you might not have questioned it. And I think that's happening, like way too much. Anyways, sorry, but where do we start here? We're talking about the trying to debate people on Reddit. They're getting in trouble for this or whatever. The next line on here that you had to read was Reddit was not made aware of this experiment, which is the reason it is leading to a possible lawsuit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I did read that, but it was okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm really happy this experiment happened.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think people need to know this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I mean, for me, the main thing that I took away from this is this is the experiment we know about.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's There are not experiments that are running that are this. And I guarantee you, well, constantly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, isn't that the entire Twitter platform now? As far as I can tell, I cannot tell the difference between the people in bots anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

But, yeah, this used to happen because it was paid people. There used to be bots that were much more obvious. Now it's automated and it's a lot less obvious. And like, it's. We. There has been an inflection point on the Internet and everything has changed. And you need to be aware of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Check this out. Freelancer System in Floatplane Chat says, we had a recent situation at my work where people were petitioning to remove the labor union because Gemini gave an answer to the question, can a business owner speak on wages while a petition is in process? And said, yes. And it was completely wrong. And then it cited links that weren't actually relevant to the answer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this is a problem. This is a pro. The biggest problem with AI right now is people, like, actually, people are just taking the output. We've. A lot of people have been screaming for so long that you can't just take the output and automatically believe it, but people just do it because it's the path of least resistance. It's easy. The answer is right there. Right. I'll just take it. It's fine. I'll submit it. I'll use this. It's okay. No, it's not. It's wrong all the time. It lies all the time. Oh, man. When I was asking it, it gets a really blatant stuff wrong, too. When I was asking it about, like, Carney and Poliev and all that kind of stuff, it got a bunch of things wrong. Like it. It said that Carney wasn't the Prime Minister at the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I was like, he definitely was.

[Linus Sebastian]

He actually is. And it was like, oops, my bad. Keeping on going on. And I was like, that's a pretty major mistake. Like, there's a lot of little ones, but that one's, like, huge.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, probably got confused because he didn't have a zero. He didn't have a zero in his name. So it thought he wasn't rural or something, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought it was a zip code instead of.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just. Man, I don't know. But yeah, this. This experiment. Super. Oh, nice. Good job. This experiment is super interesting. In other news, several months ago, there was a lawsuit opened against Character Technologies, Inc. After. Oh, we've. I think we've talked about this, like, four times.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. But this is an update Though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. After a 14 year old took his own life after this teen had several conversations with fictional characters, several of which convinced him to take his life. Now Character Technologies is making the claim that chatbots outputs should be conspicuous, should be considered pure speech, essentially protecting them under the first amendment or the right to free speech as free speech. This is still an ongoing case and there has been more discussion about what would be classified as free speech versus what would be responsible versus who would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Be responsible for this. Yeah, so I do. Liability around artificial intelligences is something that it kind of surprises me that we have not even kind of begun to figure out. Like when you consider how long self driving and also actually self driving cars have been cruising around on the roads without users touching the steering wheel. I mean in the case of the like the self driving ones like your Teslas, theoretically it tells the user like hey, you're responsible, you're liable. Right. But in the case of, you know, Waymo for instance, like there, there isn't a driver. It's like, like who is liable for what a machine learning AI does. And you could say, okay, no, this is like really black and white. It's the, it's the company that made it. But in this case clearly they're making the argument that they're not right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you would think that for how long we've had, you know, like thousand multi thousand kilogram things flying around on streets where this question seems pretty relevant. You would think for how long that's been happening, this would have been something that we would have figured out by now. But it seems like we are still in the very infancy of even starting to approach thinking about figuring out liability around this stuff. And I don't know, as an OpenAI shareholder, you know, I'm not, but if I was, I was gonna say like What? As an OpenAI shareholder I'd be terrified right now because I have no idea what I'm potentially going to be liable for and I have no idea what the volume of mistakes is going to be before some kind of accountability comes calling. Like I have. We have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Feels similar to the, like a company commits a crime, is by the law considered as a person, but does not go to jail thing. It feels like there's going to be one of those like effectively a loophole that really plagues society. I feel like this is going to be one of those types of problems.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. What's that from, by the way?

[Linus Sebastian]

IBM. IBM Service Manual 1979.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've. This is, this gets put around A lot and has been for years. But now that AI is such a big thing right now, this has been pushed around quite a bit. And yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty good. Like you. The. What made me actually think about this was you bringing up that they almost did they what? They almost busted a union or something because of whatever. Because of a rock outfitter, Gemini said. And this is, this is. I think this ties into that problem is like you can't make like really serious important decisions. Like I was looking up stuff, politics stuff. Right. I also had other friends and family members that were looking up politics stuff using AI chatbots. And I was just constantly freaking out, basically being like, it is a good shortcut research tool. Please God, look up everything you're finding in here and make sure it's actually real. Because like, wow, there's so many falsehoods being pushed forward.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, my. One of my kids came home from school where they did kind of like, they did kind of like a mock election. And I'm going. I go, okay, well honey, which party did you vote for? And she goes, oh, I voted for the Conservatives. And I go, okay, why did you choose the Conservative Party? And she goes, oh, well, because they care the most about the environment. And I'm like, okay, that's an interesting take. I'd like to get a little more information on how this curriculum was devised because you know, I'm not gonna, I don't think I'm gonna get into it on the wan show which party I did or didn't vote for. And you know where my alignments are. But what I can say with absolute certainty is that the Conservative Party is not the like hippie dippy, you know, let's go green energy and, and conserve the environment. That it's not that kind of conservation. Let's. Let's just put it that way. And I'm just. When it's so easy to go and look at their platform where they. But they basically say drill baby, drill. I'm just, I'm really confused where this kind of misinformation comes from.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I don't even know. Like, I wonder if it's comparing to other parties in other countries.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even then. I don't, I think they've basically opposed every meaningful environmental measure like in my adult memory. Like, I don't really.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like Canadian Conservatives are more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I mean, yeah, Canadian Conservative Party is basically like left wing hippies in our neighbors to the south. Like it's. Yeah, that's what I'm saying less so these days actually. Yeah, like that was more. That was probably more true 10, 15 years ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but so yeah, I'm not. I'm not necessarily even sure. But yeah, I mean when I was doing. Had a lot of stuff that was wrong. It was. It was interesting. I found it was most accurate at not specific things which might sound like almost a weird sentence, but if I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Asked it for like oh, something like very high level, like almost more abstract. Like here's my. You know, you know me pretty well. Who do you think I should. I would probably vote for.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't ask it that. But I'm curious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you logged in on your phone? I just don't. You don't have to say. You don't have to say what it says. I just want to know if it gets it right. Okay, I'm very curious.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not going to say what it says, but I will say if it got it right or wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Okay. In the meantime, I have an interesting question for you. Let's imagine a post LMG world. You know, we. LMG still exists, but it's under new management or whatever. We've both. We've both moved on. Would we still do wan show? Yeah, okay. Imagine this post LMG world. We just do wan show. Nothing else really matters. Let's assume that we're both in a position where unhinged show realistically. Realistically, like it doesn't really matter how much people like us. Would you. Would you just like both barrels just talk about stuff like this or would you just be like, no, I still think I still. What is it like religion, politics and what's the third one?

[Linus Sebastian]

Money is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Is it money, religion and politics?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The three things that you don't bring up in polite dinner conversation or whatever it is, at least culturally here. Would you just say you know it and just go for it or would you still kind of say, hey, we should probably hold this line?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I would go for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just. You just go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting. Interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you don't now. Why not?

[Linus Sebastian]

My actions on the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why are you such a p. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Man, I've got a fun one for that. Which is gonna make no sense right now, but it will later because I'm not. My actions right now have an impact not just on myself. And if we're isolated, it's just you and me. My actions will effectively really only have impact on me and me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you don't care about me or.

[Linus Sebastian]

A guy who can weather the storm. Anyways, wrong button.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but. Yeah, but on him. On him, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. No, you're just gonna leave it there.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought it was. I thought it was on. On hold. I didn't realize it was toggle. It's asking me questions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's asking you questions?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Okay, tell me which one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting. I actually kind of like that it was evasive there because if it's just straight up telling people what to vote for, that's kind of bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. Honestly, that's pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, yeah, given your priorities. Don't worry. Don't worry. Given your priorities, this party would have been the most aligned choice in the 2025 Canadian federal election. Hold on, I want to see. Wow. That first why is like probably the first one I would pick for you. The second one is probably the second one I would pick for you. I would have had. I would have had this as your number three priority, though. And I would have said this is sort of overarching on the others. And I would have said this is last.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you know me better than ChatGPT.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because, yeah, I agree with that ranking. It gave, like, reasons why it gave.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The choice, like why Luke would choose that. And they're fairly well reasoned and they're almost. Almost in the order that Luke would care about. They were 1. Correct. 2. Correct. It had his third priority as number four, and then it had as his third priority something that I would have said is more secondary and is like a number five. That is actually kind of wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus has me nailed Chat GPT. I'm still. I'm still a little evasive on, but yeah, Linus has got me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is crazy. Yes, it was correct, guys. It nailed his.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is funny actually, and very interesting to me because I was mostly pushing it to try to give me counter arguments against the thing that I wanted. I was trying to use it as an argument against the stance that I had. So I was pushing it the other way, but it's still new.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I wonder if that took a handful of prompts. Like, it didn't just spit out an answer for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like, I often, like, try to fight it, so I wonder if it kind of knew that because it's profiled me at this point. There's a. There's a fun prompt I saw from a hacker dude I follow on Twitter, which. And I don't remember what it is because it's really long, but you basically, you get it to do like a role play where It's a CIA agent and it's trying to profile you as a threat risk. So it goes through your chat history with it and it finds things that could indicate that you would be a threat to like the nation and how it thinks that you should be dealt with in these scenarios. So you're like counter attacking yourself and seeing what things are like, scary or what parts of you are more vulnerable or whatever else. It's an interesting prompt anyways, that, that prompt, that like CIA prompt is what made me start diving into it, retaining previous chats.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right, because it clearly does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like, yeah, because I, my initial prompt was. And you saw all that. Yeah, my initial prompt was, you know, I tried to take it almost exactly how you said it. You know me pretty well. Who do you think I should have voted for in the Canadian election? And then it gave like, here's all the reasons for this guy, here's all the reasons for this guy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, here's reflecting on your vote.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, just here's some, here's some, some things you should.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, consider. But it didn't give me an answer, so I just said, no, tell me which one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then, and then it totally did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it only took two prompts then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the first prompt, it wasn't that it was wrong, it was that it didn't want to answer. Probably because it's supposed to not really answer for that type of question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So tell me this, I mean, honestly, we are getting way off the tech rails now, but this is an area where tech is affecting our lives a lot right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know it's a feature.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you think that there is any possibility of moving past in our polarized world with tools like this, with algorithms, like we encounter on social media? Do you think there is any way in this polarized world to get past a two party system? Because we've often talked about how, and I think Americans talk a lot about the, the detrimental impact of their effective two party system because your choices are, you know, basically as, as south park so eloquently put it, a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Right. And in Canada for a long time, we enjoyed a multi party system. Like, yes, some of those multi parties were particularly irrelevant. Like, have the Greens ever won more than one seat federally?

