Gamers Overwhelmingly Prefer Fake Resolution - WAN Show February 20, 2026

Summary

The WAN Show - February 20, 2026
Episode: "Gamers Overwhelmingly Prefer Fake Resolution"
Hosts: Linus, Luke (with Dan and DMS)
Date: February 21, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of The WAN Show covers breaking tech news with a heavy focus on the major shift at Xbox/Microsoft Gaming leadership, an in-depth discussion of the current state of AI upscaling in gaming (with a shock DLSS vs FSR vs Native result), rapid price hikes and shortages in storage and memory (with consumer impacts), trending privacy/tech ownership topics, and—uniquely—a live on-air wedding between two team members. Through the usual banter and HOT takes, Linus, Luke, and guests debate what these trends mean for enthusiasts and the wider industry.

---

Key Discussion Points

1. Xbox Leadership Shake-Up: Phil Spencer Retires

[02:18–21:44]

• News: After nearly 40 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Xbox, Phil Spencer retires. Sarah Bond also leaves. Asha Sharma (ex-Meta/Instacart) to lead Microsoft Gaming.
• Hosts’ Opinions:
  • Mixed Legacy: “12 years at Xbox, oversaw a lot of really good and a lot of really bad.” (Linus, 02:44)
  • Naming Woes: Both hosts roast Microsoft’s horrific console naming (“It just makes you look like incompetent dunderheads.” – Linus, 07:10)
  • Game Pass Outlook: Value sell didn't last; “what we’re getting is you’ll own nothing and be happy.” (Linus, 09:25)
  • Halo/Franchises: Failure attributed more to Bungie leaving, not Phil. Comparison drawn to new Star Wars/"hiring people who didn’t like the franchise" (11:23)
  • Innovation Credit: Big praise for accessibility efforts (“Cannot sing Microsoft’s praises loud enough…genuine, earnest effort to make gaming for everyone.” – Linus, 12:06)
  • Skepticism on AI/Non-Gamer Leadership: Concern that Sharma isn’t a gamer; fears focus will drift from gaming priorities to AI/corporate goals.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “As complicated as his legacy is…it’s exactly the same reason I don’t love non Star Wars people being in charge of Star Wars…I don’t love non gaming people being in charge of gaming.” (Linus, 13:57)
  • “Games are and always will be art crafted by humans…”—Asha Sharma internal memo [Quoted at 05:41]
  • "Would it have been that hard to find a leader who was a gamer?" (Linus, 21:06)

---

2. Live On-Air Team Wedding!

[23:53–34:44]

• Surprise Event: During a sponsor segment, Dan interrupts with a wedding kit; DMS and Mochi (team members) hold a real legal wedding live—Linus, Luke, and Dan serve as witnesses.
• Hosts’ Reaction: Genuine shock and amusement, with Linus thrown off: “That was very real…I wish I’d dressed up a little bit, but nobody told me.” (Linus, 32:19)
• Memorable Moment: “You’re such an observant person, I’m so proud of you. Are you getting married to me?” – Linus joking to Dan (23:51)
• Aftermath: The team gives wedding gifts; acknowledges it’s the first time for such a real-life event on air.
• Quote: “Anyone who thinks men shouldn’t cry at weddings can go f— themselves.” (Linus, 37:05)

---

3. DLSS vs FSR vs Native Rendering – Shocking Results

[47:06–61:47] & [138:51–141:56]

• Main Topic: ComputerBase’s blind test—DLSS 4.5 upscaling chosen overwhelmingly as best image quality over both FSR and NATIVE rendering in 6 major games.
• Results:
  • DLSS: 48% of vote
  • Native: 24%
  • FSR: 15%
  • ~13% found them equivalent
• Hosts’ Takes:
  • Linus: “The sheer volume of voting and the overwhelming preference for DLSS is kind of blowing my mind.”
  • Luke: Not surprised, credits Nvidia’s years-in-the-making strategy and developer/tools ecosystem.
  • Ethical Concerns: Luke worries about the eventual obsolescence of enthusiast hardware if streaming/upscaling fully dominates.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “Are you afraid to like it?” (Linus, 51:49)
  • “The hardware, it's already happened. Nvidia set this course years ago…” (Linus, 52:34)
  • “Clairvoyant when it comes to seeing where the winds are blowing…they nailed it.” (Linus, 53:09)
• Deep Dive/Related Segment:
  • YouTuber 2kliksphilip’s video shows DLSS plausibly reconstructing 4K images from as low as 38x22px. Host reactions: “You could totally play that—that’s nuts.” (Luke, 140:06)
  • LINK provided in chat.

---

4. RAM, Hard Drives, and Storage: Scarcity & Skyrocketing Prices

[41:08–43:43] & [76:19–83:19]

• Context: Steam Deck availability hit by storage shortages. WD’s hard drive capacity sold out for 2026—cloud/AI demand is 94% of their business, consumer only 5%.
• Personal Impacts:
  • Linus: “SATA SSDs are actually cheaper than NVMe right now out of weird stock lag.” (41:02)
  • Dan: “My NAS is nearing its five year mark…I’m gonna be poor.” (80:07)
• Speculation: Uncertainty as to whether situation will normalize; Linus muses about the nature of tech market bubbles—if the “bubble pops, it’ll be free RAM for all.” (83:22)
• Quote:
  • “Hard drive prices have surged nearly 50% in the past five months… AI data centers have just soaked up all the production.” (Linus, 78:28)
  • “If you owe the bank $20k, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $20B, that’s the bank’s problem.” (Luke, 85:27)

---

5. Tech Ownership and Privacy Trends

[63:45–76:19]

• NAS/Personal Data Movement:
  • Increasing normies now moving to self-hosted storage for privacy, not just enthusiasts. Linus: “I think having your own NAS is going from a thing that weird pirates do to a thing that’s just normal.” (75:48)
• Privacy Concerns:
  • Luke: “I don’t want my kid photos harvested for AI or my family targeted because I deleted a bunch of selfies.” (73:29)
• Shifting Attitudes: Both see the private/home tech wave growing due to cloud distrust, AI data use, and company closures (like pet microchip registries leaving pets untraceable).
• Quote:
  • “Owning your own stuff is shifting from paranoid people…to normies.” (Luke, 72:07)

---

6. Other Notable News & Hot Takes

• YouTube/Discord Outage & Data Leaks: [154:17–156:26]
  • Discord’s age verification system shown to be broken; YouTube partial outage briefly discussed.
• Meta “Immortal Grandma” LLM Patent: [145:28–146:21]
  • LLMs proposed to simulate deceased/inactive users’ social profiles. Linus: “Last thing I want is fake-real conversations with my relatives.”
• Military Software Lock-in: [146:53–149:17]
  • F-35 jets described as “jailbreakable” and subject to US remote-kill switches. Both hosts appalled: “The last thing I expected was military aircraft with the same remote lock issues as a John Deere tractor.” (Linus, 148:54)
• EU Headphone Chemical Study: [152:10–153:09]
  • Some knockoff headphones shown to contain hazardous plastics; AirPods Pro 2 and Sony rated safe.
• Zillow’s WoW Stunt: [132:33–135:12]
  • WoW player housing launch coincides with a fictional “Zillow for Azeroth” site.
• Pet Microchip Registry Collapse: [127:54–130:58]
  • Serves as a warning about trusting cloud/third-party systems for what should be personal records.

---

7. Community, Merchandise, & After Dark

• Store Updates, Old Hoodies, Schrodinger’s Cat Patch: [97:55–101:18]
• Viewer Q&A:
  • Advice on teaching kids “real” OS—make it fun and purposeful. (“They just have to have a reason to learn it.” – Linus, 159:04)
  • Age verification & privacy: “No one can solve age verification safely, so just stop doing it.” (Linus & Luke, 162:05)
  • Tech nostalgia/Pokemon tangent: Extended segment on favorite Pokemon, evolution, and game design. [104:33–121:36]
• After Dark:
  • Hillary on deep privacy, piracy, and kink tangents (FinDom/“glucose guardian” etc.)
  • Final merch messages and NAS advice—avoid SAS drives unless they’re a screaming deal.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Are you afraid to like it?” – Linus evoking anxiety about DLSS being “too good” for hardware tinkerers [51:49]
• “Anyone who thinks men shouldn’t cry at weddings can go f— themselves.” – Linus, after officiating [37:05]
• “Owning your own stuff is shifting from paranoid people to normies.” – Luke on the rise of the self-hosted movement [72:07]
• “Would it have been that hard to find a leader who was a gamer?” – Linus on Xbox [21:06]
• “They nailed it. And now everyone else is playing catch-up.” – Linus about Nvidia’s DLSS strategy [53:09]
• “Nvidia sees gaming as their birthright at this point. And f— anyone who tries to take it from them.” – Linus (95:31)
• “Hard drive prices have surged nearly 50% in the past five months…” – Linus [78:28]
• “How did we accept that it’s okay to have a remote kill switch in our military jets?” – Linus [149:00]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Xbox/Phil Spencer Retirement: 02:18–21:44
• Surprise Wedding Live On-Air: 23:53–34:44
• DLSS vs FSR vs Native Blind Test: 47:06–61:47
• DLSS/2kliksphilip Demo: 138:51–141:56
• Storage Shortages (Consumer/RAM/HDD): 76:19–83:19
• NAS/Self-Hosted Ownership Trends: 63:45–76:19
• Meta “AI Grandma” Patent: 145:28–146:21
• F-35 Software Lock: 146:53–149:17
• EU Headphone Safety Study: 152:10–153:09

---

Flow, Tone & Personality

• Language/Delivery: The episode retains a playful, sarcastic, and irreverent Linus Tech Tips style (with plenty of meme references, mild cursing, and side tangents).
• Speaker Attribution: Quotes and strong opinions are always clearly sourced to either Linus or Luke (and in some cases, their guests).
• Listener Utility: The summary flows logically with headings per topic, ample timestamping, and a balance of news, deep-dive analysis, and personality-driven debate. Information on the surprise wedding and after-dark tangents set this episode apart.

---

Conclusion

This WAN Show episode whiplashes from major industry disruption and the future of PC gaming, to the emotional high of a live in-studio wedding, to dire warnings for consumer storage and privacy—all reinforced by the hosts’ trademark blend of expert analysis and off-kilter banter. Essential listening for enthusiasts concerned about the future of gaming hardware, tech ownership, and the evolving corporate landscape in technology.

---

(For links to referenced videos, check the official VOD and WAN Show doc)

Transcript

[Linus]

Welcome to the WAG show. It's the year of the horse, baby. And we got a great show for you guys today. There's big changes at Xbox after nearly 40 years. Phil Spencer is out at Microsoft. So we'll be talking about that. We'll also be talking about how gamers apparently overwhelmingly prefer DLSS over FSR and in some cases over native. Is that. Could that be right? What else we got today?

[Luke]

If you didn't like GPUs being up, if you didn't like RAM being up, well, you're not going to like hard drives being up. Hard drive capacity for Western Digital is sold out for 2026.

[Linus]

That's more sold out than Linus from Linus Tech Tips. Got him.

[Luke]

I don't know.

[Linus]

Oh, come on. Come on. There's no way Colton's team has everything sold out through the end of 2020.

[Luke]

Wouldn't be surprised if they're close.

[Linus]

There's no way. Don't make me call him.

[Luke]

And. And speaking of. No, I don't have a transition for this. Google suddenly carries about IP theft when it applies to them, I guess. And no one else.

[Linus]

The show is brought to you today by our wan takeover partner forum. Do I just say their name more times? Thorum. Thorum. Also our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Razer, and our chair partner, also Razer.

[Dan]

That was only three.

[Linus]

One more. There's one more.

[Dan]

You gotta say fourth time.

[Linus]

Laptop chair and Thorum. Thorum again. That's too many.

[Dan]

That's seven.

[Linus]

That's too many.

[Dan]

Take one back.

[Linus]

Okay, there you go. There. Fixed. We're back contractual. We removed one of the Thorum logos. Now everything's kosher.

[Luke]

Speaking of removals. Yeah.

[Linus]

Big changes at Xbox. After nearly 40 years with Microsoft, including 12 years leading the company company's gaming efforts, Xbox chief Phil Spencer is retiring. Now, before we go any further, Luke, I think asked the big question on all of our minds before the show started, and I wasn't sure what to say.

[Luke]

I don't remember how I phrase it, but, like, what do we think about this? Is this good? Is this bad?

[Linus]

Are we mad? Are we happy? I mean, 12 years at Xbox, oversaw a lot of Xbox. A lot of really good and a

[Luke]

lot of really bad.

[Linus]

A lot of really, really, really not good.

[Luke]

Unfortunately, mostly really bad.

[Linus]

Well, especially if we factor in, like, the recency bias of it. Yeah, things haven't done.

[Luke]

That's the thing that I'm struggling with.

[Linus]

Yeah, things haven't been good lately, but

[Luke]

what Halo game came out 12 years ago.

[Linus]

But give me a second here, give me a second here because as much as things have been kind of bad for the last little while, things might get worse. So let's get through the rest of the, you know, the notes here. CEO Satya Nadella announced the departure in a memo to all staff earlier today, thanking Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership. Phil Spencer will remain in an advisory role through the summer to support the transition, and Spencer's time at Microsoft taught him working on everything from Encarta. Now that's a name I've not heard in a while. Remember The Encyclopedia on CD Rom and Mississippi works in the early years to the two and a half billion dollar purchase of Mojang Studios in 2014, which seemed crazy at the time but ended up being like the smartest thing maybe ever, and their $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023. Xbox president Sarah Bond is also leaving the software giant to begin a new chapter. According to Spencer, Asha Sharma, current president of the core AI product, will be taking over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming. The look on your face is priceless. You look like you smell a turd. You look like somebody smeared dog on your microphone and you just caught a whiff of it.

[Luke]

It's just.

[Linus]

Sharma left a marketing role at Microsoft in 2013, returning in 2024 and away from Microsoft spent time as Meta's VP of product and engineering and later as Instacart's COO. The Verge notes that Sharma is not a gamer like Phil Spencer, but does have consumer experience. That should help with leading such a large division of Microsoft. Okay, the memoir. Okay, just calm down.

[Luke]

I'm reading the internal memo.

[Linus]

In an internal memo. Let me. Let me read the memo. You don't read so good.

[Luke]

That is rude.

[Linus]

In a tin ernal mno, Sharma stated, sorry, I'm trying to do it like you.

[Luke]

Oh my God.

[Linus]

In an internal memo, Sharma stated, I got.

[Luke]

I got it.

[Linus]

We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox, starting with console which has shaped who we are. I assume the console. It connects us to the players and fans who invest in Xbox and to the developers who build ambitious experiences for it. Microsoft's video game revenue dropped by about 10% year to year in the December quarter compared to a 17% increase company wide. But it doesn't appear that Sharma will be pushing for a short term fix, stating as monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will Be art crafted by humans and created with the most innovative technology provided by us. Matt Booty, previously head of Microsoft's gaming Studios, has been promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer under Sharma. So huge AI background.

[Luke]

I always liked that Phil Spencer was legitimately a gamer. Yeah, I thought it was good. While I did think there was a lot of missteps, the naming of the consoles was actually so insanely bad that I think it genuinely significantly negatively impacted sales

[Linus]

and the brand. It just makes you look like incompetent dunderheads.

[Luke]

Yeah, and like we knew this from Wii U when like a massive percentage of people thought it was just like some add on thing for the Wii and didn't realize it was a new console. Like you actually need to name things properly and they just didn't forever, which was crazy.

[Linus]

The wildest part is whether it's within the same vertical or even sometimes within the same company when it's so clear by the overwhelming, incredible success of simply named products that are easy to understand their positioning within the product stack. See PlayStation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Simple iPhone. Okay, there's been a little bit of confusion in there, but generally speaking, for

[Luke]

the most part they've stayed true.

[Linus]

Yeah, we've got the 3Gs in there and we got the X10, whatever you want to call that. There's been the odd weird one.

[Luke]

They would deviate a little bit here or there, but they'd come back.

[Linus]

But in general we come back to higher number, more better, easy to understand. And then you'll have Microsoft with just the most bass ackwards naming scheme that I think probably exists in technology. And then even Apple themselves, where you have this completely indecipherable iPad naming scheme, for instance, where we start getting into like a J129 model year. What? Just, Just put a number on it. My God, just put a number on it. Please just tell me what generation of product this is. And yeah, sorry I hijacked your point. So there's been missteps, right?

[Luke]

There's been, there's been a considerable amount of missteps. But at the same time

[Linus]

it would

[Luke]

be really reassuring when like you'd hear that story of people that were like trying to camp him in Fallout 76 and he'd just like fight back. Like he, it was like, okay, I

[Linus]

could kind of feel like he's one of us. Yeah, a little bit.

[Luke]

And it did feel like while there were missteps, he was probably trying to steer in the right direction, I think maybe.

[Linus]

I mean, there's been some big. There's been some really big missed, really big missteps. I mean, I don't think Game Pass is ultimately turning into what we were sold. We were sold an incredible value. And I think what we're getting is you'll own nothing and be happy.

[Luke]

Can I make a really weird take here? I mean, I don't think Microsoft intended Game Pass to be what it is now. I think they wanted it to stay cheaper. I think they wanted it to do a lot of things. And I think user behavior wasn't exactly what they expected. I think developer behavior wasn't exactly what they expected. And I think their franchises didn't do what they expected.

[Linus]

That's fair. I think they thought, see Starfield.

[Luke]

Starfield. Like, I. I looked into, you know, what game released the year Phil Spencer took over. It was Master Chief collection. So it's like, okay, that's not really fair. Terrible, horrible. Legendarily bad launch. But same year he joined, I don't know. The next One was Halo 5 Guardians. Oh, I played that here. I don't know if you remember that, but I had to do a controller review of, like, the first elite controller, I think.

[Linus]

Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Luke]

So I went to Willow and I rented it and then used some Xbox we had here and I played it up in the conference room upstairs over, like a weekend to, like, play the heck out of the controller. And I remember finishing that campaign and just being like, oh, as like a massive fan of the first three games. Halo died because Bungie left, not Phil Spencer, imo. Sure. If you look back at the history of what happened there, they hired people that didn't like Halo intentionally.

[Linus]

Yeah, it's kind of like. I mean, and I hate to beat this dead horse, but it's kind of like what happened to Star Wars.

[Luke]

It's almost exactly like what happened to Star wars because Star wars did the same thing. They intentionally hired people that did not like the franchise and that because they're like, we're trying to make something different that doesn't. You can make something different while hiring people that like the franchise.

[Linus]

Here's my worry here. So. So, I mean, Phil Spencer's legacy is absolutely complicated.

[Luke]

Very complicated.

[Linus]

He oversaw incredible innovation. I mean, like, let's not overlook some of the really cool stuff that Microsoft did. They were at the cutting edge when it came to accessible technology for games.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Like, genuinely really amazing controllers.

[Linus]

Wow. I mean, I cannot sing Microsoft's praises loud enough for what they did to make gaming more accessible for people with physical disabilities and other Challenges. And they really pushed the envelope in a way that couldn't possibly have paid off in money. Maybe it was, you know, the cynic in me goes, well, maybe they only did it because, you know, they were hoping for the positive press around the brand or whatever, but I don't actually think so because it seemed like a genuine, earnest effort to make gaming for everyone. And I just. I thought that was so incredibly cool. So I don't.

