Linus Sebastian (2:32)

All right, roll that intro.

Luke Lafreniere (2:33)

Yeah, let's go. Does it work?

Linus Sebastian (2:36)

Do we have the intro?

Luke Lafreniere (2:39)

Is it running?

Linus Sebastian (2:42)

You're going to C. The show is brought to you today by Threat Locker, who has done a full WAN takeover along with our rap partner, dbrand. Okay, I got some dbrand that I can show off, as well as our laptop partner Razer brought these with us. And our chair partner, Razer, who apparently we shipped Razer chairs all the way to Florida in order to sit on these. Is that what happened?

Luke Lafreniere (3:20)

I don't think we did.

Linus Sebastian (3:21)

Someone did.

Luke Lafreniere (3:22)

They did.

Linus Sebastian (3:23)

Razer did.

Luke Lafreniere (3:24)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (3:25)

That's crazy. That's hilarious. All right, cool. Why don't we jump right into our first topic, which is of course got to be the MacBook Neo. Okay. Apple dropped a bunch of cool stuff. Give me a second here. Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (3:44)

All right.

Linus Sebastian (3:45)

The iPhone 17e looks pretty compelling. It now has MagSafe charging. That was a major omission on the previous E. I honestly, I think that's the biggest one for me. It's got a new processor, very cool. Tre cool. Couple hundred dollars cheaper than a regular 17. But realistically, I think if you were going to get an iPhone, you'd probably go for a full fat iPhone anyway, which I know you've been considering. You thought about it? He thought about it.

Luke Lafreniere (4:16)

I might go for the mid tier one.

Linus Sebastian (4:18)

Yeah, that's the full fat, not the pro. Yeah, yeah. So that's the iPhone. But what I don't think this man has at any point in his life seriously considered literally never going MacBook.

Luke Lafreniere (4:32)

Literally never.

Linus Sebastian (4:33)

They have a few new MacBooks, so they've got new pros with new chips. They've got an M5 MacBook Air that starts with 16 gigs of unified memory, 512 gigs of storage. Honestly, the new pros and errors in the context of the current NAND and DRAM shortage are actually looking like a better value than before, in spite of the fact that there have been some pricing adjustments upward for the starting at that in some cases are only upward because the starting at has more base storage now, for instance. So Apple managed to do this without making major changes to pricing. But the big one, the big one that everyone is talking about is the MacBook Neo. Now, how much do you know about it already?

Luke Lafreniere (5:19)

Practically nothing. I know it's 600 bucks. I know it's a MacBook.

Linus Sebastian (5:23)

Okay, okay, okay.

Luke Lafreniere (5:25)

It's a mobile chip, right?

Linus Sebastian (5:26)

It's a mobile chip. So it uses the A18 Pro chip. So this is not like Apple M series silicon. But realistically, it's going to perform pretty darn well. It's got two cores that are going to be able to turbo quite aggressively. And then it's got, I believe it's six total. So I think it has another. Another four cores total. Guys, let me know in the chat if I've got the core count wrong. The point is this thing is powerful enough that on a very recent iPhone, it was delivering Pretty great experiences and everything from obviously, you know, doom scrolling on TikTok but you know, all the way to doing video editing because that's what people are doing on iPhones these days. Yeah, so it's a 6 core CPU, 5 core GPU with 16 core neural engine. Thank you very much Chronified over in chat. All right, it only has 8 gigs of memory. Hold on, I need your, I need your full and undivided attention because this is important. Only eight gigs of memory. It is not only non user upgradable but it is non upgradable from the factory. And a big part of the reason for that is because of the way the A18 Pro is manufactured with the DRAM right on top. This package is, she's packaged and they weren't going to do a new package design for this MacBook Neo. This is a first of its kind product. I mean I don't. When's the last time we saw a MacBook for under $1,000? Has it. People who have been following Apple for longer than me might know MacBook back when they did plastic MacBooks. Was that a thing? I'm not, I'm not aware of anything someone says. The 12 inch one I think. Okay, okay. It only has two USB C ports and a three and a half millimeter jack.

Luke Lafreniere (7:09)

That's not the end of the world.

Linus Sebastian (7:10)

Only one of them is USB3 with display capabilities but still not really the

Luke Lafreniere (7:16)

end of the world. A lot of people are just carrying dongles these days. I carry a dongle.

Linus Sebastian (7:21)

The first MacBook that didn't have a type A port on it was ten and a half years ago. The dongle machine was a long time ago. Long time ago. There's no backlit keyboard. And the base model, current laptop doesn't

Luke Lafreniere (7:35)

have a backlit keyboard and it's way more expensive.

Linus Sebastian (7:38)

The base model has no touch id.

Luke Lafreniere (7:40)

Not this one. This one does.

Linus Sebastian (7:41)

That's a hundred dollar upcharge for Touch id. Okay, but hear me out. Let me make, let me make my pitch. It has a 500 nit peak brightness display. It gets the same magic keyboard that as far as we can tell, as far as we can tell, it gets a magic keyboard just like Apple's other mobile Macs. It doesn't have a gigantic trackpad, but it has a very decent sized trackpad. And I mean if you've used a Mac, have you used a Mac? Okay, so you know Apple trackpads, they're good, they're outstanding. It's got a concern about the trackpad 1080p webcam. Okay. So it's got like an actually freaking decent webcam. And you know that the image quality is going to be good because the A18 Pro, well, that's the same chip that's going to drive an iPhone.

Luke Lafreniere (8:31)

Camera man. People keep posting like, no haptic trackpad, no backlit keyboard. I'm like, guys, this is a $600 laptop. I'm not expecting any of that stuff.

Linus Sebastian (8:40)

$600 laptop, aluminum chassis.

Luke Lafreniere (8:45)

Wow.

Linus Sebastian (8:46)

A sipped sea. I assumed that it would be unapologetically plastic. The second I saw it, I was like, they've got achieved. But. But that's what Apple is so good about, is the surfaces that you interact with. So you've got a decent display, you've got a decent webcam, keyboard, trackpad. They still manage to have dual speakers with their spatial. Spatial audio because it's all processing. Apple's a software company at the end of the day and they make some pretty incredible hardware these days, but software is where they specialize. It's where they come from. So with all of that in mind, here's my pitch. Because I don't think you would go macOS, but I didn't say that I was going to sell you a MacBook Neo for you. He's realizing. He's realizing.

Luke Lafreniere (9:43)

Okay. No, I thought you were going in

Linus Sebastian (9:44)

a different direction the next time. I know that you have some family members that are way overdue for a laptop.

Luke Lafreniere (9:53)

Unironically, I've been thinking about literally this laptop for that person.

Linus Sebastian (9:57)

Yeah, I know, I know that. You know, in the future there could be, you know, family members that are younger in your family. Like you've got some. You've got some. I don't know how much you talk about your family tree, but I know

Luke Lafreniere (10:12)

there are just nice nephew.

Linus Sebastian (10:13)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (10:14)

No other details.

Linus Sebastian (10:14)

There are younger people.

Luke Lafreniere (10:16)

Yep.

Linus Sebastian (10:17)

If you were looking for a machine for something for someone like that, for

Luke Lafreniere (10:21)

one of those people, it could really fit.

Linus Sebastian (10:23)

Yeah, I think this is the one.