[Linus Sebastian]

ChatGPT.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, if they have, it's a, it's been a very, look it up anyways, very small handful. But we actually had, at a federal level three parties over my adult lifetime that had various degrees of relevance. So you had your Conservatives, your NDP and your Liberals. But in this most recent election, while the Liberals only sort of won, they won a minority government and the Conservatives lost. They actually picked up a lot of seats and the NDP were almost wiped out to the point where their leader, like in tears, resigned as leader of the party. He didn't even win his own seat, which is again, in my adult lifetime, pretty unheard of even for relatively smaller parties, and happened twice in this election. Both the Conservatives and the NDP had their party leader lose their seat.

[Linus Sebastian]

I also think this election was determined by a different country.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair. That's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the, what's the joke? It's like Pennsylvania didn't just determine the U.S. election, they also determine the Canadian election.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, something like that, pretty much.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's pretty funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, sponsors. I guess we could do that. Oh man, have we done like three topics? The show is brought to you today by Vessi. Are you just a step away from touching grass? Our sponsor Vessi is there for you. It's time to ditch the Oblivion remake and run into nature with with their weekend sneakers. He added me on my on my hands to this. They're breathable, lightweight and most importantly, help keep your socks dry. Our team loves their Vessi cuz here in Vancouver the weather is always predictable. It rains all the time, but with Vessi you can step into puddles worry free. Their weekend sneakers aren't just great for day to day activities. They're also Dennis's favorite travel shoes. From strolling through Thailand to clocking 20,000 steps in Tokyo, they're impressively comfortable even on long walks. Briefly talk about your experience with the weekend sneakers. I know you wear them all the time. Yeah Dennis, I sent you that picture of me like absolutely drenched in a thunderstorm when I was when I was over in Southeast Asia recently. I thought you were going to use it in these spots, but I guess you just decided not to. Yeah, they're I like them. They're comfortable, they're lightweight. And while I will never say that they are waterproof because nothing is waterproof. Water literally carves canyons in the face of the earth. They do help keep my socks dry, so pack smarter and travel better with Vessi. Visit vessi.com wanshow to get 15% off your first pair at checkout and start exploring with confidence. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. You might look like this man in person. Not much going on in terms of style, but you've still got a lot of skills to offer to boost your online presence, Squarespace has your back. Squarespace is an all in one platform designed to help you get your site up and running in minutes. You can create a stunning portfolio to showcase your work with tons of beautiful layouts and styling options. And building a site is as simple as dragging and dropping, no coding experience required. It also lets you manage everything in one place, from booking photo shoots to invoicing clients and even lighting up your marketing efforts. Check out their new AI website builder. It helps to simplify your design process by providing custom design suggestions, text and images. So why wait? Start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com wan finally, the show is brought to you by Thorum. Give your partner the kind of ring they actually want to pick up. What was that? Our sponsor, Thorum, has the ring that brings the bling bling. They don't make those typical boring rings. They use unique materials like meteorite, whiskey barrels, dinosaur fossils, and even World War II rifle stocks. Every ring ships within one business day and comes with a free Thorum silicone activity band and a beautiful wooden ring box. Thorum began in 2012 when founder Caleb Martin couldn't afford a ring, so he made one for his now wife, Stephen. Not only did Steph say yes, but over 10,000 customers have also said yes, leaving five star reviews. They've got minimalist watches now too, made from meteorite, Hawaiian koa wood, and California redwood. Plus a lifetime warranty and free worldwide shipping. Whether you need a wedding ring, anniversary ring, or you just want a ring that looks awesome, head to thorum.com and use code WAN to get 20% off a truly unique ring.

[Dan]

And I've got something else that came in at the start of the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Dan]

As we're on the topic of Thorum, do you remember a couple years ago we did an insert with a woman who was gonna propose to her?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember that.

[Dan]

We have a response.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, really? Wait, what? Two years later. Hey, nice.

[Dan]

They got married yesterday and they signed it with the LTT scribe driver. Let's go. Which is amazing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's incredible.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. That's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super cool. All right, well, I'm glad she was able to seal the deal. That's. You know what? Ah, I love those little bits of uplifting news in a world where AIs are monitoring our every move. And, you know, big companies like Apple just ignore, you know, judgments for four years and, you know, but hey, there's love. There's love. And that's all you need. I heard. I heard it in a song once. Someone. I forget who did the song.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty good song.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Pretty small band. You probably never heard of them. Insect. Insect band.

[Dan]

Radiohead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure. Slip knot says dead. Anti Social. Oh. Bye Easter. Oh man, I can. I can.

[Linus Sebastian]

The funny thing is somebody has probably done an AI Slipknot.

[Dan]

Just don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Beatles crossover.

[Dan]

Don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is so easy to pick out those of you who I love very much, by the way, in our audience who. Who do not have a sarcasm detector by East One goes the Beatles. Yes, that's the joke. Oh man, that's great. Yes, that's the Beatles. Love doesn't make me money, says Elijah. Okay, man, why do I even read your.

[Dan]

Don't engage. Don't engage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What else we got? Oh my God. Is it When After Dark. We can't do When After Dark. After dark we have to do. Things get blurry on YouTube. YouTube is testing a feature for a small percentage of users where they blur your email.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wait, wait. Before we go, you asked me a question which was do you think we can ever get past two parties? And somebody in chat reminded me of it. No. While we have our current voting system, well, we have first past the post. It's always going to be two parties. Just how that works.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is honestly the thing that I'm still most angry with Justin Trudeau about.

[Linus Sebastian]

Total bullcrap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He promised electoral reform and then was like, eh. Like there's lots of other stuff you can be mad at him about. But that was a major campaign promise that I feel. For me anyway, I feel was a big part of what won him the election. I think it was in his first term. Yeah, we wanted electoral reform.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was a big part of the reason why I voted for him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We wanted a different voting system. We don't want first past the post anymore. And there are flaws in basically all of them. I get it. But first past the post is super flawed and like extra flawed.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I know why he didn't do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, because they were the incumbent. It's never in the incumbent's best interest. He like to vote for electoral reform because that's the system that got them elected.

[Linus Sebastian]

He like definitely would have lost. So he, he bailed out. Which is, which is so incredibly lame because I think a big part of the reason why he got voted in was because people were like, oh wow, we can have a real system. And then probably maybe, you know, not vote you back in. And then he just didn't do it. And now we're stuck. It sucks. It's rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I hereby promise that my first official action as Prime Minister of Canada will be to fix our crappy first past the post system. Would you vote for me?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. That's two votes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think myself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

It feels like. Let's assume I. I don't actually think this, but let's assume you would be horrible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hold on, hold on. People. People couldn't understand what I was saying. The Canadians couldn't understand. Ah, Stephen Abootman, do declare, I promise you in French.

[Dan]

Finally. Stop doing the irritating accent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now. Stop for a second. I am speaking about a very important thing. Okay. Sorry, what were you saying?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't remember. That's fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. So, yeah, I get two votes. Two votes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently William Osborne released a video on his second channel talking about the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, should. Should. Should we.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm skipping. I'm skimming through and. And checking the comments right now. And this is like a week ago. They're all pretty good. Yeah, they told me they were, like, thinking about releasing it. I didn't actually realize they were going to release it, like, almost immediately after I said, yeah, that's cool. And the comments are pretty good. I have a feeling it was like, put kind of at the end because there aren't a ton of comments about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And the name of the video is I need to stop farming for a while.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So he's. He's probably talking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Clearly testing the waters here, I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, like, I think he's. I don't think it's about just this. I think it's, like, about other stuff. I think it's about him not farming for a while.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, actually, because I just mean, like, he's obviously not just, like, leading with this news.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's kind of cool. I think it's interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, well, I'll have to watch the comments later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, good reference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Solid.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I talk about it or I just say this and then people go watch his video?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why don't we start with just not telling people what's going on and just. Dan can put links to his video. Guys, you put it in your watch later. Make sure you watch it later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Okay, sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Things get blurry at YouTube. YouTube is testing a feature for a small percentage of users where they will blur the thumbnail of a mature video. This will mainly be targeted at videos that frequently include sexual themes because, you know, in our typical North American sensibilities fashion, we don't care about violence. We care about boobs. YouTube explained in their community section in the YouTube Help center that the goal is to still provide users with relevant search results, since these videos will still abide by their community guidelines, but to protect users from seeing content that is sensitive in nature.