[Luke]

So based.

[Linus]

I don't want to take anything away.

[Luke]

And that cost a lot of money.

[Linus]

Oh, real money. Actual real money.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

But then there's no question that they just couldn't. It's like.

[Luke]

It's like they had cooked multiple franchises. They closed studios that made amazing games.

[Linus]

It's like the. It's like the, the. It's like the driver was using one of their controllers with. With Drift and they just couldn't aim anywhere but down at their own feet sometimes. You know, like, you just. They couldn't stop themselves from owning themselves.

[Luke]

I'm genuinely not confident that I could get the Xbox models in the right order right now.

[Linus]

Really?

[Luke]

I'm not 100% confident that I could.

[Linus]

I mean, that's not. That's not that hard. You've got Xbox. Yeah, Xbox 360.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

Xbox One.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

And then what?

[Linus]

Xbox One X.

[Luke]

Is that true?

[Linus]

And Xbox One S. Okay. Yeah.

[Luke]

And then is it series? Then you've got an Xbox series S and series.

[Linus]

Yeah. Okay. I think. Did I get them all? I think I got them all.

[Luke]

I would have forgotten Xbox One, but I mean, if I saw the names, I think I would have gotten that in order, if that was correct.

[Linus]

Yeah. Like, it's comically stupid, but I mean, anyway, so back to your point. As complicated as his legacy is, for exactly the same reason that, you know, I don't love non Star wars people being in charge of Star wars, and I don't love non Silicon people being in charge of Intel. Yeah, I don't love non gaming people being in charge of gaming.

[Luke]

And I'm not saying there's no chance. I'm just concerned.

[Linus]

Well, it's. It's extremely interesting.

[Luke]

I do really appreciate that one line. We're not going to fill it with AI slot. Coming from the AI side of things. They needed to say that.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

They probably got some PR thing that was like, hey, you need to say

[Linus]

this, but hear me out. In that same sentence, right?

[Luke]

In that same sentence, monetization and AI evolve and influence this.

[Linus]

No, no, no, no. Hold on. This. No, no, just this Sentence games are and always will be art crafted by humans. Okay. Doing really good here and created with the most innovative technology provided by us. What innovative technology? Okay, hear me out.

[Luke]

You know, I've noticed a problem. I. I like watching a bunch of YouTube and I.

[Linus]

That one's for the millennials.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, that was pretty good. I like watching a bunch of YouTube and I've noticed that especially a lot of history videos.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Have started a lot of AI slop showing up. AI generated picture slideshows with an AI voice. And I'll notice, like, a few minutes in, I'll be like, there's not really breaks between sentences and like, starting to get a little sus. Because AI voices are pretty good when they're really tuned in. And I'll scroll down into the comments and you try to search like, did anyone else kind of pick this up? And you control F for AI and you get 10 trillion responses because it's like part of different words and stuff. It's. I feel like it's convenient that it's just AI.

[Linus]

I. I ended up on tech talk TikTok tech for the first time in several years because we're doing another trying TikTok hacks.

[Luke]

Like, you saw it?

[Linus]

Like, like, I saw TikToks.

[Luke]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke]

Is that what you're saying? What, what are you saying that you appeared on there or you looked at it?

[Linus]

No, no, I was looking at it.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was. I was. We were doing another. Reacting to. To TikTok tech hacks. And so Adam curated a bunch of, like, shockingly large popular creators. Shockingly popular pieces of content that are just either AI slob with like, tens of thousands of hearts but, like, bad, like, wrong advice that you should never follow, or people who seem to be just. As a. As an agent. As a human agent for their AI puppet master, regurgitating AI garbage. That is stuff that no one should do. And like, I can't believe how. How much of it goes to your point unchallenged or. Or is not easy to tell that it's fake and that it's just garbage. I.

[Luke]

An interesting thing too, is there was a thread on the. For. On the Reddit.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Where somebody was like, is this true?

[Linus]

I think you got to say the subreddit. Otherwise you're at risk of sounding like you consulted the Google.

[Luke]

Sure, yeah. Sorry, I don't. I don't read it that often. The subreddit. I only go to ours and it's not even ours. And that's confusing and blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Old man yells at Cloud.

[Linus]

Nice.

[Luke]

But I went to the subreddit and. And there was a read of somebody who saw some article that was like, I don't remember. I'm going to misquote it. But like HP abandons Windows or something like that. And they're like, is this true? And it was like. Or it was a video or something. I don't remember what it was, but it was like very clearly AI generated junk. It was not true. And the comments like, roasted him for it.

[Linus]

And I feel like we're falling the right thing.

[Luke]

I feel like we're falling back into shaming people for falling for scams.

[Linus]

No, he did the right thing to ask.

[Luke]

Yeah. This is the worst memory recollection of all time.

[Linus]

Oh, you have. You ain't seen nothing. This man can tell me what happened.

[Luke]

Then tell me what happened. Huh?

[Linus]

Huh? We should get a. Doesn't remember. No, I'm good. I don't. Don't touch. I like this one. I like this one. I like. Doesn't know. But yeah, no, we need to. We need to support each other rather than attack each other for seeking truth in a sea of AI slop. So let's all. Let's all form an alliance. We'll make a pact that that's how we're going to respond to people asking about AI with kindness and with compassion. Okay, cool. Good chat. Why don't we jump into another topic?

[Luke]

We are done with this one. The conclusion is basically just, I have no idea.

[Linus]

We'll see how it goes. But I don't have it. Honestly, there's no. Okay, okay, no, you know what? We're not done. Because to me, the frustrating part of bringing in a non gamer is not that I think there's. It's a guarantee that they'll do a bad job. Yeah, I'm not a fashionista, but I think that I have done a good job of trusting the team at Creator Warehouse to do a good job of that part of it while also providing the financial backing and creating an environment that gives them the resources to. To create quality products. See, I'm more focused on like, how long does it last? Can I throw it in the tumble dryer? You know, these things that I know matter to our customers and then their job is make sure it, like, looks cool and

[Dan]

is.

[Linus]

Is not going to, you know, it looks professional at the office and, and addresses the. The little details that I would overlook because that's from my background.

[Luke]

But Phil, being a gamer theoretically helps him understand what our customers want. You being dialed in with the audience helps you understand what our customers want. Yeah, I don't know that she is dialed. Maybe she is. I have no idea. But her not being a gamer makes me question so if she's dialed into that audience.

[Linus]

So I'm not saying, I'm not saying that they're gonna screw it up. I'm just saying, would it have been that hard to find a leader who was a gamer?

[Luke]

Doesn't feel like it.

[Linus]

Like everyone games now. Would it have been that hard?

[Luke]

To me, it's the main reason why I cringed when it said, like, oh, she came from an AI area in Microsoft is that just seems to be the path now. Like, if you're a corporate jockey in Microsoft, you're just getting yourself into some form of AI something, because that seems to be the path to everywhere right now, which doesn't seem good. And you know, maybe this is pattern recognizing when there is no pattern, but

[Linus]

I mean, it seems kind of like a pattern.

[Luke]

Seems likely.

[Linus]

All right, let's jump right into our next topic here.

[Dan]

A sponsor read.

[Linus]

What?

[Dan]

And you got to do the sponsor read.

[Linus]

You can do whatever you want.

[Dan]

Down, down, down, down to the sponsor reads.

[Linus]

All right. The show. Oh, no way. Oh, wait. Yeah, no, nevermind. Okay, which one? Oh, okay. In 2012, husband and wife Caleb and Steph Martin started a business based on Caleb's passion for making custom rings. And today, that legacy lives on as thorum. They handcraft wedding bands from materials like meteorite, whiskey barrel, dinosaur bone, and more. And Thorium has recently started to make minimalist watches as well with Hawaiian koa wood and California redwood. Don't know your ring size. Thorium has ring sizers that come with a 20% discount code for when you're ready to pop the question. And they have over 10,000 five star reviews. Whether you need a wedding ring, an anniversary ring, or you just want a ring that looks awesome, head over to thorm.com and use code WAN. Speaking of rings, what is happening right now? Does anyone hear that sound? What is. What is going on? What is happening? What is happening right now? Something's happening. I was just handed a thing. This is a thorum box. This is. This is extremely confusing to me right now. I see DMS is here. What do you think is happening right now? I think you're getting married. You're such an observant person. I'm so proud of you. Are you getting married to me? I mean, I wasn't. You shouldn't have. Uh. Okay. This has never happened on Wencho before. Nobody told me. I'm so underdressed. Where do I go? What do I do?

[Dan]

If you guys just scoot your chairs back a bit.

[Linus]

You guys are going back. Okay.

[DMS]

Watch out for her.

[Linus]

Efficient.

[DMS]

Oh, she's pretty critical to the process.

[Linus]

Yeah, okay.

[Luke]

Sorry.

[Linus]

We need the efficient. Because otherwise it wouldn't be efficient. You not being aware of what was happening was pretty critical to the process. But your business team is amazing. I'll go here.

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

Okay, I'm here. Does anyone need this?

[Luke]

Well, I figured you guys are gonna

[Linus]

hold on to those for a minute.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus]

Here, you wanna join us in the middle here?

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus]

Here.

[DMS]

Trying to make some space.

[Linus]

A little bit of shuffling.

[Luke]

Beautiful.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Surprise. You're a legal witness for words.

[DMS]

All right, all right. Welcome, everybody, to the marriage today. I see. It's quite a bit of a surprise. How exciting. But we're gathered at this place to witness a formal joining in the legal state of matrimony of this couple. According to order and custom prevailing and under the authority given and provided by me by the province. I charge with you both in the presence of these witnesses that if either of you do not knew. Or. Sorry. Do know of any legal impediment to this marriage, you do now reveal the same. So let DMS repeat after me. I solemnly declare.

[Linus]

I solemnly declare.

[DMS]

That I do not know.

[Linus]

That I do not know.

[DMS]

Of any lawful impediment.

[Linus]

Of any lawful impediment.

[DMS]

Why I. Why I. DMS DMS May not be joined.

[Linus]

May not be joined.

[DMS]

In matrimony.

[Linus]

In matrimony.

[DMS]

To Mochi.

[Linus]

To Mochi.

[DMS]

Let Mochi repeat after me. I solemnly declare. I solemnly declare. That I do not know. That I do not know. Of any lawful impediment. Of any lawful impediment. Why I. Why I. Mochi. Mochi. May not be joined. In matrimony. May not be joined. In matrimony. To DMS To DMS. All right. The I dos. Do you, DMS Take Mochi to be your lawfully wedded wife? To undertake and to afford the love of your person, the comfort of your companionship and the patience of your understanding?

[Dan]

Oh, I very much do.

[DMS]

Do you, Mochi, take DM Else. To be your lawfully wedded husband? To undertake to afford the love of the person, the comfort of your companionship, the patience of your understanding? Hell, yes. Now, you let the couple want to join hands. Repeat after me. DMS I call on those present.

[Linus]

I call on those present to witness

[DMS]

that I To witness that I. DMS DMS Take.

[Linus]

Take.

[DMS]

Mochi.

[Linus]

Mochi.

[DMS]

To be my lawfully wedded wife.

[Linus]

To be my lawfully wedded wife.

[DMS]

To have and to hold to heaven.

[Linus]

To hold.

[DMS]

From this day forward.

[Linus]

From this day forward.

[DMS]

In whatever circumstances.

[Linus]

In whatever circumstances.

[DMS]

Or experience.

[Linus]

Or experience.

[DMS]

Life may hold for us.

[Linus]

Life may hold for us.

[DMS]

Mochi. Repeat after me. I call on those present. I call on those present. To witness that I. To witness that I. Mochi. Mochi. Take.dms take.dms to be my lawfully wedded husband. To be my lawfully wedded husband. To have and to hold. To have and to hold. From this day forward. From this day forward. In whatever circumstances. In whatever circumstances. Or experience. Or experience. Life may hold for us. Life may hold for us. Great. In as much as you have made this declaration of vows concerning one another. Let's get the ring, shall we? The very important rings. All right.

[Linus]

We need to switch because that one's. Yeah.

[DMS]

All good. Let DMS Place the ring on the third finger of Mochi's left hand. Repeat after me. With this ring.

[Linus]

With this ring.

[DMS]

As a token and pledge.

[Linus]

As a token and pledge.

[DMS]

Of the vows and covenant.

[Linus]

Of the vows and covenant.

[DMS]

Of my word.

[Linus]

Of my word.

[DMS]

I call upon those present.

[Linus]

I call upon those present.

[DMS]

To witness that I. To witness that I. DMS DMS do take thee.

[Linus]

Do take thee.

[DMS]

Mochi.

[Linus]

Mochi.

[DMS]

To be my lawfully wedded wife.

[Linus]

To be my lawfully wedded wife.

[DMS]

All right. Let's do.

[Linus]

Okay.

[DMS]

Let Mochi place the ring on the third finger of DMS Left hand. With this ring. With this ring. As a token and pledge. As a token and pledge. Of the vow and covenant. Of the vow and covenant. Of my word. Of my word. I call upon those present. I call upon those present. To witness that I. To witness that I. Mochi. Mochi. Do take thee. Do take thee. DMS DMS to be my lawfully wedded husband. To be my lawfully wedded husband. We'd like to just look at one another and repeat. Both of you at the same time. In receiving this ring.

[Linus]

In receiving this ring.

[DMS]

I promise and give.

[Linus]

I promise and give.

[DMS]

To you.

[Dan]

To you.

[DMS]

The truth.

[Luke]

The truth.

[DMS]

The unfaithfulness. Of my life and marriage.

[Linus]

Of my life and marriage.

[DMS]

Good. Now. For as much as DMS And Mochi. Have consented in legal wedlock. Have declared your solemn intentions in the company. Before these witnesses. And in my presence. Have exchanged these rings. As a pleasant of your vows and each other. Now. Upon the authority vested in me by the Province, I pronounce you as duly married. You may kiss your bride. Congratulations.

[Linus]

Well, we just met, but congratulations, dude. Thank you.

[Luke]

Wow.

[Linus]

Thank you.

[Luke]

Congrats.

[DMS]

And to the witnesses.

[Luke]

Thank you.

[DMS]

You're welcome.

[Luke]

We'll get out of your hair.

[Dan]

We'll let you resume the show.

[Linus]

All right. Congrats, guys.

[Dan]

All right, I'm going to squeeze around.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're good. Oh, I'm taking my butt.

[Linus]

Sure, yeah. Give me that. Actually. Sorry.

[Dan]

Can I hold that footy there?

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Okay. Here, let me get the chair out of the way.

[Luke]

Right.

[Linus]

All right, Sam, you. Way to go. All right, everyone get mad at me. Okay, Here, I'll go. Sure, go. Here.

[Luke]

I won't block this.

[Dan]

Sorry, guys.

[Linus]

All right.

[Luke]

Three.

[Linus]

One, two.

[Luke]

Thank you.

[Linus]

Fantastic. All right. Congrats. Congratulations. There it is. Bye. Well, that's the thing. That's never happened before.

[Luke]

Does that mean we're all invited to the reception? I think that means you're all witnesses.

[Linus]

Wow. Just so we're clear, like, that was very real.

[Luke]

Oh, that was 100% real. Yeah.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Legally binding.

[Luke]

Yeah. We both just fully attended a wedding.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

That was a real wedding.

[Luke]

So did Dan and so did all of you.

[Dan]

Yeah. Everybody here. Yeah.

[Luke]

First on wan show that

[Linus]

there has gotta be a story here.

[Luke]

It was so hard to not laugh the whole time. Cause I looked over at you, and you were. I could watch your brain as every single step progressed. You'd just be like, really? And then I saw at one point in time, you were like, wait, this is really long. For, like, a bit. And then you're like, wait, does that mean it's real? And then, like, some step happened. I saw your face just go, like, no way. I was watching this, like, all this computation happen in Linus's head. And that was. That was so entertaining the whole time.

[Linus]

Wow, that's so cool. I. Very, very honored. I wish I had dressed up a little bit, but nobody told me that was the whole.

[Luke]

That was the whole point.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

Yeah. I was supposed to have a dress shirt under my jacket, but then I left it buttoned on the hanger, and I. And I only had the ad spot to try to get it on, so I was, like, trying to unbutton it the whole time. Ran out of time. Just threw the jacket.

[Linus]

So this is.

[Luke]

This is my undershirt.

[Linus]

All I saw. I saw Sammy come in. I saw Luke start changing his clothes. And I was reading about husband and wife, Caleb and Steph and whatever, and I thought maybe there was, like, a Funny thing that Luke was gonna do that involved him being dressed up. Then I saw Dan whip the zoom for the main camera and I was like, okay, what are we doing?

[Dan]

I had so many cues to hit in like five seconds.

[Luke]

Did you not notice?

[Linus]

Was it you on the boom mic, Dan, or was someone else back there?

[Dan]

That was that Jordan. That was.

[Linus]

Sorry. Jordan block.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Nice. Solid. Okay.

[Luke]

Did you. Did you not notice anything about me?

[Linus]

I. I mean, I noticed you changing.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus]

You're like wearing fancy shoes. Even.

[Luke]

I have cologne on.

[Linus]

Yeah. I would never in a thousand years notice something like that.

[Luke]

I thought you would have actually, because I'd never wear it.

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

Okay. I thought I was going to give it away the whole time in the

[Linus]

pre show, you know, you did your hair.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

So that was something. But you occasionally do that.

[Luke]

Sometimes I do that, yeah. I didn't think the hair was going to get.

[Linus]

Every once in a while. It happens.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I didn't think bearded less often, especially not at the same time. That should have been a clue. Sometimes he'll clean up the beard, sometimes he'll clean up the hair. Very rarely on the same week.

[Luke]

Yeah, I was trying to. I like color matched a bunch of things. The jacket was hanging there the whole time. I thought, oh, are they still here?

[Linus]

I think they're busy.

[Luke]

I have wedding gifts.

[Linus]

Yeah, and I didn't. I didn't get them anything. What the heck? Oh, man, I can't believe that just happened. I thought this was Chinese New Year.

[Dan]

That's good. That's good.

[Linus]

Was that. Was that the scam?

[Dan]

I don't think so.

[Linus]

Like, was that what people. Cuz when is Chinese New Year? It's. It's soon, right?

[Dan]

I think it was this week.

[Linus]

Hold on. Chinese New Year? Oh, yeah, yeah, it was three days ago. It's. It's right now.

[Dan]

Perfect.

[Linus]

Like, it's totally. It's totally Chinese New Year right now, I think.

[Dan]

Right?

[Linus]

Blah, blah, blah. Tuesday, February 17, 2026. And that's the beginning of the year of the Fire Horse, which lasts until February 5, 2027. Celebrations, including Lantern Festival, typically run for 16 days, ending on March 3, 2026. So I was like, yeah, this. This totally checked out. I just didn't understand. So this is why you guys are memeing earlier? Because I was all like, you. You said something to Sammy about how like, yeah, didn't you set it up? And I was like, yo, he's Korean. What the heck? Anyway, so does that.

[Dan]

I actually didn't know that it was Chinese New Year. I Just assumed that we just had these. I know the red and white was intentional, but the rest of it, like, I don't know.

[Linus]

Well, I thought the red was because it's Chinese New Year. Like that's the thing. That's probably both. Yeah.

[Luke]

I think that's very funny.

[Linus]

So did Thoram sponsor the wedding?