Luke Lafreniere (10:25)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (10:26)

It comes the Neo. You might say

Luke Lafreniere (10:29)

it has some fun colors. I think the yellow is actually like pretty cool. I feel the yellow might be the one to get actually. It's pretty sweet.

Linus Sebastian (10:37)

And it's Apple. So you know that this thing is going to get software support.

Luke Lafreniere (10:41)

It's probably going to last for freaking

Linus Sebastian (10:42)

ever for a reasonable amount of time.

Luke Lafreniere (10:44)

Battery is probably going to be quite good.

Linus Sebastian (10:46)

Oh, dude, the battery is only, I think 36 watt hours or something like that because it runs a mobile chip.

Luke Lafreniere (10:52)

Going to last for freaking ever.

Linus Sebastian (10:55)

It's still Got really solid sort of longevity ratings. But because the capacity is so small charges like you can have just like a portable battery bank and just top it right up. You like, you could operate this thing away from the wall for so flipping long. Yeah, dude, I, I've seen for me

Luke Lafreniere (11:16)

just the, the Mac OS experience, iOS in general, all this. It just feels my brain doesn't like it. I don't have a better explanation than

Linus Sebastian (11:26)

that, but I get it.

Luke Lafreniere (11:27)

There are other people's like my, my mom, I've told this story a bunch of times. She was on an Android phone for years and struggled for years. She got an iPhone and within 24 hours like way better with the iPhone than she ever was with the Android phone. And she'd never used like Apple devices before that. That wasn't like a familiarity thing. So yeah, I mean it's very interesting

Linus Sebastian (11:50)

device and I've seen a lot of people in the comments on our Apple announcement video that were all like, but you could get this Acer that has a dedicated GPU and it's this and it's this and it's this. And I'm like, bro, you don't understand that Acer is going to have support dropped for it in no amount of time.

Luke Lafreniere (12:11)

It's probably running hot.

Linus Sebastian (12:13)

Windows 12 is what shaping up to be an AI first operating system. So in terms of software updates, you can make a pretty strong argument that Apple has fudged some stuff when it comes to macOS. But like when the bar is. The bar is at the bottom of the Marianas Trench at this point.

Luke Lafreniere (12:31)

You want a potentially surprising take?

Linus Sebastian (12:34)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (12:34)

I think at this point I would rather go with this laptop with the OS that it ships with than a Windows 12 laptop.

Linus Sebastian (12:43)

Even though we haven't seen Windows 12 yet, we haven't seen anything to indicate

Luke Lafreniere (12:47)

it would be anything good. And the thing is, with the same argument that I gave for like, I'm going to run arch on my laptop, I bet you I could run macOS just fine.

Linus Sebastian (12:56)

Oh yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (12:57)

Live in a browser on a laptop. Yeah. What cares if they'll log into the laptop? Screen looks different. Like it's just going to be browsers. It's the exact same argument. So honestly, on a laptop, on a laptop that I'm predominantly using for work, it would probably just be fine.

Linus Sebastian (13:11)

And there's things that Apple does really, really well. One of them is I wouldn't expect to have any stupid WI fi connectivity issues on my MacBook Neo. Whereas I was using until very recently, I was dailying an HP Elite with,

Luke Lafreniere (13:28)

I was going to say cheap laptops. That's not a cheap laptop.

Linus Sebastian (13:31)

What's its nuts? The strix Halo with AMD's like top of the line mobile chipset. Dude, I had so many WI FI issues with that thing. So I half the time I rebooted it it was because it sleep bugged and would just like refuse to wake up. And the other half of the time I rebooted it would be because I couldn't connect to WI FI and transfer any data.

Luke Lafreniere (13:51)

It's like MediaTek chip or something.

Linus Sebastian (13:53)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of AMD's partnership with them now, I could have cracked it open. I didn't actually see if there was a replaceable card, but at that kind of a price, it's like a $4,000 machine. I should not have to do that. No, period.

Luke Lafreniere (14:06)

And these days, how often are they

Linus Sebastian (14:08)

removable on thin and lights? It's becoming less common, which is really frustrating. So that's my pitch. I think in the next several years there is a solid like 50% chance that you will buy a MacBook Neo.

Luke Lafreniere (14:25)

Yeah, honestly, probably. And like something that I find really interesting is like I'm looking, I'm on their store right now. I don't know if Dan wants to share it or not, but I'm on their store right now and I'm looking at the lineup side by side of their. Their like previously cheap laptop, the MacBook Air. Cheap. I'm putting in quotes because Apple and their newly cheap MacBook, the Neo and that jump.

Linus Sebastian (14:47)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (14:48)

Like huh.

Linus Sebastian (14:50)

And there's things about the Air that are a lot more compelling.

Luke Lafreniere (14:52)

The five chip is wicked.

Linus Sebastian (14:54)

And you can configure the Air with way more storage, way more ram. You get Thunderbolt. Like there's stuff, there's value in the air.

Luke Lafreniere (15:01)

It's a serious deal machine at that point.

Linus Sebastian (15:03)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (15:04)

And for a lot of people, they just really need a browser.

Linus Sebastian (15:07)

Uh huh. Okay. Did you, you didn't watch our video, right?

Luke Lafreniere (15:10)

Nope.

Linus Sebastian (15:11)

Yeah. Okay, so one of the things that I said in the video was you can look at the MacBook Neo and you can go, well, it's manufactured e waste. It's got 8G of RAM in 2026. But hear me out. Is it not manufactured E waste to have people who are just going to browse Facebook and write in Google Docs and have this, have a machine that's loaded up with a whole bunch of ram? Wouldn't it be better if we saved that RAM for the precious AI data centers that need it? So much more than us consumers do as a.

Luke Lafreniere (15:41)

As a macOS slash.

Linus Sebastian (15:44)

S. For the love of God, S. Whoever's actually angry about that, I don't know. Do not clip that out of context.

Luke Lafreniere (15:51)

There's a few people nodding during that, I swear. How far does 8 gigs run you with Mac OS?

Linus Sebastian (15:59)

A little better.

Luke Lafreniere (16:00)

A little better.

Linus Sebastian (16:01)

A little better. They do support some memory compression. If you are a tap monster, you're still going to run up against it. Yeah, you will. You will.

Luke Lafreniere (16:10)

But to save, like, 600 bucks, it might be worth closing a couple.

Linus Sebastian (16:14)

If you're mostly browsing on Facebook Marketplace or, you know, replying to emails or writing that book you've always been meaning to write, I don't think it has to be an obstacle. Yeah, and I don't think you need to be an obstacle for our very special guest who's going to be coming onto the show to talk about Zero Trust World. People in the room were thinking about applauding, and then they just didn't. And then it got really awkward.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (16:41)

It was slightly awkward, I'm not going to lie.

Linus Sebastian (16:43)

Hey, welcome.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (16:44)

Somebody just left her laptop wide open in front of me.

Linus Sebastian (16:47)

This is Rob the. Okay, that is a very good thing for you to notice and for us to give him a little, you know, one of these for. Rob is the chief product officer, or. Sorry, excuse me, Chief podcast officer for Threat Locker, who took over the show today, and he's here to talk to us a little bit about Zero Trust World. You guys are right in the middle of it, and I'm gonna. I swear I'm gonna let you talk, but this is the co hosting with me experience, Really. I just kind of keep going, and then you got. Yeah, just like that. You got to just jump right in.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (17:16)

That's okay. That's okay. I appreciate you having us on.

