Google Has To Sell Chrome??? - WAN Show November 22, 2024

Summary

Summary of "Google Has To Sell Chrome??? - WAN Show November 22, 2024"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The WAN Show
• Hosts: Linus and Luke (from Linus Tech Tips)
• Episode: "Google Has To Sell Chrome??? - WAN Show November 22, 2024"
• Release Date: November 22, 2024

---

Introduction

In the November 22, 2024 episode of The WAN Show, Linus and Luke dive deep into the latest developments in the technology world. The primary focus is on Google's antitrust challenges, particularly the Department of Justice's (DOJ) move to force Google to sell its Chrome business unit. Additionally, the hosts discuss Microsoft's recent announcements from Ignite 2024, address audience feedback on their content strategy, and touch upon community support issues in the tech landscape.

---

DOJ's Antitrust Action Against Google

The centerpiece of the episode revolves around the DOJ's attempt to dismantle Google's dominance in the browser market by compelling the sale of its Chrome business unit.

• Google's Browser Monopoly:

  • Linus explains, "The DOJ will try to force Google to sell Chrome business unit" [00:05].
  • Chrome holds approximately 65% browser share across all platforms, and Chromium-based browsers account for nearly 80% of the market, raising significant antitrust concerns.

• Recommended Remedies:

  • The DOJ's proposed solutions include forcing Google to sell Chrome, banning default search deals totaling $26 billion annually, and requiring Google to license its search index data to competitors for 10 years.
  • Linus remarks, "I push back a little bit... the number's a little fuzzy" [04:08], expressing skepticism about the exact figures presented.

• Impact on Competitors:

  • These measures are poised to severely impact Mozilla, potentially more so than Google itself. Luke notes, "They're going to hurt Mozilla" [15:15].
  • The elimination of default search agreements could disrupt Google's revenue streams and affect the browser market's competitive landscape.

• Future Implications:

  • The hosts discuss potential delays in enforcement due to political changes, with Linus stating, "If you delay as much as possible and try again with the new administration" [12:35].
  • They also reference the EU's existing measures, noting that Android users in Europe have been able to choose their default search engine since 2019, which has maintained Android's market share better than in the US [22:26].

Notable Quotes:

• Linus Sebastian [04:08]: "The DOJ views Chrome as a key component of Google's search monopoly."
• Luke Lafreniere [15:15]: "It’s going to hurt Mozilla more than it does Google."
• Linus Sebastian [12:35]: "Google could delay as much as possible and try again with the new administration."

---

Microsoft Ignite 2024 Highlights

In addition to the discussion on Google, Linus and Luke cover major announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2024.

• Windows Resiliency Initiative:

  • Quick Machine Recovery: Enables IT admins to remotely apply fixes to PCs that can't boot, addressing issues like those from the CrowdStrike incident earlier in the year.
  • Hot Patching in Windows 11 Enterprise: Currently in public preview, this feature allows for updates without requiring a system reboot.

• Copilot Agents in Microsoft 365:

  • Facilitator Agent: Takes real-time notes during Teams meetings and chats.
  • Interpreter Agent: Provides real-time speech-to-speech translation during meetings.
  • Employee Self Service Agent: Answers common policy questions and facilitates HR-related tasks.
  • Linus comments, "These AI-powered tools aim to enhance productivity through seamless integration" [110:07].

• Windows 365 Developments:

  • Introduction of a $350 Edge PC designed exclusively to access Windows 365 Cloud PCs, supporting dual 4K monitors and various connectivity options, set to launch in April 2025.
  • Linus questions its necessity, comparing it to existing solutions like the Mac Mini: "Why does this need to exist in a world where the Mac Mini also exists?" [15:48].

• AI Integration:

  • Microsoft is expanding its AI capabilities within Office applications, embedding Copilot agents to assist with tasks and improve user workflows.

Notable Quotes:

• Linus Sebastian [110:07]: "Administrator protection standard users can temporarily gain admin privileges by authenticating with Windows hello and more."
• Luke Lafreniere [97:27]: "This AI integration could revolutionize how we interact with productivity tools."

---

Content Strategy: Balancing Tech Tips and Entertainment

Addressing audience feedback, the hosts discuss the balance between providing genuine tech tips and incorporating entertainment elements into their content.

• Recent Video Criticism:

  • Linus talks about their video titled "I Built an Insane Surround Sound Setup for under $250," which received mixed reviews. Some viewers found it confusing and felt it lacked clear technical insights.
  • Linus expresses frustration, "I'm looking at this going like, real tech tips might not be sustainable" [74:06].

• Audience Feedback:

  • Viewers suggested that the video was "a bit all over the place" and hard to follow [82:24].
  • Linus considers restructuring future content to be more straightforward, possibly by categorizing setups based on budget (e.g., $5 vs. $50 vs. $500).

• Sustainability of Tech Tips:

  • The hosts debate whether deep technical content is sustainable given changing viewer preferences and engagement metrics.
  • Linus emphasizes the importance of making informed decisions for viewers, while recognizing the challenges in presenting complex information in an accessible manner.

Notable Quotes:

• Linus Sebastian [74:06]: "I'm looking at this going like, real tech tips might not be sustainable."
• Luke Lafreniere [83:59]: "The journey is the important part, not just the end result."

---

Community Support and Customer Service Debate

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the necessity of customer support for tech services and how it impacts user experience.

• Mandatory Customer Support:

  • Linus advocates that all consumer-facing services should provide customer support to ensure user satisfaction and gather feedback: "Everything should have support because how else are you gonna get customer feedback?" [60:22].

• Support for Smaller Projects:

  • The hosts debate whether laws should mandate support universally or allow exemptions based on revenue or user count thresholds.
  • They consider community-supported projects, such as open-source initiatives, where forums and community interactions can serve as support mechanisms.

• Challenges for Large Companies:

  • Linus criticizes big corporations like Microsoft for relying on community contributions for support, arguing it shields them from accountability: "They basically just give them a shield to put in front of themselves to not have to fix things" [62:13].

Notable Quotes:

• Linus Sebastian [60:22]: "Everything should have support because how else are you gonna get customer feedback?"
• Luke Lafreniere [66:11]: "There's a contact. Is there actually support though?"

---

Reception of Their Surround Sound Setup Video

Linus and Luke reflect on their recent video about building an affordable surround sound system and the mixed reactions it received.

• Video Overview:

  • The project involved upgrading a low-cost home theater setup for under $250, challenging the effectiveness of popular soundbars.
  • Despite positive intentions, the video faced criticism for being hard to follow and not providing enough technical depth.

• Audience Criticism:

  • Viewers felt the video lacked clarity and struggled to understand the main objective.
  • Some argued that finding the exact parts used was impractical for the average viewer, making the project seem irrelevant.

• Host Reflections:

  • Linus acknowledges the feedback and considers improving future video formats to better communicate their goals and provide clearer technical guidance.
  • They ponder simplifying the content structure to enhance viewer comprehension and engagement.

Notable Quotes:

• Linus Sebastian [74:06]: "I don't know how to deal with that."
• Luke Lafreniere [83:59]: "We've known that forever. That has been true."

---

Conclusion

In this episode of The WAN Show, Linus and Luke thoroughly examine the DOJ's attempt to curtail Google's browser monopoly, discussing its potential ramifications for the tech ecosystem and competitors like Mozilla. They also delve into Microsoft's latest innovations from Ignite 2024, highlighting advancements in AI integration within productivity tools and new hardware offerings. Addressing their audience's feedback, the hosts contemplate refining their content strategy to better balance technical insights with engaging presentation. Additionally, they explore the critical role of customer support in tech services, advocating for mandatory support to enhance user experience and accountability. Overall, the episode offers a comprehensive look at pivotal tech issues while reflecting on the continual evolution of content creation and audience engagement.

Notable Quotes Recap:

• Linus Sebastian: "The DOJ views Chrome as a key component of Google's search monopoly." [04:08]
• Luke Lafreniere: "It’s going to hurt Mozilla more than it does Google." [15:15]
• Linus Sebastian: "Everything should have support because how else are you gonna get customer feedback?" [60:22]
• Linus Sebastian: "Real tech tips might not be sustainable." [74:06]

---

Note: All timestamps are indicative based on the transcript provided and may not correspond to actual podcast timings.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

What do Mattel, Banana Republic, Butcherbox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify. Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet that also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret. That's Shopify. Learn [e-mail] Enterprise Guys, today, what is this? The DOJ will try to force Google to sell Chrome. No, not like you have to pay for Chrome in order to use it. Like, sell the Chrome business unit. This is freaking wild. We could also talk about the fight last week. Or should we call it a show? Yeah, I don't know. We're not boxing commentators. But like, realistically, that wasn't a boxing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Match, so that's a good call.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, got him. Okay, we're probably not going to talk about that, so hold on, hold on. Let me find. Let me find something else here. I should probably expand on what we said last week. Or rather expand on why I wasn't able to say more last week about the hiatus. I. Is that the term for multiple hiatuses? Hiatus E. Whichever one it is. Yvonne watched the segment and she was just like, that sucked, dude. You didn't even, like, explain why you can't explain. And I was like, well, I thought it was self evident. And she was like, it wasn't. And I was like, okay, thank you. Better half. I will do better next time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do. I understand why you thought that, but I also understand why some people might not get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool, let's go. What else we got today? We need a puffery shirt. The number of people that talk about puffery. Ever since that segment, it's really stayed around.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Y'all don't seem to want actual tech tips.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Question mark.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that. That seems to be a thing. That seems to be a thing. We can talk about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can talk about that. Also, Microsoft Ignite 2024 things you don't want. Plus fixing CrowdStrike. Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you by Notion Vessi Server Part deals. That's a new one. And our laptop partner, LG, our wrap partner, dBrand, and of course our chair partner, Secret Lab, who sent over new chairs for us. They're just like the old chairs, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whiter and like soft.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they have. They have soft armrests, which we're both wearing long sleeves because it's like the heat just turned on this morning, so it's not actually warm in here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was good. They told me to wear this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is extremely comfy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. But yeah, well, whatever, I'm cold. I actually do need the hoodie. Why don't we jump right into our headline topic today? The Department of Justice will try to force Google to sell Chrome ban default search deals and license data for 10 years. Also Chrome OS might become Android. So they have, they've submitted their recommended remedies to judge Amit Mehta who ruled that Google illegally maintains monopoly on search back in August. And these are the recommended remedies. So selling their Chrome web browser, the DOJ views it as a key component of Google's search monopoly with approximately 65% browser share across all platforms. With chromium based browsers accounting for nearly 80% of the market. However, I would push back a little bit, a little bit on clumping other chromium based browsers in with the Chrome monopoly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not really their fault.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it is and it isn't. The dominance of Chrome is what's making a chromium basis so important for maintaining compatibility with the rest of the web. And even though Google does not single handedly develop another chromium based browser, they can certainly shove certain, they can certainly shove certain ideas along and make them difficult to go against. Even though it is possible in some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cases they can attempt to mess manifest their own optimal business environment.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I like that. Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's good, that's good. So anyway, I think that the numbers a little, I'm just saying I think the number's a little fuzzy. Yeah, it's clearly not 65% but I also don't think it's 80%. No matter which one of them it is though, let's be real, that is a dominant position and it is one that Google has painstakingly, meticulously, created and used to their advantage. This is kind of wild. The next recommendation is banning Google from entering into default search deals which amount to $26 billion annually and might end up hurting Mozilla more than it does Google.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Brutally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, to be clear, a lot of that 26 billion is going to Apple, not to Mozilla. But man, this one. Oh, I have kind of, I have kind of mixed feelings on, on the one hand, yeah, these default search deals are a huge part of why we all tolerate Google search because it's just there when we open up our browser. With that said, if that works, then more people would use Bing. But yeah, I mean, I understand Edge is still default in Windows and Bing is definitely still default in Edge. If the product was that bad, I guess people would be willing to switch off of it. Or maybe that's different platform. By platform. I mean, the whole switching to iOS experience has definitely opened my eyes to how intuitive doesn't mean intuitive, it just means whatever arcane ridiculousness you've personally gotten used to. Right. And that is true. That's true across. Across multiple platforms. I mean, how is it intuitive to press control, alt, delete to access some kind of system menu? It's not just something you've been doing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For a long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Intuitive to you specifically.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly. So depending on the platform, you might find users more or less malleable. And it's pretty well established that behavior across iOS and Android users is different. For example, I remember like years ago this used to get talked about a lot more and maybe it's because there was more transparency into the numbers. I actually don't know why nobody talks about it anymore, but I remember it would, it would make headlines, sort of like cyclically that Apple users spend way more money on the App Store.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that used to be super common to be talked about. I think that was often when there was notable or more notable, I would say, differences between the apps. I remember people used to be really frustrated because Android users had lower image quality on Instagram back in the day.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, that was little.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things like that were much more discernible. You generally had a worse experience on Android because Android users were seen as like cheap and not worth focusing on development.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And they were.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like, yeah, like very measurably. If you don't remember this, it was like a huge topic and like a many times multiplier. It wasn't like the average Android user spends 9% less on apps compared to the average Apple user. And this was more of a thing back, I would imagine more of a thing back when like pretty much every app was like kind of useless unless you spent like two or three dollars. Like that was what a. That was what a paid app was back in the day. It wasn't so much subscription based services.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In 2024, the average iPhone user spends $12.77 per app. By comparison, the average Android user spends $6.19 per month.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's still double.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Still double.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As far as my understanding goes, it was like a much bigger gap in the past. But I don't know, 100% right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if what Parkool is saying here is true, but if it funny if true. Snapchat on Android was apparently just a screenshot of the camera compared to iOS directly using the camera. It doesn't. It wouldn't really. It wouldn't really surprise me that much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It works.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean. Yeah. And do you really need that kind of fidelity in a pic? I mean, I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, if you have lower fidelity, you might gain a pixel here or there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean, isn't that the whole point of Snapchat? Low fidelity. Get it? Different kinds of fidelity.