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus]

That's cool.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

That's why it's a full takeover. Your business team did a good job. Yeah. Because there's actually been like a bunch of people in the loop on this for like a while.

[Linus]

What

[Luke]

Taren knows, I think probably like the whole business team knows.

[Dan]

Not everybody at the company.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Chewy says this may actually be the most genuine that Linus has been pranked on camera. Every prank on me on camera was genuine. So it's just whether, you know, it came across in the, in the edit or not is basically what it comes down to. Like when Dennis was living in my house multiple times, I did not know. I. I would never fake a prank. That is, that is. That should be a crime. That should. That you should go to YouTube jail for faking a prank like most pranks. Yeah, that's not. Okay. All right, so he's still there.

[Luke]

I couldn't find him.

[Dan]

All right, if you guys want to do another topic, I'll go have a look.

[Linus]

Listen, I will never deny getting teary eyed at a wedding. It's. It's a very emotional time and I cannot help but be happy for super cool people starting a life together. That's, it's, it's exciting and it's happy and anyone who thinks men shouldn't cry at weddings can go themselves. Yeah. I don't know how much we today

[Luke]

we can or should say, but I'm, I'm. I'm very happy for them.

[Linus]

I think it's their story. We'll let them tell the story in the way that they deem best.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Once they have figured out, you know, whatever it is that, you know, they're doing for, for right now, that is not in the public eye. No, that's not. Stop it. No, no, no.

[Luke]

I immediately smiled and looked at me.

[Linus]

No, because I realized. Because I just meant whatever they, whatever they, they can talk publicly about their personal lives when they're good and ready. That's what I'm trying to say. Stop it.

[Luke]

Yeah, sure, man. That's why they left so fast. They're just really excited to go talk about their. The rest of their personal lives

[Linus]

anyway.

[Dan]

Exclusive.

[Linus]

I mean, it wouldn't violate any rules

[Luke]

of the Platform technically. No all.

[Dan]

Why do you have to think they'd

[Luke]

have to make it artistic? No, no.

[Linus]

Why are we talking about this?

[Luke]

The payment processors.

[Dan]

Oh, that's right.

[Luke]

Yeah. So that's, that's why Lore for some people, that's why for a long time adult content creators on Patreon would do cosplay. That's why that was so popular for a really long time was because it was considered art. If they could put it under the cosplay category. Oh, there he is. There's thing. I have things for you.

[Dan]

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come and see you guys.

[Linus]

Okay. Yeah, congrats, dude.

[Dan]

Yeah, surprise.

[Linus]

Yeah, no kidding. Definitely a surprise.

[Luke]

Here, give me. Yeah, one sec.

[Linus]

Okay. They're off. They're off doing stuff over there. While they're doing that, why don't I talk through the cat patch hoodie or something or what should I do? Did we do the gamers DLSS topic yet? We did not. Did we do anything yet? Okay, why don't I do like a couple rapid fire things while they, while they chit chat. Steam Deck is getting pretty hard to get right now. Valve has added a note to the Steam Deck page saying that the handheld will be intermittently available in some regions due to memory and storage shortages. I knew that memory shortages were already having a significant impact on pricing and I knew that storage shortages were coming, but I didn't know how hard the storage shortages were going to hit and how suddenly they were going to hit. Yeah, we're working on a thousand dollar build video and Plouf Ploof did something that made me very upset that you know, I worked with him and tried to resolve and couldn't resolve. He used a SATA SSD in a build. I think that's the first time we've recommended a SATA SSD for any reason that in. In five years, maybe because there's no reason why it should be cheaper. Even because the part that costs more is the NAND Flash, but just I guess because the demand is a little lower and the stock is lagging, the increases in price or whatever. Right now SATA SSDs are anywhere from like 15 to like $35 cheaper than M2.

[Luke]

I absolutely see it making sense and

[Linus]

for gaming it doesn't really matter. So our thousand dollar build that's coming soon is going to use a SATA ssd. And to be clear, when I say that it made me upset, I don't mean like Plouffe made me upset. I mean he did the reality of the situation made me upset because we shouldn't be in that position. And yet here we are. Crazy. Yeah. For a boot drive. Yes. Scrappy DP for a boot drive. And I looked at the config with him and I was like, you nailed everything else and we've got a budget. That's the reality. In a perfect world, would I love to spend another $35 and have an NVMe drive. Yeah, but, and I've talked about this before, that's a slippery slope logic that takes your thousand dollar computer and makes it $1,200. If you spend another 30 bucks on every single component, you're not adhering to a budget.

[Luke]

And when does that stop?

[Linus]

And real people have budgets, and that's just the way it is. So we have to act like we have a fixed budget. So that's what we're going to do. It's still not quite $1,000. It's like $1,012 or something like that. But 10, 12 is $1,000. 1040.

[Luke]

Yeah, not really. Yeah, it doesn't feel.

[Linus]

That's 1050. That's not. Yeah, that's not $1,000.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if it was over 15, it starts to feel a little weird.

[Linus]

Oh, Yeah.

[Luke]

I think 15 is probably the line.

[Linus]

I think you could get away with 15.

[Luke]

I think you get away with it, but it starts to feel weird. 18, I think 12 is like an automatic. Yeah.

[Linus]

When you hit, when you hit 20, it's like, come on, man.

[Luke]

Yeah, come starts to get rough because

[Linus]

that's like, that's like a real bill, you know, like a $20 bill is like, no, no, I'm not gonna put that in my pocket. That one goes in my wallet. You know what I mean? Like $5 bill, like, yeah, that could be in my pocket. I might even put that in with the change drawer, you know, $10 bill, we're getting sketchy. $20 right in the wallet, no question. No question. Yeah. 20 bucks is lunch for sure. Is this financial advice? No, not financial.

[Luke]

Five goes in the car, 20 goes in the wallet.

[Linus]

I mean, yeah, sure, maybe in the 90s, 5 does nothing for the car now.

[Luke]

No, I think they mean like, oh,

[Linus]

I thought, like to fill your gas tank.

[Luke]

I read that comment for one, but for two, I think they mean like in the, in the, like, you know,

[Linus]

I get it in the change pouch.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

No, I thought like, I remember when money was tight, my dad putting five bucks in the gas tank, and I was like, dude, that was in like 1993. Not so much anymore. Yeah, sure, on a motorcycle, Chewy, but that's not what we're talking about. Our discussion question for this is, do you think the Steam Machine and. Or the frame could be delayed beyond Valve's current target of the first half of the year?

[Luke]

I heard the Steam Machine was.

[Linus]

No, no, it was still. So it was supposed to be early in the first half of the year, but they never actually promised anything other than first half of the year. And yeah, I do think that's possible. If they can't even get enough stock to make Steam Deck right now, like, how are they supposed to launch a new product? Because you're kind of damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If you delay it, people are going to be upset because you delayed it. But if you launch it and there's no stock and it's a whole scalping situation where let's say the Launch price is 999 and they're going for $2,500 on eBay. Because, you know, at the beginning they will. Because to someone for whom money is no object, there is nothing exactly like the Steam Machine. Tell me something that completely fulfills the function of the Steam Machine. Go. I'll wait.

[Luke]

Not that I'm aware of. You could. You could do it. You could make it yourself.

[Linus]

Sure. You're going to go get. You're going to go get an IR receiver and you're going to go get like some relay system that's going to turn on your TV and your PC and everything all at the same time. You're going to go. You're gonna make your own Steam controller with the touchpads. With the controller, yeah. What was Buddy's name we did that collab with recently? I mean, he made his own Steam controller. Alike with touchpads. He made his own touchpads.

[Luke]

Is the controller tied to the. Yeah, I guess the launch of that probably is.

[Linus]

Mm. Are you gonna work out a way to remotely power on and power off all of the stuff from the controller? Like there's a bunch of work that Valve did on the integration side of things that is completely separate from just how many FPS does it get? And sure, you could. You could just roll an Xbox or a PlayStation instead, but then you don't have Steam, you don't have, no offense, Microsoft and Sony, but you don't have good pricing on games. So to me, no, there is absolutely nothing. That is what the Steam Machine is. It's. It's completely unique in the market. And I think that regardless of the performance, there are people who are not going to be playing the most demanding games that just plain f ing want one and just have more money than cents and are just like, whatever, it doesn't matter. Or I shouldn't even say more money than cents. They might just have more money than they care about. They're just like, forget it, I don't care. I will just buy it. I mean, I've bought stuff that's a bad value before the work that I'm doing on my motorbike. It's a terrible value. Yeah, I could have bought a brand new motorbike and instead I'm going to be riding around on a 2003 with a paint job. That's insane. It is. Objectively, it's crazy.

[Luke]

Yeah, kind of.

[Linus]

But I love the look of it. I have a lot of memories on that bike. It's my first bike. It's still enough for me. It's 650cc, it's really comfortable. And I did the paint job myself, which I think is super cool. So I'll be like ripping around on my own paint job. Tommy B. It's Tommy B. Who did that. Team control. Super cool.

[Dan]

So

[Linus]

sucks. All right, what do you want to talk about next? Should we do the other big headline topic?

[Luke]

Yeah, let's hit it.

[Linus]

Let's do it. Let's do it. You guys might not like to hear this, okay, But I need you for one moment to just, just Here, just, just grab that and just.

[Luke]

What a chill pill.

[Linus]

Just take it and calm down. Go ahead.

[Luke]

Gamers overwhelm. See, I don't even. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. But listen to the title. Gamers overwhelmingly prefer DLSS over FSR. In a three way blind test over six games, German tech publication Computer Bases readers overwhelmingly found DLSS 4.5 upscaling to have the best picture quality over FSR or native rendering.

[Linus]

And that last one, that's the bombshell.

[Luke]

The native rendering is the. The games used for this test was Anno117, ARC Raiders, Cyberpunk, 2077, Horizon, Forbidden West, Satisfactory, and the Last of Us Part two.

[Linus]

Now that is also another huge bombshell. These are not just like Ashes of the Benchmark or like, or even Cyberpunk like games that are just overwhelmingly optimized for. Because they're the traditional showcase games and these are showcasey games, beautiful games pretty much across the board other than maybe satisfactory. But these are real games that people are playing. This is not like contrived yeah, and

[Luke]

all those real games are ran at 4K resolution with upscaling set to quality. Videos were played to. Were played to readers in Nvidia's ICAT player showing game clips rendered in DLSS 4.5 FSR and natively side by side. This is the. It's a video.

[Linus]

It is. But if anything, to me that is a disadvantage to dlss. It could be because DLSS when you're actually using it. Remember we're talking DLSS upscaling, not DLSS frame gen. Right? So there's no latency drawback of DLSS upscaling. If anything, the latency will be better because you will be running at more FPS because you're rendering at a lower resolution than upscaling it through machine learning.

[Luke]

It's just, it's a, it's just a weird note. Respondents could indicate whether they preferred or answer equivalent. So they could be like, ah, they're all the same DLSS one in every game. With an overall result of 48% of votes from a pool of 6747. Native rendering was also preferred over FSR in every game with 24% of the overall vote to FSR's 15. That doesn't.

[Linus]

So 15% of people preferred FSR or 15% of votes were for FSR. 24% of votes were for native and 48%.

[Luke]

Oh, there it is. 12.8% of the responses were equivalent between the three categories.

[Linus]

So just done care. One out of eight gamers was like, eh, whatever, whatever dude.

[Luke]

Responses weren't ranked. Respondents only voted on what they thought was the best video.

[Linus]

Now if these were closer. Okay, if it was like, you know, 20.

[Luke]

Yeah, the 48 to 24% gap.

[Linus]

25 and 25. Like I'm looking at it going like, okay, well you've obviously got a bunch of normies who literally can't tell the difference and then a bunch of other normies who literally can't tell that FSR doesn't look as good as native. Right. I'd be, I'd be ready to be pretty dismissive of it, but the sheer volume of voting and the overwhelming preference for DLSS is kind of mind right now. Like seriously, there is a lot of

[Luke]

variables at hold it was a video that was played, all that kind of stuff. But are you surprised by the results?

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

Yeah, that's the, that's the spicy part of this I was waiting for is, is we, we can nitpick how the, like, you know, how the, how the thing was done we can nitpick the science and I'm sure there's lots to be done there as there is with everything ever, but I'm not particularly surprised by the result.

[Linus]

Have you tried it yet?

[Dan]

No.

[Linus]

Is your gaming machine up and running?

[Luke]

It is up and running, but I've not tried 4,000.

[Linus]

You're on 4,000 series, right?

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

Yeah. So you can run it? I think. You have a 4080?

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

Yeah. Okay. You should try it like immediately. Are you afraid to like it.

[Luke]

A little bit? I was too, but not, not because of like, external perceptions.

[Linus]

Like, it's kind of like the, the first time that you, you know, try it with. No.

[Luke]

How. No, I don't, I don't think at all. My thing is that I'm worried about.

[Linus]

I guess. You knew you'd like that.

[Luke]

Yeah, my, my thing that I'm worried about is, is what this will do to multiple industries.

[Linus]

Oh, which industries? Hit me, Hit me. I'm ready.

[Luke]

Gaming hardware.

[Linus]

I'm ready. I mean, the hardware, it's already happened. Like Nvidia set this course years ago. Not just when they launched the 20 series, they set this course when they started developing the 20 series. Yeah, so this is like eight years ago or like nine years ago or something.

[Luke]

Nvidia really fast for this level of impact.

[Linus]

It is, yeah.

[Luke]

Eight or nine years for this level of impact is wild. Like, it's actually very wild. You look at, look at almost any other comparative industry.

[Linus]

However, it's also like damn near clairvoyant when it comes to seeing where the, where the winds are blowing within the tech industry and getting it this right. When, when it was in such early stages of development at that time, when the hardware didn't exist, when the software tools didn't exist, when it hadn't been embraced by game developers. You gotta give them credit. They nailed it. And now everyone else is playing catch up. Whether you like fake frames, whether you don't like fake frames. AMD and intel are all in on upscaling and frame gen. Now the warden

[Luke]

is kind of getting to my point. How are you fellows gonna pivot when consumer computing is completely gone in five years? This is kind of what I'm talking about is like the, and it's not even just the work. Right. We can actually do a lot of different things.

[Linus]

Oh yeah.

[Luke]

Where's a lot of the revenue coming from these days, that stuff? So like, you know, that's, of course, that's a little bit of it. But I'm worried about the hobby I've had For literally my entire, the memories that I have of my entire life is being interested in this hobby from before I was interested in this hobby. I don't remember anything. Like there's, there's like it's been forever and then there's what this will continue to do to the gaming industry. Gaming industry is in a really weird spot right now and I think this doesn't necessarily help.

[Linus]

So hear me out. We've had this conversation before but it always felt kind of like eh, sci fi and maybe someday and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And it always seemed kind of easy to dismiss, but I feel like it's time to have it again. If someone say Microsoft built a gaming experience that simply wasn't possible with many clients all over the world connecting to a central server to exchange game data. If they built a gaming experience that could only run on the big iron and that you remote into and it beams frames to you like a, like I know we've had massively multiplayer worlds, right. But I'm talking like a massively multiplayer world where it's just, it's just not even possible to run it on the client side anymore. Could you be convinced in this, in this hypothetical, you know, universe scale game where you know, everything is physics based and everything's persistent.

[Luke]

What happened to physics in video games anyways? That's a different topic but.

[Linus]

Different topic.

[Luke]

Keep going.

[Linus]

But, but let's say, let's say that by that by having like enormous banks of AI servers and crap, they could, they could model and simulate the world in a way that just wasn't possible to render locally.

[Luke]

I mean the more interesting part to me is the anti cheating that comes with that. Yeah.

[Linus]

Could you be convinced to cloud game to play that? Like let's say it was, it was a game that had a moment like Arc Raiders is having right now. Would you just be like, let's go. Would you be sad? Like tell me.

[Luke]

So far I've resisted. I haven't joined any of the subscription things. I haven't joined.

[Linus]

Oh, because you know it'd be a subscription. Yeah.

[Luke]

Oh yeah.

[Linus]

Because you're running on their hardware at that point.

[Luke]

Yeah, I'd like have to be.

[Linus]

Yep.

[Luke]

So I, yeah, I haven't joined Xbox Game Pass or, or the Ubisoft service or EA's thing or, or anything like that. Even when it probably made sense when I'd be like, okay, there's some new shooter coming out, maybe it doesn't even have a single player or I don't really care about the Single player for this one and I know my friends are only going to play for two weeks, so whatever. Really. Every single time. If I'm going to play that game, I've bought it. I have not joined the subscription services. I don't know at a certain point when there is no longer an option, which is the reality you're describing. Yeah, I don't know necessarily what I do there. I think there's definitely a lot of interesting aspects. The anti cheat is very interesting. Would you still be able to cheat?

[Linus]

Absolutely.

[Luke]

But the level of cheating would decrease and at least at the beginning, the barrier of entry would increase.

[Linus]

Like using, using machine vision to read a screen and literally a robot arm to move a mouse and operate a keyboard.

[Luke]

Oh, you can still digitally send inputs.

[Linus]

There's nothing. I just mean that that's sort of the. That's sort of the. The ridiculous lengths to which we could go.

[Luke]

And people have.

[Linus]

And people have gone.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

To make something that is completely undetectable by software.

[Luke]

But you could say yeah, yeah, yeah, because you can still read a screen and then snap to a head. But then like you said, still detectable by things, etc.

[Linus]

Yeah. So. So like you will never be able to compare completely eliminate people who are determined not to play the video games that they pay for.

[Luke]

But I think it would make it so that it's not like one per freaking lobby like some games are right now.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

So like that's. That is kind of exciting. But I, I don't think I'm romanticizing this. I think I'm always going to have a computer. There's like I, I spent the long. It's kind of funny, during the Renault, I spent the longest period of time in my life since I touched a desktop without touching a desktop because at work I had a laptop and I would take that laptop home to. I mean most of the time continue working. But also like if I play games or whatever, anything I did on a computer was on a laptop for a while.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And then I got my desktop back and it like shouldn't matter when you're connected to a dock. But like it does and I don't know why it does.

[Linus]

They're just not that fast.

[Luke]

I don't know like what it is.

[Linus]

I like, I daily a laptop right now for work. I don't have a work desktop right now and I haven't for like six months.

[Luke]

And there's just, there's just something about it.

[Linus]

Like I went to being a big

[Luke]

box on a desk and I don't Know why?

[Linus]

No, they're just. They're just. I don't know. They just.

[Luke]

Yvonne desktops just feel like they work better.

[Linus]

Yvonne always would talk to me about this, like, and I kept telling her it was her imagination because it doesn't make any sense, but she'd be like, yeah, no, laptops wear out. They just, like, don't work as good. After a while, I'm like, that doesn't make any sense because anecdotally, it's like. It just kind of seems to. It just kind of seems to happen. Whether it's the way that these mobile chips have a tendency to. To be very bursty in their performance or whatever it is, they just. Ah, man, I don't get it. I don't get it. Um, right now, it's an Elitebook X. Yeah. An EliteBook X G1A. It's a Strix Halo. So it's. It's like a $4,000 laptop that I would never buy because there's, like, things about it that are like. Like, broken level of stupid. Like, it has by default the screen ships at 40 hertz. I know, right? You can turn it up to 60.

[Luke]

What is it, an engineering laptop or something? Or, like, what, like an engineering sample? No. Why would it have a Strix Halo and a 40Hz screen? Is it.