Linus Sebastian (17:20)

I want to talk a little bit about what's been the huge news at Zero Trust World this year, other than, you know, the chief technical officer of. Of a large media company just leaving his laptop on the desk completely unlocked.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (17:32)

Does it have Threat Locker on it?

Linus Sebastian (17:33)

Does have Threat Locker on it.

Luke Lafreniere (17:35)

Touche. Okay, you're fine. You're fine.

Linus Sebastian (17:37)

Got him.

Luke Lafreniere (17:37)

Got him. Yeah.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (17:38)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (17:39)

So what do you guys been up to?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (17:41)

A lot of shaking hands and kissing babies. And some shaking babies and kissing hands. Just basically pounding the flesh, talking to people, meeting people, doing a bit of talking, doing a bit of podcasting, releasing some new products.

Linus Sebastian (17:58)

Yeah, why don't you tell us about that?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (18:00)

New products are awesome. So they fundamentally. Two parts. We've got Zero Trust network access and we've got Zero Trust cloud access. Start with the second, I suppose. 0 Trust Cloud.

Linus Sebastian (18:11)

Oh, I'm gonna have you go back and I'm gonna have you tell us about the concept of Zero Trust. We've actually talked about it on the WAN show before, but I'm sure we have some new viewers this week.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (18:20)

I mean, you can sum it up really simply, which is should. Well, in my mind, it's to deny by default. You think about cyber security for the last 20 years, fundamentally it all operated in the same way, which is to allow everything except those things we know to be bad. The mechanism by which that was done has changed. So it started off with antivirus, with definitions and, you know, keeping definitions up to date based on everything bad that's out there.

Linus Sebastian (18:45)

But then we started to recognize the behavior of this software.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (18:47)

We started to proactively into ED or territory. But I mean, fundamentally, they still allowed everything to happen except bad stuff.

Linus Sebastian (18:55)

Right.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (18:56)

The idea being you have to detect and respond. I mean, fundamentally, detection assumes, well, it is breach because something bad has gone into the environment, something bad is running in the environment and you're hoping that whatever tool it is you're using is going to recognize it.

Linus Sebastian (19:13)

UAC will save us all.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (19:15)

UAC will not save us all. You would be amazed. I have spoken to people who think that I've taken away admin rights for my users. We're not going to have to worry about ransomware. I'm like, you do realize that anyone can run ransomware, don't you? Oh, so yeah, it's a common misconception. UAC is not going to save us all.

Linus Sebastian (19:36)

Okay, so now tell us about the new Zero Trust products. Sure.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (19:40)

So I will bought. I'll sort of mention the other thing. So to sort of finish the thought about Zero Trust, deny by default is one way of looking at it. Assume breach is another way of looking at it. And it's effectively about controls rather than making decisions on what's good or bad. I mean, fundamentally we don't care about what's good or bad. We're about applying controls, whether those controls be allow listing. So blocking things by default from running. So malware can't run, ransomware can't run. But also good things, other things that could be misused are going to be blocked from running. We extend. That's the one place where ThreatLocker Excel is. We extend that concept of deny by default. So it's not just about what can run or what can't run, although that is important because what things can do when they are running is almost equally important.

Linus Sebastian (20:27)

Right.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:27)

So things like powershell, weaponized all the time because it is so, so powerful.

Linus Sebastian (20:32)

It's right in the name.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:34)

It is literally right in the name.

Linus Sebastian (20:38)

Don't worry about it, it's fine.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:40)

Yeah, you can run remote code, you can download next to payloads, you can exfiltrate data, you can rear shell with power.

Linus Sebastian (20:46)

Quite literally anything.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:47)

Pretty much, yeah.

Linus Sebastian (20:49)

So.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:49)

And it's on every Windows machine.

Linus Sebastian (20:51)

It's just there.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (20:51)

If you're an attacker, it makes sense to use it. But the way to stop it from being weaponized is say, well, look, it can run, but it can't access my files, it can't access the Internet, so it can't run remote code, it can't exfiltrate your data, it can't download payloads. And we apply the same concept to network access as well. So basically same principles and I by default permit by exception. So you're allowing those things that need to connect to stuff to connect to stuff and blocking everything else so it stops, you know, compromised VPNs or vulnerabilities and firewalls, or somebody spinning up a VM on a machine and trying to attack via that. Right, all those things. And again, you'll notice everything I've mentioned so far, none of it requires decisions on good and bad. All of it is just purely around controls.

Linus Sebastian (21:36)

So.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (21:37)

And there's a bunch more stuff we do with the platform as well. So we've got network control, we've got patch management, we've got. It's an entire Zero Trust platform now. The new stuff. Yeah, sexy stuff. The stuff everybody is going to want to buy like yesterday. Zero Trust cloud access. So the idea being that MFA is good.

Linus Sebastian (21:57)

Yeah, it is.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (21:58)

MFA is right. People should use mfa. MFA is not a silver bullet. MFA can be bypassed.

Linus Sebastian (22:04)

Oh, we know all about that. Yes, we. We had our channel stolen by a like a session cookie hijack. Oh, really?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (22:11)

Okay, that's interesting.

Linus Sebastian (22:12)

So they didn't even need to use our mfa.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (22:14)

Well, you need our new product in that case. I also am painfully aware of this because I spent many, many hours at. Not last year, Zero Trust World, the one before that where we used Evil Jinx and WI Fi pineapples to basically snarf credentials and cookies.

Linus Sebastian (22:31)

Right.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (22:31)

And it showed that while MFA is great, MFA is not effective all the time and can be bypassed.

Linus Sebastian (22:38)

So, so what does this do?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (22:40)

It basically routes all. So the likes of Office 365, for example, or Google Or Salesforce, or any cloud service you care to mention allows you to limit access by IP address. So by default the entire Internet can access an Office365.

Linus Sebastian (22:57)

Right now a lot of people will

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (22:59)

use conditional access, but they'll do say, conditional access, we're here in America. They'll say, okay, I'm going to lock it down to American IP addresses. That's fine. But America still has a lot of IP addresses.

Linus Sebastian (23:08)

Yeah. And you could just route through a data center. Absolutely. A random infected machine.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (23:15)

Okay, I've just bypassed that control. Last year we took a stab at what we call cloud control and cloud control, basically the idea was that I'd have an app on my phone, I've got a threat locker agent running on my machine, I can gather all those IP addresses and then I can add them to a named location in Office365 for example, and apply conditional access based on that. So we've gone from all the IP addresses to an entire country's IP addresses to three or four thousand maybe in a reasonable size organization. IP addresses, that was great, except Microsoft, because what would happen is we'd gather all the IP addresses, we'd update, upload them to Microsoft, and Microsoft would take their sweet ass time updating conditional access policies.

Linus Sebastian (23:57)

Right.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (23:58)

So that was a great idea. It was well executed, I thought, on our side. But then when Microsoft entered the room, it basically all went to. Am I allowed to curse on this?

Linus Sebastian (24:07)

You can say it went to pot.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (24:08)

It went to pot. So we went back to the drawing board and said, well, what's the other way we can do this? How can we stop businesses from suffering business email compromise or you know, people who shouldn't have access to stuff, getting access to stuff, cookie session, cookie session hijacking, etc. Okay, so basically it is a way of routing traffic through us. So instead of thousands of IP addresses or millions of IP addresses, it's one IP address. So in your office 365, in your G suite, in your Salesforce, and basically just allow one IP address to connect to that, all others are blocked.