[Luke Lafreniere]

See, I got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm surprisingly funny this early in the morning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was really good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm actually. I'm actually giving myself one of these. That was not bad. What's her nuts? Ashley Madison just released their. Just released their most non monogamous cities in Canada list.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Vancouver is very low.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Vancouver is very low non monogamy. So, I mean, to be clear, I'm not saying that that's. That's a goal. I'm. I'm just. There's. There's all kinds of. Well, there's like, you know, ethical non monogamy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but isn't that site specifically.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not judging. I'm not judging you if you're an.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apology, like for cheating, though. Well, there's a big difference.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, is any site for anything really, Luke? I mean, is flow plane for early access to. Well, although. Although very occasionally, very occasionally, there are things I was actually hinting at something. What I. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look what I found.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't find it. Emma put it in my luggage and then I found it that way, but I found a relic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. That is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even that many people in the audience are even gonna know what that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I pulled out of my luggage, was like, what. What is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So apparently I lost a shirt, but I still have the toque.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Yeah, I. I'm pretty sure I still have the shirt kicking around somewhere. Yeah, but it's not. It's not my go to pajama shirt anymore. It was for a long time. Now it's my Jibo shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Another. Another name that hasn't stood the test of time. What on earth were we supposed to be talking about? Oh, right, Google. They also are recommending that Google be required to license its search index data to competitors for 10 years. So this is the kind of like, whoa. Not slap on the wrist, but actual like. No, you guys need to not behave like this again. And you guys need to Take active steps to prop up your competitors to make up for the anti competitive practices that you guys have engaged in. And I got to tell you already, like we're not even all the way through the list here already. I'm looking at this going I have no idea what's going to happen in January because on the one hand I think we've both been pretty happy to see the US actually finally engage in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh dude, Lina Khan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Any antitrust investigations and remediation. But I have no idea whether that will or won't continue with the next administration because I think that everyone on both sides of the political spectrum can agree that it is likely to be unpredictable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know a pretty strong theory around this whole like you're going to have to sell Chrome thing is that Google's probable defense is going to be to delay as much as possible and try again with the new administration.

[Linus Sebastian]

The thing with the new administration though is I don't think they have any particular love for Google in general reply.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To that theory is that Big Tech right now is kind of at odds with both sides.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is kind of a funny thing because a lot of the transgressions that both sides are kind of mad at Big Tech about are very different from each other. Like they're sort of mad for completely different reasons.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's hard to feel bad for, you know, the tech billionaires that have kind of, you know, sold us up the river over and over and over again over the last couple of decades. But I do kind of feel like at this point now that everything's so far gone that they just are monopolies whether they, you know, kind of like it or not. And to be clear, you do not have to be the mono in monopoly is not actually like strictly speaking necessary. Right. You can just be in a dominant, abusively dominant position. You don't actually just have to be a monopoly to fall afoul of antitrust regulations.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you completely control everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Or you don't even. Or even. Or collude with a handful of other parties to control things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Certasium has an amazing video on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there are some very, very. There are some very non monopolist cities in Canada. Sorry, wait, what are we talking about? The point is just that everyone's kind of mad at them and looking for an excuse to kind of punish them. But the remediation that another administration might ask for might be really different. Yes, I guess is what I would worry about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So maybe roll the dice again, kind of thinking this is probably one of the worst they could have got and hoping for better. I don't know. Yeah, I do think the just jumping back to it a little bit because I saw some comments about this in the flow plane chat when we were talking about it. But the 26 billion in search deals hurting, you know, it's going to hurt Apple, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, not really. Apple will be fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly. It's really like the big damage that we're probably going to feel is to Mozilla. They're declining in usership effectively constantly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, thanks, Dan. I wasn't actually, I think. Okay, I want to clarify something really quick. That's not my gesture for fill my water. I was checking if there was water.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That the optics of that were not great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't even notice. That's pretty funny. But yeah. So honestly, this shake up. Okay. Significantly less cash in the bank. I suspect it might immediately hurt Mozilla in the ability to employ people department, things like that. As far as my understanding goes, they actually had layoffs recently. I suspect that may continue if this happens. But a significant shakeup in the browser market could result in a user base increase. An actual one. Yeah, we can hope that could result in Firefox actually having long legs instead of this just constant decline to eventual irrelevance, which they've been kind of on the path of. I enjoy Firefox. I use Firefox daily. In my personal life, Firefox has been my mobile browser actually the entire time I've ever had an Android phone, since the very beginning of having an Android phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's going to be so much less lucrative for Firefox to even have users if they aren't benefiting from that Google default search deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. You know, Bing could swoop in. It's not a ban of there being default search deals. It's just a ban of there being.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, Google ones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It reduces the competition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Who's the competition? Why would Microsoft have to pay a ton of money for it? And. And if I'm Microsoft and I'm watching this go down for Google, I'm like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if I want to do that. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, that's like, that's how this is supposed to work, right? Like that's. These remedies are not supposed to be, oh, here's a $1 billion fine. It's like cost of doing business. They're supposed to be like, oh crap. Everyone else looking at this going, holy crap, we really should not do that. We should not do that people are talking about like DuckDuckGo the issue. DuckDuckGo doesn't have any money. Like they have money but they don't have like billions of dollars a year to use our search engine money otherwise they would just be doing it already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Autark I'm guessing in full plain Chat said since 2019 Mozilla has lost 30 million monthly average users.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yikes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, so they've been on a just.

[Linus Sebastian]

They've lost like almost an entire Canada of users.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Eventually they're not going to have anything to take this money from anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like there will be nothing for Google to have bought from them. So like I don't know. I, I'm. I'm hoping that a re. Roll of the dice, a shake up, something like that might give them a chance. It's going to hurt a lot in the short term because that money is just going to disappear.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I don't know. Hopefully something can happen out of this that that works out.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think the real question Luke is what have you been doing to help Mozilla? It's not like there aren't things you could do using it personally. It's not enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We put, I mean why don't you make it. Why don't we put on the lab site that it works best in Firefox?

[Linus Sebastian]

Why don't you make it so that float plane can only be accessed with Firefox since they're all using Firefox anyway, it wouldn't be a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a good call. We probably should have done that. Yeah, I can look towards doing that in the future.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you have your phone in your pocket? Is it me? I think it's this iPhone. I think the is a lot worse in terms of interference because I've kept.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My phone over there for. Since before you brought the iPhone. It wasn't causing an issue unless it got damaged and now it's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

For those missing context we've done some polls and float plane the flip plane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Audience swears up and down that they.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are using Firefox but we have actual like site access statistics and they don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, people have pointed out that you can like spoof it so that it reports that you're using Chrome for like weird compatibility recent things.

[Linus Sebastian]

I sincerely doubt that that percentage of people are spoofing it. Sincerely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Definitely not a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

More remediations. Not selling Android but restricting it from favoring Google search Now because this is focused on search and not web mail or web documents or whatever the case may Be. It sounds like they could still have default Google apps, but I do wonder if this all goes through, if this all went through, if Google would look at a lot of their current practices and go, hey, how do we avoid any more of this? Restricting Android from favoring Google search. That is, like, what would that look like? So instead of that default Google search bar, like, I would be prompted when.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I suspect on phone setup you, or maybe with an update now, one time, and then phone setup in the future, you would be prompted to choose your default search and there would probably be like, you know, your top five and then other. And it would probably. Yeah, the list would probably have to be randomized.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. And it would involve undoing Google's $2 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic. That would be big bummer for Anthropic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, really? Why? No, no, no, no. Like what I'm saying. Not that it would be a. I understand why it would be a big bummer for them. I'm wondering why they have to do this.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know a ton about Anthropic and that and that investment, but what I would guess is that Anthropic is super, super focused on search. But I'm just guessing. I'm completely guessing. Google. Google has responded, calling the DOJ's proposal staggering, wildly overbroad, and part of a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and break a range of Google products. In an example of how excruciatingly horrible this would be, Google said that the proposal, and this is a quote, would literally require us to install not one, but two separate choice screens before you could access Google search on a Pixel phone you bought. And the design of these choice screens would have to be approved by the technical committee. And that's just a small part of it. We wish we were making this up. Is that an actual quote? That's from Google's blog. Are they for real right now? This is. Oh, my goodness, guys. Yeah. A device setup wizard is a thing, which you already have, by the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is actually very interesting because this is such an early WAN show. We have a bunch of EU viewers, and apparently this is, like, already a thing for them.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dracorex said, in the eu, you already get to choose the search engine on Android. Technically, they said, as far as I know, at the end of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. People are saying, yes, we have that already. Yeah. So, like, what do you even mean you already did it for them?

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's worth noting that in the eu, Android actually maintains better market share than it does in the US So clearly, clearly that ain't the variable that is affecting that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So annoying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Freaking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What an annoying thing to say. I hope they lose just because of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you, can you imagine sitting at Google and thinking that typing that is a good idea? Like, how did that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At a certain point you wonder if like the person who wrote it is like, yeah, let's, let's torpedo ourselves a little bit because like, that's the worst. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

We wish we were making this up. Are you kidding me? Hold on. You know what? No, my source thing. Oh my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, is that, is that poking fun at yourself?

[Linus Sebastian]

This is literally, literally at Blog Dog Google. I didn't even believe it. Like, I trust, I trust Riley. Okay? And he had the citation in there. So I saw the citation. I went, I don't need to click through to this. But I was like, no, no, the people deserve for me to actually click through to the Google blog.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And see that. This is literally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We wish we were making this up.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wish I was making this up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We already did this in the eu, so really we don't have to do any of this at all. But we wish we were making this up. I've had multiple conversations with multiple people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good people, strong people, the best people, tears streaming down their eyes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The wend list of people about the, like, the slow death of just Google in general. Like, they suck. Like, if we're, if we're looking at the landscape of like modern, you know, web, Silicon Valley style companies, what have they done in the last long time other than just like kill stuff and not innovate?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me think. What have they done? Okay, does it count as a thing they've done if they ultimately killed it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that doesn't count.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on. Thinking Google Fiber. Oh, wait, no, hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's Old stadium at this point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, no, okay, hold on. There's got to be something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently the EU has had the choice screen on Android since 2019, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, YouTube. YouTube has done some pretty cool stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

YouTube is the only thing I've been able to think of that has had positive innovation and it has also had really junky negative innovation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, this is true. This is true. I would say. Oh yeah, I was gonna say that finding stuff to buy through Google Search.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if we're talking about monopolies is better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, like the interface is better, but all the sponsored stuff that gunks up the results is not better. So I take that one back. Android Is better than ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but like, nothing crazy has changed.

[Linus Sebastian]