[Linus]

It's a workstation. It's considered like a workstation.

[Luke]

Yeah. Okay.

[Linus]

Because it can be configured with up to 128 gigs of RAM, like Strix Halo, you know, tends to do.

[Luke]

Yeah. I was trying to figure out, like, what. What. What configuration ever would someone buy that thing in when it's 40 hertz? And then I was like, okay, maybe it's just for cat or something. And maybe they don't care. I'm not sure. Maybe they do care. Like, I feel like if I was an engineer, I'd be kind of annoyed that my screen's running at 40.

[Linus]

It can do 60. Yeah. But it's, like, super dim. Like, it's not. Like, you compare this to, like, a. Like a top. Top end MacBook right now, and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, not good. Not good. But, man, that Strix Halo.

[Luke]

But, yeah, I. I feel like I'm always gonna have a desktop, and if I'm the dude running a desktop off, I can only keep it alive through secondhand hardware because literally no one makes this stuff anymore. I feel like I'm gonna be that guy. And does that mean I'm just aging poorly or whatever? Maybe. Maybe when I'm 70 and I'm still keeping my desktop alive. I will be seen as aging poorly.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

But I don't think I care. I like my spot. I like having a desktop. I like how it works. And if that's the equivalent of having a Windows 98 machine now, I think that's still fine because I think having a Windows 98 machine now is pretty cool.

[Linus]

Yeah, I don't think it's gonna go away. Go away, because you're not gonna be the only millennial left in, you know, 30 years from now.

[Luke]

So I won't be 70, 30 years from now.

[Linus]

Well, I will.

[Dan]

Right there, buddy.

[Linus]

Yeah, like, I don't, I don't.

[Luke]

I'm just saying, like, and, and I'm, I'm. I'm giving a theoretical scenario.

[Dan]

Right.

[Linus]

And there's happens or not. And I, and I think that especially with how diverse the game development industry is even now, and I think will become. I mean, that's something you've talked about a fair bit. This, this splintering off that's happening right now from the big studios. You're going to have a lot of people who, in much the same way that game developers are spreading up, who are nostalgic for the rich single player, like pixel art, RPG experiences of their youth or whatever it is. Right. And are, are trying to make that but better and more modern. I think you're going to have people making games that are designed to be played from the client side.

[Luke]

There's always the indie space.

[Linus]

Yeah, but. And always. Yeah, sure. Always is a huge word, very loaded. Maybe it won't always, but in our lifetimes, I don't see the desktop completely going away. It might take on a different form. The kind that we use now might not make sense anymore. We're already seeing soldered memory make its way to the desktop, not because it's being crammed down our throats, but because it runs faster. Like, the fact that Framework went that route was pretty mind blowing to me. And the first thing I told them was like, hey, like, this is not that modular. And they're like, look, AMD literally like worked with us on this. You cannot build Strix Halo with, with memory modules and maintain the performance. And it's not that it needs it for the cpu, it needs it for the gpu. And the GPU is becoming integrated the way they are.

[Luke]

In a really weird way that happened,

[Linus]

we went from that conversation, right, where intel started talking about, you know, the IGPU on the CPU becoming like very powerful and an important part. And amd with their Fusion way back in the day and the CPU and the GPU becoming integrated and we all went yeah, but IGPUs are so crap. They're so bad. I feel like it just kind of, everyone was talking about it and it like definitely wasn't going to happen. And then there was a period of kind of quiet and then it just happened. Happened.

[Luke]

Here's a really how fine is the soldering on soldered ram?

[Linus]

That's not that bad. Bga, BGA RAM can be upgraded a lot of the time. The issue around both that and NAND comes down to like, like firmware, handling the firmware. But no one is going to build a motherboard that is designed to have the RAM desoldered and re soldered onto it willy nilly. And so because of that you're never going to get friendly firmware even from companies that do have the best intentions and you can make. There are boards that allow BGA chips to just be like, like, like bolted onto them. But they're for engineering. It's not practical. The interface is way too expensive and bulky.

[Luke]

Just trying to think like is it possible that's the return of like repair shops basically.

[Linus]

Oh yeah. Oh 100%.

[Luke]

It might not even be upgrading, but it might be replacing, fixing stuff like that.

[Linus]

Yep, a hundred percent. Right. The other thing I was gonna say is I think Strix Halo is just the beginning too. Because one of the things that was most exciting to me about Panther Lake was, was not. And, and this is why I think our Panther Lake coverage back at CES was so different from everyone else's. Because I was moderately excited to see intel return to competition in terms of battery life. Put out a really good igpu. Okay, no, I was more than moderately excited for the igpu, moderately excited for the performance gains and they moved some caches around and all that kind of stuff that they tend to do as they make a new chip. But what I was really excited about was the modularity of the underlying platform. Like they've got all of this stuff that they were talking about for years. Like foveros is like working, it's in shipping silicon right now we can just like take out. And they talked about using third party vendor ip. So the idea like holy crap, of getting something like the SOC on the Nintendo Switch, right, with like an Nvidia GPU, but like an X86 CPU and then like some custom, you know, AI tomfoolery over here and whatever they want over there and having like a, like a mega chip on something like a Framework desktop. Like a really compact desktop. Form factor. That's exciting. That's cool. And if they're able to do that not on a monolithic die. Right. But through packaging, then the yields might actually not suck. And the performance benefit of having it all tightly integrated might be worth the cost, maybe.

[Luke]

Here's an interesting comment from fartmuncher69420 in floodplain chat. Fartmuncher69420 says, I think enthusiasts will change to running servers inside their house instead of desktops, in my opinion. This is a really interesting comment because

[Linus]

we've talked about that before.

[Luke]

First of all. We have. Second of all, in my opinion, if you look at, like, tech media, what is the only thing that, like, really feels like it's growing right now?

[Linus]

Building, like, local AI crap.

[Luke]

Homebrew.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Or home lab.

[Linus]

Yep.

[Luke]

I don't know why I said homebrew, but, yeah, home lab and doing things like that. And that's a big part of the reason why I think it's growing. But also people are looking at, like, oh, man. Like, I've been mulling over this particular thought in my head for a while now. It's. It's this, like, you know, I'm not trying to be. I'm not trying to be a gray man. I'm not trying to.

[Linus]

A gray man.

[Luke]

Gray man, yeah. Where you, like, blend in with the crowd and, like, you're, You're, You're, You're. You can't. Like, you're all tactical, but people can't tell. I'm not trying to do that. I'm not trying to, like, hide from the government, whatever. But there's also, like, you know, I don't take a picture of my junk every time I go to the washroom and send it to you. So why should I share all my private things with Google and everybody else?

[Linus]

Right, Right.

[Luke]

So, like, there's people that are like, all right, there's a certain level of invasion of my privacy that is just like, dang, dude, maybe back off a little bit. So I think people are trying to split off from certain major services. Not out of, again, like, paranoia, oh, my God, I need to be ultra tactical. But it's just like, whoa, like, this is actually too much. I should probably own a little bit more of my data. I think these two things are happening at the same time.

[Linus]

We did an AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade, I guess we shot it a couple of weeks ago for Nate, one of our guys at Creator Warehouse. Did I talk about this last week? Cool. Okay, so. So we shot an AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade and one of the things that he wanted was a nas, which is like, yeah, sure, that's a thing that comes up on these AMD Ultimate Tech upgrades. But the difference is that Nate doesn't really do any video editing, doesn't really want a Plex server. He doesn't do the stuff that we typically think of people wanting NASA's for. And this was really cool and very exciting investment disclosure in S Tech, but they have gotten to the point where what he was after was quite literally a matter of like maybe 10 clicks to get image set up on his. Remember, Hexos is based on TrueNAS, so the underlying. The underlying system is TrueNAS ZFS. Good stuff. And he was able to get it set up with their pretty dashboard, get image installed and syncing from his phone in like I kid you not, about 10 minutes.

[Luke]

Nice.

[Linus]

With no trial and error and no BS. And that was what he wanted it for. He had a kid recently and he just doesn't want to upload to a cloud service. Yeah, because there's just. There's a freaking limit.

[Luke]

Yeah, like, it's. It's really not. It's not edgy, like, like you hear these stories. It's. Oh, man, this can make conspiracy theorists, like, so I'm not going to say

[Linus]

the word for it, but wet in the panties.

[Luke]

Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

[Linus]

Did I help?

[Luke]

But it's. It's not. It's not.

[Linus]

Why are they feeling like that?

[Luke]

It's not fear of the unknown, it's knowledge.

[Linus]

Did they see someone who's pro consumer?

[Luke]

Jesus Christ.

[Linus]

Jesus can't help you where we're going, brother.

[Luke]

It's not fear of the unknown. It's knowledge of what's happening happening widely. Right. Like you, you. This is an old story, but you hear about the Tesla stuff where they were like, sharing videos from inside of people's cars for fun on their slack. Like, yep, this is happening. We have accepted that even if a company is like, morally perfect, well, they're going to get hacked anyways. Like, it's. If your data is, is. Is just publicly out there, people are gonna get it. People you don't want to have it, will have it eventually.

[Linus]

And it's just like, realistically, most people probably not that important.

[Luke]

Yeah, but.

[Linus]

But it kind of does.

[Luke]

Maybe I still don't want someone seeing it.

[Linus]

Maybe that just sucks.

[Luke]

Yeah. Maybe that's actually an irrelevant part of this conversation.

[Linus]

Maybe we could just not. Yeah, that.

[Luke]

Because I know that gets brought up too and it's just like, dude, whatever. That doesn't mean I want. Yeah, I don't know, just owning your own stuff I think is shifting from paranoid people and hyper enthusiast land to normies to this is actually just kind of normal now.

[Linus]

Dude, I think that as cool as it was investing in Framework and as many good business decisions as I've made for LMG and mistakes, the investment in tech and the timing for hex OS is going to end up seeming like clairvoyant when they get their product out of pre release and like, dude, the timing like I think they're aiming for.

[Luke]

Sorry, I'm going to jump in while you find that dark guy said AI being trained on your junk for AI porn. See this is part of my problem though is like you hear stuff like that and it's like, okay, maybe I think he's probably joking. But I've, I've heard more recently that apparently one of the ways that they prey on women is they look for when you delete a bunch of selfies because it shows like a low self esteem moment and then they'll target you with ads for like makeup and cosmetic surgeries and stuff like that.

[Linus]

Seriously.

[Luke]

Seriously. That is so like maybe I'm just gonna host my own photos and you can actually off. I just don't actually want you involved with this at all. So there's a certain level where it's like, yeah, you're doing stuff with this information that is just not okay. And like, like that's, you know, self esteem issues in, in men and women are a problem. But I think it's pretty well known that like negative emotions and negative thoughts and self esteem issues like that are much more heavily present on with women. And it's just like, I don't know, get out of here. So if I can help solve that by like hosting it myself. Yeah, okay, maybe I'm gonna do that now because I'm tired of this stuff and I think a lot of other people are tired of this too. I think Instagram was doing that too. Yeah, I don't, I don't necessarily know.

[Linus]

So here it is. Q1 of 2026. By March 31, 2026 we will have 1.0 of hexos which will include the local UI. That people were rightly upset wasn't initially planned for the launch. Q1 of this year.

[Luke]

Yeah, and that's awesome. And if you don't want to go that route, there's tons of other routes as well.

[Linus]

Yes, lots of other options. What I love about this one is the philosophy of making difficult and secure and robust simple.

[Luke]

But if you decide you're going down this route regardless, you can go that route and skip the steps. Or there's a massive, extremely vibrant community around doing it for free as well. Yes, level one forums is really good for it. There's stuff on, I mean there's stuff on the line of executives forum lots. There's stuff on Reddit everywhere. There's tons of YouTube creators. There's tons of people all over the place that would be more than happy to help you solve these things. The discord age verification thing, people are posting about that as well. Like this is. Yeah, this is just another example of like this to me is very clearly within the law, mass data harvesting and it's just everywhere now and it's just too much. Just tired of it.

[Linus]

I think I don't have much more to say. I think, I think having your own NAS is gonna go from a thing that weird pirates do to a thing that just is like a normal thing that people should do if they care about the privacy at all.

[Luke]

I wouldn't be surprised maybe, maybe I'm being too in our own bubble about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if, if in a certain amount of time it's like weird if you don't have some form of your own owned large storage.

[Linus]

I mean it's going to get hard with. What was it, was, was it WD who said all of their.

[Luke]

Hold on 26. Yeah.

[Linus]

Hard drive.

[Luke]

Yeah, it's only in a bubble there.

[Linus]

You know what, let's jump right into this topic then. Hard drive capacity for Western Digital is sold out for 2026. WD CEO revealed during a company earnings call that they're pretty much sold out of HDD production capacity for all of this calendar year with firm purchase orders from their top seven customers. WD has also signed Long Term Agreements LTA's with two customers that extend into 2027 and one into 2028. This demand is driven almost entirely by AI data centers. Cloud revenue now accounts for 89% of WD's total revenue, while consumer revenue has shrunk to just 5%. Let's take a moment and wrap our brains around that. And obviously it doesn't quite work like this, but at the Western Digital factory, okay, as the drives are rolling along the conveyor and dropping into the bucket at the end of the conveyor, those drives, they're all done now. One out of 20 is destined for a consumer, what, 19 out of those 20? So for every hard drive you see in a consumer system shipping today, 19 more are going elsewhere, with 18 of them headed to the data center, to the cloud. Hard drive prices have already surged nearly 50% in the last five months, according to Tom's Hardware, following a similar pattern to RAM and nand, which are also in shortage because of the current AI build out.

[Luke]

Yeah, I figured this out unintentionally. I was trying to help someone configure a build and the performance, like, was not very important, so I actually recommended the core. Most important thing was hard drive, so I recommended to get a hard drive. We checked the used market because of course. And I was like, oh, everything's really high. I feel like these are just like people expecting too much value because, like, the used market around here is.

[Linus]

I know what I got is not.

[Luke]

Yeah. The use mark around here is not always super vibrant for everything. So it's like, okay, let's. Let's jump on stores. Because I've seen literally during Scrapyard wars.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Where it's actually cheaper to just buy a new drive sometimes, which is whack.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Like that has happened. So like, okay, let's just jump on the stores. Then I was like, what is going like, why are the hard drives so expensive? And then I started diving into things and I was like, oh, no, it's coming again, isn't it?

[Linus]

I found three WD greens, two terabytes each from. Just to give you some idea of how old they are, they have archived footage from when we were at the Langley house on them. They were the old cold storage drives.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

So each of them only has, I think, around a few dozen power on and off cycles and like a couple hundred power on hours. I bet those are worth close today to what they were worth then, which

[Luke]

is so messed up.

[Linus]

Completely wackadoodle.

[Luke]

Dan, chime up. Say it.

[Dan]

Yeah, sure. I didn't want to interrupt.

[Luke]

No.

[Dan]

But yeah, my NAS is there, nearing their five year. Kind of scary. And I have five, 15 terabytes in there. I'm gonna be poor.

[Luke]

How much is that gonna run you right now?

[Linus]

Oh, my God, Luke.

[Dan]

Please check.

[Linus]

Luke.

[Luke]

I'm working on it.

[Linus]

I have a WD green is worth 80 bucks for a two terabyte. That's nuts. Okay, so no, they're not as bad as they would have been like 12 years ago or whatever, but that's too much to be paying for a two terabyte drive.

[Luke]

You said 15 terabytes, Dan.

[Dan]

Seagate Barracuda is what I have in there, right now or exos something like.

[Linus]

Oh, God, it might be the same thing. Exos were like, kind of cheap for a bit. Okay, okay. In fairness, four terabyte drives are around the same price. Here's one from Seagate for 90 bucks.

[Luke]

He needs 15.

[Linus]

No, no, I don't. Talking about those stupid greens.

[Luke]

Is this a phase where you would expect to upgrade? Are you looking for 20s?

[Dan]

If there's 20s, I didn't do the math recently because power on hours weren't getting too crazy. But, like, I gotta think about it. I was looking at SSDs and remortgaging my left kidney.

[Luke]

Yeah, that's so.

[Linus]

Yeah, 18s for like a red Pro NAS drive is $400.

[Dan]

That's probably cheaper than it used to be.

[Luke]

I'm seeing 4 to 4 to $700, depending on the models.

[Dan]

Yeah, that sounds about the same, but

[Luke]

I'm also not seeing 15s.

[Linus]

The sweet spot seems to be a little higher than 15 right now. The 20 terabyte is 420. Nice.

[Dan]

Okay, so I'm fine then.

[Luke]

Sick.

[Linus]

You're fine?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Oh, really? You're Good.

[Luke]

You're buying 15. How many of those. I mean, that's still.

[Linus]

That's still two grand. And this is US dollars, sir.

[Dan]

Okay, that's because I remember paying about 400 bucks a drive five years ago.

[Linus]

Yeah, sorry.

[Dan]

Canadian.

[Luke]

I'm seeing. On the Canadian site, I'm seeing Ironwolf Pro 20 terabytes for 600 bucks.

[Linus]

Okay, that's not that far off. He's getting 30% more capacity for about 30% more. It's not better. It's not like it used to be. It's not like it used to be.

[Dan]

The price was always the same where

[Linus]

the price would always go down per gigabyte. But we talked about this. It keeps coming back to that bloody video I made where I was like, YouTube Premium should cost more money or whatever. What did I. What was the premise of that title? But basically I was like, hey, look, you got to understand, Moore's Law is dead. The law of storage being cheaper is dead. This platform costs more and more and more and more to maintain the more people use it. Something's got to give.

[Dan]

Well, it looks like I'm not as homeless as I thought I was going to be.

[Luke]

Just a little bit.

[Linus]

John McGee, 1996 asks, Is this gonna get worse or is there any indication of balancing out type of situation? Hold on, just give me one second. You can't see it, but this is just gonna polish my ball here. Gonna gaze into it.

[Dan]

Consult the orb.

[Linus]

We're going full gaze here. I don't know,

[Luke]

I thought you were gonna give some whole impassioned speech about trying to tell the future and stuff

[Linus]

and then I don't know.

[Luke]

That was good.

[Linus]

Like. And the thing is I, like obviously I was kicking myself for not just stockpiling a bunch of dram. Right. But I've been in this industry for so long. Do you how many times I've heard drams going up? It's going up and like what, for a month or two? It'll trend up for a little bit, maybe for a quarter or two, but it always comes back down because at the end of the day, you know, it's people who, they earn their money working on all the forecasting for all this crap years in advance that mostly have done a pretty good job over the years of predicting where demand and supply is going to go and making sure that they're striking a balance between maintaining the profitability of their fabs and also not oversupplying or not under supplying the market. Making sure that they can supply all of their business, their big customers, including direct to consumers. And I don't think there is a precedent for them it up this badly. Nobody saw this boom coming. And there is no quick fix. There's no like, oh well, let's just, you know, I'm trying to think of a game where you were built. Yeah. Anno. There's no ano. Just plopping down a new fab and then you just run a little road to it. And now the supply chain is fixed. It just doesn't work like that. So I don't, I don't know because the, the bubble could pop and if

[Luke]

the bubble pops, all these purchase orders just be sitting there.

[Linus]

They, as far as I can tell, they, they like what do you, what are you gonna do? Like, what's that, what's that famous saying, if you owe the, the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem.