Linus Sebastian (24:46)

And that way you guys have the nimbleness for us to go, okay, here's our ranges. Make sure this is updated so our people can access their stuff. And then everything is going through Microsoft or Google or whoever, any of the slow moving giants. They just don't really need to update anything.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (24:59)

They don't need to update anything. It's literally just an address is all that needs be to.

Linus Sebastian (25:02)

Now this might be a little uncomfortable. I know you guys Sponsored the show today and everything. But I mean, I have to ask you say zero trust, but it sounds like I need to trust you.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:12)

It's a tiny bit of trust.

Linus Sebastian (25:13)

Okay, okay.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:15)

No, the, the phrase zero trust has been around for some time. It is somewhat of a misnomer. I mean, look, the fact of the matter is zero trust means computer turned off, locked in a vault, never connected to anything.

Linus Sebastian (25:27)

Yeah.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:28)

That is fundamentally zero shows that is not practical. That is possible.

Linus Sebastian (25:33)

But we won't get a lot of work done.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:34)

You're not going to get a lot of work done and businesses are going to grind to a halt. So that's kind of impossible.

Linus Sebastian (25:39)

Okay, so a little bit of trust then.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:41)

Tiny little bit of trust.

Linus Sebastian (25:42)

Tiny little bit of trust. Now my second question then is never mind the trust. Let's say I trust you, but it sounds like there's a single point of failure for access to all of my cloud services if your server goes down. So what have you guys done to build resiliency into this redundancy?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (25:58)

It's not one server, it's multiple servers. In fact, it's four servers basically for each organization or each company that's using it. So there's no single point of failure. It is multiple.

Linus Sebastian (26:09)

And that's the biggest launch this year.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (26:11)

Then it depends on how you look at it. That is the one with the potential biggest reach because that is where the biggest problem lies. More organizations and most organizations need help. They need more than just mfa. The zero trust network access comes from a unbelievably common question asked to us by customers. So we listen to customers feedback. I mean, zero trust world, apart from all the baby shaking and hand kissing and all that stuff, one of the best parts about it is we get to hear customers. Both good things, but probably more importantly, bad things.

Linus Sebastian (26:50)

Sure, we're running up against time a little bit. So give me the short version of why I need this instead of Windows firewall.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (26:56)

Because you don't want to be opening VPNs to the Internet because VPNs open to the Internet are bad. They're exploited. They're a compromised credential or a vulnerability in a firewall away from being exploited.

Linus Sebastian (27:07)

So in the same way are we routing everything through you guys then effectively at both sides?

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (27:11)

Effectively. So you have a resource in the office that you want to share with your users on the road, you basically just publish that. It's not published on the Internet, but basically any devices that you say should be able to connect to that will connect to each other via us.

Linus Sebastian (27:25)

Very cool. Well, hey, you know what? It was really nice to you.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (27:28)

And we got something.

Linus Sebastian (27:29)

Thanks for coming on. We did.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (27:30)

We did. There's somebody who's probably watching right now, and it's gonna break his heart that I'm sitting here talking to you.

Linus Sebastian (27:38)

Oh, that's right.

Luke Lafreniere (27:40)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (27:40)

Hi, Ben.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (27:41)

Hi, Ben. Okay, that's it.

Linus Sebastian (27:42)

All right. Thank you.

Rob (Threat Locker Chief Product Officer) (27:43)

Thank you very much. All right.

Linus Sebastian (27:44)

Take care, man. Cheers. All right, that was Rob, chief product officer for Threat Locker, who sponsored the entire WAN show today. Now Luke's back. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was absolutely awesome. And let's jump right into Our next topic. Mr. Luke. Do you want to talk about Linux misadventures or do you want to talk about ratings Going paywall.

Luke Lafreniere (28:05)

So I saw I left my laptop open and he left his badge on the desk. Nice. Yeah. Ratings.com changes their membership program, places tests behind paywall. Sort of ratings. RTings.com has announced substantial change to their website, citing a loss of organic search traffic. Similarly to how we've been talking about the lab site. Seeing their numbers. Actually the chart looks very similar. The numbers are a lot higher, but the chart, the shape of the graph looks very similar.

Linus Sebastian (28:36)

Yeah. Where everything was going like, kind of like it was going where you're getting referrals from Google Search and then all of a sudden AI summary starts scraping all of your data and just presenting it directly to the users.

Luke Lafreniere (28:47)

Go up, the clicks go down.

Linus Sebastian (28:50)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (28:52)

So they also highlighted how AI is scraping the website and using their results without attribution. The website hopes that the new membership will provide them with the funds to continue their testing across a growing number of categories. And they are like constantly adding new things. It's awesome. Ratings Previous premium tier called insider access Limited readers not okay. The. The. The subscribers insider access weren't limited. The. The non subscribers were limited to 10 individual product articles per month but allowed you to see the full test results and scores and all that kind of stuff.

Linus Sebastian (29:27)

Of those 10, yes.

Luke Lafreniere (29:28)

The program also provided early access to product. The program itself provided early access to product reviews and allowed users to provide input and developed into developing testing categories and kind of like vote on what things you wanted to review. It's actually a very cool system. The new membership. It unlocks test results and scores for paying use. Unlocks test. This is.

Linus Sebastian (29:51)

Yeah. Because free users can no longer see individual product scores, individual test results or individual test scores.

Luke Lafreniere (29:57)

So unless you're a paying subscriber.

Linus Sebastian (29:59)

Unless you are a paying subscriber, free

Luke Lafreniere (30:02)

users can still see ratings Best in categories, lists, which as far as my understanding goes is like where a vast majority of their tests, their traffic is. So for a lot of people this won't necessarily change that part of it. The overall summaries they can see as well as subcategory summaries on product pages, for example, how a headphone performs for travel, office work, wired gaming, audio reproduction, accuracy, stuff like that. And educational articles like their TV burn and test, ANC explainer and Wi Fi 7 multi link operation articles which are very cool. So the problem is the like new bit. Sorry, I'm not sure where this is, but I swear it was in here earlier. The new bit, just riffing, is that some of the graphs will be blurred out.

Linus Sebastian (30:49)

Oh yeah, yeah. And even like the numbers, like a lot is going to be blurred out and I'm going to get out ahead of this one here and I'm going to throw in my hot take. I see a lot of people really upset about this. This is, this is the reality. This is the reality. I have, I have absolutely no negative sentiment whatsoever towards ratings over this move.

Luke Lafreniere (31:15)

No, no, this is.

Linus Sebastian (31:17)

And if you have any negativity towards Ratings for what they're doing right now, you've got to point it at the right place. I feel like this is what we were kind of talking about when we did that video recently on LTT and we had that conversation on WAN Show My Screen about be angry, but be angry at the right people. You know, by all means, you know, be angry about affordability issues in tech. Be angry that a site like Ratings will not show you the rating of a product anymore. But don't be angry at ratings. Yeah, be angry at the AI giants. Be angry at the AI giants that are scraping, that are stealing the hard work that real actual human people with blood flowing through their veins are doing to test this stuff and just putting it in an AI summary and profiting off of it, benefiting from it and not paying for it. And I know I don't have to tell you guys be mad about AI, but seriously, be mad about AI because whether it's ratings.com or whether it's House Fresh, that's that air purifier test site that has really struggled with a bunch of issues. We did a great video a little while back. You guys can go check it out. Talking about, you know, everything that they've gone through with respect to manufacturers trying to make their lives really difficult, as well as AI summaries coming in and basically just nuking their source of revenue and stealing Their testing. Our discussion question is what does this mean for labs? Because that was our goal was to do kind of a ratings style thing over time. We knew it was going to take time. It's taken longer than we want, but we knew it was going to take time and have a rating style product page. But more for like IT tech, you know, GPUs, CPUs, that sort of thing.