In like, it's better than ever, though. It's like, well, I'm looking. You asked me to find stuff, so when I find stuff, you don't get to be like, feh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Google Workspace has stood still for a super long time. Don't even have their own realistic chat. I know they have chats, which they swear to me that they use internally, and I don't believe it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, oh, Google Maps. Google Maps.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe they do, but they also use other things. I bet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe other people have had access to this for a long time. But my Android auto interface for Google Maps finally allows me to report problems. Like, if I see police, I can report it in Google Maps. I mean, they acquired Waze, what, 10 years ago. So it's, it's, it's understandable. It took them a little while to port that functionality over. Someone says they've had that in Maps for a long time. I don't know, man. It. It did not show up into my interface until, like a couple weeks ago, which was the reason that I exclusively use Waze, even though Waze's search is terrible. Like, my own badminton center doesn't show up in Waze search. And I don't, I don't, I don't know why. Because it's on Google Maps. Like you. They're literally owned by the same company. I thought that's the point of being a monopoly, like, the actual point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But anyway, on basically everything they've stood still on, they have some people, the company, that are obviously still doing good work. Like, they have their AI researchers wrote the white paper on, like, what is breaking the world right now. But then they have, like, one of the worst ones in Gemini because they didn't capitalize on it because they don't seem to be able to do anything. And the reason why I got onto this topic is because of the. We wish we were making this up. Almost feels like they're. They're pointing at themselves because the. And the design of those choice screens would have to be approved by the technical committee. That part is like, okay, yeah, because.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can't trust you to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On your own based on your own website and documentation. You already did it. So, like, what are you talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that looks fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it does. It looks completely fine. And they literally already did it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that looks like. Let's just do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are you talking about? Make things again. Like, Google was such a sick company. I really liked Google I really like Google Workspace. I can't tell what's different in Google Workspace.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can tell you cool stuff years ago. I can tell you cool stuff they've done.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have those like hardware decoding cards for video. Hardware, video decoding cards. Those are cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When did they make those?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, like a while ago. But they like are like working on them and stuff. Yeah. So they, that's not really for users though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We get the result of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Look, I have said before and I maintain that YouTube is one of the wonders of the world. It is like I think if we, when we, if we didn't have YouTube anymore, we would look back on the time that we would have, that we had YouTube and we would go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Internet would be different.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good lord. Like the knowledge, the library, the sharing of human experience. I really do feel like it would be a loss.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe not quite on that level because of how little sort of written knowledge there was in the world at that time. Right. But I think that given even more time and given even more buildup of collective knowledge and experience, I think you could make the argument. I just didn't want to make such a strong statement. But no, I think it would be like that losing something of that magnitude at this time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of the big things with YouTube is when you'll, you'll find videos on there that are like from 13 years ago and it's, it's like potato, you know, but it's, it's when people were archiving footage from like pre Internet era. So it's not only is it from 13 years ago, it's actually from way before that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. And there's literally nowhere else to access it because on YouTube, any Yahoo. It's kind of a joke because it was pretty good. Yeah. Can upload anything they want and it just is there and is just documented. That is, I'm not going to call it a public service because they're clearly a for profit company and they profit from it with your data and your attention to ads and your premium subscriptions and all of those things. But to lose it would be catastrophic I think at this point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But yeah they, I. When's the last time they launched a Gmail? You know like when they launched Gmail they launched it on April Fool's almost as like a joke and then just took over the world. Like they, they don't do stuff like that anymore. Google Workspace again hasn't moved at all. Gemini, I'd say. Yeah. Someone's phone is oh, sorry, that's me. Gemini.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd say Docs is notably behind. Docs is noticeably better than it used to be at all, though. As someone who uses it every day, it's a lot better than it was five years ago, I'll tell you that. It's definitely better. What's changed in the last five years specifically? I don't know, but just it's. The interface is just always like getting a little better. It's always getting a little better. There's still things that are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's probably one of those things where I can't imagine it, but if I saw a version from five years ago, it's probably changed subtly over time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Still things that are super obnoxious. Like once a document is pressing return is two spaces, it's like damn near impossible to get it to stop doing that for some reason. Like you can go in, you can tell it single spacing, you can tell it whatever you want, but if you like paste something in that has that inherent formatting in it already, for some reason, it just like breaks it forever as far as I can tell. I'm sure there is a way around it, but it is not intuitive to a word user, a longtime word user.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someone in full pinchot Tim said, come on, you know more than anyone that small backend changes are so huge and you don't realize them unless you look at them side by side.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know that this is from a consumer standpoint. Yeah, give me something as a consumer. Back end changes smooth out your infrastructure and make managing it easier and they might even improve responsiveness here and there. But for the most part, every time that I've seen Google tell me that a back end change is supposed to make my user experience better, it has made it literally worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure it happens a bunch of times without them really communicating to you. This is totally a thing. It's super annoying being on a team when you have to work on stuff that users.

[Linus Sebastian]

The most egregious example of this is the Analytics Dashboard, which used to be extremely snappy except for the occasional time that it wasn't. And now. Okay, of course it's behaving well right now. Yeah, now it is for the most part a piece of garbage. It's actually doing really well right now. But I could talk for a long time about how much I hate the new Analytics Dashboard. And it's not even new, it's like 7 years old at this point. But I can't stand it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't think of anything new that I use from. From Google. And most of the old things that I use from Google are becoming harder and harder to justify over time due to price increases from, you know, getting my YouTube music from my premium subscription that just went up by 60% because they're trying to shoehorn in AI features that are really expensive, dude. So they're cranking the price up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just give me Google Play Music back. Yeah, it was actually better. Like, the thing that I. The one feature I cared about, the reason that I spent a bunch of money on Sonos speakers and the reason that I got a Google Play Music subscription was because from my music app, I could just click Cast. Like, just the cast button, you know, like the Chromecast cast button. I could just click the cast button and then pick my speakers. And the integration was perfect and flawless. And I never had to touch that piece of Sonos app. And now that it's, like, so bad that, like, their CEO had to apologize, I feel so validated in that sort of. That decision I made to completely avoid it also. Oh, my God. I don't know when this happened, but again, back to Android Auto for a second here. I can't search in my YouTube music app. Like, I have to. Like, I can voice search not in the app. Like, I can be like, I don't know, play Justin Bieber or whatever. Right? Like, I can do that. But if I'm. If I'm like. If I'm, like, using the interface, there's no search and the browse is super hamstrung. And what's. What's really wild is there's no Start Radio button in it anymore. And that is literally like, how I use my music app is like, I find a song that I'm kind of in the mood for and then I click Start Radio.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I just want to. I kind of want to listen to stuff like that for a type of song. Yeah. And that. That Start Radio button is no longer there in the player for me. And I see a lot of people when I was talking about Maps saying, like, oh, yeah, mine has this, mine has that. It's all over the place, though. The fact that you. I'm not saying you don't have. And you got. You guys might even have a Start radio button. I have no idea. But I don't. And it is very annoying. Very annoying. Okay. No one is actually. Yeah, no one's actually disagreeing with this one. So I guess. Yeah, it's. It's apparently still. Still bad. But yeah, just. Just get. Bury the hatchet with Sonos and just make it work again, please.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, I just. I've heard a lot of stuff about how and who knows what's true and what isn't true, but I've heard a lot of stuff about how things work inside of Google. Apparently the best way to get promoted was for a long time was to like champion a project to launch. Yeah, but then you would just get promoted after it launched. So it. That project would like lose its leader, stagnate and then get closed down. So it was just this like farm for junk for a long time. So for at the beginning they were making new good things rapidly and then they saw new good things coming out rapidly as a good thing for the business. So let's incentivize that and promote people that do that. But then the people inside that just wanted promotions and money were abandoning all their projects. So they were making new good things and getting rid of them rapidly for many, many years. And then now they just don't seem to really do anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cubes the gamer has one. Rcs. Yeah, and that wasn't just a matter of like developing it. That was. That was like launching and maintaining for an extended period of time an extremely, ultimately effective campaign to get attention from regulators.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As I was saying, a big competitors, the lobbying almost more than anything else. I think RCS is a good example. It's crazy to me that there is this few examples for a company of 200,000 people.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is true. This is fair. Google Meet is pretty good these days. I'm just saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look, I'm but barely matters when people are actively moving away from Google Workspace because if you want to be on Workspace and you want an actually good chat client, you're using Workspace and Slack. And Workspace and Slack as a combination is quite expensive in my opinion. Slack is significantly better than Teams. Workspace itself though has stagnated so hard that Office365 seems to have mostly caught up to them. Yeah, if not at parity. The biggest problem with Office365 is that teams is just such a dumpster fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's better than it used to be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's still so bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have few stability messages to group.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Chats that have not existed before.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know. Why?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, if you attach something to a chat message, you have to wait for it to upload before you click send. Yeah, why In Slack if I attach something and click send, it just sends once it attaches.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, duh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like there's. There's so many things that are Just holy crap. If you're in a big group chat, it highlights the box for whoever's talking except for you. So you can't tell if your mic's working.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just why? There's so much stuff that's just so confusing.

[Linus Sebastian]

We need to get a couch on the WAN show set so he can but. So he can lie on their couch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But teams therapy, teams is going to keep improving because something that Microsoft is quite good at is this just never ending March.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They just keep moving. Usually a little bit slower than everybody else, sometimes backwards, but they just keep moving. So eventually teams will be good enough. You know, there's only so much you can do with the chat client. You're seeing the type of innovation that Slack has been bringing lately and it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like eh, I think we're at feature parity with MSN messenger now. So the only way to go is upward from here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're getting there. But it's going to be really hard for IT teams to justify the cost of having an expensive Google workspace subscription, especially when they're trying to not give you discounts anymore. Unless you also buy Gemini, which nobody wants, and then also a very premium, very expensive Slack subscription when you could get all of that under a365 license or a Lark license or something like that at a massively decreased price with more features.

[Linus Sebastian]

VDKA makes a very important point here. Until we have a nudge, feature parity with MSN messenger will not have been achieved. You are right. Thank you for that. And I'm sorry I have misspoken. I have besmirched the good name of MSN messenger and I will not do it again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I miss Messenger.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will not do it again. Okay, what else we got here? Google claims the DOJ should be focusing on revising search distribution agreements instead. Okay, this is interesting. Google isn't the only one who thinks this is a bad idea. Some analysts worry about its feasibility and unintended consequences. For example, it could potentially harm schools that use Chromebooks and disrupt the browser market which relies heavily on Google's open source Chromium project. Those are both good things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some analysts realize that something might happen if this happens.

[Linus Sebastian]

And this is one of those things where it feels a little bit like the housing bubble in Vancouver where not in my backyard. The bigger the bubble gets, the more hand wringing there is over doing anything about this because of the economic harm. And it's like the longer you hand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wring, the harder the economic harm gets.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like if we'd done Everything properly, we wouldn't be here in the first place. And the further we allow it to expand, the bigger the explosion when it pops like, yes, there's going to be collateral damage. If all of this goes through, there will absolutely be unintended consequences, for sure. But the longer we wait, the worse it gets, the more atrophied every other potential competitor will become because of Google's dominant position.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is why you shouldn't allow this to happen in the first place. Ideally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Speaking of the Vancouver housing bubble, it's. It's kind of starting to look a little shaky.

[Dan Besser]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's looking a little shaky. A little sad. Yeah, you know, it's. It's making a noise like sales are erupting, though. Yeah, sales are. Sales are going up, which will maybe prop things up a little bit, but also interest rates, apparently. Apparently, the Trudeau government is doing like a buy your vote program right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, you saw that, too. I'm happy you had the exact same reaction I did. The election's coming soon. What if we lowered taxes and gave you money? How about that, huh?

[Linus Sebastian]

What if we got rid of first past the post? You ever think of that, Mr. JT?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that thing you said you'd do?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, remember? Did you ever think of that? Because I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal, Mr. Trudeau. Right now, if you're watching this, I will wholeheartedly, emphatically endorse you for the next election. If you get first past the post gotten rid of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you do that thing you said.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'Re going to before the election, you follow through on that first term election promise. I will. I will. I will say hey, for all of his other warts, at least the ones that I can see and the ones I can't see. Don't show me your warts. Hey, he's got that cool fall down the stairs trick. And he got rid of first past the post. That's enough for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because we need election reform.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, we do. We need it desperately.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm. There you go. I'm in. That's all you gotta do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is first past the post? I would actually recommend that you watch a CGP Grey video on that. But effectively, with first past the post, you are going to end up being forced into what is effectively a two party system.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you don't have first past the post, you then have ranked choice, ideally. So you rank your choices, and if one of your parties that you voted for as your first choice is clearly definitely going to lose. They just dump that and your vote goes towards the second choice and so on and so forth until there's a winner.

[Linus Sebastian]

It also makes it so that like let's say you had a super polarized electorate. Hypothetical scenario. If you had your ranked chose ranked choice voting card and it had like the super right wing party here you had a super right wing party, kind of a centrist party and a super left wing party. If you were to say, well, okay, I am very aligned with the right wing party and very misaligned with the left wing party, but I guess these center guys would kind of be okay. And if everybody basically did that but like flip flopped, that center party would actually have some representation in the formed government.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because if everyone kind of agreed that these guys are okay even though one of the other two hyper polarized parties was their first choice, those centrist sort of mindsets would be much more representative. Is pretty much what it would come down to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

First past the post drives people to extremes because it ends up making, in my opinion, most people vote on an anything but them type basis instead of for what they actually want. And ranked choice voting allows you to vote for what you actually want, which is like enormously massive difference.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Or more like it allows you to. It allows you to specify what would be completely unacceptable and what would be more acceptable and what would be preferred and then you can account for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It often results in something that's a little bit more average, not necessarily the best or better, but it'll help lean towards something that's a little bit more average instead of more extreme. I don't think there's any voting system that involves everyone and is perfect. I don't think there's any voting system that's perfect. Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But first past the post is like definitely one of the worst. Yes, there are worse ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's one of the worst.

[Linus Sebastian]

But first past the post is really good for the incumbent. It's really good for those parties that are that currently hold all the power. So that's why it's really hard to get any kind of reform passed because they are highly disincentivized to do it. It's really frustrating. Why is it called first past the post? Ask Shortcut. It's called first past the post because whoever passes the requisite number of votes to win that race just takes all the marbles instead of accounting for anything else. Digital B11 says Veritasium has a good video on voting systems and that makes perfect sense I'm sure Derek does. So why don't you guys go check that out?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Moving on. Did we finish the Google topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Discussion question Google blog post Multi Google has told Android Authority that Google's multi year plan to migrate Chrome OS fully over to Android, which lines up with a Google blog post from June 2024 swapping parts of Chrome. Yeah, I think we're pretty much done. I think we've talked about this enough. Okay, so what do you want us to do, Dan?

[Dan Besser]

Announcement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you want us to do announcements? Oh, good lord. There's a handful of announcements today. Okay. From Tuesday, November 26 to Monday, December 2, we will be running some incredible deals on some of our most popular products at lttstore. But what we're really excited for are these bundles that we're putting together with the help of some of our partners. If you've already seen our Black Friday Cyber Monday email signup page, then there's something new on it. Make sure you sign up so you don't miss out on the deals. Also, Floatplane subscribers. Oh, this is. Is this because of like the new like better integration between Floatplane and LTT Store or like what is this quite.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Similar to what we had before. It's just a different way of using it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Floatplane subscribers will be getting one day of early access on Monday, November 25th. Now my understanding is that early access is to the week long deals, but it is possible that there are messages on my phone that will further clarify what is going on. Okay. No, I do not have any further messages on my phone. So I think that would be the week long deals. I don't think that that will necessarily include some of the very limited quantity flash deals, but I do not know for sure. The way to know for sure is to be signed up for the newsletter. So that is at lmg, gg, bfcm. Dan, do you want to throw that in all the chats to make sure that everybody gets that?