[Linus Sebastian]

This might help, like something awkward being on your screen when you're at work or something like safe for work situation. But do you think this is going to work the other way around? Because I have heard that when you spoiler tag something, it draws people to look at it. So I wonder if blurring the thumbnail here, if people are gonna notice that it's blurred and then be drawn to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It, that'd be an interesting experiment for us to do on the channel because it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not the same. Oh my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like in the next week, just upload a video with a blurry somehow. Yeah, interesting. Do like an A B test.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not the same as a spoiler tag, I think. I don't think it would be quite as effective, but it might still, like, if people learn what it means. Yeah, like, oh, naked Linus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I don't think anyone needs that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's on William Osmond too. It's on his second channel. It's the most recent one on his second channel.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not like about this. It's just mentioned in there. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there are currently no more specifics on what fully triggers this blurring yet, but video titles, channel names and description will remain visible and unchanged even if the thumbnail is blurred. Users also have the ability to toggle this feature on and off if they so choose. Okay, our discussion question is using the guidelines, what do you think would fall under these new blurring guidelines? Since it seems that the guidelines are clear about what isn't, isn't allowed. I mean, would like, I don't know, because I've seen some wild stuff on YouTube in like music videos, for instance, that just like, I could not imagine like any other like, like basically pornography like that. I could just not imagine any normal user being able to upload and have it stay there. So I don't, I don't really don't post a thumbnail or image on YouTube if it shows pornographic imagery, sexual acts, the use of sex toys, fetishes, or other sexually gratifying imagery, nudity imagery is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not specific at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Unwanted sexualization. I mean, it kind of is violent imagery that intends to shock or disgust. So, okay, we do care about violence. Graphic or disturbed imagery with blood or gore, vulgar or lewd language. A thumbnail that misleads viewers to think they're about to view something that's not in the video. That's actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

That actually have more impact than almost anything else. That actually seems pretty solid, but it's not specific. When it. We saw this happen to Twitch, the second you put a line, it then just becomes creatively avoiding that line. That's it. Like is. I know. One of the Twitch metas I think was body paint. Like is it nudity? If there's body paint, like they're. They'll find it because it just says nudity including generals. Then people are gonna be like, all right, how far can I push this line? And becomes a game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, where you. Where was it? Sexually gratifying imagery I think is meant to be the catch all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh man. Sorry. Can I segue us off of this topic? Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm done with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Elijah said, nah, Twitch is flawless. And it made me think of another topic that we have in the doc which will make sense eventually but will not make any sense at all for a while.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Giant bomb.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stick with me. No PSU testing, feedback and LTT labs.combin sharing. This will make sense. I promise you this will make sense, but it's going to take a little bit to get there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I'll bring up the article.

[Linus Sebastian]

First off, there's an article. This part is not related. Spoiler alert. But yeah, there's some interesting stuff going on with our power supplies. This is related to that email that we sent you where they're passing under standard load. But when we go outside of standard load into an area that you should test because there's like protections for those types of things that power supplies are supposed to have. They're failing in the protection phase and we're wondering if we should create a separation in category between ones that just fail within standard usage and ones that fail within the protections phase. And we're thinking yes, but we're interested in your guys feedback. So check out the article on the site, read it, go to the LTT forum post and give us your feedback on the LTT forum post. Lucas is keeping tabs on it. Cool, Sounds good. We're trying to do this thing where we like build in public more. So we're trying to show our work. We're trying to show our line of thinking and let people have input on what we're doing and how. So Lucas had this observation. I think it was a really interesting observation. He came up with a potential solution for it. I think it was a good solution for it, but we want your guys feedback so let us know. Moving on. We also have a new feature that's working and this is the one that I'm gonna. I'm gonna bring Elijah into this in a second. But bin sharing. Bin sharing is now a thing on the store on the. I'm so used to talking about the store on wan show on the lab. So you. There's a button up to the right. Up right hand corner says share this bin. Or alternatively. Wait, what the heck is this a cached page?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I clicked your link and I think I accidentally added one that was already in it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, so this is a curated. Okay, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. I think I screwed up the demo. Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Okay, so let me hit it from the top. Labs dot com. My laptop. Okay, so I'm going to grab two power supplies. I'm going to grab this one and I'm going to grab this one. I'm going to go to my comparison bin. I'm going to view the detailed comparison. My URL has now updated. So if you're old like me, you can just copy this and give it to someone and it will work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. I support this move.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was some amount of resistance to this because this isn't what their argument was. But I like to interpret their argument as like, you're old, no one's going to do this. And I was like, yeah, well that's old meta.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So we just have both.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is a universal resource locator.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it doesn't universally locate a resource, what is even the point of it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So we have both. So you can click the share the bin button and we might have some other options in here. Like maybe at some point in time someone made a comment. We should probably do this where you can actually see the URL that's going to share before you click copy, link, whatever. We'll probably figure that out. But we might even have these so they can be shortened URLs or something. I don't know. That's not really a huge priority right now. Maybe we'll figure it out at some point. Right now you can share bins. That was the whole point. But there's also some stuff where we had some bin ideas. So we had some things that could be pre curated. There was a like mixed mouse and mixed keyboard example. So that's this one. So you can see there are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, you compare a mouse and a keyboard?

[Linus Sebastian]

My bad. Give me one second. No, but you can have a series of things that are comparable. One second.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. He's going to do the demo.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just like all demos, make sure Dan's still there. Hi, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Take a sec. Okay. Mix mouse and mix keyboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan's still there. Mold on my chips now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Well, my point is that you can share comparison bins. And theoretically, if we were, like, making a video on something, the writer of the video could prep a comparison bin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'd be sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then link it under the video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then you could see all the items that were in the video.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So there could be a see the items from this video link. You could compare them all and see them all there for more detail or whatever else. That's cool. There was a challenge that we had of what is the best bin that you can create be useful or less useful, like the ones above? And the reason why I'm pulling Elijah into this after this really, really, really long bit of expose is the. I was like, yeah, I don't know, like, how interesting that'll be. And they're like, well, someone could do, like, a WAIFU comparison collection to help Elijah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I see an example of one of the kind of useless bins, model names that are greater than 50 numbers. Is that. Was that okay? That's incredible.

[Dan]

Oh, this is comedic gold.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where did you even see that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I clicked the mix keyboard, mouse, and PSU example. I think our hyperlinks got a little bit confused in the way I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

They did because I got a little lost.

[Dan]

This is a top 10 website immediately. Good job, guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway. All right, what else are we supposed to be doing today? Something, I think, finish off your topics. Oh, yeah, we could do that. Hold on. I'm trying to figure out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, yeah, I see this. Yeah, the. The doc on this was. Was a little weird, but one of them is the only acceptable list of peripherals. And there's like an Apple Magic keyboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, boy. I love this.

[Dan]

You're gonna do a great service for the Internet with this website.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, yeah, you can.

[Dan]

This is like the Spotify playlists.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm assuming whoever on the team made this has a MX machine, Master 3S, and an Apple Magic keyboard. But, yeah, you can. You can name your bins.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, if you. If you come up with a collection of products you want to throw in here to compare, you can then name the bin, copy the link, share it to other people. Obviously, the bin naming thing isn't going to work if you just copy the URL, but but you can, you can make some funny stuff. So if you wanted to make a WAIFU collection of components that the lab has tested and link it at Elijah on his social media, that would be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Funny, NASA marketing says. The US Administration. The White House released a skinny version of its budget proposal for 2026 today, including all federal agencies. This budget proposes cutting NASA's funding by 25%, from 25 billion to 18.8 billion. Some major legacy programs on the chopping block include sls, Orion and the Lunar Gateway, which are set to be phased out after Artemis 3. The budget cites SLS, $4 billion per launch cost and 140% budget overrun as reasons to move to cheaper commercial systems. The Mars sample return mission also cancelled. The ISS is also getting dialed back with fewer crew, fewer flights, and reduced research capacity. Instead, the US Administration wants to focus on human space exploration and beat China to the Moon and Mars. They're allocating over 7 billion for Lunar and 1 billion for Mars efforts, a chunk of which will likely be given to SpaceX, according to Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger.

[Linus Sebastian]

No way. What? No, that's not going to happen. They're not going to give most of it to SpaceX almost by default. No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there's Boeing.

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you say. Oh, totally. Yeah, they're in the running for sure. Wow. No one saw this coming 100 days ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Now I guess that's all you have to say about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not really. I like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So bit of a. Bit of a NASA fanboy here. So he just watched his team take.