Luke Lafreniere (33:22)

Every component in a computer was the original goal.

Linus Sebastian (33:25)

What are we supposed to do?

Luke Lafreniere (33:26)

The original concern that we had was, okay, they're, they're written articles and people are less interested in written articles now. Therefore traffic will not be super high. When we first started the lab site, these AI scrapers to this degree didn't exist when we first started trying to do the lab site. So now it's, I don't know, it's a difficult pivot. I, my, my heart goes out to the ratings team. Hopefully this work works for them. This the vibe I got.

Linus Sebastian (33:54)

It will work. And look and look. If we say yes, we think it will work and you see any value in it whatsoever, you should go subscribe and be part of that. And if we say no, we don't think it will work and you can spare a little bit of pocket change, then you should probably just go subscribe anyway. Prove us wrong. Make us wrong. So whatever he says, you know, they're doing great work over there. I think there are Canadian bros, by the way. I don't know if you guys know that.

Luke Lafreniere (34:23)

Really, really, really hope they make it. I am keeping in mind though that I'm trying to be objective as possible. I think this will work, but with a pretty big and bold asterisk on the end of it. Yeah, of like, I don't think they're. I don't know. I really hope they do, genuinely, but I don't feel like this is going to lead to the growth or the good sustainment that they probably need. And I think it's gonna hurt for a while. And I think the ratings that we see in five to 10 years is probably going to feel a little different than the ratings we see now. But I would so love to be wrong. Yeah, that would be so awesome.

Linus Sebastian (35:05)

Yeah, I don't think it's gonna work, but I understand why they're doing it. And if I was in their shoes, then, gosh darn it, I would try.

Luke Lafreniere (35:15)

Yeah. Oh, totally. You ought to do something.

Linus Sebastian (35:18)

Because what they're doing is important. But what I worry about is that it's gonna take too long for people to realize how important it is.

Luke Lafreniere (35:29)

They might have nailed their mix though. The fact that you can still get their best of pages and things will still be in the right order. You don't have the scores, but it's right order.

Linus Sebastian (35:38)

And like, I mean, honestly, dude, like, I'm looking at it going, this isn't going to stop AI bots from scraping them. No, they'll buy a subscription for a few bucks, scrape everything anyway. Like, I'm just. I feel like quality data and quality information is just kind of doomed, not incentivized anymore.

Luke Lafreniere (35:57)

No one actually goes the whole way. They just search it and stop. And we can complain about that all we want. It's going to keep happening. It doesn't matter. There's no way you're going to get the zeitgeist twisted on that. One question in here. Why don't we use number scores for reviews?

Linus Sebastian (36:14)

That's because I decided many, many years ago I thought it was an oversimplification and that people need to watch the whole video for the nuanced take. Was I right? Yes. Does that matter? No. Because not having numbers or Editor's Choice Award or gold silver bronze award websites like unusable significantly harmed our ability to communicate in the way that people want to be communicated to.

Luke Lafreniere (36:45)

Yeah. And sometimes it's really hard because like, how do you ultimately differentiate between these two things that are like basically equal? So we also don't have experience with it, but yeah, in a web format. Everyone wants the best of list and they want to click on the one at the top.

Linus Sebastian (36:59)

And E Gadget guy says, so every game in the world being a 3 out of 5 is wrong./ S. Yeah, like I. I've always fundamentally disagreed with just summarizing something as complex, especially as a game. Oh my God. A game in just one number. It's. It's ludicrous. And yet I find myself doing it sometimes. In fact, no, I think I did it today. Who was I talking to that I was like, okay, tell me, what are. How much you like it or what are the odds of you doing this out of 10? I think. I think I did that to someone today. Are they in this room? Was it you?

Luke Lafreniere (37:37)

I have no idea.

Linus Sebastian (37:38)

Okay. I don't remember. Because. Because that's what we want. Sometimes we don't want a long explanation, we just want the gist of it.

Luke Lafreniere (37:44)

And some people have pointed out in the past, like, expecting that I or we or whoever would have some amount of animosity to ratings because they, you know, they have a website that covers keyboards. I Guess that's like our main crossover keyboards and mice bearings of the website

Linus Sebastian (38:00)

bearing any kind of ill will or having any kind of animosity toward anyone else who's trying to test and provide valuable information to consumers is is like borderline like villain behavior quite frankly and

Luke Lafreniere (38:18)

like it's it it also I think

Linus Sebastian (38:20)

people need more sources of information, not less in an ever shrinking third party ones too. Consolidating media landscape.

Luke Lafreniere (38:28)

This is part of the Every single time we ever talk about this topic we say, you know, check multiple reviews, check multiple perspectives. This is a valuable part of that pie.

Linus Sebastian (38:38)

If you manage to develop like a weird hate boner over someone else trying to do product testing then you might be the problem.

Luke Lafreniere (38:46)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (38:47)

So not gonna name anyone good luck ratings.

Luke Lafreniere (38:50)

I really hope it goes really well.

Linus Sebastian (38:52)

Genuinely.

Luke Lafreniere (38:53)

They they're still keeping the YouTube channel open and pumping and there's no real change there. So hopefully, hopefully that goes well. I did notice that part of the announcement was a YouTube video, a pretty good YouTube video. So hopefully that goes well.

Linus Sebastian (39:10)

All right, we don't have a ton of time today, so why don't we jump into Linux Challenge updates. Yeah, I shared a file with myself naturally. Even though part one is not even out on YouTube yet, it is out on floatplane. Talk a little bit more about that later. I did see all of your comments that I was a fool. You fool. You've chosen popos after everything that happened with popos last time, I'm not going to be gaslit on this. What happened last time was that POP OS was like the flavor du jour. And I went with it because it was the flavor du jour. Especially if you were running a GeForce card.

Luke Lafreniere (39:55)

It was recommended a lot back then.

Linus Sebastian (39:56)

Okay. The issue that I had with it was blamed on me super hard. And as I've talked about in the past already, there was absolutely an element of user error. Absolutely. There also was an element of a random bizarre bug. Crazy timing no user should have ever seen. And even after that came to light, so right out of the gate I was blamed hard for 100%. And even after the bug came to light, the presentation to me across like the entire Internet was what an idiot. POP OS is goaded. How could he have managed to screw this up? And then I didn't use POP os, so POP os, I didn't have like a bunch of problems with POP os. I had one problem that was attributed to a bug.

Luke Lafreniere (40:47)

Weren't you like out of there in like an hour?

Linus Sebastian (40:50)

Yeah, I used Manjaro.

Luke Lafreniere (40:51)

Yeah. For, like the whole challenge.