[Dan Besser]

Can do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now it's time for us to play a game. Sorry, we're playing a game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some people are saying that they don't see the email signup form. It's probably because you have something blocking it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Modern Internet is a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay Luke, let's see if you can guess what these items are. Sorry, I don't have an item here. Dan, do you know anything about this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it these? What are these?

[Dan Besser]

No, I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wondering about what's with everything on the desk there.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, Dan, what these items are?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What items?

[Linus Sebastian]

But I think you had a good feeling about the item in the middle of last week. I don't know what the items are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it in this?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think you had a good feeling what they were.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The bag.

[Dan Besser]

I guess so. Ah, Riley had mentioned this. I'm so sorry, Riley.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. Why don't we come back to this.

[Dan Besser]

Guessing game plan for products on set, which will be.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, here. Anyway, so the early access thing. Subscribe at lmg, gg, fp, Black Friday to subscribe to Floatplane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People are saying it's the bundles at the bottom of the Black Friday page. Oh, the question mark things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suppose. I guess what they are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you, audience. Okay, there we go. The big freaking bundles.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How specific am I supposed to get?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think you're supposed to get very specific.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How the heck. Really?

[Dan Besser]

Pikachu.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Guess that.

[Dan Besser]

Can you just say ditto for product?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Still win. I don't know. The. The first one based on the. What looks like the wrist rest attachment and the fact that it doesn't have the.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you're supposed to guess the middle one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The middle one. It's a stream deck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. It's apparently in the human organ transplant bag that is on the set. That's my thing. Why? Luke, I don't know what's going on right now any more than you do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's not. It's a Wave xlr. It's from the same brand.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wow. You got it wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure they use the same housing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow, Luke, you're 0 for 1.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, I don't think I'm gonna get any of these.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then check it. Wait, what? No, hold on a second. What? What's going on?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think that's right. Because the doc says. The doc says Elgato. Stream deck. Mark 2 is supposed to be in the organ transplant bag. What is happening right now? You can't do this anymore. Okay?

[Luke Lafreniere]

From the shadow, you literally can't tell the difference between the two.

[Dan Besser]

Okay, I have one on my desk that looks like.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is the silhouette on the right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a keyboard, Mon. I don't know. My guess. On the right, Luke, that's the left headphone, mon. These look like Sennheisers. They look like Jamaican headphones. No, I'll say Pokemon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who's that? Pokemon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Anyway, do any Pokemon have mon at the end of the game?

[Linus Sebastian]

Squirtlemon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, they look like Smokemon.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Too early. That's a. That's A good reference. The cucumber song thing, about how it's good for you or whatever. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know why I remember that jam on.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't take credit for that. I can't take credit for that. That goes to Sinful Hands and Float Plane Chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They look like Sennheiser headphones. I'm guessing based on the band that they're like six hundreds.

[Linus Sebastian]

Check under your table right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was wrong last time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, dude. I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're sennheisers. They're not 600-hundreds.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're HD 560s both open back headphones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Both of these items are going to be included in bundles that are on sale throughout the entire event or until we run out, which is probably more likely. But there's a third item on the left. Good gravy. This is taking forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Corsair K65.

[Linus Sebastian]

Corsair K65. Did you look at the dock?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, it looks like it has a 10. Open the LTT backpack that is here between us, Luke. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's the case, though. K70 core TKL with Corsair. I thought it said milks and I was like, really? MLX. Red, smooth linear switches, a $120 keyboard that will be included in a bundle at no extra cost. Along with one more thing. But this bundle is going to be dropping on a random day throughout the week, so I'd really recommend you sign up for email notifications at LMG GG BFCM to have the best chance at securing one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I was five switches off.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah, good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right brand, though. You can kind of tell from the silhouette that it's a Corsair keyboard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, okay. Kind of. We made our way through that eventually. Yeah. Also, what are those?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are those?

[Linus Sebastian]

For the announcement. Left hand for the announcement. Right hand. Okay, so Linus Cam. Hold on. I'm gonna figure this out. Our collaborative wrist rest with Delta Hub is back in stock. And this time the left hand variants are available too. They sold out quickly during the first run. And this time you can get early access to their Black Friday sale. You can get 15% off by going through our link in the video description. And finally. Oh, this is an announcement, but is not to do with the store. OVH Cloud Summit 2024. Why is it that Luke has a go bag with him right now? Not because the world has ended yet, but coming up on November 28th, Luke will be live in. Excuse me, Live A Paris hosting this year's OVH Cloud Summit Live event.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

There will be great discussions around cloud computing, AI, machine learning and more. And it'll be hosted on their Twitch and X links, which we will have in the video description where you guys can find out more. That is actually super cool. I said 15%. 15 should genuinely actually be pretty fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've seen the lineup of people that I'll be interviewing. I'm actually genuinely.

[Linus Sebastian]

So are you like a media personality again or, like, what. What do you even.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who. Who are you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

What exactly is it that you do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not sure, to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. Whatever comes up prominent guy, they should just ask for that to be your little, like, tag.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be pretty funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, like, honestly though, I don't know. Like, I do this thing. Yeah, you're like, you're a Renaissance man. Podcaster, development team, lead lab thing. Yeah. Bird enthusiast. I don't know. There's all. There's all kinds of, like, infrastructure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Enjoyer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Historically great lovers of chicken. Chicken.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Specifically chicken.

[Linus Sebastian]

He loves chicken.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

He just really loves it. Chicken's very effective. That's what he loves about it. Yeah, it's the most effective bird.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

100% hit rate on chicken. Why'd the chicken cross the road? To get away from Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have no idea how many chickens have sacrificed themselves for my mediocre physique. That's a stolen joke. But anyways. But I think it's actually gonna be really fun. I'm excited for that. Okay, tune in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. What else are we even. What are we supposed to be talking about today? Dan, can you please get this show back on the rails?

[Dan Besser]

I've been trying. Are you still. Are you done with the announcements?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Am I?

[Dan Besser]

I'll read the doc for you then. Let's see. Yeah, looks about right. Then let's do some merch mess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, sure. Merchant messages. So you head on the store, you add something to your cart, a box pops up, you leave a merch message. We think it's better than Super Chats or Twitch Bits, because, hey, if we get to your message, great. Or Dan can pop it up down here or reply to it or forward it to someone internally to get you an answer. Well, you know, we're going to do our best to acknowledge your merch message, but if we don't, then, hey, well, there's always, you know, getting some high quality merchandise in the mail. Yeah. All right, cool. So anyway, merch messages. Hit me. Show us how it works, Dan. Sure.

[Dan Besser]

Let's See, your first is from Zachary. How much is Google to blame for people getting scammed? Facebook and Instagram don't have customer support. But if you Google it, a bunch of scam results appear. Should customer support be mandatory? So I think this is more of an issue with like Facebook not having.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Customers would be an incredible amount of free products that would instantly cease to exist.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So, okay, so basically what you're saying is that Google is returning search results that are invalid and that are scams when people are trying to contact Facebook and Instagram support. Okay, so step number one is yes, a customer or help option of some sort should absolutely be mandatory for any business and especially for someone that operates on the order that Facebook does. Like, if we can afford to have customer support, Facebook can afford to have customer support.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So any free service has to have customer support.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, dude, nothing's free. It's not free. So there's that Facebook, you're absolutely paying for, you pay in your data. And if it wasn't profitable, they wouldn't be doing it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If that became a law, genuinely a lot of services would instantly shut down.

[Linus Sebastian]

If they had to have customer support. Well, hold on a second. Because I'm not saying every service like if there's some back end project or something that we have implementation for on our website or something like that. I think if you are consumer facing, maybe I should call it consumer support. Then if you are end user facing, give me an example of someone who shouldn't have to have end user support for their product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Straw poll.

[Linus Sebastian]

Straw poll. Is straw poll even a company?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like realistically I pulled that off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Top of my head.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on a second. You do they have support?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Watch them have support.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on a second. What the. What the devil is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can contact them.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have pricing type form. And why do they have straw pool? Straw type straw straw. Easiest pull creator ever. That only. Okay, well apparently there's competition in the. Create a quick. Create a quick poll space. Also. Hold on a second.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They have support.

[Linus Sebastian]

They totally have support.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Confirmed it online. Contact us support email. So they have a. They have a pricing structure now though, so I did. I wasn't aware.

[Linus Sebastian]

Try again, sir.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Give me an example of something that shouldn't have support. Everything should have support because how else are you gonna get customer feedback? Literally, if we didn't have LTT Store support, how would we ever improve?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but that's a store. That's like a very different situation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, fine. If we didn't have floatplane support. How would we improve?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Floatplane is pay to access service.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everything is paid, though. Everything's paid. You pay with your attention looking at ads. You pay with your personal information. You pay with your credit card. You pay for everything. Everything's paid. So there's no free lunch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I can't think of examples right now. Small Linux distros. Linux support for Linux distros. I think there are some support forums. Would that count?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that support forum count, DAC overflow. You know what? No, I. Well, see, here's my problem because I think in the case of something like a Linux distro, I actually would say that. Yeah, I think that counts. I think that's valid, right? If it's a community created, community supported product, then I think it can be. Yeah, then it can be community supported. Community created can be community supported. But the fact that Microsoft, for example, has that. I forget what it's called. Like Microsoft answers or like what's it called? Give me a second, I'll get there. So the fact that Microsoft relies on community contributors to answer support inquiries for freaking Windows.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Is actually comical and actually very annoying to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like actually comical because it basically just gives them a shield to put in front of themselves to not have to fix things that are problems. If they were actually accountable, if they had to pay, if they had to pay billable hours to employees or contractors to sit and explain to people why freaking search doesn't work. If that was actually on their books, we might get a different response from them about it. Maybe they might actually fix it or.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It would just be canned responses being scammed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Eventually. Eventually, like someone would look at it and go, hmm, it might actually be cheaper to just develop a fix to this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They would just script a can response to everybody and not actually deal with them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Turn it AI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, what about this?

[Linus Sebastian]

What about it? That's a, that's a forum.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where's support?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, you. Hold on. No, no, no, we have, we have, we have. You can contact an admin or moderator. We literally have that. I'm gonna find it, I'm gonna find it, smart guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not official support though, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, hold on. Staff. Okay, Linus Tech. And I'm not logged in, but you can literally send me a message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's not support.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's not. But hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay. By the way, don't bother because I don't reply to them anymore. But no, no, I'm pretty sure I'm Pretty sure there's. I'm pretty sure there's stuff. Hold on. I'm gonna find it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He hasn't found it yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Forum support.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll find adventure. There we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's right there. We totally have support now. I knew we had support. Smart guy. We a hundred percent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know why we have that support though?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because you should have support.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

For gdpr. Forget me requests.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sort of actually. But it's because we. We did sales through the form.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. But we would need it anyway. And we would totally have it anyway. No, I'm not. You know what? I'm going to die on this hill. Every service that is customer facing, consumer facing and anyone who pays you in any way, whether it's with their blood or their. Look at all the DNA friggin collection companies. Man 23andMe's implosion is terrifying. If you're not terrified of that, you should be terrified of that. Even if you never send your genetic information to them, if anyone even kind of related to you did, you could be like, that whole thing sucks and I'm super angry about it still.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm probably screwed and just don't know. You're actually screwed and do know. Yeah. What was I gonna say? Would you. Would you accept some form of threshold of like revenue for the company or something like that? Like there's a lot of laws like flow plane is protected by these where if you're below a certain amount of revenue, certain laws don't take place yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think as long as we also account for. Well, we have like very little revenue but we do have a casual like $9 billion in seed funding. Like I think basically once a certain amount of money is flowing in some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Way, I'm down with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You should support the product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So once you either have a certain amount of revenue or have raised a certain amount of dollars, I'd be completely fine with that. I just think. I think this has. There's a lot of these types of laws that I see come in that to a certain degree seem designed to benefit big players and like some. Some random little forum or some random little thing here or there that like, you know, maybe they do make money off of it. I would. They probably actually do have.

[Linus Sebastian]

Team Boo suggests that another threshold could be users and I think that's valid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's an interesting one. There's a contact. Is there actually a support though? Wow, this website is rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just went to paint.net oh yeah, good old paint.net.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The email is not for technical support or troubleshooting There's a forum linked below. There's an example.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's just a support forum. Please ask our forum.

[Linus Sebastian]

But isn't paint.net like open source?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a donate button.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Again, you said any site or service.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, what I said is that if it is community created, then it can be community supported. So I said the forum is valid for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Okay. I don't remember that bit, but I believe you was probably thinking about something else.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Chicken, probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't eaten today, so maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I think if there was some amount of. Yeah, Either a user count or a revenue count or freeware.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not open source.