[Luke]

If, if you, if, if you owe the bank, if you have a loan from the bank for $20,000, that's a you problem. If you have a loan from the bank for $20 billion, that's the bank's problem. Yeah, it's not the exact quote, but something like that.

[Linus]

It's something along those lines. And in the same way, if this whole thing just crashes, there's literally going to be no one to fulfill this one trillion dollar RAM order or whatever magic on, on paper money has been exchanged in advance or whatever commitments have been made. So if anything, there will be a huge crash in the pricing of this stuff and it'll be, it'll be free RAM for all. But when that will happen, I have no way of knowing if any like from my point of view and I'm just, I'm not a finance guy right. Like I'm, I'm. I'm a tech nuts and bolts guy. From my point of view we should have all figured out that this is not going to result in the kind of, the kind of revenue generation that would justify the investment that's going into it ages ago. We should already be there. So I'm just sitting here going well can I stay solvent longer than the market can stay irrational? The answer is no.

[Luke]

Yeah. Dan, check your email. Full point chat's cooking.

[Linus]

Are they finding them deals or.

[Dan]

I think I might actually just need four which is kind of nice.

[Linus]

Sick.

[Dan]

Oh get shocked. Sounds like a great idea.

[Linus]

Mega Cuel asks hey question are tariffs responsible for this consumer hardware shortage at all or is it really just because of stupid AI? Just a tariffs aren't helping.

[Luke]

Yeah but it's a shortage globally.

[Linus]

Yes. So like tariffs are not helping. No I can tell you that much but the shortage is. Is a much more macro problem that is not to do with a tantrum that a particular world leader is having at a particular moment.

[Luke]

Does this affect you guys as a channel? Absolutely. In like every day, so many ways. Constantly and every day. This hobby has never been more difficult to get into.

[Linus]

No, I actually will say that ring true. It's never been more frustrating to participate in. Yes, I'll say that.

[Luke]

Yeah it was definitely a lot more difficult to get into in the like

[Linus]

much more further past in the 80 days.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Like where would you find resources to learn to build And I mean there

[Luke]

was laptops that were $3,000 in like the early 90s.

[Linus]

Yeah. You go way back to like the hobbyist days.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And I mean so never mind.

[Luke]

Ignore that part.

[Linus]

Even from a pricing standpoint it sucks right now. You can still buy a sick. I mean I told you we've got that thousand dollar gaming PC video coming. You can still buy a sick gaming PC for $1,000. We went to David and I this video is coming out really soon. I talked about about this one. We went to Costco and we brought a. We bought a great computer for like 1250 US or something like that very capable little gaming machine AM5 like like modern platform gaming machine with was a night 9600. I think it was the, I think it was the XT9600 XT. Perfectly cromulent gaming card. I played some Expedition 33 on it and I was like, yep, this is a gaming PC. And that's really great. It's really amazing that you can get into it like that. But it's also really frustrating that we had it so good for so long and it feels like it's been torn out of our fingers. And the reason. The reason is the hard part. Like, if Moore's Law was just dead and everyone was doing their earnest best to overcome it and the answer was fake frames, I think everyone would go, okay, sure,

[Luke]

but not everyone but I.

[Linus]

Yeah, not everyone but you. I think you get what I mean.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus]

But if the reason that this stuff is not affordable and the reason that we're going the direction that we're going is because, you know, I don't know you, Sam Altman needs more ram, then I think that's a lot harder to swallow. It's a lot harder to be passionate about, to get excited about.

[Luke]

I also think that, I mean, if, you know, if. If companies like WD are having 5% of their revenue be consumer and you see more patterns like what Micron did happening where these, Where these traditionally known in the Western market brands. That's how I'll say it, start kind of exiting. I'm not saying Western Digital is exiting, but Micron did for reasons that Western Digital is experiencing. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to see other brands do a similar thing. I think maybe in a really weird way, one of the saviors of the desktop PC market might be China.

[Linus]

Oh,

[Luke]

because there is a consumer market.

[Linus]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely.

[Luke]

So, like, if certain brands are just going, well, all the money's in data center. Well, that's not true. It's just there's a crazy amount of money in data center. So, like, I don't know, somebody's gonna step in and there's a lot of very hungry Chinese companies trying to get into computer components.

[Linus]

So, like, I think it was a hardware unboxed that made a video on one of the Chinese DRAM companies. Hardware unboxed. CM RCX rather. Hold on. Cxmt xmt ymtc I think one of them did a. Yeah. 32 gig. King Bank, KFRW DDR5 6000 CL36 Soar Blade Cxmt review. Hardware unboxed. And it was like, fine. I guess that could help. But I. I don't think they have a ton of capacity. At least not right now.

[Luke]

Not right now.

[Linus]

Not right now.

[Luke]

I'm not talking about right now, but

[Linus]

that's the thing about China is how, how long did it take them to

[Luke]

build hospitals during COVID like days or something? China Builds Hospital in 10 days.

[Linus]

That was nuts.

[Luke]

That is nuts. That is nuts. And this is a different type of scaling and a different type of building and all that kind of stuff. But like if there's opportunity there, somebody's going to chase it. And if the traditional brands are going data center, that doesn't mean consumers are out of the market. Right? We're still here, there's still a big market, we're still hungry, we're interested in things.

[Linus]

There's still billions of dollars to be made selling to consumers and I think

[Luke]

consumers are probably less loyal than Data center is. If Data center uses something and it works. Oh dude, that's where you have all those quotes of like nobody was fired for buying IBM.

[Linus]

Yeah dude. AMD has been, well okay, it's not as cut and dried as AMD has been better than intel in, in server for years but they've been a very compelling option compared to intel for, for years and years now. And how slowly that market share shifts compared to consumers who seem to be able to are willing to pivot a lot faster. It's not, it's less relationship contract forecasting driven. It's more like I go and I see what's, what's good right now. It's like recommended by my enthusiast buddy. I want more FPS, you know, like it's a very different decision making process.

[Luke]

Super Wisk says how long until Nvidia just gives up on GeForce? I don't think they will and my reason for that is largely geopolitical really. I think they are much more geopolitical than a lot of the other brands. I think, I think in my opinion Nvidia is extremely invested in Taiwan's market dominance and wants to hold themselves there.

[Linus]

But why do they need gaming for that?

[Luke]

Because I think they would take anything they can and if they can take Data center and gaming and anything else, I think they'll grab it and hold on to it.

[Linus]

I think they will continue to make gaming GPUs but for a different reason. I think that for many years the gaming R and D fueled the Data center products and now we're seeing that kind of flip around where the Data Center R and D on things like machine learning is fueling advancements on the gaming side. But I, I think it's less about geopolitics and I think it's less about Taiwan and for me I think it's more about tradition. I think there's at least as long as Nvidia's leadership remains as it is. I think there's a lot of ego and a lot of pride and I don't necessarily even mean those in really negative ways. I think that GeForce dominates gaming is a point of personal pride and, and part of the origin story of Nvidia such that if this is definitely part

[Luke]

if not the majority of it, if

[Linus]

anyone were to challenge Nvidia in what has been traditionally for the longest period their stomping ground. I think Nvidia sees game, the gaming market as essentially their birthright at this point and f ck anyone who tries to take it from them. I think they would, I think they would cut open their money bags and bleed it rather than lose their dominant market share in gaming quite frankly because we've seen them do it. When AMD was competitive they were willing to do anything. Sometimes it wasn't even just to sell more GeForce, it was to just over anyone who tries to dare sell a graphics card. And, and I don't even necessarily, again I don't even necessarily mean that in like a negative way. I mean that in a highly competitive way. They've done stuff that I would describe as anti competitive. But what I'm talking about right now is the competitive spirit of Nvidia and sometimes that competitive spirit can lead them to do things that are anti competitive. But it's not what I'm talking about right now.

[Luke]

Also feels like, yeah, I mean I think this is fair. It feels like they have more of that than a lot of companies. Nvidia feels very rah rah.

[Linus]

Oh yeah. I mean I think Jensen takes it personally when like he loses market share.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And like actually and that kind of passion is important from a leader. It's probably not a small part of Nvidia's ongoing success. I mean point at a company that has executed so consistently for like 20 plus years. When was it Nvidia founded? It was like 1990.

[Luke]

People also like notoriously don't quit and like they have this internal culture of like education and cl, internal classes that you can take and stuff because they feel. Yeah, it's all very interesting. I don't want to, I don't want to glaze Nvidia too much when they do a lot of things I don't like.

[Linus]

But yeah, I mean you can't deny that they're winners.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Speaking of winners, you can be a winner by learning about Checkout messages or comms. Sorry, it took me a second to remember what they're called. Now.

[Luke]

The way to interact, the mark of a great name.

[Linus]

The way to interact with the WAN show is of course not. Not through super chats, not through Twitch bits, but through checkout messages. We believe that when you throw money at your screen, you should get something in return. And in our case, it's high quality merchandise from lttstore.com and the product we're launching this week is Kind of a Funny Story. Do you want to bring up the page on the site? This is called the Schrodinger's Cat Patch hoodie. Shout out to Matthew on the fashion team for coming up with the name because it's kind of genius. There may or there may not be an LTX logo under the cat patch. You can't see it, which means it's in a state of superposition until someone does something to test that theory, which we would strongly advise against because it would mean that your cat patch is no longer on your hoodie. If you've been around since the LTX days, you will recognize the tie dye base of this particular hoodie. This is officially the last of those. Finally, we're done. And for anyone newer, it's our 100% French Terry Cotton hoodie. Soft, breathable, structured. And now featuring this Schrodinger's cat patch on top. You can find it live now at LMG GG catpatch hoodie. So the reason for these is that our first batch of LTX 23 hoodies had the LTX logo crooked. It was aligned to. And you know what, seriously, our printer has done so many perfect prints for us over the years that I don't even, I don't even blame him because it was aligned to something. But then something about the way the garment fit meant that when you wore it, it was like angled. It was angled off the relative to the floor. And so we had to reprint all of the hoodies for the show. Like I think it was like three or five days before or something like that. I can't remember the exact timeline, but we had to reprint the hoodies. And then we spent years trying to figure out what the heck to do with those hoodies. No, the logo was not sewn on, it was silk screened. So the cat patch being sewn on is, is new. It's an upgrade. Look at this quality cat patch. I think this was Lisa's handiwork. Isn't it adorable? Anyway, it took us until now to figure out what to do with them. So this is your last chance to get the tie dye hoodie, and it has a cute little cat patch on it. And Luke showed you guys how to find it on the site. And next he's going to show you guys how to send a merch message. All you. He won't. He won't do that. I'm sorry. He will not do that. Oh, crap. He will show you how to send a comm. A checkout message. Bloody hell. Okay, all you got to do is add anything to your cart. Say, for example, the off site laptop bag in a small size, cool, neat view cart. And there it is. The checkout message interface that will go to producer Dan, who will put it up on stream or he will respond to it, or he will curate it for me and Luke to respond to. Dan, should we show them a couple checkout messages and show them how it works?

[Dan]

Yeah, I've got a couple here. Let's have a look. Hey, Dll question for Linus. Do you guys have a product list? From oldest to newest would be useful for my project.

[Linus]

We are launching a new version of the site. I believe in Q2. I think that's the current roadmap. And then once that's done, we're going to be working on a product archive. And once that's done, we're going to be working on a way to allow people to kind of vote maybe once a quarter or a couple times a year on the top products they'd like to see us bring back. Because I know it's been an ongoing problem with LTT Store that we're always moving forward, never restocking things that are gone. And I think that's something that would be a way for us to kind of meet in the middle. Because we can't carry every product that we ever made. That's not really realistic. But we can bring back some if there's enough demand for them.

[Dan]

Luke Nukem.

[Linus]

That's a. The shirt. Oh, that one's not coming back.

[Luke]

No.

[Linus]

You should have gotten one when you had the chance. I wear mine, actually quite regularly on weekends.

[Dan]

So, like, not every product will be available to vote on. Then your super special ones, it would be there.

[Linus]

But that's never gonna win.

[Luke]

It's not gonna get enough votes.

[Linus]

Yeah, we did rig it.

[Luke]

We saw the sales numbers.

[Linus]

We did not sell many of those.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Hey, Luke, Linus and Dan. Hello from Adelaide. Adelaide, Australia. What do you think of the new Pokemon Fire Red leaf green release for switch and switch two. News that dropped in the last 24 hours.

[Linus]

Did they seriously not put a space between two different words, Fred? So this is the Colton edition. And that's.

[Dan]

That's just a good joke. And Leaf Green. Yeah.

[Linus]

I don't know. What are they. Are they games? Are they the same game again? Pokemon Fire Red version capture wild Pokemon and recapture the nostalgic feel of the Game Boy Advanced system when the Pokemon Fire Red version and Leaf Green version games return for the first time in over 20 years on the Nintendo Switch. Also playable on Switch 2. Just in time for Pokemon Day. There's a lot to unpack here in these Nintendo Switch versions of the 2004 Remakes of the first Pokemon games, Red and Pokemon Green. So this is so sorry. These are just so.

[Luke]

I understand, halfway to Skyrim right now.

[Dan]

They're your toaster.

[Linus]

These are remakes of remakes.

[Luke]

It's a $20 GBA game, and every language is a unique listing on the Eshop.

[Dan]

So you really do have to catch them.

[Luke]

All emulators win again. I guess there's like, no way this is not one of the most easily emulatable games.

[Linus]

I don't know, man.

[Luke]

I've never done it, but I have to imagine it's like, brain dead easy.

[Linus]

Pokemon Blue Master race. That's all I have to say about that. Never cared about red or green.

[Dan]

Sorry, there's another Pokemon comment here somewhere.

[Luke]

Green. It was, wasn't, Wasn't. Like you're talking about the previous era.

[Linus]

Oh, I'm talking about, like, original Game Boy.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wasn't. Wasn't green, like, not a North American thing. I thought it was, like, Japan only or something.

[Linus]

Maybe. All I know is Pokemon Weird Rumor is the only Pokemon game I ever played. And from every conversation that I've had with a Pokemon fan about it, those are your choices. They were like, yep, you had the experience.

[Luke]

Yep. Good job.

[Linus]

And I played it on a Game Boy color emulator, so I, like, got to see it in color, I think. Or was it.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Linus]

It doesn't really matter. You don't even need my nostalgia glasses say it was in color. Sure. It might not have been.

[Luke]

You're right. Green was Japan only. Yeah. Okay, cool. So for us, it was. It was just. It was just red and blue, and then yellow came out, and that was, like, weird.

[Linus]

And yeah, Grell Wing says real Chad's played yellow, but, like, yellow wasn't out yet, so I was just too OG for yellow.

[Luke]

So that's why I said it was weird. Red and blue were first.

[Linus]

Whatever.

[Luke]

I still have my cartridge of blue.

[Linus]

Nice solid blue homies.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I got a follow up Pokemon question for you both. Seriously, I think. Yeah, well, I mean, might as well have two. Everybody seems to be care about Pokemon today.

[Luke]

Yeah. What's going on, Luke?

[Dan]

Do you like Pokemon? I think you like Pokemon.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Okay. Hi, Wancho. Question for Luke. What is your favorite Pokemon? Are you looking forward to any potential announcements for the series 30th anniversary?

[Luke]

No, I'm not looking forward to any announcements. I know that might suck but like I don't tend to like the mainline games anymore. I actually don't even like the game that I play. I think Pokemon Go is just like objectively a pretty bad game. Other than the fact that it tends to usually incentivize going outside. And there's so few things that do that on your phone and I think that is super, super cool gamifying. Going outside is fantastic.

[Linus]

While you finish this up. I gotta go use water gun.

[Luke]

Sounds good. But the, the concepts around how the PvP works I think are terrible. I think the rating system is in a lot of ways really bad. I think the max battle system is terrible. I think how they deal with catching, especially things that you technically paid money for in some way is horrible. I think their event management is just trash. Like in so many ways it's a terrible, terrible game. That sucks. It's one of the reasons why when people are like, oh, you have to have remote rating because of like people who are immobilized. It's like, okay, I would highly recommend playing anything else because it's a terrible game. I guess I'm supposed to look over here. Sorry. If you're stuck at home, there's like near infinite other things you could play that are just better. Like you don't need to spend money, an extra amount of money to be able to play from your couch. To be able to play a bad game from your couch. The only good thing about Pokemon Go is that it gets you outside and then it gets you moving. So if you can't do one or either of those things, just play a better game. I would highly recommend playing just a. Just a definitely better game. That, that's my main stance there. The mainline Pokemon games I bought whatever it's called, Scarlet or something. Oh man. Because I bought it, I've been kind of like forcing myself to play. When I play on my switch, it's starting to get better. The beginning was really, really slow and it's starting to get a little bit better. But still it's like I don't know is different. It's an open world game in a more real way than the original Pokemon was. I don't think they're that great. Hot take. I love Za. I haven't played those ones. I haven't played a ton of them. I don't have really great takes on it. But anyways, in terms of announcements, I'm not particularly excited. I think people in the indie scene that are making semi ripoff things are doing a much better job with the Pokemon IP than Pokemon is. I think that game Pokemmo or whatever, that was a long time ago where you could play in your browser and it was. Was like an MMO of Fire Red or something and you could see all these trainers around on the map. I'm wondering if fullplane Chat's going to correct me on the name, but there was a pixel art game of Pokemon that was an MMO that I believe was in your browser. And that was like super cool and really fun and really hype and then Pokemon killed it. Palworld was like a really interesting take on Pokemon that was actually really fun. Multiplayer in the same world.

[Linus]

Wow.

[Luke]

How has that not really been a thing having your Pokemon be able to like work with you to build things like super cool. I think an actually official one for Pokemon would have been way better and not having the guns and stuff. I think it actually would have legitimately been better. I think Palworld needed to do stuff like that in order to not infringe too much. So hooray. That was definitely the right choice. But I would prefer to just play a first party one that was actually well made but none of them exist. But yeah, people are saying Pokemmo. So yeah, apparently that. Let me see if I can find it. Poke mmo. What if there's still more? Oh, they have a website still. What the heck? Are they still alive? Wild. I thought they got like banned off of the everything. But yeah, like these, these experiences made by others have been better. So no, I'm not particularly interested about announcements. Favorite Pokemon Kadabra. My reason for that was I never traded back in the day when I had my, my Pokemon Blue. I think I like we didn't have a link cable or something. I don't remember but never really traded. And I remember above Misty's Gym you cross the bridge, you go to the left and then you come back down there's this patch of grass and if you go up and up and up and up, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. Up, down. My brother told me you could catch an Abra in there. So I would go do that and I would finally catch an Abra and then if you do the. The old brutal exp. Trip trick where you have to send the Abra out first and then swap out to something that can tank it and you eventually get a Kadabra, that Kadabra will just hard carry you for like the entire game. Kadabra is sick. In those old games, I found a lot of the Pokemon that you either needed to trade to evolve or that you had to get in weird ways. Were some of my favorite ones, like Gyarados getting that Magikarp from the. From the guy who thinks he's scamming you and then you turn into a Magikarp. Fantastic Pokemon. Kadabra. Machoke, Graveler.

[Linus]

Why do you keep going for like mid tier evolutions of these?

[Luke]

Explaining. Because I. I think we didn't have a link cable or something, so we couldn't trade to those ones. Required a trade to evolve. Oh, it's the only way to do it.

[Linus]

Well, you could get him a champ.

[Luke]

No, I don't think so.