Linus Sebastian (40:52)

So. So there's like, there's like deep, deep threads discussing how I could have possibly gone POP OS after last time, when what actually happened last time was A, I didn't go popos and B, the one issue that I had with it was blamed 100% on me. The third part of the narrative that I'm not going to allow to happen here is that how could you possibly choose it? Nobody recommends POP OS anymore. Yes. Yes, they do. As you guys will see in the video, whether it's Listicles, whether it's asking

Luke Lafreniere (41:26)

an AI, I actually did something after last WAN show and Linus was there. I could probably bring it up right now, but I asked my chatgpt with what you know about me and remove the fact that you know which distro I'm using right now from your memory for this. From what you know about me, which distro should I use? And it gave a top three and popos was in there and.

Linus Sebastian (41:53)

And you can go, yeah, well, AIs are stupid. They just like hallucinate that it's good or no. AIs are trained on the web at large. So if you're going to have a little headcanon narrative that nobody recommends popos, lose it. Just lose it. Go be part of the solution. Write a really great article on top Linux distros and get some good SEO and be part of the solution. Otherwise you're not really doing anything other than just like making noise.

Luke Lafreniere (42:21)

Yeah, its recommendations were number one for me was OpenSUSE, Tumble Read, Tumbleweed. Fedora Workstation was number two and Arch was number three.

Linus Sebastian (42:30)

Now let's have a.

Luke Lafreniere (42:31)

Remember, I'm gonna play games. And it still did OpenSuse number one, still did Fedora number two and did Pop OS number three.

Linus Sebastian (42:37)

Now let's have some fun. Let's have some fun. Because obviously, even before seeing any feedback on my choice of popolos, I haven't been thrilled with popos. Oh, man. Oh, sorry. That's. That's another part of the narrative that's just driving me crazy. How could he use that? Cosmic Desktop environment is like, functionally in Alpha.

Luke Lafreniere (42:56)

Dude.

Linus Sebastian (42:56)

When I go to their website and I download LTS and it doesn't mention anywhere that it's in Alpha or beta. Also, it isn't. It's V1. Something like. Don't. Don't. You don't get to say that. I don't. If I download an LTS, that's. That's not on me. That's on system 76. At that point, if it's not good. No, no, I'm not. No. But anyway, my experience with it hasn't been great. So before anyone even was like, why do you choose POP os? Of course, I was the first one asking, man, why did I choose POP OS anymore? I seem to be just cursed with POP OS because you got to remember, for me, I've never had any information other than my issues with POP OS were clearly user error. So I was already exploring other distros. And guess what, Luke? It turns out the curse carries over. Do you want to see? I spent one evening. I was probably at it for about two and a half hours in between work and going to our badminton night. And Dan, can you throw up? Can you throw up? My system here, trying to get a couple of my systems. So fascinating Tux pilled.

Luke Lafreniere (44:06)

I haven't spent two and a half hours fixing anything.

Linus Sebastian (44:08)

So I wanted to do. I wanted to do my home theater system because I actually, like, just. Actually come back to me for a second, Dan. I wanted to do my home theater PC because I, like, just had to do some tomfoolery with my old Harmony remote. And I, like, got it. One button go set up again, which required a combination of CEC and infrared.

Luke Lafreniere (44:31)

Just. Just. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (44:33)

And I. And so I wanted to get the. The theater machine working. And I also. It was a great opportunity because now that I've given up on running POP OS on everything already, I was like, okay, well, that's a perfect place to run Bazzite. And Bazite has an Nvidia build, so theoretically it should be fine. Also, the other machine that I wanted to do was because I was already a week into the challenge and I hadn't done my work laptop yet, which is kind of a hack because that's the system that I use 97% of the time. So I was like, okay, I really need to get Linux on my work machine. So I was working on both of those. All right, Dan, go ahead and hit me. Nope. Okay, so this is me kind of wrapping up. Oh, okay. Do you think? Well, after a couple blah, blah, blah. He's talking. He's doing talking things. I don't even know if this is going to be part of a video at this point. I need to go. It's badminton night. Okay, that's my face. Here's my systems. That's Bazite on the left, and that's Kubuntu on the right.

Luke Lafreniere (45:51)

What is even happening over there?

Linus Sebastian (45:54)

Nothing, Luke. I recorded. I recorded everything. I did. I recorded Everything I did, I am literally, quite literally, no other word for it. Cursed.

Luke Lafreniere (46:10)

Okay, so for a little bit of contrast for mine, since the video that released, nothing has happened negative on my system literally at all.

Linus Sebastian (46:20)

Good for you.

Luke Lafreniere (46:21)

Still have. I was happy for you mentioned it in the video. But I still have the problem where when I restart my computer, I have to restart my mixer or else it won't detect in anything that might be solvable somehow. I've put zero minutes into trying to solve that. Everything else is working great. I was on my work laptop in a meeting and I had Windows on it because I had to prove to Lenovo that Windows wasn't the reason why my laptop had constant errors ever since I got it. And I did. So I didn't need Windows on it anymore. And I was pressing the Start menu and the Start menu would show up, but I couldn't interact with the search in the Start menu at all. It wouldn't work no matter what I did. And I crashed out in the meeting and just like live installed Mint and it has been flawless. The only thing I did, I installed Mint, switched it to Nvidia drivers which like you click a thing in the first pop up menu that comes up that's like let's get started. And there's a driver manager. You click that, you click Nvidia and it just downloads it and it's done. So like the whole like this is made for Nvidia distro thing I think is a little oversold sometimes. Yeah, in my experience at least. And then on the flight over here, Slay the Spire 2 launched yesterday morning. Just so no like it. It came out into early access yesterday morning. It has had no time for anyone to like optimize it or anything. I downloaded it, ran it instantly worked, zero issues. I bluetoothed my headphones to the laptop in the flight.

Linus Sebastian (47:46)

Good for you. Happy for you.

Luke Lafreniere (47:47)

No problems.

Linus Sebastian (47:48)

I'm so happy for you, Luke.

Luke Lafreniere (47:49)

I had just less problems with it than Windows.

Linus Sebastian (47:52)

So the Bazzite system rebooting did not fix that because I kind of assumed that would be it. Also it's surprisingly functional in that state. Like it'll go to sleep after a

Luke Lafreniere (48:03)

while with it looking like that and

Linus Sebastian (48:05)

then it'll wake from sleep and look exactly like what you saw.

Luke Lafreniere (48:08)

That's so nice.

Linus Sebastian (48:09)

So it's very installed.

Luke Lafreniere (48:10)

So crazy.

Linus Sebastian (48:11)

And then the Kubuntu system that was on the right was like that, just with the black screen with the Kubuntu logo for I think it was probably a solid 10 or 15 minutes before I had to leave. And then I didn't check on it again after I got back from badminton. I came back to it in the morning and I am now Kubuntu pilled.

Luke Lafreniere (48:34)

Oh, this is. Oh, okay.

Linus Sebastian (48:36)

However.

Luke Lafreniere (48:36)

Interesting.

Linus Sebastian (48:37)

However, I'm about to show you something fun. I'm going to go ahead and click the not start menu and I'm going to restart my system. Yes, I mean now. Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (48:48)

I have noticed it won't really prompt you, but after you install, I'd maybe give it a restart or two.

Linus Sebastian (48:59)

Oh, I've restarted a few times.

Luke Lafreniere (49:00)

No, I'm not, I'm not. I'm more talking to them. I don't think anything I can say is going to help solve.

Linus Sebastian (49:07)

Yeah, it's. Dude, it's wild. It's wild.

Luke Lafreniere (49:10)

I don't know.