[Dan Besser]

Sorry, Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

And yes, this is a really good point. VNG Supernova says open source doesn't mean community created.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's also very true, actually. Very true often means limited amount of contributors because I don't know, either there often isn't that many contributors, or it's people that just want credit for job applications.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hexdot says no chance with Elon as part of the next US Administration. Doesn't Tesla not even have PR anymore? They don't have pr, but what they do have is customer support. They actually. They do have support. If you are an individual end user, you can 100% contact Tesla about whatever issue you're having with your model. Whatever. So let's just, you know. Look, I'm not a fan of a lot of stuff that he's done, especially over the last few years. There seems to be kind of this weird kind of turn that he's taken. But let's. Let's not. Let's not make things up. Right? Yeah. Me goo says Elon is their PR department. For better or for worse. That is a true statement. Let's maybe move on to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I've got to get out of here in like 40 minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, do you? Okay, let's move on to our sponsors then. Cool. What has the show even been about so far? We're gonna have to get through some topics at some point.

[Dan Besser]

Only Google.

[Linus Sebastian]

Google. It's the Google.

[Dan Besser]

Good job, guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Notion. If you want the power of Thanos in the office, check out our sponsor, Notion. Just like Thanos, Gauntlet brings all the Infinity Stones together, Notion keeps your notes, docs, and projects in one place. You can even view all your files directly on the platform and keep everything synced up with storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive. And to make it easier to find your files, their AI Connectors feature designed to enhance searching capabilities is now in beta. Speaking of AI, their new Notion AI is a single AI tool that does it all. Search across Notion and other apps, generate docs in your own style, analyze PDFs and images, and chat with you about anything. Sorry can analyze PDFs and images and chat with you about anything. It's powered by ChatGPT4 and Claude. And to protect your privacy, their AI partners are contractually prohibited from using your data to train their models. It's super easy to use, and Notion helps you save time by letting you focus on what really matters. Try Notion for free when you go to notion.com wan that's all lowercase letters notion.com wan to try the powerful, easy to use Notion. The show is also brought to you by Vessi Is the holiday season squeezing your wallet dry? Don't worry. With our sponsor Vessi, the only thing that should stay dry this Black Friday season is your socks. With up to 40% off on select shoes, you can step into the season with comfort, style and savings. If you don't know Vessi, they offer all kinds of stylish, functional shoes for everyday wear. Sorry, I'm deviating from my talking points a little bit here. I had no idea they had a store in Metrotown. Yeah, yeah, they had like a physical store. I hadn't been to Metro Town in like eight years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't seen it because I haven't been there since they opened the store, but I just know that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Our team loves their Vessis because here in Vancouver the weather is always so unpredictable. I actually hate this talking point because the weather in Vancouver is not unpredictable. It's extremely predictable. It rains. Which doesn't change the fact that Vessis are good for it. It just is very predictable. Their new Courtside Classics bring that sport and retro everyday look with a padded tongue for extra comfort. Or if you're more of a wild adventurer, their Stormburst high tops combine the comfort of a sneaker with the grip and coverage of an outdoor boot. So step into water resistant comfort with Vessi's Black Friday sale where you can enjoy up to 40% off select what they say are waterproof [e-mail] and my hesitation there, guys, my hesitation there is that I have a belief, this is a core belief of mine, that nothing is waterproof. If water can carve chasms into the face of the earth, then it can, with enough time, break down just about anything. Water is patient, so that's my only thing. I don't call anything waterproof. Finally, the show is brought to you by Server Part Deals. Oh, okay. I know about dropping things, but I'm not the only one. Sometimes your package might be dropped even harder by the courier. Imagine if your wife's anniversary gift is in that box. Or even worse, your hard drive. Our sponsor Server Part Deals thought about that. They sell recertified, refurbished and new hard drives and have a growing collection of enterprise SSDs. To avoid that kind of tragedy, they offer some of the best packaging in the industry. They've custom designed both their individual and bulk packaging and offer free two day shipping. And it says show the packaging on camera for a better environment. This container was not bleached white. Okay, very cool. And what am I about to find? And we've got some boobles. The cushions in this box are manufactured from 100% post consumer recycled plastic. Cool. That's nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It genuinely looks very cushioned.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow, that is a. Yeah, that is a firm cushion. Oh, okay. Oh, neat. Yeah, this is different from what I've seen before. So you kind of go like this and then your hard drive comes out and That's a casual 24 terabyte Seagate EXOS in there. Very cool.

[Dan Besser]

Is that one of ours?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, look, we've inventoried it.

[Dan Besser]

That might be from Motherfault. Please don't drop that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Dan Besser]

Although if it was in the packaging, it wouldn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right? So what you're saying is that I should drop it, but I should just put it back in here first, right, Dan?

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, that's probably from one of the V devs that's live. So if we lose that drop will lose the entirety of the mother vault. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Dan Besser]

No, we like to live dangerously.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, there's no way that's true. Stop it.

[Dan Besser]

Re silvering takes eight days.

[Linus Sebastian]

We wouldn't.

[Dan Besser]

We would. No, we wouldn't do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, okay, Dan, but I bet.

[Dan Besser]

I'm sure you could.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So many levels. Why would that have been done?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyway, they test every single drive they sell. Even manufacturer recertified drives go through read write speed testing and sector scanning and they have their smart data checked for bad and reallocated sectors. They have many manufacturer recertified drives that are only a fraction of the price of brand new ones while still delivering reliable performance. If you need help, their customer service, Luke, is not outsourced and can be reached and can be reached through live chat or calls. Check out server part [e-mail] LTT and use code LTT to get 5% off on any order, which might not sound like a super deep discount code, but guys, you gotta understand this is a very, very different, slimmer business model.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of other, you know, services and products online that literally will have, like 25, 30 points baked into them so that they can offer a discount. Yeah, that's 5% off on hard drives is, like, good. So go for it.

[Dan Besser]

I'm also told that they actually sent us that hard drive to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. They sent the hard drive.

[Dan Besser]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, thanks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, so that's just like, legitimately exactly how it was packaged because they sent it.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, that's how it was sent. It makes sense. And then we owned and Tori did, which destroyed the entire bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Neat. Okay, I want to talk about this. The topic is, y'all don't seem to want actual tech tips.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I saw this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you? Did you. Did you check out the video?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I checked out the video. There was also, if I remember correctly, there was actually a Reddit thread talking about how good parts of the video were, even though the person recognized. I think it was about this video. I don't remember. I didn't know this was gonna be a topic in the doc, so I didn't prep for this. How good parts of the video were. Even though they're usually just interested in the entertainment parts of the video, they saw how it was, like, connected to real world things. They're like, wow, this is really cool. And I was like, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we did a video this week that has changed titles a couple times because it's performing, trying to make it work terribly. And basically it was me and Elijah. And I gotta give some credit to Plouffe, who was actually the one who did the Facebook marketplace dumpster diving before the project got passed to Elijah to get it across the finish line. But right now it's called I Built an Insane Surround Sound setup for under $250. The original title focused on building an entire home theater for less than the price of the most popular sound bar. I don't know if the Bose TV speaker is the most popular sound bar today, but it was the last time we did. Why is everybody buying this soundbar? It was the most popular soundbar on, I believe, Amazon, was the platform that we were using for that series at that time. And the amount of criticism for this video, slash, the extremely low performance of this video has been a little demoralizing for me, to be perfectly honest with you. I've seen a lot of people that are kind of dunking on it for being another Facebook Marketplace video. I've seen a fair number of people dunking on it because we're comparing against a new soundbar instead of comparing against a secondhand soundbar. So they see it as kind of like an unfair fight. I've seen quite a few people say that, you know, the odds of them being able to find the exact parts that we're using are basically zero. Therefore, this is not applicable to anybody. And I gotta say, guys, I don't know. I don't know how to deal. I don't know how to deal with that. And if the video was performing great, like, if it was getting a ton of views, then it would be fine. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, I'm looking at this going like, real tech tips might not be sustainable. Like, if this type. If people are, what did I do? What can I do differently? I guess is what I'm asking. Because, like, what you said is exactly right. Like, that's not the point. The point is not finding the exact AV receiver that we did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The point is the journey. Did you watch the video by any chance?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It wasn't this one. I watched a different one.

[Linus Sebastian]

So basically what we, what we did was we got a few different options.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We started what was the Lancet or Audio one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got it. We started with an old home theater in the box. So it was a number of years old and it was probably around 500 bucks when it was new, but it was like 40 bucks, which realistically for those kind of low quality, semi proprietary surround solutions, probably more like it. They tend to be a little bit overpriced at msrp, but if you can get them on clearance, they can actually be a pretty great deal. We started with one of those and showed that even for $40 on a marketplace site like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, we could absolutely obliterate this thing. We were unflinching in our acknowledgement of the inconvenience and the wiring mess. That was another thing, man. I saw people like defending soundbars super hard for the ease of use. And I'm like, guys, we acknowledge that so directly that I just don't know how we can acknowledge it more. We stepped it up by upgrading our left and rights so that, you know, particularly for watching anything with music in it, which is like all content, we could get a bit better of a soundtrack experience. We upgraded our amplifier, or maybe we upgraded the amplifier before we changed the speed, whatever. But we got a cheap avr and with the intention not of using it for video switching, because you can't use an older one for video switching if you want to run like, you know, a modern 4K display or whatever the case may be. So we got an old amp and old amps, like, they're still great amplifiers. If you buy something that was decent 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you can still get a really nice amplifier. And then you just don't run your video through it, which for most people is fine because your TV is probably going to have anywhere from two on the very, very low end to four inputs anyway. So you just run everything through there. And then we added a subwoofer and then we added some cheap towers that we got. And the final configuration was probably around $240 compared to the Bose TV speaker, which is $250. And our point was just. And there were so many tech tips along the way, I guess is what I'm trying to get to here. Sort of talking about speaker impedance best practices, talking about what you can do if you don't have EARC support on your receiver. So talking about optical connections and the, and the good things about it and the limitations of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I, I think honestly past a certain view count, there just isn't really room for it. Maybe I'm being too doomer about this. I would like to think that I'm being too doomer about this, but I don't necessarily think I am. I think a pretty good example of this, of maybe Michael Reeves. When you look at some of Michael Reeves videos, if I remember correctly.

[Dan Besser]

His.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very early videos, he talked more about the programming that was involved and showed more of it. And these days it's usually like a comical montage where sections of the code like, fly past the screen. Like it's, it's, it's different. People don't actually care. I know there was, there was like, if you think about old YouTube, there was a lot of videos that were like tutorials on how to do something. And then the people that were making the tutorials on how to do something videos realized that no one was actually doing it. They were just watching them for the content. So they tried to push entertainment. It started leaving the actual tutorial space.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's some really good insight in floatplane chat. Like some people are saying, yeah, I really liked it, to be clear. I mean, 900,000 plus people watched it. And like the like, dislike ratio is fine. Like, it's not like people are hating on it. I'm just trying to figure out how to make like, like Someone, someone here said where's their comment? Maybe it was just not that great of a video. Can we just move on? Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The point is like I'm trying to figure out how to make this more accessible because I want people to save money. Like that's why, that's why we do this in the, that's why we started doing this in the first place. Right. Is bringing the people tech tips and we want to do it in an entertaining way. But we, so I, so I'm trying to like figure this out. Why does being critical of the content me and the video was bad? Well, okay, no, no, there's, hold on. There's. There's some, there's some really good, there's some really good comments on it. So some people are saying in my area, marketplace, especially for this kind of stuff is kind of terrible. I sometimes have to travel a couple hours for a deal on gaming computers. Yeah, well that's the thing. Like that's a thing here too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we, but we acknowledge the time spent in it. And I think that like that mindset of like sort of bargain hunting is what we're trying to get across. So maybe that's something that we need to acknowledge more directly is like, hey, this has a cost in time. Like do you think that's something that would help?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe. I don't know. Was that not explained?

[Linus Sebastian]

Combetsenbolzin says I found it a bit hard to get what the point of the video was. I felt like it was a little bit all over the place. So maybe it's something where we need a bit of a better summary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We need a couple other comments like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We need more like visuals to kind of drive it along. Boredaga, I think probably has the best comment I've seen on it so far. I bet the same video would have blown up if you'd done 5 vs 50 vs $500 home theater speaker setup. And that is, that is, that is probably the best. Maybe we just should, Maybe we should, maybe we should revisit it and like keep that same stuff. Get a $5 option. We've already got our $50 option. We upgrade our, our $250 option a little bit. We take it to 500 bucks. We get a $5,000 option and then we like contact some, we contact clips or something and we like borrow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we borrow like a $50,000 option and then we just, we do, we do it again. Postman Sundays, as an AV professional, I really enjoyed the video and the Journey. I guess maybe that's, maybe that's the thing is maybe, maybe the journey is too hard to follow along. Maybe like simplifying the format to like 5 vs 50 vs 500 is the way to go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did see a fair amount of comments on, like, maybe there should have been a better explainer at the beginning because I didn't understand what the, what the video was about.