[Linus Sebastian]

A massive L. By the way, people are freaking out. Out about this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

On those teams. Well, yeah, a 25 cut means a lot of people are losing jobs. And I've heard, I don't know the legitimacy of this. I've heard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you can do better science with 3/4 as many people, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of that. I don't know if that was in here, but a lot of that funding reduction was just science. And like, if you, if you look at a lot of American innovation over the years, like NASA has driven a lot of it, like, like, actually quite a bit cordless drills NASA. Like there's, there's, there's tons of stuff that you wouldn't really think about. Cordless power tools in general, as far as my understanding goes. And they're, they're massively reducing their, their science budget, both like space and not Velcro memory foam. People are just listening. Tons of stuff. Yeah. Like it's this is a big deal for like innovation in the States.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well in the world really. I mean I use cordless tools too. I don't live in America.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like it's, it's, it's rough. It's not just like a lot of the writing when you look at like oh, why are they doing this? SLS being really expensive. Which like. Yeah, I mean it's way over budget and it's really expensive. Okay. I'm not really going to try to fight that too much. I do have some concerns about moving all of your ability to get to space space into commercial hands. I don't know how cool that is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, they don't prioritize safety over everything else. Commercial entities.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I don't know if that's the right move, but it is. Yeah, it is. Way over budget, all that kind of stuff. But like canceling the Mars sample return mission and be like, oh, humans will just do it. Like wow, that's really bold.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's just stuff that would have been invented by others anyway. Just like by that, by that logic, why invent anything ever? Because someone's going to invent it at.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some point someone else will do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why don't we just wait?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you need your computer? Like it doesn't matter if someone invented it, you know, decades ago you could have just waited for someone else to do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, NASA advancements have helped computer stuff a lot anyways. Yeah, it's just, I think the impacts of this are a lot more wide reaching than people immediately realize.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well that's because, I mean we've talked about this on the show before. Regardless of the political leanings, there is a serious problem with short administration terms incentivizing extremely short term actions and short term thinking. And it's, it's, it's, it's a real problem because a lot of the time what is done is not really felt by the general consumer until much, much, much later. And when you, when you go at sort of, you know, scientific cradles of innovation like NASA, you might not feel it for never mind like four years or eight years. Right. Which would be your, your one or two term presidency. Right. You might not feel that for 25 years. Like trying to think off the top of my head of like an older NASA innovation that there was, man, there was something that was recently that was like yeah, they, they were looking at this. It was, I don't know if it was NASA, if it was one of the other big like national labs but they were looking at this like, like years and years and years ago. Decades ago. And like finally we were like, oh, whoa, here's an application to this. I'm sorry, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but there, there have been examples where it's not necessarily clear what the commercial application of this will be. But the work that's being done is still extremely important. What are we looking at here?

[Linus Sebastian]

Things that wouldn't have been possible without space travel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Camera phones, crash resistant lenses, cat scans, LEDs, landmine removal, athletic shoes, foil blankets, water purification system, dust busters, ear thermometers, home insulation, the jaws of life, wireless headphones, memory foam, freeze dried food, adjustable smoke detectors, baby formula, artificial limbs, computer mouse. But portable computers, I don't know if computer mice or portable computers are important to you guys at all. I don't know who got that list. It's not conclusive. That was on some random site that somebody in floatplane shared.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't forget the movie Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks.

[Linus Sebastian]

True.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Never would have gotten that without space travel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good stuff. Good stuff. Important stuff. But yeah, like the, the reason why I'm so into NASA isn't, isn't just because like space stuff Cool. Space stuff is cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Space stuff cool is objectively based. But that was NASA's website. It didn't look like it to me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

NASA has a fair bit of credibility. If it was NASA's website, I don't mind it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What does it say at the top of the picture? One sec. Oh, whatever. I read something wrong. My bad. That was absolutely NASA's website. It's not conclusive though, so I don't, I don't know what's going on there. But anyways, it's, it's because in a way it represents like human advancement. Like it's not just space travel. A lot of it is science.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, a lot of it is the one small step for mankind.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not just rocket cool, rocket go fast space, neat. It's like this is how we like grow. There's that whole thing of like, like every scientific discovery is this like tiny, microscopic pimple on the circle of knowledge that humans have. It's like. Yeah, but when you do that a lot, the circle grow bigger. This was a big part of circle grow bigger. Like it's. I don't know, it's rough. I don't think this is bad for the world. It's also inspirational. Yeah, absolutely. Hugely so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently not anymore. I mean, remember when we were kids, kids wanted to be, what was it? Doctors, lawyers, astronauts and firefighters and heads of state. And now it's influence. Tick tocker.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Now they want to be you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Being me is not that great.

[Linus Sebastian]

A little bit less so him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because they want to be bigger on the short form media.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they probably don't want.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then they start figuring out the money stuff and then they want to get on YouTube. YouTube?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's when they're a little older, they want to get on YouTube.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like that word. I prefer mature.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's me. Blonde. Mature. Last week, user David the Runner posted on our subreddit their custom 3D holographic display, which has been added to their graduation cap. It reads, I survived with SolidWorks, Microsoft Suite, OpenAI and LTT. Hey, congrats on making it through university. But this does spark an interesting conversation about AI use in schools. David left a comment on the post talking about using AI to assist with some learning and to help with assisting in written works. Do you want to just. Can I screen share?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's pretty sick. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super cool graduation cap. Absolutely chatted. Love it. What else? What else we got. What else we got this week that we're supposed to be talking about? Ah, yes. Giant. Whoa. What's going on? Giant layoff bomb hits video games. After creative director Dan Rickert left Giant Bomb, its parent company Fandom hit the pause button on its subsidiary's production to perform a strategic reset and realignment of their media brands. This comes two years after much of the Giant Bomb core left. The gaming outlet Polygon has been hit with over 20 layoffs after being sold to Vox. By Vox, to Valnet, owner of 27/ Click Farm Publications. Valnet has been mired in controversy, including a lawsuit directed at competitor the rap for 64 and a half million in damages due to libel from their article about Valnet owner Hassan Yousef's ties to porn and accusation of sweatshop like working conditions. So I'll. Alleged. Alleged. Oh, gee. The rap article seems pretty legit. And I think the lawsuit is a Hail Mary defense. This is from our writer. I don't know what OG means is. Do we have a writer whose initials are O.G. not that I can think of. Anyway. Allegedly.

[Dan]

Allegedly Original gangster.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but what is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks for that, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, Original gangster. The rap article seems pretty legit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay, guys, it's fine. EA has laid off between 300 and 400 employees this week. With a hundred of them coming from Premier Studio respawn which has resulted in two game cancellations, including Sorry Luke, a new Titanfall based extraction shooter.

[Linus Sebastian]

This was so depressing to hear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Narrative designer Heather Woodward was one of the people let go just 24 hours after the reveal of the first character that she wrote for Apex. And hold on. Where's this. Where's this link that I. Man, where's the link I sent in the chat? If I. Okay, if I send a link in the chat, it kind of means that I want to talk about the stuff it says in the chat and man, how to get fired from video games industry. This is hilarious.

[Linus Sebastian]

Make a successful game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, no, it's got. It's got a whole. It's got a whole bunch of examples. Who. Oh, man. Apex layoff. Hold on, hold on. Where is it? Dang it. Dang it. I can't find it. Is it from PC Gamer? Yeah, this is it. This is it from PC Gamer. They've actually got a pretty. I don't want to call it funny because this is really terrible news, but they've got a humorous. A humorous take on the situation. Let's look at all the reasons why you might get laid off while working on a game, shall we? Your game doesn't do well. Okay, sure. Your game is called a success by Microsoft. Microsoft lays you off. You help make a game as successful as Marvel rivals. You are then laid off. Your studio gets acquired for over $60 billion. You are then laid off. You endure executive pressure that forces you into making games your studio isn't good at making. It doesn't go well. You are then laid off. I guess that was Monolith, I assume.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm assuming. I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no. This arcane makes sense. Okay, someone decides your portfolio needs to be aligned, reorganized, restructured, become more flexible, agile, versatile under economic industry conditions. Meanwhile, your CEO might have spent $2 million on vintage cars. You are then laid off. Now we can add you dared to work on a video game to that list. I guess this is. I don't. I don't understand the. I'm not. I'm not understanding the logic here. Can you help me understand the logic? Can any of you help me understand the logic? Are any of you video game executives?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think. Okay, this is not. Maybe they could be video game industry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They could be. You don't know that they aren't.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think there's been a strong correlation since like 2023 of shrink company stock go up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I think that's well before 2023, sir. Is it maybe, maybe more specific to the game industry, which admittedly probably had gotten a little bit over ambitious because. Because of the COVID boom. But I mean, shrink company stock go up has been, has been a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but there was a lot of drive like especially in 2020, but also before 2020, before COVID stuff for gaming and tech companies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Massively inflate their staff for gaming and tech companies. Yes, but I'd say more generally, you know, especially if a company is, you know, falling slightly short of analyst projections.

[Linus Sebastian]