Linus Sebastian (49:11)

Okay, wait for it. Oh, hold on. It didn't do it. Hey, progress the first few times.

Luke Lafreniere (49:18)

Let's go.

Linus Sebastian (49:19)

I've rebooted this system. It's prompted me. Do you want to try a live environment or do you want to install? Even though. And I have this on camera, so I don't need you guys to believe me. I've got proof. Even though there's no installation media installed in it and the operating system is installed. Okay, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna enter my. I'm just gonna enter my password. I'm gonna see if it does it after that. Yep, there it is.

Luke Lafreniere (49:46)

That's funky. You don't have installation media in anymore?

Linus Sebastian (49:49)

Nope.

Luke Lafreniere (49:52)

Weird. I've never tried Kubuntu.

Linus Sebastian (49:54)

What? Mr. Besser. Oh, I can show you on. Yeah, sure. There you go. So every time I boot this machine, I get the. Try Kubuntu like, like, like a booting, like a live boot environment. Or install Kubuntu. And then if I click install, then it just dumps me on my desktop.

Luke Lafreniere (50:14)

Yep. Nice. Why?

Linus Sebastian (50:21)

And people are gonna ask me. They're gonna ask me. People always ask me. They ask me all the time. What did you do? Nothing. I didn't do anything. I just. I just have.

Luke Lafreniere (50:35)

I thought you. Interesting.

Linus Sebastian (50:38)

Is that. Is that wild or what? Now I've got a follow up.

Luke Lafreniere (50:41)

Pretty easy to pass.

Linus Sebastian (50:42)

I've got a follow up because I managed to break a Linux system that wasn't even mine.

Luke Lafreniere (50:47)

Oh yeah, this is funny. I got a message about this.

Linus Sebastian (50:52)

So Dank Pods was up for a visit recently and one of the things that happened was his system for whale land. Well, he didn't. He was ready to blame the airline or the Airport. Oh, I blame his packing job, but he got it here and he shook it and it went, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. And we were like, okay, that's content, baby. Let's do a video. Linus fixing dank pods computer. So he's a Bazzite guy, you know, I get the system. I find some problems with a GPU support brace that was very diy, along with some screws that have fallen out, some inadequate packing foam. I rip the system apart, I throw it on a test bench, I re bend some, you know, VGA back plates and stuff like that. I give him a new cooler, I get him a second stick of RAM because he was running single channel and times are tough out there. Got to take care of your boys, right? Throw the system all on test bench. I go, okay, where's your boot drive? And he hands it to me, he goes, yeah, this is running Bazzite. And I go, okay, okay, Is that like Marmite? And he's like, no, no, it's a. It's a Linux distro bruv or whatever, but. But like Australian accent, you get the point. And I knew what Bazzite was. I'm just. Just don't worry about it. The point is we put it in, fails to boot immediately, and we've got it on camera. We've got the whole thing on camera in the fixing dank pods. PC video that's going to be coming soon fails to boot. He like does a thing. So he like presses enter to continue or something like that, and then it reboots and it fails even harder. Just. We didn't change any. The only thing we did was I added a second stick of memory and I enabled Docp or Expo, like the faster memory profile. We then tried un. Enabling the faster memory profile and that didn't. I didn't even take the CPU out of the socket. Okay, like, this computer is the same computer he brought here that was running Bazzite, had all of his games installed. The sheer act of me touching the drive seems to have nuked his install. I grab a Windows drive that's just lying around, throw it in the exact same M2 slot, instantly boots up. Machine's totally fine. I can't explain this stuff, man.

Luke Lafreniere (53:19)

I don't know. I don't know.

Linus Sebastian (53:20)

I can't explain it.

Luke Lafreniere (53:21)

I don't know. I also can't explain why this stuff just seems to mostly work for me. We were talking at whale land, right? Like, sometimes that's actually more terrifying. Yeah, I don't know, it just Works fine. I will say. So far the experience of having mint on my laptop again has been like, really positive. And some of the little added bits of like, okay, I can totally do this thing, but I have to jump through like four hoops on Cashios when it's one hoop on mint is like,

Linus Sebastian (54:01)

I'm starting to think flavor of the week is just not a thing. I'm also starting to think that long term, long term distros like Kubuntu are not a thing either for me. But your mileage may vary.

Luke Lafreniere (54:13)

Anything might not be a thing. I, I think the, Yeah, I think the flavor of the month thing is like, if you're into hyper optimization, like, that can be fun. Like, there's some performance stuff with Cashy. Like, I was dialing in Baldur's gate and was able to get some like, real smoke. Like, it felt great. But I, I did some like, custom things to get it there, if you want to do that. I think it makes a lot of sense. But yeah, like, when I, when I, when I booted up mint on my laptop, it was just nice. Like, I think I showed you the store. Yeah, I showed somebody on the plane store and I was like, yeah, it's just easy.

Linus Sebastian (54:52)

Yep. I, I think there's just a God of irony somewhere that when I was being born was all like, wouldn't it be funny if there was like this tech media guy and he literally just couldn't use the operating system that was like, almost his name.

Luke Lafreniere (55:18)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (55:21)

Now's the time for us to talk about.

Luke Lafreniere (55:23)

Or you're just gonna end up getting really good at it. It.

Linus Sebastian (55:26)

No, I don't, I don't have time to get really good at stuff that is actively fighting me this way. Like, I, I, I can't, I can't. Do you want to bring up the store?

Luke Lafreniere (55:36)

Sure. I, I always want to tell him to go try mint. And then I, I end up stopping myself because I'm like, I don't.

Linus Sebastian (55:43)

Do you really want me to break it?

Luke Lafreniere (55:45)

Exactly. Yeah, I kind of, I'd almost rather he did it. I'm on it.

Linus Sebastian (55:51)

All right, you guys asked for zip off pants, we got you zip off pants. Dan, Luke, screen, if you don't mind. If some of you remember, about a year ago, Tatiana from the fashion team roasted the zip off pants in a video about reviewing their boss's setup. The comment section was flooded with replies that you love zip off pants and that you would get them if we sold them. Well, guess what? Here they are. The zip off cargo pants. Are built with the same fabric and same construction as our regular cargos feature a total of nine pockets and now zip off when you want to switch them to shorts. For those who commented, you can get yours now at LMG GG Zip off Pants. Speaking of cargo pants, if you're not a fan of the zip off feature, guess what? We just launched two new colorways of our regular cargoes. They are now available in Olive Knight and Naval Academy. They feature 21 pockets total, including four zippered pockets and two magnetic cargo pockets, plus two hammer loops and as one reviewer put it, an incomprehensible amount of pockets. You can get yours at LMG GG Cargopants. But wait, there's more. This week is all about utility, and the next item we launched is the lightweight packable jacket. Okay, this is super cool. And somehow the coolest thing about it did not end up in the dock. Maybe it's on the page. Does it say where the design was inspired by? Are you. You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. We don't talk about it. Ah, okay. Well, let's start with. We made the lightweight packable jacket because if you live somewhere like Vancouver, you know, the weather can turn on you pretty fast. The whole jacket packs into its own little pocket with a loop and a carabiner so you can clip it onto your backpack or your carry on. We also added a small embroidered screwdriver on the pouch just for fun. It doesn't screw anything. It's just a little embroidery thing. It's decently wind resistant and it is treated with a PFAS free DWR or durable water repellent. So it handles drizzles and light rain. It's perfect for hiking, running, traveling, or just when you're on the go. I am going to call Ms. Bridget to get an answer to this, but you can shop the packable jacket at LMG GG packablejacket fashion team has been absolutely killing it. Let's see if she picks up. She might be busy. She's a busy lady. The design, though. The design is inspired by something really cool. I just forget exactly what it is. It's like a microscopic or like electron microscope view of something. All right. Darn it. Well, I'll have to find that out for you guys next week. It's. It's super cool. What else we got this week? Oh, more topics, I guess. Luke, you want to pick one?