[Linus]

No. Am I wrong? I'm pretty sure I don't.

[Luke]

I thought you had to trade it.

[Linus]

By the way, weren't you gonna ask me if it's very effective?

[Luke]

Was it very effective?

[Linus]

Was very effective. Super effective even.

[Luke]

Very good. Very good. He went.

[Linus]

Am I wrong? They were trade only.

[Luke]

Trade only? Yeah.

[Linus]

Really? Yeah. Oh, I must just remember fighting them or something. In fairness.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

This was like 25 years you would have fought them.

[Luke]

I think there's a gym leader that has them or something.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke]

But yeah, Machoke, you need to trade in order to get him a champ. But then it would just give them a champ to the other person. Yeah, you could trade it back. But like, I don't know. Kadabra. In order to get Alakazam, you had to trade. In order to get Golem, you had to trade a Graveler. Those are the three that I really remember. Yeah. The other really cool one. Oh, yeah. Gengar. That's why Haunter is my favorite one out of that chain is because to get Gengar, you had to trade. So I always really liked Haunter. That's why my one laptop was called Haunter and not Gengar because Haunter is my favorite one because I never was never able to trade up. And Haunter is also incredibly powerful in those games because Ghost is just like immune to a ton of attacks, which is crazy.

[Linus]

It wasn't a particularly balanced Game?

[Luke]

Not at all.

[Linus]

It was more about selling toys.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kadabra has always been my favorite one. He's my hard carry. Yeah. Sammy's favorite Pokemon is Gengar, which is pretty sick solid. It's so common for people to be like, Charizard or whatever.

[Linus]

It's like, okay, I mean, Pikachu.

[Luke]

That's cool. Yeah, Pikachu, Eevee, whatever.

[Dan]

All right.

[Linus]

Okay. Hold on.

[Luke]

What's your favorite Pokemon?

[Linus]

When did the Eevee Obsession show up? Because, like, when I. Modern. Is it okay? Is. Does Eevee feature really prominently in, like, modern shows and stuff or something? Or, like, I don't know, but I

[Luke]

know they pushed it a lot more. Like, there's a ton more Eevee evolutions now.

[Linus]

Oh, dude. And like, when I like, I got this, like, Pokemon find and seek, like, book for my kids. Some. I don't know, some relative gave it to us or something. It was all like, Eevee. I was like, eevee? Who cares about Eevee? I thought it's all. It's all Pikachu and like Charmander and Charizard and whatnot.

[Luke]

There's also, like, communities that kind of form behind different Eevees.

[Linus]

Tumblr says Crystal.

[Luke]

Well, Tumblr, I think was largely because Sylveon is a lot of people in the trans community. Because Sylveon has. The trans colors have bannered behind Sylveon. Oh, then like, similarly, there's like, other Pokemon for reasons people like Vaporeon. There's. There's. There's other stuff going on. Yeah. But Eevee got more popular, like, way later on.

[Linus]

Okay. I would. I would need to be reminded.

[Luke]

Brights, let's go.

[Linus]

I need to be reminded of all the original Pokemon before I could pick a favorite.

[Luke]

I also really like Pidgeotto. Pidgeotta.

[Linus]

I was about to say, I low key loved my Pidgeot.

[Luke]

They're actually awesome.

[Linus]

Yeah. By like, late game. Pidgeot is actually pretty. Pretty solid. I actually kind of loved my Raticate.

[Luke]

I like that. I don't. I don't like Raticate, but I like that you like Raticate. I think that's cool. The nitto's are pretty sweet.

[Linus]

Mm.

[Luke]

Kadabra, let's go. I was a huge fan of Geodude.

[Linus]

Did not love this.

[Luke]

Catching early Geodudes. Yeah, me neither. Not really.

[Linus]

Didn't care about that. Geodude is sick when you first recruit him.

[Luke]

Yeah, exactly.

[Linus]

Like, he just will one hit. Basically anything hit so hard.

[Luke]

So little damage from so many things.

[Linus]

Okay. I love horses, so therefore I immediately love Ponita. But I just didn't really need it because I. By the time you get this, I think you have like a pretty solid.

[Luke]

Is that even in blue? I thought. I thought we had Growlithe.

[Linus]

Maybe not.

[Luke]

I don't remember which one. Don't remember which one. There's some Pokemon that aren't. You have to trade for them.

[Linus]

I think you can maybe you might fight a trainer or something that has.

[Luke]

You definitely do. There's the gamblers that have them. There's the old guys. They like their ponytas.

[Linus]

Don't ask why, man.

[Dan]

Well, but man, there's.

[Linus]

There's more than I remember there being.

[Luke]

There's a Rhyhorn and Choyer in chat that's based on. That's a. That's a based favorite Pokemon.

[Linus]

These fighting guys are pretty cool, but I never really bothered with them. Blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah blah blah blah. I just really liked the design for this one. I don't know if I don't think I ever had one.

[Luke]

They're cool,

[Dan]

man.

[Luke]

I wish they did more with Ditto over the years.

[Linus]

And you'd have to be like. You'd have to have a heart of stone to not love Snorlax.

[Luke]

Very true.

[Linus]

Yeah. You know what?

[Luke]

If I had to also, I. I really dislike a lot of the modern systems. I. I've often talked about how a lot of the modern Pokemon systems just make it feel like Digimon to me.

[Linus]

I don't even know what Digimon is.

[Luke]

Mode ex. I don't like it. But. But I do think Gigantamax Snorlax is awesome. The fact that he just. He's just still sleeping on the road and just stuff grew on him. Hilarious. But then they do stuff that's like. You might actually like this. Meowth is just. He's just like buildings tall.

[Linus]

It's all very Power Rangers Y to me. I think that was probably my first exposure to like Japanese style fighting media.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Where the fight has three stages every time you fight the Putties and then you fight the boss and then you both level up and you fight again. And all of the foreplay was completely unnecessary.

[Luke]

Yeah. That's totally. Yeah. Now there's Megas and. And all this other junk. It gets a little ridiculous.

[Linus]

And like.

[Luke]

Okay. I know. Anytime. Anytime you make a compare, like you look at new Pokemon and you're like, why is there keys? Why is a set of keys a Pokemon? And people go, yeah, well, you can look at Gen1 and there's like some silly garbage as well.

[Linus]

Is there though?

[Luke]

Porygon.

[Linus]

What's Porygon?

[Luke]

He's. He's.

[Linus]

Yeah. I don't. Sorry, what's it called?

[Luke]

Porygon.

[Linus]

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think that's Gen 1.

[Luke]

Yeah. Yes.

[Linus]

How do I spell it?

[Luke]

P O, R, Y, G.G. o, N. 100% Genmo.

[Linus]

Oh, this. What is this?

[Luke]

This is my point. He's just like, oh, he's a duck. He's just a duck. Some shapes.

[Linus]

No, he's a duck. He's a racist.

[Luke]

What are some other silly Gen 1 Pokemon?

[Linus]

There aren't really that many. I mean, I think my thing is,

[Luke]

like, for the most part, it was like, this is a mouse, except it's electric. Hooray.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

I mean, yeah. Machoke is just like a jacked guy.

[Linus]

Jacked, like, kind of. Well, okay.

[Luke]

Mr. Mime is just a creepy guy.

[Linus]

Yeah. Like, the gas one is like, so that we could have like a gaseous thing.

[Luke]

Obviously, I have no problem with ghastly. Personally,

[Linus]

I thought ditto was kind of like random.

[Luke]

Magnemite is just magnets. What's the one that is just a lot of magnets?

[Linus]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke]

But. But I think, like, I am very cool with things like onyx. It's a bunch of rocks in a row. Neat. Geodude. It's a single rock. It has arms for some reason. I don't care. Neat. I like stuff like that. I don't like. This is a space demon. Like, I don't want that.

[Linus]

I'm just glad we're all passionate about it.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I'm glad people have things to be excited about.

[Luke]

Like, what is that? Why is that a Pokemon?

[Linus]

I think it's a lobster. These Lobster. Eagle. Scorpion.

[Luke]

Does that. Does that as a Gen one only, or does that feel like it belongs in Pokemon?

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

Yeah, exactly. That's my problem with some of the new stuff.

[Linus]

And I will always be a Gen1 onlyer because I'm sorry, but I just cannot be arsed to collect them all. More than 151 things.

[Luke]

So many more.

[Dan]

Nope.

[Luke]

How many Pokemon are there total?

[Linus]

They just don't exist to me. There's 151 Pokemon. You're welcome.

[Luke]

So the. For the delusional people that think there's more than 151.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

There's apparently 1025.

[Linus]

That's crazy. It makes no sense.

[Luke]

That is crazy.

[Linus]

There's 121.

[Luke]

51.

[Linus]

151. No, you know what, forget it. There's 121.

[Luke]

Chopping 30 of them off.

[Linus]

Anything I had to trade for doesn't count. Oh man.

[Luke]

Okay, how many people did we just bother? 152 missingo. I like that.

[Linus]

Oh that.

[Luke]

No, I like that.

[Linus]

No, no, the glitch doesn't count. I like that glitch. Please.

[Luke]

My delusion is that there's 152. Righty. Then. What's next? First at a wedding, we fought about Pokemon.

[Linus]

First, Apple adopts rcs. Now it tests end to end encryption in the latest iOS 26.4 beta build. Apple explains that it is now rolling out testing end to end encryption in RCS messaging on iPhone, currently not shipping on certain devices and carriers. But the big news about this was that it is only testing the RCS encryption between iPhones, not between Androids. They're not saying that they will never support it on Android. But while other people are super negative about this, saying, well, isn't the point of RCS end to end encryption so that you can have encryption when you're texting with an Android acquaintance, I personally am choosing to believe that this will, this is just the start. And they will roll into an encryption to Android friends at some point. And so that's why I cared to talk about it. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in good faith believing that Apple is going to continue to do the right thing and continue to move RCS forward. Oh, speaking of good things, that I'm super excited about Android finally, after all these years, finally did it.

[Luke]

Whoa. Really?

[Linus]

Finally.

[Luke]

Android, not like Samsung or something.

[Linus]

Apparently r Pixel phones. Android 17 by the way. Whoa. Works for me. Pixel 10 Pro Android 17 if it's in mainline Android because I don't care about running a Pixel. But what I do care about is I want a Sony. I want an Xperia. I expect it won't have it yet. It's probably going to take a little bit, but when that propagates I am like first in line. I'm going to import an Xperia from Japan and I'm so ready. I'm so excited.

[Dan]

They're so good.

[Linus]

Yes, I know Samsung had this for so many years, but what if I wanted something other than Samsung? OnePlus also supports it. I believe nothing supports it. There are vendors that support it, but Google themselves hasn't supported it. And Samsung, or excuse me, Samsung and Sony to my knowledge, just kind of sticks as close to stock Android as, as possible and has not supported it. So I am super, super excited.

[Dan]

I'm on 16 right now and it's not here. So if it's 17, then I'll be getting it soon and I'll let you know. And then you can buy one too.

[Luke]

Yeah, there was commenters on the Reddit thread that were saying it's specifically Android

[Dan]

17 and I still haven't wiped my old one for you to play with, Luke.

[Luke]

That's okay.

[Linus]

Yovo Azito asks, remind me which side is the right side? Linus? Now you can always tell because the left hand makes an L, so this is the right. But if you meant correct side, the answer is that there is no correct side. Which is why we need a choice. Depending on whether you're left or right handed, depending on whether you prefer the task switching button being closer when you're holding it in your right hand or being closer when you're holding it in your left hand. That is completely, completely personal preference and there should never have been any reason that you should have had to choose. This is good. This is a win for, for user choice. All right, what else we got?

[Luke]

Let's see here. What is this?

[Linus]

You want more good news?

[Luke]

Why charge when you can use y? Charge? Yeah, why charge? A company that has been pioneering wireless charging has announced their second batch for their wireless power kit.

[Linus]

Huh. So I did a short circuit on this thing a little while ago and the difference, and the reason I wanted to highlight it again, is that it's way cheaper now. It was like a commercial only solution not that long ago. And now they have support for the Schlodge and code, which is, from my understanding, a much more popular smart lock. So you just take out the battery cover, put on the receiver module, boom. You never ever charge your smart lock again. You don't, you don't put a battery in. You don't like have it just randomly die at an inopportune time. And you have to use a key. It just has power forever. I've been using my like commercial one with the Alfred smart lock at my house. It just is always charged and will always be charged forever. It's super cool. We first covered these guys at Computex like 10 years ago and it took them five ever to whether it was funding or partnerships or development to get this technology rolling. And it's finally happening. So they just seem like cool people who are finally catching a break. And I just wanted to highlight that good stuff. Oh, this one's less fun. The registry from Save the Life, a pet microchip Company became inaccessible when the company went out of business in January 2024. For those unfamiliar pet, microchips are simple RFID chips that produce a unique string of numbers when scanned. Databases like Save the Life link that identifier to pet information that vets can access. There was apparently very little notice of the shutdown, leaving many pets unknowingly unidentifiable to vets and shelters. Cincinnati Animal Care says it's found 65 dogs with useless chips. Only about half of their owners were found. Pets registered to Save the Life should re register their chips number with another microchip company, which is usually free. This whole thing raised a whole bunch of questions for me. Namely, what was the point of putting a microchip in my pets? I've microchipped every one of my pets that I've ever had, thinking that, like, the idea was that they scanned it and the information was just there, readable in plain text, which I don't actually mind if somebody has my cat, because I want it back.

[Luke]

I thought it was, too.

[Linus]

So this was. This was insane to me. I kind of understand, like, the privacy potentially, of, like, an animal is roadkill. And you go and you scan the microchip, and what you get. You get a girl's phone number that way. Like, come on, man. Like, I. If. If. If it's a. If it's an alternative to a collar or a tattoo, probably plain text would have been fine. What was the point of this?

[Luke]

Yikes.

[Linus]

So frustrating.

[Luke]

I hate that on, like, multiple levels.

[Linus]

Like, I. I had. I had hope, you know, that when I. When the Bengal cats escaped, that someone would find them, and they would eventually. Even if someone stole them, they would eventually make their way to a vet, eventually get scanned, and I would eventually be contacted. But this whole ecosystem is just more stupid and fragmented than I could have. Than I realized. I guess I could have looked it up. I could have found this out. But, I mean, nowadays we. We tattoo and microchip our animals, and we don't let them outside under any circumstances. So it hasn't been as much of a problem. The Bengals were also just escape artists. They just really wanted to get out. Rumble was able to jump up and hang off of the door handle to open the door, which is like, really? And when you. We had little kids, we had people, like, coming in and out and then. Yeah, anyway, that's. That's history at this point, and it's a lot easier now. All of our cats that we have right now started their lives outdoors, and they are, like, don't walk in. Stoked to be inside. None of them try to get out. We accidentally. One of the kids left the door open for half an hour, like a few weekends ago, and we were like, panic cat. Check everyone. Find all the cats. No one went anywhere near it, especially the boys. Brownie and Noodle are like, they. They lived outside until they were, like, old enough that I was worried that they would be difficult to socialize.

[Luke]

And the vet even have a concern about that. I thought there was something.

[Linus]

No, our vet was pretty chill. Okay. No, that was. That was to do with whether they had feline hiv. We had to.

[Luke]

There was some.

[Linus]

Yeah, we had to. We had to isolate them from the other cats for quite a while before we could be sure that they didn't have, like, a dormant infection that could get the other cats or whatever. Got it. But. But yeah, they. They were outdoor cats for quite a while. And we. We caught them with, like, a live trap and brought them in and tried to socialize them. I shouldn't say tried. Socialized with Brownie especially. Very much socialized. Noodle's still a little bit skitterish. He's. He was, you know, he was a wild thing at some point. And those guys especially are just like, nope. They hunted. They hunted for their food when they were just little boys. And they are not into it.

[Dan]

They

[Luke]

did they go particularly away from it.

[Linus]

From the door.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

No, but they. They do. They're, like, not interested.

[Luke]

Yeah, Yeah, I meant when it was left open.

[Linus]

Whereas, like, some of the. The other ones, the. The. The two. The two newer ones, they were just like little. They were born in, like, a shed. So they've never really been. They've never really had to hunt for anything because the family found them and fed them and took care of them and everything. Everything. So they'll like. They'll like and haven't been. They'll sniff. They'll sniff the outside and they'll be, like, kind of interested in it or

[Luke]

had the concern of being hunted.

[Linus]

No, they've never had to deal with that.

[Luke]

Corey is the name of Full plane chat said, my cat is terrified of the concept of an outside existing.

[Linus]

Nice. It's a lot easier to take care of them that way. Hey, do you want to talk about Zillow?

[Luke]

Yeah. Yeah. Zillow launches a. Wow. Themed micro site as a marketing. Okay. As a marketing stunt. I saw this in my Google News and went, hmm. And then kept scrolling because I was like, there's no way that's actually real. The experience coincides with WoW introducing player housing for the first time. Tied to the upcoming midnight expansion, the microsite features both player created homes and Blizzard built homes, some with 3D tours, in a move that can only be described as savagely realistic.

[Linus]

I can't interface with this.

[Luke]

You can't actually buy the houses. But users can hilariously claim a free in game Zillow inspired doormat. The listings are written in character with fictional Zillow real estate agents. Given the current affordability and housing crisis, does this seem tone deaf on the part of Zillow and Blizzard? Is it just fine? It's definitely just fun. I mean, I don't care about it at all, but I'm sure it's. It's fun for someone, but I don't think they're being tone deaf. Dude, people are buying houses. It's just not most people. And like, no, I don't think they're just going to give you an entire house in the game for free. So a doormat is a collectible item that's still neat as a free thing. Part of it. Just a fun, random promotional campaign, I think. I think. Just don't think about it too much.

[Linus]

Okay. The site's responsive again for me now.

[Dan]

Oh, dang.

[Linus]

It stopped working again. What the heck? Okay, well, whatever. That's kind of what it looks like. Good enough.

[Luke]

The site's working fine for me. That's weird.

[Linus]

Oh, here, I'll go to Luke's laptop.

[Luke]

Sure.

[Linus]

There you go. Rugged, rustic.

[Luke]

These are actually like shores. It's funny because the. The photos and the videos that I'm seeing for these are actually a lot better than most of the photos and videos that I see from realtors of actual homes. So that's kind of funny and kind of Sad.

[Dan]

Where's the HDR?

[Luke]

Yeah. Really? Bechtar. Don Hamar. That's actually awesome. Wow. 80. Wow. This is so much. There's a floor plan. We are destroying most Realtor posted homes. Oh my goodness.

[Linus]

Anything that lacks a floor plan is so annoying to me. All right.

[Luke]

Meet the owner. That's not very normal. Neat fun.

[Linus]

Oh, speaking of neat and fun, we should talk about what's neat and fun on flow plane.

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

FB announcement. Please read all the way through before going off topic.

[Luke]

What?

[Linus]

What?

[Luke]

I don't think let's specifically go on off topic.

[Linus]

What?

[Luke]

That's not. That wasn't the problem last time. The problem last time was that they put information that you needed at the beginning at the end.