[Linus Sebastian]

Telesco says you called everyone out for making the worst choice. You made your audience butt hurt. I'm in this tweet and don't like it. That's probably a good point too. Like, are we. So then is part of this that people are watching tech tips just to be. Just to know their choice was validated as opposed to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've known that forever. That has been true.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can know something. I can know something cognitively without fully.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've legit talked about that, being willing to accept it at ncix.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes me sad though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

But why aren't we allowed to say, hey, this thing that's super popular is not that great? Like, man, do you remember when probably about like nine years ago, athm 50s, these, these garbage headphones, like popped off in popularity because of some, some like, I don't know, they got a lot of attention. Let's just say they got a lot of attention for a little while and you and I were both kind of sitting there going, like, what, what? Like people buy these because they're disposable rubbish. That's why they use them in the studio, not because they're good. What is happening right now. And I, I do genuinely think if we had come out and made a video when that trend took off, that was like, the ATHM 50s are not very good and people need to stop buying them. We probably would have just gotten destroyed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's one of the two you either are right after or are the turn of the tide or you get slaughtered. One of the two. If you're the turn of the tide, then your video is going to explode. But if people aren't ready for it yet, so you're not the turn of the tide, then they'll just crap on you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isaac V says it was hard to follow. You scrambled a lot of parts and I didn't really get what was happening. By the way. I would like a lot more technical details and what they're about. Okay, so those two things are definitely not going to work together. A ton more technical details is going to make it a little harder to follow. I can promise you that. But I do agree that kind of like in the last scrapyard wars where we went back, we basically sent the edit back to the kitchen. You never saw the original edit? No, I sent the edit back to the kitchen. I said, look, you guys, take however much time you need and make sure that we have these onscreen visuals that make it really clear what parts we have now, what we've added, what we're subtracting, who we're negotiating with and where the money stands. And even then, one prominent viewer couldn't figure out that I was never at a negative balance. So, yes, that's. In spite of our best efforts. In spite of our best efforts. You were schwifty. Says, I totally watch reviews for things I've already bought. And that's. That sort of validates your validation seeking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do sometimes, too. But it's not necessarily. It's like, kind of to see where it's at, if that makes sense. And there's. There's products where, like, you know, I'll do some research on it, I'll buy it, I'll try it out. I'm like, yeah, it's working, but it's not 100%. And then I'll see some new product comes out, It'll get compared against that new product, and then I'll be like, yeah, okay, I probably should have waited. This isn't great. I allow my opinion to be changed. Or honestly, I'll sometimes buy something. Someone will review it against something else and say that it's crap versus the thing that they like. And I'll be like, yeah, I just don't agree. But, like, that's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tim says there was a bit of difficulty when you were between the two systems. Like, you had the center channel from this one, but the receiver from another one. I had a bit of difficulty knowing where the value was halfway through, but it all kind of came together at the end. And I think that is probably another, like, gold star. Good comment, because I still make videos with the intention that people watch the whole thing. I know better than that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. You almost have to make, like, multiple videos.

[Linus Sebastian]

You almost. Yeah, you need to have, like, the payoff, payoff, payoff, payoff. And it kind of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It kind of kills 20% viewer video, the 40% viewer video, the 60% viewer video.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can never have, like, where's he going with this? It always just has to be very clear. And that's something that is easy for me to forget because I've always kind.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of hard to write for.

[Linus Sebastian]

I imagine yes and no. I mean that, that 5 versus 50 versus 500 format kind of flows. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, yeah, I guess you kind of have to shoehorn into a format that works for it or it might be more difficult to write for. I suspect that's the case.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sock Hatabee says the established tier seemed to borrow stuff from the others a bit too much, which made it harder to follow for some reason. Yep. I think that's, I think that's very fair. In fairness to me, I didn't source the stuff and so I didn't know exactly how it was all going to go together. So I was kind of working with what I had. But that's really valid and I think that's something that I and the content team could have worked on ahead of time to make it more accessible by having a well understood format. I think that's what it basically boils down to is we could have done a better job visually of showing exactly what it was we were doing. And having a better established format wouldn't hurt. I also think that some people kind of got fixated on details that didn't matter. I saw, I saw some people talking about how, well, I don't even have a home theater room. And it's like, well, no, that's, that's not the point. We're shooting in here because it's really convenient, but you could do this anywhere. And I think a lot of people kind of missed that. Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm looking into booking a ride right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lieutenant Salty. The video was important. Too many people have crappy soundbars and have no idea what they're missing. Yeah, I mean, that was why we did it. I thought it was a really important video. Mantissa says. Are you just focusing too much on a loud minority? No, because the whole point of this is that last, last thing that I just read. So many people have the wrong thing and like need to hear this and it might not work for everybody. Not everybody has the space, not everybody has the wife acceptance factor to be able to put a bunch of random speakers they found on Craigslist in their living space. Right. Like, it's not going to be applicable to everyone. But I do think that before you make that decision, you should be well informed. That's it. I want people to make informed decisions and that was why we made that video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, if you're interested in tech, like if you're interested in tech, if you don't have a TV even, I think it can still be an interesting journey to see what someone would do to set up that type of a system.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because surely you might have friends and you want to be the knowledgeable tech expert in your group, I assume. Right. Like, I'm. I think so. Right. All right, why don't we jump into our next topic?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Traffic's looking good. I can leave slightly later. Why we weren't able to say more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, all right, great. Let's do. Let's do another topic like that. Hooray. So a lot of people last week were upset, frustrated, disappointed that we weren't able to say more about the channel hiatuses last week. And there are two main reasons. Reasons, number one is that it's the law. And it's funny, I ended up kind of in exchanges with a couple of people where I said that and they were like, yeah, but. And I was like, no, there is no yeah, but yeah, it is just the law about certain things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's completely inflexible.

[Linus Sebastian]

I cannot disclose literally anything about someone else's personal life, including their employment status.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was just going to say, and to be honest, for good reason. Reason, sometimes it would be nice if you could, but the law should exist.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's number two, because it's like the right thing to do. Like, let's say. Let's say hypothetically that you were no longer at your job tomorrow, whether you quit or you were laid off or you were fired, sort of immaterial. During your exit interview, the HR manager asks you, hey, do you mind if we talk about the circumstances on our podcast? You would think they lost their minds, Right? But that is what a not insignificant number of people were asking me to do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To be fair about me in particular, I wouldn't necessarily think that.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it would still be the law.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it doesn't matter how much anyone externally feels like they're entitled to it. They're not. Yeah, they're not entitled to it. I saw some suggestions that we just provide information about the folks that we're parting amicably with. For example.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we always try to part amicably, but it's not always possible. And the issue there is that if we acknowledge some folks and not others, it's pretty easy to do the math. Simple deductive logic, and then. And then the conjecture starts. Right. We used to talk about stuff way more like we'd bring people onto the podcast on their last day. Or like Nick van Berkel, for example, is an example. For example is an example. Yeah, he made a farewell video on channel Superfun. But what we've Realized over time is that it's not a sustainable practice because as soon as there isn't a farewell video or an announcement or whatever the case may be, people start speculating and the. And the rumor mill spins so much faster than we can possibly respond to any of it. I also saw some folks that were asking for way more detail about the business decision side of things. Again, though, let's put yourself in their shoes. Okay, Luke, you are no longer working on a project and someone else who has a way louder megaphone than you goes and talks about whatever it is that led for your project to be shelved or canceled or whatever else. Do you think that would reflect on you a little bit? Possibly. Maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, it could. It could affect future employment potential. It would. It would be a blow to morale immediately for sure. I would be frustrated about that because, like, there's almost no way that they're going to say everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's no way that we're going to say like, we. If something got canceled. Right. Almost certainly there was something that went wrong with it at some point in some way or. Right. So if I were to say, like, hey, we're going to talk about all of the completely unsustainable practices at Floatplane that led for it to be shelved.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're going to be like, excuse me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then it creates this background drama.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you were supposed to be the business arm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly, exactly. Which is valid. Also, Floatplane is not unsustainable. The reason we're using Luke as an example and the reason we're using his project as an example is just illustrative. It's to show you guys why these conversations don't take place in public and shouldn't. And just because we've made mistakes in the past doesn't mean that we should just continue to make them in the name of like, what morbid curiosity? Like, that's not. That's not a good reason. So I'm really sorry to have disappointed some of you. Looking at the comments from last week's WAN show, quite a few members of our community were extremely upset. And I think that a big part of that is on me. I should have explained this in more detail. I do this thing sometimes where I think that stuff is sort of self evident. And it's not because people live in all kinds of different places around the world where laws and norms are different. People come from all different walks of life. People have their own value systems. So to me, this one was obvious based on all the experience that I've had doing it the other way and seeing what an absolute cluster it is. You guys don't have that experience, so you didn't know. This isn't a choice that helps. I don't benefit from not offering explanations or justifications for the actions of our team or our company. That doesn't help me when the rumor mill swirls because I can't give additional details about something. I don't benefit, guys. But it is a choice that is designed not for my benefit, not for your benefit. It's designed to minimize the impact on our team members, both current and former. Don't expect this policy to be altered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Going forward because you'd be wrong.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Good chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you want to talk about full screen ads for Copilot Plus PCs on Windows? Windows 10?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Microsoft is aggressively prompting Windows 10 users to upgrade, employing full screen ads that highlight Windows 11 features, particularly those on CoPilot plus PCs. These ads coincide with the approaching end of free security Updates for Windows 10 in October 2025. While an extended security update or ESU program exists for a fee, the ads predominantly push new PC purchases. This aggressive marketing tactic isn't new for Microsoft. They've used similar methods for past OS upgrades, sometimes just forcing them on you anyways. And users can still Upgrade to Windows 11 directly on compatible PCs as an alternative discussion question is where's the limit? Every mainstream, non Linux operating system and even some of the Linux based ones would fall under the definition of adware at this point. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where's my iPhone? Here? Hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't used macOS. Do they have ads baked into macOS?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have. I have. Literally. Check this out. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've used Mac OS but not active.

[Linus Sebastian]

Give me a sec. Check this out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't notice any.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have left them because I wanted to remember how many there were. I have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, macOS doesn't have ads, so that's not correct.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have three macOS. Never prompts you to like buy icloud. Are you sure?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, what I'm saying. Okay, fair enough. What I'm saying is, okay, Windows has other ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bakes in ads from everybody. It's not even just their own stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm sorry, but I don't, I don't. I don't have. I don't think there's. I don't draw a distinction.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so on iOS right now, my Apple account suggestions. I have three persistent notifications in my Settings app for this. My iPhone's not backed up. Okay, that's valid. However, my second notification is your iPhone can't be backed up. Upgrade for $1.29 a month. And then my third notification is some icloud data isn't syncing, which again is related to me not having enough storage, which they have kindly offered to solve for me for money. And then I have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is how that would work.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have three. Well, no, they could allow me to quickly free back up to my NAS or my computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Remember, do that in another way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember party app back. I mean, maybe. But I don't have. I don't have an ad from Apple about that. Apple doesn't notify me that that's a possibility.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So is this in your settings thing or. Yeah, I don't know.

[Dan Besser]

It's right.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's my. Well, no, I got notifications for them at some point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then I have three notifications for services included with purchase. Let's see, what do I have? I get Apple TV free for 3 months. I get Apple news plus purchase of the phone. Yeah. But of course, I'm going to have to sign up for a subscription that is going to. It's a very generous three months. Thank you very much for after my 1,100 or $1,200 phone or whatever this is. But I'm going to end up. I'm going to end up with subscriptions at some point. Yeah, people are really mad about you, about you thinking that, like they shouldn't offer or. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, guys. No, no, no, I am not. I am not necessarily saying that Apple should be. Oh, no, I think. Yeah. I think they should be forced to present me with an alternative option. No, actually, no, I. Do you know what? I do think that one person's just particularly ma. Because Apple's limit has been five gigs, basically forever. And they've done that intentionally, knowing that you're going to have to buy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but they don't have to provide that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but I think the thing that. I think the thing that is bad is that they. They don't give me a free alternative.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they're going to give you a native notification.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And not give a free alternative. That's pretty annoying. If it's just in your settings thing and it's like, hey, you could do this. That's not too big of a deal to me personally. But giving you notifications. Yeah. Breaks that law.