Trinket. Yeah, that's been a thing for trinkets.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Go up has been a thing for long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think we've seen it in gaming and tech for a long time. And then in Covid eras, they cranked the inflate the staff numbers harder than ever before. And then coming out of it, they're like, oh wait, there's this way to pump the stock where you just fire a ton of people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there's a few things. Few things in floatplane chat. This is a very passionate topic for them. Jack Welch, former GE CEO, apparently started the fire piece people to make stock go up trend. That was a long time ago, but we already kind of. We're all caught up on that. Alana Pierce apparently has a really good video about these layoffs. So you guys are apparently going to want to go check that out. Source FSP9 but there's actually another one that I wanted to look at here. And this is from screenies in the floatplane chat. CEOs of these companies need to stop selling their studios to giant corporations. But here's the thing. It's not quite that simple. And when we toured Monolith, it was actually shortly after their acquisition. And talking to folks there, the decision kind of made a lot of sense. Monolith was, I would say like more of a double A developer. Do you say that's a fair assessment? I wouldn't call a game like Fear aaa. Yeah, like it was on a relatively, relatively small budget.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the definition again?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Budget, essentially.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you guys think that's a fair characterization? I think characterization.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would say so for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I would say, you know, Monolith is like a double A AA game maker. And even at that time, this was. This was years ago. Right. Even at that time they were looking at the trend in the gaming industry that of. Of development costs going essentially parabolic and the returns going parabolic as well. But only for a small handful of successful Titles. So basically what you were locked in was this endless cycle of, like, bet the entire farm. Work, work, work, work, work. Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, crunch, crunch, crunch, until you finally get to release, release. Hope that you have absolutely nailed it, right? Because you bet everything. So you're. You're swinging for the fences. You hope you nailed it. You get this enormous windfall of cash that's even bigger than last time. Everybody has a party. Realistically, a lot of people still lose their jobs. Like QA staff are not really needed toward the beginning of game development, where it's more about ideation and laying, you know, groundwork or whatever else. And then you're in some repeat because the expectation from the customer is bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, why do you think it's taking Rockstar so bloody long to make Grand Theft Auto 6, which just got delayed?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ogrisaurus and Floatplane Chat said, then you made Starfield.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's exactly it. And so to answer your question, well, why do they sell out? They sell out because that's exhausting and it's terrifying to go all in. I can tell you guys, as a business owner who has gone all in multiple times, Imagine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Imagine you just make one product every, like, five years. And if you got a banger, like, ouch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And even if it is a banger, how many underappreciate. How many copies of Freelancer sold? I want to know. I want to know how many copies of Freelancer Soldiers. Okay. The video game Freelancer is reported to have sold approximately 20,000 copies in the UK during the first half of 2003. While exact total sales figures are not readily available, there were hopes that the game would sell at least 500,000 copies. And I can. I can tell you that if it did 20,000 in the UK, it sure as hell didn't do 500,000 copies worldwide. It was an awesome game. Awesome. So good. That doesn't mean it's successful. Yeah, yeah. People bring up Titanfall. Just because a game is great doesn't mean that it's gonna sell. So you could do everything right and you could still get.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like Titanfall was largely a lot of people's opinion on that was that they were the release window.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Prey. Yeah, Prey was a super cool game. Total commercial flop. I mean, as far as I could tell, they probably gave away more copies with GPUs than they actually sold. So that's the thing. Right? So why do they sell out, Luke? Well, because they're terrified. Because that's their. That's their opportunity. To realistically, to cash, to cash in on all the work that they did leading up until that moment. Like, yeah, they got paid their salary or whatever else, but if they're, if the expect, if they're sitting there in that moment, they just launched a huge game and they get a big offer that values their company at something akin to the revenue that they're making right now on this huge game launch. Put yourself in their shoes. Most people would sell and tell me that you have the, you have the personal integrity or you have the personal code that would, that would make you turn away tens of millions of dollars versus fear for your livelihood daily.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can, I think I can tell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You I know what you people are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not going to answer this truthfully. I know they might think they are, and I still bet you it's not true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is. I can tell you from experience it is really difficult to say no to tens of millions of dollars. Super hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Doesn'T regret it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kind of based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super hard. Though not easy decision. And you know what? I got, I got to tell you, I got to tell you that I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Had a weird flex.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had a. No, I had a big advantage there. Huge advantage. Because when my offer came, we weren't starving. I already, I had literally just purchased my dream home. Yeah, right. Like, like I, we were, we were in a sustainable space. Right. Like we never took startup capital. We weren't like spending someone else's money and trying to figure out returns and then taking the windfall and having to reinvest it, maybe even go into debt towards the end of it to get this thing over the line, take on investment. Investment. We weren't playing any of those games. I was running a profitable month to month, year to year, even day to day. I was running a profitable company. And you know, realistically, another $10 million wouldn't have changed my daily life. It just wouldn't have really made a difference. And yeah, that is, that is an extremely privileged position. And I recognize that that is realistically a huge part of why I was able to make the decision I was able to make.

[Linus Sebastian]

But when making payroll every week is like absolutely freaking terrifying. I can understand, I can understand. I would not do it. I can understand someone doing it. And I really don't believe that a lot of people that would be like, I wouldn't do it. I don't believe that most of them wouldn't do it. It.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me neither.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've, I've been in related scenarios, so I can kind of trust my own answer, I think. But Yeah, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So our, our worksman in floatplane chat put it really well. I came to my decision from a position of power, not a position of fear. If I had been in a position of fear, it would have been totally different. I had a little bit of fear, which was a big part of why I even started the conversation in the first place. To be clear, when I say started, I mean was receptive to the conversation. I didn't reach out.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that fear was also just an interesting conversation. Sometimes you want to have those conversations even with zero intent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like knowing what my stuff's worth.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like getting your coin collection assayed. I want to know what my company is.

[Linus Sebastian]

An interesting conversation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So we hadn't launched back before pack yet, so I had some fear that we had made an enormous bet that wasn't going to pay off. But, but as I talked about prior to the backpack launch, which was a big part of the whole trust me, bro controversy, we even were approaching that large bet from a position of strength. If I had to refund every single one of those backpacks, I could afford it. I knew that. Right. I wasn't in the position of like a game company of someone on it, like in a game, in a leadership position at a game company where they literally wouldn't know where their next meal was coming from if their next game flopped.

[Linus Sebastian]

And this isn't always true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

There are companies that have, that are much more financially stable, that still sell out. There's all these different scenarios. Right. But I think the one that Linus is describing is a pretty common one for probably the majority of studios that aren't just making like incredible bank all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like, not everybody's lariat if they have an as a service game or whatever else. Or they're just like printing money with like, you know, a dozen active mobile games that are, you know, gotcha af. Like, sure, there's, there's definitely examples.

[Linus Sebastian]

They already did the, the selling out, basically at that point. They sold out to themselves, I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I guess I'm talking more about your tradition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Traditional game studio, traditional medium level successful, medium to low level success.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm speaking from my experience doing the tour at Monolith, basically speaking to people who literally just went through this acquisition and more recently have now been shuttered because they were pushed to make a game that wasn't really aligned with their experience or. No, no, that one was the Wonder Woman iP1. Sorry, that was actually a slightly different situation. Ah. I mean, pay, pay. 90 brings up a good point. I mean, technically, even Larian's kind of got some tension.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. The way it was originally typed is a misleading statement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But they, they, they had to go. They had to go sniffing around for money. And if anything, I think that kind of adds strength to the point that I'm trying to make where it is a. It is a ruthless, ruthless cutthroat business. It's tough.

[Linus Sebastian]

One of the most, probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if, if someone, if someone succeeds in that business and gets an opportunity to get theirs and they take it, we cannot agree, we cannot like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can understand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I think that there are very few people and you might be one of them. I believe you are probably one of them. You might be one of them who would say no, who would walk away from it, and who would swing for the fences again and again and again and would never get tired of it. But I do believe that most people would just say, well, I mean, I gotta eat. My kids gotta go to school.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, especially when you have dependence.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. My wife's gotta drive a nice car.

[Linus Sebastian]

My family. My family member has whatever problem, illness that I could solve with this. Just imagine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, look at, look at what people. Look at what people will do for, you know, the payouts on something like Beast Games. Right. Or just, I mean, just Mr. Beast's videos in general looks Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like I'm in a fairly privileged position that no one in my life is in one of those scenarios. Right? So like, like, if my mom was, like, not gonna make it unless I had a ton of money to ship her off to some country to pay for some really expensive operation and somebody was like, you could do this thing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, yeah, you do it. Yeah, no question.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, there are lines.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Everyone has lines.

[Linus Sebastian]

In my current scenario, I can resist because I'm fine and I'll be fine. And I enjoy swinging for the fences and I like it when it's hard. So. Pause. But, you know, things could change that would sway me for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, what are we supposed to be talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Who knows?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. The giant layoff bomb.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

DOJ antitrust plan could kill Google Search Testifying during the remedies phase of Google's search antitrust trial, on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai claimed the US Government's plan to rectify Google's search monopoly might make it hard to justify continuous continuing to build a search engine at all. The government has proposed that Google be required to share much of its search data and search index with competitors for A marginal cost. Pichai said that this would be a disaster that would allow anyone to completely reverse engineer end to end any part of our technology stack. Pichai's testimony also touched on the government's proposal to force Google to sell Chrome. Several companies have expressed an interest, but Pichai argued there's no other company that could match Google's care for the browser. Google spent tens of billions of dollars on Chrome in the past decade and is responsible for more than 90% of the code commits to the open source Chromium project, which makes up the core of Chrome and several other browsers. This comes as Google's share of global online search traffic has dipped below 90% for the first time in a decade and has dropped below 80% in the desktop PC segment. I mean, isn't Google basically like not going to bother making their traditional search engine anymore anyway? Isn't that kind of the direction that we're going?

[Linus Sebastian]

Feels like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we're just, we're just going AI at this point. In other Google News, Google has killed smart features for their first and second gen Nest thermostats. They will be killed effective October 25, 2025. Okay, so hear me out. Actually not hear me out. I want to hear your take on this. The first gen Nest Learning Thermostat came out 14 years ago. You can still use it as a normal thermostat.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are the feature? What features?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, the like learning and I guess the app control. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think there's a difference between killing and no longer supporting. Is it being killed or are they no longer supporting it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is effectively being killed. You can, yeah, you can't use the mobile app for control anymore. Scheduling.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is why, like this is a huge part of the reason why I put a strong preference on if I'm buying something that I mean this happened with. What was it the like floor cleaning robot for smash Champs or something. You were like what happens? Like can I, can I maino. I don't remember the exact can I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Still use it if the Internet goes out or whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they were like, well and your reason was because you guys might not exist. And they're like of course we'll exist. This is my whole point. If, if the smart learning stuff, I paid more for upfront sticker price because the hardware in order to do that is in the device and it happens locally, I am personally much more willing to buy. I don't think that's universally true. People look at the sticker price, do it entirely based off that. So they Want the cheaper device where it happens remotely. But this is why, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I'm still mad. I don't think I care that it's 14 years ago because I didn't necessarily buy it on launch day so that that timeline is honestly probably shorter.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like, I'm not saying I'm not mad because this thing is sold with these features and it doesn't. It never said, hey, we'll turn them off in 14 years. Yeah, and if you bought it seven years ago, it didn't say, hey, we're gonna turn it off in 7 years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now when I saw 14 years, it still works.