[Linus]

Yeah. This week's theme is how many resources can Sami steal from the company before being fired. We got a deep look inside what a week at LMG looks like with some LTT leaks. Sorry, not sorry. Sammy vlogged his entire week showcasing things like how production shoots are scheduled, the behind the scenes on set, our camera setups, merching our videos, which is what we call it when we, like, do packaging. So title thumbnail, that kind of thing. It also includes a ton of insider info, including leaking an entire month of LTT content in the first minute. Okay, so that's this video. Oh, wow. People are loving this video. All right, well, I'm glad that it was for something. We also have a refreshed meet the team with Mr. David Pankratz, the technical production assistant. Sammy made Pankratz fix his PC in this video because if it's for content, you're allowed to make, not it fix your things. Okay, that's good to know as well.

[Luke]

I think he means his personal computer.

[Linus]

What? Sammy?

[Luke]

I think that's what he means.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

That is not a workstation that we.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Provide to our employees.

[Luke]

It doesn't look like he just fixed. Looks like he upgraded.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, that's. That's the case. That's from inventory.

[Linus]

Right.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus]

Where are the lines? Oh, I see.

[Dan]

It's signed out to lost.

[Linus]

We also took in viewer questions, which we're looking for more questions featuring our new writer, Sean Frey. We took in viewer questions, which we are looking for more. I have no idea what he's talking about. Sure. Finally. We also have an early LTT video that went up a few days ago Showcasing the Fluke II915. And you would have known this if you were a floatplane subscriber. Keep an eye out for more early releases like this one, which will release right now. Oh, is. Oh, we're releasing the Costco video. That's not David's best thumbnail. You know what? I guess it's too late now. Cool. Linus and David buy a PC from Costco to answer one question. Is it the answer to rising PC prices or is it bait? I'm gonna take the A out there. All right. Save.

[DMS]

Boop.

[Linus]

Subscribe now at LMG gg fpwan to fill your weekend with fun content. Also, we'll have a behind the scenes of DMS's wedding sometime next week. Seriously. All right. Sammy is like the embodiment of anything for the content. Seriously.

[Luke]

Good stuff.

[Linus]

Want to pick a topic?

[Luke]

Do we talk about DLSS again? There's two DLSS topics. It sounds similar. DLSS is too good. Now YouTuber2. We've talked about this before. Yeah, yeah, two clicks. Philip posted a video seeing how far they could push DLSS while still having a. Oh, I've seen this for sure. Quick recap for those who don't know dlss. Really, we're going into that. Dlss, or Deep learning. Super sampling is Nvidia's. Okay. Yeah. Nvidia's image generation algorithm that allows gamers to render their games at lower resolutions, which are then upscaled to a more playable resolution. While we're maintaining high frame rates, the YouTuber tested Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 at 20% render for 4K, meaning 764x4 all the way down to 1% scale or 38 by 22. Just 38 by 22 pixels. That's it. And it's impressive how well DLSS works now. And we have a. Maybe a short thing, but you should go watch the video.

[Linus]

This is mind blowing.

[Luke]

The fact that. That you can kind of. You could totally play that is nuts.

[Linus]

You could not.

[Luke]

Well, no, but you could.

[Linus]

Here is 136 by 76. So this is what, like 3% or something or. No, because it's probably. It's probably not linear because that's actually a much larger. It's like 3% in each dimension. But you guys should definitely check out this video. It's got like half a million views because it's awesome.

[Luke]

When did this come out? Because I feel like I saw this a bit ago.

[Linus]

Yeah, here you go. So this is. This is showing the difference between.

[Luke]

This is three weeks old.

[Linus]

Yeah. So this is original versus the upscaled one.

[Luke]

It's genuinely pretty fascinating how it can

[Linus]

take that and turn it into that, this. And turn it into this. Genuinely incredible. Like, there's a lot going on over here where I would have a hard time telling if this is a. Like my human eyes, if this is a path leading off this way or if it's a shadow of this tree or like, what the crap this is supposed to be. How it managed to resolve any additional detail in the grass over here. Mind blowing the way it kind of reconstructed the shadows and the lighting and the bark here based on this. Again, mind blowing. Pretty impressive. That was it. Just wanted to highlight that. Go watch two clicks Phillips.

[Luke]

Super cool video. I just. I knew. I was like, man, I thought this was from a bit ago, but yeah, three weeks ago.

[Linus]

Yep.

[Luke]

I watched that a while ago.

[Linus]

Yeah, we never. We never kind of talked about it. So, guys, go go check it out.

[Luke]

Really, really, really cool.

[Linus]

No key. Just Threw the link in the chat. So did Dan.

[Luke]

Nice.

[Linus]

Bookmark that for later because you're not done.

[Luke]

I wouldn't have thought to put that in the doc, but that was. That was awesome.

[Linus]

There's been a new world record set for the tiniest QR code. The source this time is Tom's hardware. This is kind of incredible. You want to do the story?

[Luke]

Sure. With a pixel size of 49nm, the smaller than a bacteria. QR codes were created as a collaboration between Vienna University of Technology and data storage company. The codes are less than half the size of the previous record and require an electron microscope to read. The achievement will enable greater densities in cerebytes. Yeah, cerebyte makes more sense. I've heard of cerebyte before. Cerebites ceramic storage which they claim could enable very long term storage with capacities up to 100 petabytes by 2030. And no, I actually didn't dyslexia that. There's just a tiny typo discussion question, how much storage do you really need at home? You know, for all those Linux ISOs? Well, there's been a lot of very musically focused Linux distros recently.

[Linus]

How big is that?

[Luke]

Even though not 100 petabytes.

[Linus]

Yeah, like the Spotify rip was.

[Luke]

I thought it was about a petabyte.

[Linus]

Yeah, 100 petabytes. I mean recalling this data is extremely challenging. This is meant for like my understanding is like very long term resilient storage, like mass amounts of storage. And for that we need a lot, but only if we care to preserve everything that's being created right now. But so much of it is slop that I.

[Luke]

So much of it. I don't.

[Linus]

I don't want. Wonder if we don't really need to

[Luke]

archive it to be forgotten.

[Dan]

Oh really?

[Luke]

I thought it was a petabyte. 300 terabytes.

[Linus]

That sounds right to me. I had in my brain 30 terabytes and I was like, yeah, it can't be enough. But I think I thought there was a three in it. Anyway, I thought this was cool. That's all. No notes for this one? Well, they put a few notes. Unreal Engine tournament. Unreal tournament 2004. Okay, who's responsible for calling it Unreal Engine Tournament? You know what? It doesn't matter. We're not going to name and shame. The point is it was not called that. It was called Unreal tournament. Unreal Tournament 2004 is now available for free thanks to community collaboration. UT 2004, one of the greatest shooters of all time. Just received its first public patch in over 20 years. This was made possible by Old Unreal, a community support project dedicated to keeping early EPIC titles alive. This patch includes support for Windows, Linux and macOS, along with various Quality of Life updates. Epic has given permission for them to host the original files, so they have an easy to use installer available. Super cool. Shout out. Epic. Love to see it. That's all I have to say about that.

[Luke]

Yeah, I found, just for people wondering, it's definitely 300 terabytes. I found some very early articles that seem to just be kind of making up part of the story that said a petabyte, but it was confirmed for sure a lot of times that it's 300 terabytes.

[Linus]

All right.

[Luke]

Meta wants to. Oh yeah. Oh, Meta wants to make your grandma immortal. A patent granted late in December outlines the use of an LLM to simulate a person's social media activity when the user takes a long break or is deceased. The document states that the impact on the users is much more severe and permanent if that user is deceased and can never return to the platform. No. Your new AI Nana, could like, comment and respond to DMs from beyond the grave, potentially even joining audio and video calls. Meta says the technology would be great for influencers who want to take a break from social media without giving up income.

[Linus]

Get rid of it. Dan, thank you.

[Luke]

One of the crazy things is I saw this in my Google news feedback probably 10 minutes after seeing somebody on Facebook. So jump on a Facebook, go to Marketplace. I saw somebody on Facebook who's definitely passed away that, you know, worked here. And that was like, you know, a sad moment to see them. I'm pretty happy that I didn't have a new message from them.

[Linus]

I have some relatives that are getting pretty close to the end, and the last thing that I want is fake, real conversations with them. I'm. I'm instead taking time now to talk to them while I still can. And that's what we should do if possible. And if it's not possible, this is not the answer. Cool. Hey. But in other news, the Netherlands defense secretary said on a podcast that the F35, like the warplane, can be jailbroken just like an iPhone, implying that European forces could maintain the aircraft Software software without US and Lockheed Martin support. Currently, the F35 software is managed through Lockheed Martin's Autonomic Logistics Information System, which pushes updates to the fleet every year or two. European countries own the physical planes, but the US controls the software and update pipeline. Israel is currently the only country that has negotiated a deal with Lockheed Martin allowing it to run its own software on the F35 fleet. The comments came amid broader European fears that the US could remotely disable F35 fleets. Oh, boy. Gonna butcher this. Joachim Schranshofer, head of comms at German defense contractor Hensolt, previously said the idea of a remote kill switch was more than just a rumor. I gotta say, the main reason that I flagged this for the WAN show was that while I realized that this was a problem on a telephone and I realized that it was a problem on a tractor, I did not realize that this was a problem on a military jet. Oh, yeah, for how much you pay for them. You've got to be f cking kidding me that you can't just.

[Luke]

Oh, I thought you meant the remote kill switch.

[Linus]

Oh, yeah, that too.

[Luke]

Yeah, that part, yeah.

[Linus]

That's insane.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

How did we all, like, even at that level, accept that this is okay?

[Luke]

Can you make an F35?

[Linus]

No. That's why there are alternatives.

[Luke]

There's not a ton. And they would all have probably a similar problem.

[Linus]

That's insane.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I mean, yes and no. I bet if everyone got together and boycott, basically just said no, we will literally not buy any if you don't deal with this. How long do you think Lockheed would hold out?

[Luke]

I feel like they just try to hide it.

[Linus]

I mean, that's a very military thing to do. In other German news, Acer and Asus have been blocked from selling PCs in Germany.

[Luke]

They could also just say no, have fun being not superior.

[Linus]

Right.

[Luke]

Another angle they could take.

[Linus]

A German court has granted Nokia an injunction against the two firms selling desktops and laptops. Stock that's already in the country can still be sold. Nokia claims acer, Asus and TV maker Hisense are infringing on three patents related to the High Efficiency Video Codec HEVC, aka H265. Hisense decided to enter a licensing agreement with Nokia in January, but Acer and Asus continue to fight the allegations in court. Hevc is considered a standard essential patent due to its widespread use, which means special rules apply to ensure the technology is broadly available while the patent holder is still fairly compensated. And that's it. That's why Hevc never really took off because of stuff like this, which blows. In other news, Google suddenly cares about IP theft. This is hilarious.

[Luke]

Yeah. Where are we at? Where is that one top? Yeah, I think we've kind of talked about this one before. I don't know how old this is. But Google is accusing commercially motivated actors of trying to clone the proprietary logic behind Gemini AI. In other news, the entire world is accusing Google of slurping up proprietary. Yeah, yeah. Google says distillation attacks have agents querying Gemini up to 100,000 times to try to extract the underlying model.

[Linus]

This is hilarious.

[Luke]

This is also a thing that has been happening for a long time and has happened to other people as well, most notably OpenAI model distillation. Ah, hey, okay. Model distillation attacks aren't a new thing. In early 2025, OpenAI suggested that Chinese startup Deepseek had distilled OpenAI's models to create their own cheaper, more efficient model. Which as far as my understanding goes is like effectively confirmed. But I don't actually know that. Where's the

[Linus]

nice.

[Luke]

Yeah, where's the line? How much does your company need to be worth to ignore the law?

[Linus]

I just think this is hilarious because IP theft matters immediately when it's their IP theft. And it doesn't matter that what underpins it was massive IP theft on a scale that I don't think the world has ever seen before before.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, crazy.

[Linus]

Last topic. Harmful chemicals may be in your headphones. An EU environmental advocacy group called Toxfree Life for All released a study that tested 81 pairs of headphones and supposedly found hazardous substances in all of them. Got to be careful, the substances included known endocrine disruptors, which led to some highly sensationalized pieces suggesting that speakers would be better for your health compared to headphones if you are trying to avoid cancer. The study actually does seem to have some validity to it, but it mainly aimed to address companies that circumvent regulations with equally bad alternatives since these chemicals are handled on a substance by substance basis. Not to mention that these chemicals are only an issue from cumulative long term exposure across many kinds of plastics. Products like Apple AirPods Pro Twos and Sony WH1000XM5s were rated safe. The real problems were knockoffs from marketplaces like temu.

[Luke]

That's it's not surprising, but it's also like, dang, the ones that are safe are really expensive also.

[Linus]

Okay, Riley sent me another kind of summary of this that I had sort of expected to be in the summary that was in the the Wan show doc, but basically he was kind of saying that a lot of this is sort of extrapolating what may be a concern. So commenters have connected the headlines of that they might be using alternative chemicals that are less regulated and that some of these chemicals still need to be like studied and turned it into connected these dots and gone like, oh no, all headphones are poisonous. And then meanwhile, the other side has gone completely other side of the pendulum swing and gone. That's such an overreaction that it must be completely safe and there is no problem. But as usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Mm. Dan, I think it's time for After Dark.

[Luke]

I've got. I've got one more chat. Really wants me to talk about this one or us really. We've really kind of two more. I guess YouTube went down. People wanted our comments on this.

[Linus]

Oh, that's bad.

[Luke]

I think we're both like, dang.

[Linus]

Whoops. They should not do that.

[Luke]

Yeah, it was. For me, it was really interesting for, for some people to see how compartmentalized certain systems are because people were like, oh, like with direct links I can still play videos but like the homepage is down and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, yeah, it's. These systems are really fascinating. But anyways, moving on from that, there's also this we talked about a little bit in the pre show. Hackers exposed Discord age verification system issue after Persona front end code was left wide open. We don't have topic notes on this, but this, this is. I think what I said in the pre show was like, whoever did this, I want to shake your hand. Great work. Congratulations.

[Linus]

You made your point.

[Luke]

And that's such a good point to make. And such important timing that you nailed it so fast.

[Linus]

This is why this is a problem.

[Luke]

Way to go. Thank you. But yeah, this just goes to show that we need them to not collect data like this because it's just going to go out there. Yeah. And again, just like we were talking last week, try some alternatives. Have a like fun random day with your friends where you're like, let's play three different games and each time let's try a different voice chat service just for fun and, and see how it goes. And even if you end up having both or something like that, at least start legitimizing alternatives. One of the biggest issues when you have markets like the voice chat market, is there is only one thing that matters right now, and that sucks. And if we can even make it so that there's two, that is such a massive gain. If there's. If we start legitimizing and make it normalized that there's other ones that people use, then Discord's market share will, will fall quickly. And that's a good idea.

[Linus]

The whole 3D printed guns thing is continuing to evolve. California Bill would restrict 3D printer sales to state approved models to prevent printing gun parts. Joins Washington and New York on legal offensive. Yeah, that's not going to work.

[Luke]

First of all, it won't work. Second of all, rough because now there's, now there's all this insider collusion of companies bribing people to be on the approved list and there's already an incredible amount of corruption in every single government everywhere. So that's definitely going to happen. I'm not even calling out America. That's just the world. If this was in Canada, the same thing would be a problem. Especially bc.

[Linus]

Hey.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

After dark. Yes, after dark. Button, button. There we go. All right. Up first. Hey, LLD and future me, always watch VOD on Saturday mornings. What's the scariest thing about starting your own business? And how did you deal with that fear?

[Linus]

The scariest thing is not having money to eat and to pay the people who work for you and your mortgage. And how did you deal with that fear? Work harder so that that doesn't happen. I mean it's just, it's. It's a tale as old as time. Right. There are advantages to entrepreneurship and there are advantages to employment. Hitching your cart to a horse that has, has been walking for a long time and seems to have a lot of road out ahead of it offers security while entrepreneurship can offer incredible opportunity. But I forget what percentage of business it is that fail in the first five years, but it's, it's a lot. So it's, it's not a guarantee and it's not right for everyone. But it was right for me and I'm glad it worked out the way that it did. Oh, I accidentally just archived the site.

[Dan]

No, I didn't know that was me.

[Linus]

Nice.

[Dan]

Hi Linus and Luke. My grade school kids love gaming and learning about PC parts thanks to Astrobot. But Windows feels complex versus consoles, tablets, Chromebooks. Any tips for teaching them a quote unquote real operating system?

[Luke]

You said they love learning. Just maybe try to make it fun.

[Linus]

Yeah. And I mean realistically my. I was kind of blown away by some of the stuff that my son was doing so that he could mod Minecraft and stuff. They just have to, they have to have a reason to learn it otherwise they're not going to bother. Windows is not that complicated these days. If you are sufficiently motivated.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

To do it. And kids brains are so malleable. I would see. Do you see the. Do you see that kid that like destroyed the sub 3 second solve on a 3 by 3 Rubik's Cube recently. Kids like 7 or something. I don't. I don't know how old he is.

[Luke]

Seven year olds with chess or Rubik's cubes are terrifying.

[Linus]

Yeah. Hold on. What's this kid's name? Theodore Zad Z Zer. 2.76 seconds. 2.76 seconds.

[Luke]

That's absurd.

[Linus]

Seven years ago this was a question. Will there ever be a sub 3. Sub 3 I could see as the very edge of possibility with an absurd solve. Oh, 2.76. Like obliterated. Obliterated the record.

[Luke]

That's a. Yeah. When you're getting down into that such. Such a small amount of total time. That's an insane, insane amount of time to chop off.

[Linus]

Blah blah blah, blah blah blah.

[Luke]

This isn't it, is it? Yeah. There we go. It would have to be like add

[Linus]

an event so he gets 15 seconds to look at it. Is that wild or what? Like wow. I'm not a.

[Luke]

But you'll never do that.

[Linus]

I will never do that. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how long I worked at it. Doesn't matter.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Dan]

A video age ago which was like a six sided CNC machine attached to a Rubik's cube and it did it in like one second. So he's like twice as fast as a computer controlled robot.

[Linus]

Mind blowing. Katowa says I can solve in five minutes. Yeah, exactly. Scrappy DP. You'll also never kick flip 100%. So. So, so give your kids credit. Don't baby them. They can figure it out. They just have to be sufficiently motivated.

[Dan]

My project, it's like people say, learn programming by making a calculator. No. Find a problem.

[Luke]

Do something. Do something more interesting. Yeah.

[Dan]

Hi gang.

[Luke]

Thinking about Automate something around your house?

[Dan]

Yeah. Thinking about age verification. Who do you think would be able to reliably figure out and implement safe age verification? Maybe Steam, Maybe a defcon.

[Linus]

Well that's the whole point is that you can't.

[Luke]

It's not gonna happen. And we need to stop like chasing this weird dragon. I.

[Linus]

The only solution is for someone who already is tracking all of this like the government. Except I don't trust them to keep it safe, so. Well no, that's what I'm saying though.

[Luke]

No, I'm agreeing with you. Yeah.

[Linus]

No, except I don't trust them to keep it safe any more than I would. Even less I'd say then I would trust a corporate entity. So since we can't do it safely we need to just not do it. It's like asking, like, and what's it all for? Like, who could figure out how to reliably make it so that I can enjoy my crystal meth? How about we just don't? Crystal meth?

[Luke]

Yeah, it's. The thing is, like, it's going to be circumvented anyways, obviously.

[Linus]

Okay, this is pretty funny. McBain says leisure suit Larry solved that 35 years ago. Do you know what the age check was for Leisure Suit? Larry just asked you questions that only older people would know the answer to. It wouldn't work in the age of Google and, and like, chat GPT or whatever. But here, here, here, here, here, here.