[Linus Sebastian]

Especially because they used to. You used to be able to quickly and easily just plug a Cable into your computer and back up to itunes. Yeah, yeah, but no, they want you to buy cloud storage. Now people are saying you can back up your phone over USB still. So I guess the frustrating thing is just that they aren't presenting that. Oh, apparently Apple's being sued over this in the uk. Oh, that's hilarious. Okay, so I was. Yeah, you can still use itunes. So that's good. They just don't tell you. So back to what I said in the beginning, I think they should present you with the free option.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rather than just saying, hey, oh, no, oh my God, your iPhone's not backed up. Buy storage. Buy cloud storage from us. Wow, good guy UK. Good job. Well, that's a valid reason to want USB3 on the iPhone. I actually didn't really think about that when we. When we talked about the. The original implementation of USB C on the iPhone 15 family. I didn't think about faster backups with the Pro versions that have. I believe it's 5 gigabit per second, right? Is it 5 or 10? I think it's 5.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pixel. Pixel bugs you to buy drive storage. But one kind of point that I will give to them, and I don't know if iOS does this, is it will also suggest that you, like, delete old photos that it thinks are just of garbage. If it's like a parking location or something that it doesn't think you need anymore, it'll be like, hey, you can get rid of all this stuff. Or like, hey, you haven't opened this app in like a year. You should just uninstall it. It'll give you suggestions on reducing your. The amount of data that you have, which I think is kind of neat. But they do try to push you to buy more drivers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kumostar in floatplanechat made a really good point. What's really ridiculous is they've had time machine on macOS for like, a bazillion years and didn't ever let you do that on the iPhone. There is absolutely no reason from like, an ecosystem user experience standpoint that I shouldn't be able to just arrive at home and my iPhone shouldn't just wi fi sync to my time machine that I literally already have, because I literally already have a Mac.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently Apple does that too. I don't know. I don't use iOS. I wasn't saying in contrast to Apple. I was just saying that I do like that they do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

To be clear, we started this segment with every mainstream operating system is functionally adware now, and it's really frustrating. Apparently you can wifi sync to iTunes. Well, why not Time Machine? Is there a reason to not be able to do that to my NAS that supports Time Machine? I don't know, man. I just. It just, it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem intuitive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No one's fighting that to me. Deep Blue says at Luke, why does the pixel not prompt me to add a different cloud account like Dropbox or Next Cloud when I don't have enough drive storage? I'm not, I'm not defending Google in this isn't. This isn't, man. You start talking about Android or iOS and people just immediately are like, this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isn'T a wifi sync to iTunes. The other is apparently not automatic. And archangelofdeath says it would be too convenient of an alternative to buying more icloud. Yes, yes. That's the whole point. That's what we're trying to say. Also, I don't want to backup to my desktop PC because I don't want to have a RAID array in my desktop PC. I want to back up to my nas. I want to use Time Machine. Like if I was an Apple user, that is what I would want. I would want it to go to Time Machine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's also super Time Machine is cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Time Machine has always been cool. To be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's so cool. And it's like, it's not even. It's one of those things that's not even like unique. Like snapshot based backup tools have existed for a billion years. It's good and it's integrated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the only reason for them to not build a good integrated thing is so that they can sell you their own storage solution. Their own cloud storage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, this is super cool. This is the last thing that we really need to talk about before you go. Have you seen the LAN party house?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was wondering if you were going to see this. Yes, I have. What the heck? You should like go or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would actually love to. The way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pretty cool, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

The way that this room folds up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude. It's so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

And still.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. You can so close station to the right. It just looks like the wall and you can see so the. The doors at the bottom support the desk. Like. Oh man, this is so really cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredibly thoughtful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

DDR panels under the floor. This show someone using them later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. The upstairs office here too. Yep. And there's. There's keyboard. Like what looks like pull out keyboard trays or. No, that might just be keyboard storage. I'm not sure. Because this one's just kind of sitting.

[Dan Besser]

Here, like, even better than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so cool. Flip up monitors. That is wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wait.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow. So that was literally a keyboard you saw. They just flip it up.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so cool. Extra. I hadn't looked through the whole thing pre show because I wanted to. I wanted to do it live. Cable management. Stealthy. Stealthy. Absolutely love it. Killer conduit. Look at this. Look at this. They've got actual, like cable trays up in the ceiling, just like you have in, like a data center, call rooms.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like they're in an office.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at this. This is hilarious. 20 identical machines, personal desktops. Door leads to the hot side. Oh, my goodness. This is so cool, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's wicked.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is so cool. Apparently it was like a million dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

E Gads. This photo has made a lot of network engineers angry. Oh, because they're not using a patch panel response in the Q and A. Okay. Yeah, this was a mistake. I'm a software guy. Yeah, fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got you. Got you. 2 gigabit per second fiber in it. This is crazy. Look at this. Can you imagine, like, working at the, you know, the micro center when someone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Comes in like, hey, I'll take everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thank you.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many? I'd like to. I'd like to buy a 4070. How many? Yes. Yeah, that was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guarantee you that was fun as hell.

[Linus Sebastian]

Assembly. Yeah. Man, look at this space. It's just so. It's so enticing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Beautiful.

[Linus Sebastian]

The house has normal parts too. Yeah. Love to see it. Dude, look at this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cat door leads into the kids bedrooms. I love it. I have wanted to do this since before we moved into our new place. Like little cat shelves and stuff on the wall. Just haven't gotten around to it. Apparently one of their parents is like, like works in architectural design or something. Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Colorful.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That I understand.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And. And kind of helped with this and has, like, designed some pretty cool stuff. Got a couple work from home call rooms.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Clearly does a good job.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cat restrooms, like, really, man. Seriously though, if I were to design my own house from scratch, I would 100% do it. If you never have to look at it and smell it. Like, man, cats are like the best pets ever. The worst thing about them is the litter. Dude. So cool. Oh, it's space under the stairwells. Dude, I could totally convert one of those spaces in my place to a cat bathroom. Dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The downstairs one, definitely.

[Linus Sebastian]

I Should do that. And the main stairwell. I could totally make a little door in there. And I don't know how humans would access it, but cats definitely could. A couple guest rooms. Dude, this roof deck. Like, what? Like, freaking what? Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Super, super cool project. I would love to come check it out. I'm inviting myself to go do a tour. I mean, honestly, I think they already did, like, a great job of doing a tour of the place, but I still would love to just check it out and geek out over it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someone 1 Up my host land Center.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, it's a great title. Yeah, yeah, it's a great title.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Slightly better than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they also. They didn't one up it. They like, six kind of smashed it. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I didn't even think about. Keeps going.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're like, oh, you thought we had one Land Center.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What about Second Land? Like, it's crazy. I love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm, I'm. I'm. It's impressive to see anyone that dedicated to pretty much anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And because it happens to be something that I think is super cool and I'm also into. It's that much cooler.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think they did an amazing, amazing job of their setup. Do you need to go? You. You're like, getting pretty anxious here, so that. That's fine. Get. Get out of here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get out of here.

[Dan Besser]

The topics. What do you want?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'll finish off the topics and then we can do a couple merch messages. I guess it'll just be me and you there, Dan.

[Dan Besser]

Let's see. Yep, there's only a couple.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm so excited for this. Android will apparently finally be able to instantly log you into your apps on new devices. This has been a huge pain point for me because I have so many, like, accounts and two factors and dependencies that I basically cannot use a phone until probably three or four hours after I first start setting it up. And it's annoying because. Because for my job, I switch phones a lot more than probably most people. And I have, like. I have like. I get like, anxiety when I need to switch phones. Google has announced restore credentials, which will allow apps to seamlessly log users into their accounts on new Android device after a user restores their apps and data from a previous device. Oh. If they can do it in a way that's, like, secure, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's why I started looking at this.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm so excited. I just can't hide it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think this particularly for Reviewers is going to be amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

The user experience should be as if they had already been using the new device. They will even receive notifications from apps that have not yet been opened on the new device. How it works Signing into an app on the old device will create a restore key which is stored locally and backed up to the cloud. Apps can opt out of cloud backup. Don't you dare. The restore key is a public key compatible with passkey/fido 2 backends and uses the same server side implementation as Passkey. When setting up the new device, the user can restore data from a cloud backup or transfer data locally. Why is Google doing this is a question here. I don't care. I'm not asking that. It's great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does this counter my rant about Google early in the show not doing anything?

[Linus Sebastian]

This is innovation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am like this is actually pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So excited about this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, my ride's gonna be here in two minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna go according to the Android developer blog, 40% of people in the US reset or replace their smartphone every year. That's a big one. Forget even like getting a new phone the number of device manufacturers where you're like hey, I'm having a problem. And their immediate response is to heart to reset the phone. It's like do you have any idea how much work homework you just gave me? Resetting my phone? That sucks. Resetting your device sucks. Anyway, they say that making the process of logging back into apps on a new phone much faster and easier will help avoid app abandonment Min and user churn. Okay, well that part of it I'm not that into. It's just to like make sure I keep paying my subscriptions like a good little boy. But whatever, I still love it. Oh, hold on. The Android Developer blog apparently the 40% is probably an overestimate. Our notes here say that's probably incorrect. Various statistics have it at more like 10 to 20% max. But anyway, I'm in that 10 to 20%. And so I'm extremely, extremely excited about this. And I can't overstate how excited I am about it. Our last topic, which I'm less excited about, is Microsoft Ignite 2024. There is some good stuff. Microsoft announced the Windows Resiliency initiative. Quick machine recovery allows IT admins to remotely apply fixes to PCs that can't boot. So this is in response to the crowdstrike issue earlier this year. Windows 11 Enterprise now supports hot patching in public preview. No reboot required. Okay, that is pretty cool. Administrator protection standard users can temporarily gain admin privileges by authenticating with Windows hello and more. And then next up we've got the Windows 365 link. This is a little less exciting. A $350 edge PC that only serves as a client to Access a Windows 365 Cloud PC. It supports dual 4K monitors, has four USB ports and Ethernet port, Wi Fi, 6e and Bluetooth 5.3 and will be available in April 2025. My only question is why does this need to exist in a world where the Mac Mini also exists? Cloud powered performance the Mac Mini is a ripping fast PC for yes, more. But I would say considering that it is a full fat like awesome PC for that price is a lot more compelling. But hey, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. Microsoft also announced new AI powered customizable Copilot agents that are rolling out in Microsoft 365 aka Office. Like the Facilitator Agent which can take real time notes during teams meetings and chats, which is in public preview now we use a third party tool for that so this is actually kind of useful for us. Interpreter Agent which provides real time speech to speech interpretation during meetings, even optionally simulating the user's voice, Public Preview in early 2025 and an employee self service Agent which can answer common policy questions and facilitate tasks related to HR. And it okay, maybe I'm, maybe I'm getting more excited. It was just the, it was just the Windows 365 link that I was like. Because Microsoft 365 is all copilotify. Microsoft is adding a little Copilot badges to the app. Icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. And best of all, they're changing the Microsoft 365 logo to something pretty similar to the Copilot logo but with an M365 badge. This is a terrible logo, huh? Oh wow. It says Please watch this 10 second clip with audio to hear ignite attendees enthusiasm for this change.

[Dan Besser]

Sure you've got some audio playing so mute something else first.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I will do that. Give me one sec. I would imagine they're going to sound about like what I just sounded like looking at that logo. I had not seen that yet and it is not very good. Here we go. All right. 10 second clip. Dan, should it work?

[Dan Besser]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, here we go. Icon to the new Microsoft 365 copilot icon.

[Dan Besser]

Oh boy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. Oof. That was the shortest polite applause that I think I have ever heard at a keynote. Wow. This last part is Actually super cool. Also rolling out now for Meta Quest 3 and 3S users is the ability to access a local or cloud based Windows instance and interact with multiple virtual monitors. That is looking pretty cool and comes at a much lower price than an Apple Vision Pro and a MacBook. I can see people being pretty stoked on that one as well. Good gravy. Was that ever savage though? Wow. I think I might even even as much as I don't like it, I think I could probably muster a little bit more fake enthusiasm than that. Yikes. All right, why don't we switch over to when after dark Mr. Dan Besser can do. Whoa. We need to switch the WAN show to this time Forever. Our concurrence on YouTube are like 15%, 20% higher than usual.

[Dan Besser]

That's higher than of very high. I'm showing 16. Oh, never. There we go. Everybody stop watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. I don't want to get up early on Fridays though.

[Dan Besser]

Me too. This sucks. It's actually 5,000. YouTube is. There's an error.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, it's a reporting error. The dashboard is broken. Exactly. Oh, crap. Okay. You know what's funny is we always did it at the later time because. And I don't want to make anyone else feel unappreciated, but we always did it at the later time because the Australian crew was like so into being able to catch WAN show and so vocal about it that we picked the afternoon on Fridays because it would be not a work night for the east coast in North America so they could kind of stay up and watch it and it would be in the morning for the Australians to watch. And we've just kind of. We just kind of. We. Our European audience was a lot less vocal and a lot, a lot smaller back then. And so we have. We have always been kind of Aussie. Aussie accommodating. And maybe it's because, I don't know, maybe it's because I kind of think of Australians as probably one of the closest cultures to Canada. Maybe. I felt like some kinship. You know, we're both kind of like.

[Dan Besser]

They're like, sorry, but with spiders.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we're still kind of commonwealth, but like, you know, kind of King Charles, you know, like. I don't know. We just always kind of seemed. We always kind of seemed on the same page about things. But yeah, this is. Wow. This is. This is a lot. This is a lot, a lot higher viewership than usual. I haven't looked at the analytics.

[Dan Besser]

I hadn't either. Yeah, no, this is concerning.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huh.

[Dan Besser]

Outlier.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, yeah, maybe. Who knows? Well, I'm not promising anything because the work week is very challenging here in a lot of ways and I'm often mentally really tired. Like I. To be clear, I don't think that I work a hard manual labor job or anything like that. But it can be mentally very exhausting. And early morning on my, on my Fridays is not my favorite time to have to be like on for two to four hours. That's another thing too is doing it at the end of the workday on Friday means that we can just kind of like not disturb anybody and we can go for as long as we need to until we're blocking like three.

[Dan Besser]

Or four sets right now. Yeah, we can't do a short circuit. Nobody can come in the building. We can't do tech linked. Nobody can be upstairs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do you keep moving yourself? You're my only co host right now, Dan.

[Dan Besser]

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about that. I should try and move the camera over slightly if I can do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Might not be a terrible idea anyway. Yeah, so. Okay, I didn't consider that. So there definitely won't be any changes anytime soon. But yeah, I'm definitely liking y'all hanging out with us. That's pretty cool.

[Dan Besser]

It's kind of fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, want to hit me with a handful of merch messages? And then I guess we should get out of people's way.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, probably. Probably. Let's see. With graphics card running hotter and the 4090 already being 60 millimeter thick, will we eventually see tower coolers as standard? Would you consider janking one together for a current or next gen?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, dude, a few short years ago I would have said no, that's just a silly mod that people do. And we're always going to need to keep our slots open for additional add in cards. And what adding cards do people even install anymore? What are we supposed to like most motherboards like they they high end motherboards. This is a funny thing.