[Linus Sebastian]

WTF? They're killing specific features. They're not saying that it's not working at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like, when I saw 14 years, I was like, I don't know. Do you really expect something to last 14 years? And I was like, yeah, I do. A thermostat? Yes. I expect a thermostat to last as long as my house.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty much. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, what are. What are we even talking about here? Like, this is not a. You know, this is not a smoke detector. You know, change it every five years or ten years or whatever. This is a freaking thermostat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does I don't have one, is there? The app control was the selling point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he knows. That's what he's saying.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are you talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what he said.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's the same guy. He said it still works. Wtf. They said the app control was the selling point. What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What. What are you talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

What are you talking about? Because my point with, like, if there's things on it that happen locally, it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Becomes a dumb thermostat now. So there's no learning anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the easy thing to do if this. If. If a lot more of this stuff happened locally, which maybe it does, maybe doesn't. I don't know. I don't know this product very well. But the easy thing to do would just make it so that people could control it with, like, home assistant or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but that's not that easy. You can't ask people to set up flipping home assistant.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it would be much cooler on the company if they allowed people to. I don't know that it doesn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To be clear, Pyro, you can, but you can't expect a normie.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but that is better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is the problem with the cloud. This is the problem with anything that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

They are disabling home assistant access. What are they actually?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, this is worse than I thought.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if that's true or not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The whole thing should just be immediately open source. If they're, if they're killing it, if it's a smart device, if it has a processor on it, then I mean that's the right thing to do. They should just say okay, well here.

[Linus Sebastian]

You go then works locally but won't work with hardware system. So it's just losing app control. Even the app control thing is weird though because like, like we said earlier, right, you buy a product on a list of features. Like I think something needs to change legally and I don't know what it is. But you, you shouldn't be able to sell a product and then as a company take features away from that product. Right? Like that doesn't seem right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Man, this is tough.

[Linus Sebastian]

So is there, is there, is there like a legal period of time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Insomniac points out that the hardware can't do modern cryptographic ciphers which could legitimately be a good reason to EOL it. They are offering a discount that's an interesting one on a new thermostat for a 4th gen Nest learning thermostat. They will give you looks like a hundred thirty dollars off, bring it down to one hundred fifty bucks but boy is that ever a lot of money to rebuy a thing that I thought I was buying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know, I don't think it's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Says it's not fair to ask them to give that IP up. We're not asking them to give it up, we're asking them to support it. And then failing that, well, I guess they better give it up. They're making a choice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also if it's, if it's 14 year old software for a thermostat, it's probably fine to give that up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cat O Esco is fairly sure Home assistant went through the cloud. Yes. So some home assistant integrations are through the cloud which is why I insisted on finding thermostats that didn't. So my ecobees do not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They are controllable locally by home assistant which means that if my Internet's down I can still adjust my in floor heat.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's, that's exactly how I would want to do that purchasing decision for sure. But yeah, I don't know. I think they need to figure something out because this is happening with lots of different products where they're just being like no, we're not going to support it anymore. And 14 years is a long time but it's still Them going, well, we're not going to support this anymore. For a device that traditionally people expect these things to last forever. Right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I expect a thermostat to just be, if I bolt it to my house functionally, I expect it to be part of my house.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, and I guess the, the line would be if it's something that is expected to be included when I sell the house.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You get what I mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, you know, most people are gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rip their nest off the wall or their dishwasher out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, that, that to me is, is the line. Right. So if it's, if it becomes part of my house, I expect it to, you know, last like my house. I mean, it's not like the thermostats that we had in my house when I was a kid. Just like, you know, oh yeah, the mercury in the little tube went bad, so we throw it away. What are you even talking about? No, it's a thermostat. It's part of the house. You just, you need to be able to control the heat and the cold.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I have to assume.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like, it's like light switches. What am I going to change all my light switches? Because there's like a cryptographic compatibility problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because they're breaking because our apartment builder sucks. But anyways.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Raiden 428 says, do you expect a smart watch to last as long as a regular watch? Is a shorter lifespan a trade off for the features for a watch?

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the difference between the device dying and the device being killed by a company?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because like, I could still use a Pebble smartwatch if I was willing to use a black and white display, you know, and I'm willing to, you know, fight with the Rebel app or whatever. Also that went open source. That's a great example of Google actually open sourcing something that they took over and killed. So that is how it's supposed to work. Funny we should be talking about smart watches, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, I think when people are looking at a traditional watch versus a smartwatch, I think it is very easy to do the calculus of figuring out, hey, this thing might not last as long as this mechanical device that in a lot of cases can last practically forever. It's not necessarily easy to be like, I'm going to make a random guess on how long this company is going to support this thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I also think there's a sort a sort of, a sort of implied support period too. Right. Like when I, when I buy a smartphone accessory, I think the implication is that it's a. It's kind of a piece of my smartphone. I don't necessarily compare it to a regular watch. And the pitch, the original pitch that the company's making is also hugely important. Like when Google sold the Nest, or I guess when Nest sold the Nest, because I don't think they'd been acquired by Google yet. At that point, though, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong. On the timeline, when they sold the Nest, they were just selling a thermostat. They were like, it's a thermostat. By the way, it also connects to your phone. It's smart and it learns. They didn't say, like to your point earlier, that it'll stop working in 14.

[Linus Sebastian]

Years, but they did say that it connects to your phone and it's smart and it learns.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's not a phone accessory.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a home accessory.

[Linus Sebastian]

If any of those things stop, it's now. It was now, in my opinion, falsely advertised.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Because it does still work as a thermostat, but that was never really how they pitched it. They pitched it as a piece of my home that does all this cool stuff in the cloud. Whereas, no, to me, the smartwatch is an accessory for your phone. Like I. And maybe part of that is just like my own mental gymnastics here. Like, right. Trying to divide a line. That was something I intuitively understood or, you know, something that I believe but not necessarily everyone would agree with. Right. Man, this is wild, dude. Like, there. This is just the tip of this spear. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Every is becoming more and more of a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every smart device anyone's ever bought is going to be deprecated at some point and probably not properly in our opinion. Yeah, and then what? It's just a Z waste. That's it. Okay. After dark time. Hit me. Dan, look at that one button. Like an absolute boss. Seems like a low priority.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Make an airtable integration.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, don't. You can't say that because he might hear you and then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, don't, don't, don't give Conrad ideas.

[Linus Sebastian]

He just does stuff sometimes. No, stop it.

[Dan]

Short Linus question for you all. Other than a vpn, what protection is the advantage of the content? And I'm muted. I'm muted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fake emails.

[Dan]

Hey, techie Dan, Large Luke and short Linus question for you all. Other than vpn, what protections do you guys do for your privacy of the content?

[Linus Sebastian]

Fake emails, fake Personas. I have multiple people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know their full names. First Middle last, I know lots of these random types of details. They have profiles online, they have emails, all this kind of stuff that I can just whip out at any time. They're not real. Made them up mostly when I was like between.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tell me you were involved in some shit without telling me you were involved in some shit.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. And I mean I still got them. They can be pulled at any time. For a long time. I would use the White House as my address for like everything. Nice Netflix. My address was the White House the whole time. I have to imagine some random junk mail was addressed to me and sent to the White House and thrown out at some point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's actually pretty based. I'm relatively certain that happened very little. I basically use a VPN exclusively for Linux ISOs because I never know when I'm going to want to like fire up a game and I don't want to have to like remember to turn off my VPN and I could configure it to only, you know, use certain applications through the vpn, but I have not been asked to do that. So that's where we're at on that. I mean this is, this is, this is a terrible take. But I have nothing to hide.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, and that is a terrible take. That's not even what you believe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I have nothing to hide. In a non oppressive regime and in a, in a societal position of strength.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's still a bad take.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a terrible. I just told you it's a terrible take.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think your thing is more that everything's already been breached.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My privacy ship sailed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So long ago that even if I did have stuff to hide, I would have basically no hope of, you know, concealing it from the next.

[Linus Sebastian]

For it's like locking the windows when all your doors are off the hinges. It's like, well, all right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I'm not saying that anything that I'm doing applies to any of you guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there are still some privacy steps that you take.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like what?

[Linus Sebastian]

There are some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, I take some.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you're just not that into it because you're pretty compromised already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And realistically. Right, like I really found, found that, that the amount of interest in my private life and my private life's details declined sharply when I just started publishing it. Like when it was hugely, hugely life changing for me when we published the address of Linus Media Group on Google Maps. Because all of a sudden all of the, oh, where's the office? Where, where are they based? Blah, blah, blah, Blah. Just want to away. Just completely went away. And you know, there's obviously still steps that we take with respect to physical privacy and security. But, you know, I, I'm not deluded. Right. Like, I'm obviously aware that I drive a pretty distinctive car. That is a decision that I have made knowing what the security and privacy implications are. I don't think that I'm a particularly polarizing figure for the most part. You know, it does only take one completely deranged person, I guess, at the end of the day. But like, I don't actually see anybody being like that mad about like a bad review on an Intel CPU or whatever. I just don't think it was worse.

[Linus Sebastian]

Back in the day.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. What cheese melts best or whatever. Like, I don't, I don't see anybody actually being like that angry about anything that we talk about.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could see people being really very angry about. But like, I, I got more like. I can't even remember the last one at this point, but I. I got them relatively frequently back in the house. I would get like death threats and stuff. Remember somebody sent me like a long essay on how they. With details of how they wanted to murder me because of a review I did on something back in the day.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I was like, as nuts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I sound like a cool person.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I was like, probably not gonna happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They probably lots of women. Probably pillows. I mean. Well, yeah, I didn't say they were real.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't know. I just kind of wrote, Trigg says.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just don't talk about Boeing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Don't review. Don't review a plane.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, a Boeing plane, I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Not a Boeing plane. What about like a Desau plane? Just curious. I'm just. It's a random manufacturer. Pulled it out of thin air.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Sounds probably fine. Probably not big enough. Not murderous enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I'm just checking.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Hey, Dan Land. And the man here is my interest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hypothetically. A Falcon 50.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just hypothetically reviewing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like if we made a video on.