[Luke]

Maybe you have to like, Control, plain and simple. Yeah, I mean, we've been control and data collection, but my. My thing is, like, if you try to think of it positively, what is. What is the gain? And the gain effectively doesn't exist because it's. It's so la la land. It's like, okay, we can keep the kids from. Okay, doing these bad things. Like. Yeah, if they care. They're gonna go around it. Like it's. You have.

[Linus]

Let's play a game. Tiptoe through the Tulips was recorded by.

[Dan]

It plays ukulele. Very tall, very high voice.

[Luke]

I wouldn't be able to play this game. I'm looking at some of the questions. I would not be able to play this game.

[Linus]

I mean, you would know probably this one.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

A kid probably wouldn't care at that time. Do you know what a neighbor jacket is?

[Luke]

No.

[Dan]

Nope.

[Linus]

Where's the beef?

[Dan]

Where's the beef?

[Luke]

Okay. I wouldn't have got that Tiny Tim beef.

[Dan]

I'm upset about myself.

[Linus]

Does a pair of queens beat three deuces? I don't think so.

[Dan]

Three twos.

[Linus]

Yeah. I assume this is poker. Yes, in. Oh, in blackjack. Yes, in blackjack. Good gravy.

[Dan]

Three pair above two pair.

[Linus]

I only know this is multiple choice, so they're.

[Luke]

Oh, you just have to, what, type them in?

[Dan]

Yeah. Is my banana still there or not?

[Luke]

Have I upgraded my card, which is

[Linus]

non alcoholic C Perrier. Like, this was their solution to age verification, which is pretty based, actually.

[Luke]

That is so cool.

[Dan]

That's so smart.

[Linus]

The result of Watergate was, you know, back when scandals actually had consequences. Yeah.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah. Any kid these days would just say nothing. Sorry, that was a little too real.

[Luke]

We paid them more money for some reason.

[Dan]

All right, Dan, hit me. Moving on. Hi, dealer.

[Luke]

The result of Watergate was. Someone made a Watergate coin.

[Dan]

Oh, Watergate.

[Linus]

NFTs.

[Dan]

Oh, my God. This is a real world that we live in. Hi, DLL. Would you rather lose 5% of your personal data at a. At random every year, no backups are allowed. Or have 100% of your data perfectly preserved forever, but completely unencrypted and publicly accessible?

[Luke]

5% gone. See you. He's trying to calculate how much of it's leaked anyways.

[Linus]

100% of your data. When you say data you got here, help me. Help me out a little bit. Are we talking digital files?

[Dan]

I kind of took this as like your NASA at home.

[Luke]

That's how I took it as.

[Linus]

Okay, but do I have a chance to scrub it first?

[Dan]

Oh, it's not like today.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Dan]

Like, if you want to store stuff in the future.

[Linus]

So I could go through and I could, like, remove any pictures of my passport that I took at some point to, like, send to Vance so he could book a flight, but they would

[Dan]

have to be deleted. You couldn't have them anywhere else.

[Luke]

Yeah, I think you could never store them ever either. I don't think you could take a picture of it.

[Linus]

I'd accept that going forward. I would just have to have, like, perfect digital hygiene.

[Luke]

But that would mean you could never take a picture under any circumstance of your. Of your passport. That's how I'm interpreting.

[Linus]

I could message it to someone because it's.

[Dan]

It's.

[Linus]

The picture is only for convenience. My convenience, not the recipient, too. So, like, honestly, it would make me more considerate.

[Luke]

I think that's not in the spirit of the question. It just says personal data. I. I interpret it as, like, things I would store on a nas. But I. I think, yeah, you're maybe

[Dan]

going a bit too far.

[Luke]

Taking a photo is. Is personal data.

[Dan]

It would be saved on your phone, and then it would be publicly accessible.

[Linus]

Yeah, so then I wouldn't take that picture anymore, is what I'm saying. Like, I could send them text, but I wouldn't count that as, like, that. I wouldn't store that on a nas. So does that count? Because I interpreted it as stored on a nas, and that's what I'm even remotely considering. If we're talking every message that I ever send to anyone, ever, for ever,

[Luke]

that is personal data.

[Linus]

Then, frankly, then, okay, so which one is it?

[Dan]

I leaned more towards the NAS side. I think that was maybe a little more easily conceptualizable. Otherwise, everything else is just like, oh, well, I just. Let's just not use the Internet.

[Luke]

You have, like, your taxes and stuff.

[Linus]

I Mean, I don't think I keep that on my nas. I don't do my taxes.

[Luke]

So that's gonna say, does your. Does your wife.

[Linus]

Yeah, but that's not my personal data. Then, like, I don't have it, so

[Luke]

I'm just losing 5%. But you might be able to do the hundo. What about you, Dan?

[Dan]

I think it was on the nas. I would, man, That's.

[Luke]

It's just personal data. I don't think you can be like, just. Only the things I put on my nest. Okay. They said personal data.

[Linus]

Then it's got to be the 5%. And I'll just take 5 of every picture and hope that.

[Luke]

Because for me, it's all about mathematically actually game it. Just buy a ton of extra hard drives.

[Linus]

That's what I would do.

[Luke]

There's like.

[Dan]

Well, no, because I think 40 million

[Luke]

pictures of one parking spot.

[Linus]

I don't know. That's your nas.

[Dan]

If you think about. Don't look at my camera roll either. I think maybe more in the spirit of like, 5% of like, you know, if you had 40 million of the same picture, you would lose that picture.

[Luke]

Yeah, probably.

[Dan]

It's all hashed, so if it's the same picture.

[Linus]

Disagree. I would. No, I would take. I would just, like, you would gamble with it. I'd hit my shutter five times every time.

[Luke]

So they're all slightly different photos, man.

[Linus]

I'd print photos. I think that would actually be a huge part of my. My countermeasures against this is I would actually print photos.

[Luke]

Yeah, just go back. Interesting. Interesting.

[Linus]

Because for me, anything else is, like, replaceable, but photos are not.

[Dan]

I think I'm gonna do the hundred percent.

[Linus]

You're gonna do the hundred percent and just put it all out there.

[Dan]

Because there's stuff that I would not want to lose. Like, there's a lot of stuff that I cloud replicate nightly. You know, it's kind of my. My super slide data.

[Luke]

You can't pirate anything anymore ever again. Not that you do.

[Linus]

Well, you can. You'll just. People just know.

[Luke]

Yeah. So then you can't.

[Dan]

Why not?

[Luke]

Because you get sued to oblivion.

[Linus]

Oh, come on. Not in Canada.

[Luke]

There's no obfuscation, though. I think you still would.

[Dan]

I'll just. I don't slice in some zip bombs. It'll be fine.

[Luke]

You can't be sued for pirating anything in Canada. That doesn't seem right.

[Linus]

No, I really don't think so. Someone. Because I'm not a lawyer, but, like, I.

[Luke]

This would be like, an insane haven Online piracy is a criminal offense in Canada.

[Linus]

Yeah, but what's the consequence for it? Like, someone would have to actually pursue it. And is that for downloading or is that for sharing?

[Luke]

I'm trying to look through it.

[Linus]

I think. I think just leeching, you can't really get like, hit too hard for.

[Luke]

In 2022, 22.4% of Canadians access pirate services.

[Linus]

That sounds about right.

[Luke]

Let's go.

[Linus]

All right.

[Dan]

With all the tech prices, do you

[Luke]

think apparently thousands of Canadians every year are the targets of legal action based on piracy?

[Linus]

Yeah, but is that for redistribution? Because that's my understanding.

[Luke]

Doesn't seem too specific. Anyway, sorry, keep going.

[Dan]

With all of the tech prices, do you think Optane or readyboost might make a return?

[Linus]

Not Optane, because Intel and Micron completely divorced over that whole thing. Nanoptane was so cool, but the concept of an SSD cache, I was actually thinking about that earlier as we were talking about hard drive and storage prices. It works really well.

[Luke]

It does.

[Linus]

It's kind of a very underrated solution to a problem that became not a problem, but is becoming a problem again.

[Luke]

Which is kind of neat because I thought it was a fun solution as well.

[Dan]

I use it on my nest.

[Luke]

It's fun, it's cool, it's interesting.

[Dan]

Nifty.

[Luke]

It's neat.

[Dan]

I tried to buy an Optane drive because Linus was talking them up so much and they were like 250 bucks for a teeny tiny one when I was looking. And then.

[Linus]

Really?

[Dan]

Yeah, I think it was like right near the end or something. And yeah, I just got like 128 gig SSD for like a dollar at that. That time. Back in my day, you can still

[Linus]

get the 16 gig ones for like 10 bucks, 20 with delivery.

[Dan]

Yeah, I wasn't looking on ebay because I'm stupid.

[Linus]

All right, here's 10 of the 16 gig ones for $53. Stuff like this is always confusing to me because I really don't think a lot. Obviously people bought them, right? But like they were never popular that I was aware of. So like they clearly produced them at a volume that like people have this many of them, you know, like what. Who was buying these? Where, where did they, where did they come from? Where did they go?

[Luke]

Server offloading, I think.

[Linus]

But like 16 gig for what? What? Who put these in anything? What are we even talking about here?

[Luke]

No idea.

[Linus]

Yeah, right. Wild. Anyway,

[Dan]

where do you see the line between a company's agency and the need to act upon the whims of a Consumer base. I. E. Why pressure Apple to support AirPods on Android if it's not the vision for the product?

[Linus]

Because they're Bluetooth headphones that benefit from the industry wide standard that is Bluetooth. And in my mind a basic part of a product is providing ongoing support, which Apple clearly agrees with, given that they actually do a phenomenal job, generally speaking of providing ongoing software and firmware support for their products. And I bought it. That's why I bought it. It's mine. You have an obligation to warranty it and support it. And the fact that I didn't buy another one of your products is just utter arrogance. As for what their vision of the experience is, that's nice. But my vision of the experience is that when you provide a firmware update, I have a f ing way to apply it without buying another one of your products. Because I already bought one. It's pretty simple to me. And the fact that anyone will put Apple's dong so far down their throat to defend something like that is mind blowing. They don't know you, they don't know your name, they don't care about you. Stop defending bad behavior. If Google did the same thing or Samsung did the same thing, I would think it was ridiculous. If you buy the product, you are the customer and you should be supported. Full stop. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Dan]

I'm thinking about switching to SteamOS on my main PC, but I have different monitors. Should I get all the same monitors or just wing it with the three I have now?

[Luke]

Wing it, wing it. Save that money son.

[Linus]

Yeah,

[Dan]

does it not support mismatched monitors or something?

[Luke]

Bezels. I think they just want their bezels to match and like everything be even and the bases look the same. Don't worry about it.

[Dan]

Yeah, don't worry about it. Hey LLD thinking of building a 10 gigabit NAS. If I am running ZFS Z2 in Truenas, would I benefit from buying SAS drives with HPA? The Exos X24 SAS drives are almost the same price with current pricing.

[Linus]

I wouldn't get SAS drives just because then you're limited to using SAS HBA's forever. And for a home user the benefit of SaaS is just not going to materialize. I would, I would go SATA assuming that the cost is equal. The only way that I would go SaaS as a home user is that is if for some reason there was like a lot like like not like a large quantity, like like a, like an auction lot, like like a bunch of SAS drives and they were an amazing deal. Like, way cheaper. So much cheaper that I could buy a sash HBA and a backup and that would be all my storage that I needed.

[Luke]

Because I don't see that happening right now.

[Linus]

Yeah, that's not going to happen right now. But that would be the only way that you would get me to go SaaS. If I was just buying new drives, I would go SATA for sure every time.

[Luke]

This is like,

[Linus]

man, if you don't know why you need SaaS, you don't need it.

[Luke]

So someone was talking earlier. I don't remember why I had this thought, but somebody was talking earlier about, like, oh, yeah, like buying new stuff right now sucks. But like, the used market's always there. It's like, man, the used market sucks right now.

[Linus]

Yeah, it does.

[Luke]

The used market is terrible right now.

[Linus]

This is great. Crystal's still talking about the. The Apple firmware update thing. She goes, if you pay for an escort, you shouldn't be the one doing the deep throating. Basically, You are the customer. Assert your rights.

[Luke]

Well, it kind of depends, I guess.

[Linus]

I mean, if you're into it, I'm not gonna yuck your yum or whatever.

[Luke]

Some people might be into that. With Apple. There are people that are big. Financial. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus]

Financial abuse kink. Like what?

[Luke]

No, that's a thing.

[Linus]

What?

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

What? Yeah, that's not like financial.

[Luke]

No, it is. What? Yeah, it's a thing.

[Linus]

Shut up.

[Luke]

Yeah, people might be that way with Apple. Yeah, look at chat. That's okay.

[Linus]

Fin. Dom. Oh, I thought you said fem Dom. No, no, no, no.

[Dan]

You could have both.

[Luke]

I think usually it is.

[Linus]

It usually is both. Yeah. Pay pig. It involves a power dynamic where the sub would need to willingly relinquishes financial control, often without any sexual contact, sometimes through online platforms. The.

[Dan]

The.

[Linus]

The sub will often be insulted using terms like tribute or draining. This is wild.

[Luke]

So maybe people like that about Apple.

[Linus]

Avon Fox says, linus, how are you so online and yet often so not? Why would I go looking for this? How. How could I possibly come across this?

[Luke]

I didn't go looking for this.

[Dan]

He's already got a wife that does

[Luke]

all his taxes and handles all his money. You're gonna say, are you sure to me? You think I of all people would be into something like that? Are you kidding me?

[Dan]

Here's all my money that you won't spend.

[Linus]

I don't mean went looking for it, to engage in it as far away

[Luke]

from me as possible.

[Linus]

I could see. I could see you finding Your way through a Wikipedia wormhole of, like, weird kinks or something.

[Luke]

I could see it. Yeah, sure.

[Linus]

If you're looking at.

[Luke]

If you, you know, those, like, political spectrum grids.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

If there's like, my interests in this, we're like, oh, 100% opposite cor.

[Linus]

100%. This is so bizarre to me. Like, I could, Like, I. I think

[Luke]

I don't get it.

[Linus]

I think I've had a pretty clear stance that, like, sex work is work and I'm not like, as long as everyone's adult and consenting and whatever, I. I think, you know, sex acts. I'm like, whatever.

[Luke]

Being paid to go shopping, whatever. She's also work.

[Linus]

Whatever works for your relationship.

[Luke]

They just keep the stuff.

[Linus]

Okay. Whatever works for your relationship. You know what? I. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna judge. I keep my nose out of your business. You keep your nose out of mine. Everything's good, everything's chill. But this is up.

[Luke]

I'm gonna try to not yuck your yum, but I'm definitely gonna go, yeah, okay, let's.

[Linus]

Yeah, like, like, like I. Could I narrow my eyes enough to express my eye narrowness for this one.

[Luke]

What are you doing?

[Linus]

Like, it's like. It's like if you're gonna. If you're going to. If you're gonna hire a sex worker, like, it's right in the name. In it.

[Luke]

Yeah, you're missing part.

[Linus]

You might as well at least get laid.

[Dan]

But then it would be a glucose guardian situation.

[Linus]

What the hell's a glucose guardian?

[Dan]

Gender neutral term for sugar daddy.

[Linus]

Shut up. No, it's current.

[Luke]

It's current year. Is that real? Did you just come up with that?

[Dan]

No, No, I did not.

[Linus]

Oh, my God. It's current year.

[Dan]

You're gonna be gender neutral.

[DMS]

Come on.

[Dan]

It's.

[Luke]

Oh, man.

[Dan]

Oh, them babies gotta, you know, have love too.

[Luke]

I mean, I'm gonna turn into a Minecraft villager. All right.

[Dan]

I actually had a follow up question about SAS drives.

[Luke]

Sure, yeah. Maybe just get us out of here.

[Dan]

I have like a bucket of sass interposers at home. Is that also something that could be experimented with?

[Luke]

This is you personally?

[Dan]

Yeah, me personally, because I bought one of those Facebook servers, I think, or. Or something like that. So I've got like. What the hell was it called? I can't remember.

[Linus]

Those are those. They're port multipliers. Right.

[Dan]

Something like that. It kind of converts SATA drives into SAS drives and vice versa.

[Linus]

Oh.

[Dan]

It might only be one direction. It might just be SATA2SAS.

[Linus]

Oh yeah, that makes sense. So that again, that would only be if you have SAS HBAs or like a SAS JBOT or something.

[Dan]

But. But if they were SATA to SAS drives, would that be something to consider if you wanted to like flirt with the idea of SAS drives?

[Linus]

I just. I wouldn't flirt with SAS drives. I just. I don't. I don't care about them. For home NAS use. What? What now?

[Luke]

No Husks and fault plane. Chaz. This is the stream DMS's kids will see when they watch. When they see their parents wedding.

[Linus]

They won't watch the whole thing. It'll be fine.

[Luke]

We talk about glucose guardians and phin dumb.

[Linus]

Hey, it's after dark.

[Dan]

Oh no.

[Luke]

I'm sorry.

[Dan]

This is also the first inaugural stream on LMG Clips.

[Linus]

Yeah, I forgot about that. We never even mentioned that we're. We're migrating the WAN show to the LMG Clips channel over the next little while. So we're going to be simultaneously streaming on both channels for some amount of time and then eventually it's going to go LMG Clips exclusive as we migrate it off of the. The main LTT channel.

[Dan]

I've been hanging out with them. They're super chill.

[Linus]

Oh yeah, there's like 350 people watching over there.

[Dan]

Yeah, they're really cool.

[Linus]

Yeah. So you're gonna want to get in the habit of watching over on LMG Clips sometime over the next little bit. Yes. LMG Clips will be rebranded in the future, Kevin says. Oh please. No. What difference would that make now? You're watching on floatplane, Kevin. It's not gonna. This is for YouTube crying out loud. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, just to clarify, this only affects YouTube viewers? Yes. Yes. Float plane forever. Relax, everyone. Okay, well, my brain hurts. Final merch message.

[Dan]

Sure.

[Linus]

Calm. Damn it. Thanks for that. Are you gonna read it, Dan?

[Dan]

I was just letting a beat play out there.

[Linus]

Thank you.

[Dan]

Greetings all. Is there any update on the light switches in. Linus is home. Did they get all of the kinks worked out yet?

[Linus]

The new ones are here. I haven't installed them yet. I will, but there's just a lot of stuff going on. Yes, this is an adequate media thing. David, Easy. We need to. We need to get the show off of an LMG owned channel and migrate a channel that's like kind of worthless right now to adequate media. Merch message. You mean pay pig post. Send me your pps.

[Luke]

I don't think it can. Because you get the product.

[Linus]

Yeah, if.

[Luke]

If you bought it and for some reason Linus got it, then I think that would make sense.

[Dan]

What if we just sent them nothing?

[Linus]

Yeah, can they just. Can they just, like, buy me screwdrivers that, like. What do I have to do?

[Dan]

No, that would.

[Luke]

Nothing in this scenario.

[Dan]

You sure?

[Luke]

You can do whatever you want? I don't know, though.

[Linus]

What if I want to do really weird stuff with it?

[Luke]

Then I think you probably get more people.

[Linus]

We'll see you next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Luke]

Bye.

[Linus]

It.