[Dan Besser]

It used to be me off so much.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, remember, remember when high end motherboards had more PCIe slots?

[Dan Besser]

Yeah. I will pay more for extra because I need a lot of PCI cards sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Now it's like actually one. Yeah. Basic boards especially like Mat matx is one that drives me absolutely bonkers because the high end ones will remove PCIe slots. But they're not even full size ATX board, so they don't have like 5 or 6 M2 slots on them. So I'm sitting here going what did you do with the lanes? Why am I paying extra for this? If you're not putting like a PLX chip on it and then giving me all the slots, what happened? Basic MATX boards have all the slots. What's happening happening here?

[Dan Besser]

Exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so, yeah, now that this trend of people only install GPUs in their systems because GPUs cost so much, we can't afford other cards. Just not the real reason. But I don't know, it might be a contributor. I don't know. I mean, what I will say is that I wouldn't be surprised if 5090 coolers are about the same size as 4090 coolers, even with the rumored increase in TDP. And the reason for that is that the rumor is that 4,090 coolers were designed for a much higher TDP because Nvidia kind of rug pulled their board partners on what the exact heat output of the card was going to be. So I don't think they're going to get bigger in the next generation. But with that said, man, I don't think anything's off the table anymore. Oh, man. Dude. How cool would it be, Dan, if we had. Oh, I guess I should look this way at you, even though you're physically over there. Yeah, sure, that works. Oh my goodness. How cool would it be if we had a standard where you're kind of like the old trash can Mac Pro. Right. Where you got your CPU socket and then you've got your GPU and the die is on the top and you could just do like a gigantic combo cooler and then just have like front to back airflow that goes right through it.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, I'd like that. Or like you could have your CPU cooler here and then maybe another thing that kind of wraps around it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

So you can still remove them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or you could move the CPU socket more to the right of the board.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then you could, because you'd have such a large cooler, like a gpu, even though it kicks out so much heat, is a larger die, it's easier to move the heat away from. So you could cool your smaller die cpu where you really need that temperature difference between the air and the fins, or rather and the processor itself. And then you could take that semi heated air, blow that through like a large cooler for the gpu. So you could either do them serial or you could do them split. Like you could have the CPU on the one side and the GPU on the one side. And then you could just have like a tunnel that you're blowing air down that kind of cools each on both sides. Or I think probably the most effective design would be like the trash can, which really did a great job of cool, of removing that much heat for its size and for its noise. And then you would just have like heat pipes coming off the gpu, heat pipes coming off the CPU into this like a great big fin stack. That would be freaking cool.

[Dan Besser]

And maybe we should start seeing like, you know, CPU chips just come as a chip. When can we get GPUs that do that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's never going to happen.

[Dan Besser]

I know it would be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Never going to happen.

[Dan Besser]

I think what pisses me off mostly about the new motherboards these days is again, yeah, lack of PCI lanes. PCIe Gen 5 came out, all the boards put it on it. It has like a thousand PCI Gen 4 lanes. What speed do GPUs run out? Linus PCI Gen 4 times 8.

[Linus Sebastian]

For now.

[Dan Besser]

For now.

[Linus Sebastian]

For now I would like to see, I'd like to see the desktop use the additional bandwidth of PCIe Gen 5 differently. I would actually, rather than see a PCIe by 16 GPU slot, I would like to see everyone get together and kind of go, hey, can we all acknowledge that 16 current generation lanes is utterly unnecessary and can we start putting 8x slots as our primary GPU slot and using those lanes somewhere else? Having more slots, having more IO, having more storage ports, you know.

[Dan Besser]

But the new consumer, the PCI5 came out. I need the new nice big thing. That's the new number, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, hold on.

[Dan Besser]

There is PCIe gen four times X. You know, I've got a motherboard that has seven PCI slots. I know what I'm buying. Average consumer sees top of the line board PCIe Gen 5. They know that. They don't know that the GPUs don't even run at the speeds.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have a justification, Dan. I have a justification for this.

[Dan Besser]

Go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I still had a 16x slot, right? PCIe Gen 5 by 16 and a PCIe Gen 6 card comes out, right? I could take that, I could put it in my Gen 5 slot and I'd still be getting half, half of its total theoretical bandwidth. If we move to by eight interfaces, I will be getting now and we get like a 16x card and I put it in my 8x slot. That's a gen old. I will be getting a quarter of the theoretical bandwidth which could actually impact performance.

[Dan Besser]

Another thing, a lot of the CPU and Northbridge like lanes are shared If I put too many NVME drives in, it disables PCI slots. If I put too many SATA drives in, it disables PCI slots. Slots. What if you just give me eight slots on the board and then we can adjust which ones are active or not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, server boards, that's kind of what I'm talking about. That's basically how they work now is you don't even have slots on them. They just have those little. What's that mini whatever connector called? Jake sent me the wildest looking board. That was pretty. I think it was from asrock Rack where it just had no slots on it and just the entire bottom of the board was covered in those PCIe riser connectors. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. Because then you just design your chassis around that and you just like carry PCIe wherever you want it.

[Dan Besser]

Storage devices, GPUs, basically, that would be super nice. Like taking the PCI standard to its logical conclusion and just making everything like an add in card.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, not oculink. It's the newer one. It's escaping me right now.

[Dan Besser]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I can't remember. No, it's not oculink.

[Dan Besser]

Oh yeah. Bifurcation is another huge thing. I've got a quad M2 drive thing in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Adding cable cost though is gonna, is gonna kill the deal on consumer. Like for servers. Yes, but not for. Not for.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, but it gives manufacturers the opportunity to sell more dongles.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean think of the dongle slot. I like it.

[Dan Besser]

They'll love it. They'll push it for just that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think K case. It would really change case design. That would be super cool if all of a sudden you could kind of like creatively mount cards anywhere. But looking at how little adoption we've seen for PCIe risers, like it's still niche in the small form factor space or like the vertical mounts. Like it's still, I would say at most probably 1% of PCs if you factor in pre builds, probably less. Like, I just don't think most people are going to be willing to absorb that additional, that additional cost.

[Dan Besser]

Probably not.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what else we got today?

[Dan Besser]

Okay, thanks for the early show. Now I can watch it work since I work in a data center myself. I love that video tour. Was there anything that you learned that you want to apply to your home's pool loop?

[Linus Sebastian]

Those leak detection cords are super cool. Like being able to know exactly where it is. But. But no. The cost of implementing things the way that they do them is why we didn't do it that way. It's not because we like didn't think of it. Yeah, it's super cool to see it all done. Right. I'd say the one thing that we are legitimately considering because we've had multiple power outages here at the office in the last couple of weeks because of storms in the southwestern BC area is diesel generator backups. We're getting pretty darn tired of our power going out. But we can't afford to have an on site fuel purifier. So it's going to be someone's job to micromanage making sure we have non stale diesel fuel on site all the time. And I'm just looking at it going. We can barely keep our snackies drawer stocked. And that's not because people do a bad job or something. It's just because we've got a lot going on and it's easy for just in case we need IT stuff to fall by the wayside when something else is happening. I understand.

[Dan Besser]

Especially if you can't even keep snackies in stock, which are extremely visible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. Okay. You know why the snackies aren't in stock right now?

[Dan Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Canada Post. Right. Strike. Costco relies on them for delivery. So we don't have snackies right now. Like I think our, I think our shipment is like one of those limbo shipments where it started before the strike ended and then. Or before the strike started and then didn't get completed or something. I. I don't know exactly why I'm piecing this together. Someone told me that it's to do with the Canada Post strike. And I read an article about how some things are stuck in limbo. So I made some assumptions, I connected some dots, but basically it's something to do with the Canada Post strike.

[Dan Besser]

Well, we'll call them Moldies now instead.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of snackies because has it just been.

[Dan Besser]

In a warehouse for the last month and a half?

[Linus Sebastian]

Thanks, Dan.

[Dan Besser]

Let's see, last one I've got here for you. Hello gents. I think my last merch message went astray. Yes, it did. I'm sorry about that. I own a ZX Spectrum UK competitor to the Commodore 64. Do you think keyboard computers could ever make a comeback? Love mechs.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, the keyboard is. Has become such a personal choice, like even. And I'm not even talking about the people for whom their keyboard is their purest expression of their self. You know, I'm talking about just low profile, high profile. Numpad. No Numpad positioning of various keys. Keyboards have become such a personal choice that I feel like integrating them into a device would be a fundamental error of the greatest magnitude. Like, even mobile devices, right? Like, they come with a keyboard, but you can absolutely switch it out for a different keyboard, a different layout, different functionality if you want. I just, I don't see us making a return to this and sure, yes, okay. You could make it modular, kind of like what Framework did on the, the framework 16. But again, I look at what an outlier the framework 16 is as a laptop with, you know, a slim modular keyboard. More modularity is absolutely, absolutely not the direction that the industry is going and I wouldn't expect that trend to reverse anytime soon. Yeah, Randall, we have no plans for a, like a formal tool bag at this time. Nothing's impossible, but there's nothing happening at this time. And I think that's it for the WAN show. It feels bizarre, doesn't it, to be done. WAN show, like, yeah, and then go for lunch.

[Dan Besser]

I gotta just. What do I do?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I, like, I feel like my day's over and it's time to go home. Like, this is like, like, like salivation condition response right now. Yeah, I'm ready to.

[Dan Besser]

I'm sleepy. I'm ready to go to bed. Yeah, because like, I was talking to Sammy about this. I've had maybe three or four, like, single hand Friday nights off in 10 years, not even exaggerating. So I'm like, will I just go and like, stare at the ceiling all evening? Yeah, because I took my meds too early this morning and I'm wired.

[Linus Sebastian]

I told my kids, I told my kids that I'm coming home at a reasonable time. And they were like, why? I was like, well, why do you lie to us, Daddy? Yeah. No, I was like, oh, we're doing WAN show in the morning. They're like, why? I'm like, luke has to catch a flight. And they're like, oh, like, oh, okay, maybe. I guess you guys have plans on Friday nights. I don't blame you. I mean, I've been absentee dad on Friday nights for your entire lives. But yeah, sure. I mean, cool.

[Dan Besser]

Have a UK snack or just leave. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I mean, our branding's all off now. We can't have WAN show after dark when it isn't dark. It's messed up, man. Everything's messed up.

[Dan Besser]

I didn't even push the button.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. Okay, well, let's do a special. Let's do a Special shout out for dbrand Then who didn't get their banner interruptions and actually I can show you guys. I saw it on the forum. Okay, well, that's the Ridge collaborative product. Hold on, let's wait. Let's refresh again and find another collaborative product. Hello.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, our Costco snacks came through UPS as of yesterday.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, did they? Okay, so it's fixed now then?

[Dan Besser]

I think they've always come through ups.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, well, why did someone tell me it was something to do with Canada Post then?

[Dan Besser]

I don't know. Blaming you.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna go speak to that person. Okay. Do I have to load a new page? Like, what's. What's going on here?

[Dan Besser]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hello. Refresh. I thought alt F5 is supposed to do like a full refresh. Alt function F5. Am I. Am I just completely derping here, Dan?

[Dan Besser]

On What?

[Linus Sebastian]

On Alt F5. Alt F5 is the thing to refresh the page. Right?

[Dan Besser]

I think that's like. Is that force refresh?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I thought it was. I thought. Is it.

[Dan Besser]

It's just F5.

[Linus Sebastian]

Alt shift F5.

[Dan Besser]

I don't know what the force.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I thought it was alt. Is it shift F? It's shift F5. Good Lord.

[Dan Besser]

For the force. Yeah. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't had a reason oh crap. I haven't had a reason to force refresh a page in years and years and years. Sorry, guys. Sorry.

[Dan Besser]

Often.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

I don't even know if it works. There's no indicator that it's actually a force refresh.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think it's force refreshing because it's loading the exact same thing. Even if I. Whether I shift. You guys are sure it's not alt control? Is it control?

[Dan Besser]

I think sometimes there's a shortcut that you hit the refresh icon while holding a shortcut. I don't know if that works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, it seems to be just not. Okay. LTD backpack available now. I'm just going to keep clicking stuff until whatever. The point is we finally launched Black Friday. Sale ends in 10 hours. Shop now. I don't. Oh my God. I don't care. Okay. Yeah. Circuit board. So cool. This apparently is gyro controlled on Android, which I thought was pretty neat. If you go to. If you go to the circuit board landing page, there's three different versions. We've got dark circuit, short circuit and glow circuit. And it's going pretty good. People are pretty into the design. So guys, you can. You can check that out. Our skin partner, dbrand. There you go. All right. I think that's pretty much it. We'll see you guys again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. Oh. Oh, crap.

[Dan Besser]

What you should do is we should pull up a video.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, no, no, we got this.

[Dan Besser]

You got me a column?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

I was going to freaking out. I don't know what's going to happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is. This is hilarious. For the first little while before I synchronized my contacts on the iPhone, Luke was still in my address book asleep. And so I didn't realize that I went to Colin with voice in my car and I was like, call Luke Lafreniere. And it's like, sorry, who? I'm like, call slick. And it goes through. I kind of want to put him back in my address book. Is that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hello?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey. Bye. Bye. I have made a terrible mistake. I said same bad time. It'll be like the normal time. Not this time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.