[Linus Sebastian]

That, I think that'd be pretty cool, actually. I don't think the company would try to murder you. I think it would be an interesting challenge from an artistic perspective to have you try to review something that is so traditionally outside of your wheelhouse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Your hanger.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, I like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

There we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a weird thing to call it, but sure. Sorry, Go ahead.

[Dan]

No, that's fine. Hey, Dan Lamb of the Man. Here's my interest free loan. How Does Floatplane differ from other creator run content platforms? How is it better or worse than them? Can you guess who the man is?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Dan]

Sure, let's go with Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, what was the thing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan, lan and the Man. They wanted us to guess who the man is because lan could be either of us.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, man, I. I saw you were.

[Dan]

Ready for that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was crazy. That was nuts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nailed it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was actually wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. Oh, man. That was awesome. This is a high note. Are there more merch messages? Because I just want. I just want to end the show now. That was awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty good.

[Dan]

Wrap it up, everyone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that was great. No, no, we got a few more. Okay, we got a few more. We got a few more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So how does Floatplane differ from other creator run content platforms? I wouldn't say that functionally, it's that different. Right. Like, it's a way to safeguard our income streams. You guys saw floatplay makes up, I think it's 7% of our total income. Income. We're actually over 40,000 subscribers on floatplane right now. So thank you guys so much for your incredible support. It's. It's a way of engaging more closely with our. With our most committed community members. So it's. It's awesome. That way you get like kind of extras and behind the scenes, a little bit of early access sprinkled in here and there. Secret shoppers doing early access this time around on Floatplane. So they all kind of like, I would say, function the same way. But what I'd say is really cool about Flow plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Similar way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think the main dividing line between the platforms is the subscription model.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Yeah. Whether it's a subscription, like an all you can eat for multiple creators, or whether it's in house for only one single creator, like we saw at Rooster Teeth, or whether it's kind of. I'd say we're like kind of a hybrid where I'd say the closest thing we are to is something like a Patreon where you can sign up as a creator and then your money that you get from your subscribers is your money. Except the difference is that, you know, our fees are structured around being really heavily focused on video content delivery.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's are also percentages and ours are flat rates. Like, there's little differences in the subscription model, but the overall flow of like, like come to platform, pay money, receive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Content pretty similar and. And not compete with YouTube.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is something that they all have in common. But I would say the thing that sets us apart the most is our team. I think our team's super cool. I think our team's incredibly talented. I'm not saying any of the other teams aren't cool or talented. I'm sure they're very cool and very talented.

[Linus Sebastian]

We like ours, but we.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We really are super, like, into art. And I think it's really incredible what they've done on the technology side. Like, we. I think from the outside, you know, a lot of. A lot of our stuff looks kind of basic sometimes and we kind of honestly suck at some of the more businessy sides of things. Like the fact that we still don't have like a trial. Sort of embarrassing, you know, like, we.

[Linus Sebastian]

Know that there's a few things like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a few things like that, but in terms of like the player tech, it's like really good. In terms of like the, the. The cdn, I don't even want to call it platform because it's more of like a. How would I even describe it? Like, the CDN web that exists to serve the video on the background in the. On the back end is like a combination of off the shelf and custom.

[Linus Sebastian]

And a couple things. One of the player tech was mostly really fantastic a while ago. Like, I think we peaked in. I'm not very good with dates. I'm gonna guess like 2018 with the color thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was pretty wild. We were like legitimately the only ones able to serve full color on Chrome. And I think it was Firefox non Edge browsers. Yeah, like, it was. It was weird. There was a. There was a situation where Netflix was advertising people watching Netflix in Edge, but that was not a thing that Microsoft was sponsoring them to do. They were telling people to watch it in Edge because it was the only way that you could get full color.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like proper color. Like, it wasn't like washed out or it wasn't like shifted. It was really weird.

[Linus Sebastian]

But while they were running those advertisements, we had a player that could play full color in those other browsers, which was really sick. These days we. We tend to give better quality video, but there isn't as much special differentiating sauce in the player. I'm just being honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then what was the other thing that you said?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was the CDN side?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, the CDN side. So we, we made this thing called float CDN back in the day where it was. It was a multi CDN solution so we could automatically kind of like switch between which one was the cheapest the due to bargaining and whatnot these days. It's like, for. For vod, it's like pretty much just Cloudflare. But we still have the tool. It just doesn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if our deal with Cloudflare changed.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can turn it on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pray I don't alter it any further. You know, then we have that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is pretty cool because we were operating extremely bootstrap. And so just. I don't know, let's just hire someone who knows AWS and implement that. That was not an option. We needed to generate revenue month to month. I mean, it was an option if we just wanted to lose more money.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Well, I mean, it wasn't under the marching orders that you gave us at the time, which is still the marching orders that we have, which is that it needs to be resilient. One of your biggest things was, like, it needs to continue to exist. Because at that point in time, the biggest problem with these platforms is they'd pop up for a year, maybe a year and a half, Half. Maybe two years, and then die. And they would just disappear. And it was really frustrating for creators because you bring your audience to this thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then it's just gone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And actually forgot. One of the other major pillars was. No Fang should be able to just arbitrarily decide that you don't exist anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's. That's a huge part of the way that floatplane is architected. No Fang Co. And I guess fangs like the old one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's marvelous. Seven or whatever it is. Like, no one entity can just be like. Yeah, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's. There's stuff where, like. Like ovh, for example. If OVH just pulled the plug, it would hurt. We're not good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Suck.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're not gone. We might be gone temporarily.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have we ever publicly acknowledged, like, how much of our hosting is in ovh?

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of it is. It's not all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I'm just wondering if we've ever publicly acknowledged that you used to be very squeamish about, like. Like talking about where anything was hosted or anything. Security through obscurity. I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I have mentioned it since it's so. Like, I don't love talking about this stuff, but it is very easy. Like, if someone's interested, you can figure that out pretty easily.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just checking. I'm just, you know, I never know where your comfort zone is. Like, I actually messaged him earlier today. We had an old video idea. I've been going through our Doc. And kind of categorizing things.

[Linus Sebastian]

My. My answer is probably not. But honestly, just because it's late. Less interesting these days. Like. Like that thing with the player.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you underestimate.

[Linus Sebastian]

It used to be more interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We could include some of the history, which I think would be super cool because it's stuff we've just, like, never talked about. And I think it would be a chance to highlight some of the accomplishments of that team, which I think would be super cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it could be pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

See, I know how to tug on his heartstring. I'm like the AI Chatbot with the researchers. I've been thoroughly blind on him, and I know how to. I know which strings to pull. But think of highlighting your team and their accomplishments. Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't on board. I wasn't on board until he said that. And then. Yeah, now I'm kind of down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Um. But yeah, I know we had an idea to just do. Like, how does flo. What. What the heck is float plane? And how does it actually work?

[Linus Sebastian]

There might be a really good timing for this. Is that what made you think about it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Uh, that's part of it. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay. Is that a good enough answer on that? Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I forgot what the question was. But how?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Flo.

[Dan]

Bling. Good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Dan]

Let's see. Dan, Dan, Dan, Luke Newcomb and Linus. Linus, have you ever considered using magnetic starting zippers?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I've never heard of that. So you. They. They just like magnet together at the bottom and then you zip it it. Man, this really is feeling a little bit like zipper magnet type. Okay, what am I looking at? YKK. America's Group. 1.3 9,000 subscribers.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Dan]

Oh, that's sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? That's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What am I just being like old man yells at cloud. Like this seems unnecessary. It does seem highly unnecessary.

[Dan]

I think it helps people who maybe don't have the dexterity to be able to attach a zipper together.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very wise of you, Dan. I've never seen one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've never seen that before. That's. That's kind of cool. No, I have never heard of that and never considered it. But I. I guess it's on. It's on my radar now. Thank you.

[Dan]

Hi. Early DLL might be in. Still in discussions or have yet to watch Delayed watch. But will the gift cards only be usable in the US Store? Thanks and understand the headache.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe there's an faq. Oops, sorry. That's old. We split into two. Yeah. Here we go. Control F Gift I live outside. Want to sing? What will happen to gift cards on LTT Store? If you live in the United States, your existing gift card will REM as before. If you live elsewhere in the world, your gift card will be moved to global.lttstore.com and the amount will be adjusted to reflect the current USDCAD exchange rate. Please note that this migration may take some time to complete. We anticipate that all gift cards should be migrated by May 9, 2025. When purchasing gift cards in the future, ensure your gift card matches the region of the purchase of the person you intend to send the gift card to. For example, if you live in the United States, but want to send a gift card to a friend in Canada.

[Dan]

Hello? Dennis, Tuke and Wanny. I want to replace my router without reconnecting all my devices. How can I do this? I looked on the LTD forum and didn't see anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Theoretically, you can just change the SSID and the password to the same thing that they were before. In practice, I found it doesn't always work. Good luck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which would be a good thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But not a convenient thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

True effort, but you don't want that to happen. Just being clear.

[Dan]

Hey guys. Luke, what is usually breakfast of choice?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Chicken breast.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's terrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

I tend to skip breakfast.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Black coffee too.

[Dan]

Black coffee.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't drink coffee.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I microwaved a corn on the cob this morning.

[Dan]

I felt that in my soul.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? Corn is a delicious and nutritious.

[Dan]

No, just like the vibe. Just. Just like me.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a bit of a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My wife doesn't love me so I put corn in the microwave. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. She does.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I'm a heathen and I don't like eggs. I wish I did actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, that wasn't today.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Today I had a dentist appointment in the morning and I couldn't eat.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess I could have most breakfast food I'm not into. I love cereal but cereals like sugar.

[Dan]

Cereals like a dessert food.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cereal's actual sugar.

[Linus Sebastian]

Starting your day with dessert. Maybe not the best strat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I haven't finished it yet, but I read a considerable amount of sugar, salt and fat. Or salt, sugar, fat, whatever. That book that's basically about how big food in like especially in the 90s, basically was like ah, all of you and put sugar in everything until we all got diabetes.

[Linus Sebastian]

What happens when we subsidize corn and people make corn syrup? What happens now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It wasn't even. It's. Honestly, it's not even that conspiracy theory. They just, like, discovered the bliss point essentially in food engineering. And we're like, oh, so we can just do that, Put more of this in it, and then people will literally start to develop addictive behaviors around our food.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's wild. What stuff? Like when. When you read labels and things like beef jerky. Why does beef jerky have sugar in it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Seems weird because it's delicious.

[Linus Sebastian]

I assumed it would be salt. And do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They literally hooked up like. Like brainwave monitoring crap on kids. Kids. And then gave them, like, dozens of formulations of Oreos and then saw which one lit up the pleasure centers the most and they were like that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Meat plus sugar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Literally, though. Literally though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Damn, dude. We have so way too much sugar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. All right.

[Dan]

Hi. Ldl. Love the show. Been watching for years. Professional curiosity here, but do you know what data visualization software you use at ltt?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Data visualization software.

[Dan]

I wasn't sure if they were talking about graphs or anything else because.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. We use a bunch, to be honest. Grafana is the first one that jumps to mind.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because we use it in multiple parts of the company. Highcharts is. Is it highcharts? I'm pretty sure it's High Charts. It's the one that we use for the labs website.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you can't remember, maybe using it too much.

[Linus Sebastian]

Using it too much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. That's why you can't remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. High Charts. Oh, damn, Dan.

[Dan]

You had to get it first.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Delayed gratification.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come on. And there's. There's a bunch of other ones. Cabana I. That name rings too much of a bell. I'm sure that's somewhere. There's so many. There's so many. I mean, if you go on the infrastructure side, there's like a trillion. Oh, because like, this one or that one's better at this thing or that thing and whatever else. I don't know. Even make our own sometimes. Tool jet. You got that going on? Could you count Air table? Probably. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

[Dan]

It's got a chart in it.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have. Yeah, we have Data.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Google Sheets.

[Linus Sebastian]

Freaking everything. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, my goodness. I don't know. D3js and chart js. Sometimes google sheets. Charts. Yeah. Conrad threw those in. Yeah, man. There's like. I don't know. Name it. We probably use it somewhere.

[Dan]

Aloha dll. I remember a while ago mentioning a video about a Steam deck as a daily desktop computer. Did that ever release I don't think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We ever, like, committed to daily driving yet, but we did do this one where we compared it to a PC for about the same price from, like, a performance and general usage standpoint. So that was pretty cool. So you could kind of check that out.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you get your beard back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, I've made progress, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

And grow your hair a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am going to complete my bike before Luke finishes Final Fantasy 6.

[Dan]

That's very exciting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am. I will check this out. I have real.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've progressed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you?

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't tell you when you told me about your bike thing because I didn't know if you're going to mention on Wednesday or not, but I have progressed. I progressed before you sent me the bike stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. It's on.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's still on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's on. Oh, that's the wrong person whose name starts with a D. Hold on one second.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm going on a trip soon with a lot of long flights. Plates.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are they hard? Are they long and hard?

[Linus Sebastian]

They've got it, technically, the plane. It has some girth to it, and it is a tube.

[Dan]

Can't even get both your hands around it.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's just factually correct.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But who makes it? Is it Dassau? Oh, I'm just curious. It's hypothetical.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably not in this case.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably not. Probably. Yeah, probably not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably. Very likely. Boeing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that. You should get one that's straight.

[Dan]

Sure, sure. There's a stretch there, but. Oh, that looks nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was determined that if you. If you. If you deal with stocks while you're on a plane that is actively crashing, it's not insider trading.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. So if you're, like, on a Boeing and the door flies off and your plane's gonna crash, you should sell. You could whip the laptop out short bowling. Buy shorts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan]

Only if the inflight WI fi works. Oh, I did it wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Go, go.

[Dan]

Their bike.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so what we're looking at here is every piece of the bike, at a minimum, primed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you. Do you need multiple coats of priming? Because they look like they're in different states.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the primer is gray. So what we're looking at right now is everything completed priming. Okay, so that's like a DTM Direct to metal. Metal primer. And then. Dan, what are you doing, bud?

[Dan]

Well, now you can talk about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Keep moving it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. No, no, no, no. Keep it. Keep it big.

[Dan]

Keep it big. All right, fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Some of the pieces are fully Coated in white. I need white in order to get a vibrant pink. I discovered this when I was doing the many experiments that I've done over the last couple of years. So I need a nice, even, vibrant white in order to get a nice, even, vibrant pink, which is what I'm going for. So there's a couple of pieces in between the two wheels that are done. Done in the white. However, a lot of my white stuff that I have coated either had like issues with the coating because I had not really gotten good with the white paint yet, or has been damaged because I didn't actually have my setup such that I could hang every single piece at once before. And that caused a ton of problems for me. Like just a ton of rework and resending and recoding and then doing it again. So I finally just put another. Another rack in there so I can actually hang every single piece of it all at the same time now. Some. So some of them. So you can see on the front fairing there on the far left top, Top left. Yeah, there's like some blasted bits of primer over top of the white. Yeah, that's areas where the white was damaged or the coverage wasn't very good. And I need to.

[Linus Sebastian]

The closed portion. Is that shadow?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's primer spray.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's a quick spray of primer over a spot that was down to the bare plastic on the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could tell in some other spots, but there I wasn't sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then I am going to be. So the next stage is I'm going to be doing like a quick touch up blast of white on some of the ones that just were spot primed. Then I'm going to be doing a full coat of white on any of the ones that are gray. So those are mostly the ones center frame and at the bottom left rack. Then I will do a full finish, a second coat of white on all the ones that just were like spot primed or spot white is. And then I will do a second coat of white on the ones that just got their first coat of white. And that'll be like probably a three hour session. Three and a half hour session. And then everything will be white.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you still committed to growing the beard back out once you're done?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'll be up to Yvonne. Just like it always is.

[Dan]

Sure, Fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So after white. Hold on. Bring the picture back. Bring the picture back. So after white, the next thing that I need to do is spray the wheels pink. Specifically the wheels, both sides. Then I need to mask you can actually. Oh, I don't know if you can see it on the picture. That picture is there to be my inspiration. In the top middle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Zoom.

[Dan]

I'm zooming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Zoom, zoom. Is this gonna work? Okay. You can't really see it, but each. I want each of the wheels to have a pink stripe around it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna paint them pink, but, like, minimally, I'm only going to be focused on the area where, like, the stripe is, as long as I can get a nice, even coat. Then I tape that off and paint the whole wheel black. Oh. Then I clear coat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's gonna look sick.

[Dan]

It's gonna look so good.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's gonna look great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's hope.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you're gonna say green, and I was like, what? Get it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

But, like, no, no. It's gonna be pink and black.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's like a super cool pink.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has like.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has like a. Like an effect crap that they add to it. I mean, it's so long since. Yeah. Like a flaking or pearlescent thing. Pearl. It's a pearl. It's like a. Like a purple pearl. So in the light, it'll kind of catch it and, like, turn kind of blue. Purple. Oh, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That'll be sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I'm pretty. I'm pretty excited.

[Dan]

Worth the no beard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then. Honestly, I think that it's gonna be a very imperfect job, but I think I just accept that now. Like, what I've discovered is that I picked basically hard mode by doing a. So. So what is this? It's a prime, prime white. White, Maybe third coat white, depending on my coverage. Two coats pink, two coats effect layer, and then two to three coats of clear coat. So this is anywhere from an 11 to 12 layer process on parts that have extremely irregular shapes. It's basically like a nightmare paint job, which I didn't fully understand. To go back and do it again. I definitely would have just done a solid color with no pearl, no nothing. But at this point, I'm locked. So I think that it probably won't look that good if you look closely. But as long as it's like, realistically, if I'm riding safely, nobody should be within about 10ft of my bike anyway. So that's 10 foot job.

[Dan]

That's all I got.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pause.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I mean, no, that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my. That just made it so much worse. So much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even know what's coming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't oh, my God. Stop the show.

[Dan]

Show us.

[Linus Sebastian]

Show us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

What's in your sack? Go on, pull it out. Come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's. Oh, yeah, it's because I was grabbing something from the bag.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he was. Is that what you call it?

[Dan]

Bag of tricks so you need all your cash for, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

He doesn't know. I know he knows. That's why he kept it going for so long.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, really? I don't.

[Dan]

Yeah, I also don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

His lying is lying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's really not. I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't believe him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you mean though, like, do I know about that? I'm innuendoing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. No, no, I have no idea. I was. No, I wasn't lying. I was saying I had no idea what's in your bag. I don't know what you.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want you to look at one more thing after the show on my laptop. That's completely unrelated, but, like, after the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but you're stalling the end of the show so that you could.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're still going to show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I thought we. I thought you told them they had one more thing. No, no, no, no. Bear with me on this one.

[Dan]

You said pause. You said pause, and then you said pause.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because he said foot job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Foot job. Yeah, I did. I say foot job.

[Linus Sebastian]

10. Foot job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, come on. That wasn't even intention. What are you even talking about? I want to go home. So basically you just gigantically cock teased them for no reason.

[Dan]

Oh, they got it. I got excited for nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Chad understood. No, they thought there was another thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, Chad understood. Well, I mean, we're probably both right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, well, we'll see you then next week, same bad time, same bad channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bye. I realized that there's one very short and I think you're not going to care, but I still want you to see it. Anyways, thing for the all hands.