Luke Lafreniere (59:21)

Yeah, sure.

Linus Sebastian (59:22)

Hold on. I'm about to do a thing. Go for it. Oh, wait, no, I was supposed to talk about merch.

Luke Lafreniere (59:29)

Stop it.

Linus Sebastian (59:30)

Stop. Sorry. Checkout messages, comms. If you guys are into interacting with, you know, live streams or whatever, you're probably familiar with the concept of throwing money at your screen and then maybe they acknowledge you or maybe they just, I don't know, don't. Or, you know, whatever. We're not into that. That's why we created checkout messages. If you guys want to send a message into the show, either to producer Dan, who can reply to them, or forward them to someone who can help you out. Do we not have a Dan cam? I'm over here. Oh, no, we have no Dan cam. Okay, Dan, you'll have to come on over here and wave. What is happening? Why did you do that? We can't see you, Dan. Okay, so it'll either go to producer Dan. Hey, there it is. Nice solid run. Who will reply. Fly, you fools. Or he will curate it and Luke and I will respond to it. So, Dan, do you have a couple curated checkout messages for us this week? I do. Oh, right. All you gotta do to send one is go to LTT store.com, add something to your cart. You'll see the interface for our checkout messages. Bippity boppity. There it is. Go ahead and place your order and it will go to Dan. There. That was not the most organized we've ever been, but very cool. Wow. Super professional.

Luke Lafreniere (60:44)

You're great at this.

Linus Sebastian (60:45)

Thank you. I'm. I've been doing it for a very long time. Unironically though. Wow. Hi. LLD. My mobo died. I have a 4. No, 11,400 K. Should I pay 100 to $200 replacement or wait for the new intel and get a micro sensor bundle, which was the original plan? I'm currently on a good enough laptop. Ooh, Dan, do you want to come back to us?

Luke Lafreniere (61:11)

Sorry.

Linus Sebastian (61:12)

Nice. Normally our producer doesn't have to actually handle producer things like camera switching, so understandably, he's a little behind. I have a few things to worry about right now. Oh, man. 11400K is still a very decent gaming chip. You've left out some information that I could really use, like what games you play and what gpu. Pretty important. I think the bigger question though is should I be spending a hundred to two hundred dollars on such a dated platform at this point? 11 400k is. What is it? LGA 12. LGA 1200, if I recall correctly. So if we go on ebay, I wouldn't buy a brand new board for it? That's for sure. LGA 1200 motherboard. Like can I get something for less than 100, $200? Yes, I can. So that would be my answer to you is finding something between now and when Intel's new stuff comes out won't drop in value by that much. So you should only be out shipping and then seller fees when you get that new board and then resell it probably alongside your 11 400k because that is still new enough that it is going to be very usable for someone who just wants to play, you know, not necessarily the very latest, most AAA Games with their RTX 6090 or whatever it is that we're looking at by that point. Playing the the second hand hardware game can be an. A phenomenal way to get the best value out of your system as you're. As you're upgrading. Oh boy. Are we dead?

Luke Lafreniere (62:55)

Are we local recording? If so, we should just keep going. We're not. You want to tether your phone?

Linus Sebastian (63:24)

We're back. We're so back. All right, why don't we jump right into our next topic? Luke, you want to pick one?

Luke Lafreniere (63:34)

Yeah. Meta sends intimate ray banned AI glasses footage to human workers in Kenya. There was a joint investigation by Swedish newspapers SVD and got Borg's Post. And I butchered the heck out of that. Found that Meta sends user footage from its Ray Ban AI glasses to data annotators at Sama, a subcontractor in Nairobi, Kenya. Over 30 workers were interviewed. Workers said they regularly see footage of users on the toilet undressing, having very fun alone with one other person time and exposing bank card details. One said, we see everything from living rooms to naked bodies. They risk losing their jobs if they refuse to label said content. So they just gotta dive on in what There's a. There is a third person in the room with you and your really good roommate. Meta says that faces are automatically blurred before reaching workers employees.

Linus Sebastian (64:39)

But are they going to blur my

Luke Lafreniere (64:41)

strawberry justice just faces. But employees said the blurring frequently fails.

Linus Sebastian (64:46)

Well, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (64:47)

Former Meta staff in the US confirmed that algorithms sometimes miss. Meta's AI Terms of service state the company can review user interactions and that review can be automated or manual. The only solution offered is telling users not to share info they don't want retained. The teams don't say how long data is stored or who sees it. The reporters found Meta's wearable privacy policy buried behind multiple links. Swedish retailers gave contradictory answers about data handling. Yep. With several incorrectly claiming data stays local.

Linus Sebastian (65:25)

Yeah, right. On anything. Meta data staying local. Please.

Luke Lafreniere (65:28)

Yeah, big time. Testing showed that AI requires server side processing and cannot work offline.

Linus Sebastian (65:34)

Well, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (65:35)

The UK's ICO called the findings concerning. Yeah, I'd hope so. And is writing to Metta. EU lawyers flagged potential GDPR violations. Yeah, I think so. Since there is no adequacy decision recognizing Kenya's data protection, Yoakes had to look up what adequacy meant. So I'm dropping that here in case it's useful. It's a legal term indicating that the European Commission can officially declare that a country outside the EU has data protection standards equivalent to EU standards. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (66:08)

Yeah. I wouldn't think that Kenya would fall under that totally.

Luke Lafreniere (66:12)

If a. If a country has that EU companies can freely transfer personal data there. Kenya doesn't have one yet. Apparently they're trying to get one. Which means sending EU user data to SAMA in Kenya may lack the required legal basis under gdpr. At least as of right now. Meta is rolling out Name Tag, a facial recognition feature. They should have Dong Tag, a facial recognition recognition feature for the glasses. An internal memo obtained by New York Times said Meta intentionally planned to launch the feature now during what they called a dynamic political environment, when civil society groups would be distracted by other concerns. So between the data collection and facial recognition, this feels not great.

Linus Sebastian (67:03)

The funniest part of this to me. There's lots of funny parts of this to me, not least of which would be Dong tag. But the funniest part of this to me is every time we've talked about what the killer app would be for us to go smart glasses. It was the, like, creepy dystopian facial recognition. And like, oh, yeah, this is this guy, you had a meeting with him six months ago and he has a dog named this.

Luke Lafreniere (67:33)

I would love for it to only be local, but it will never be from Meta.

Linus Sebastian (67:36)

And it would for me to be comfortable with that thing. That would be very useful to me. Existing. It would have to be opt in. It would have to all be voluntary. It would have to be consensual with the people that you're, you know, identifying. But I could see it being great for things like trade shows. Cool.

Luke Lafreniere (67:54)

If it was like you have a name tag request and you'd be like, yep. And then it like shares your.

Linus Sebastian (67:59)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (68:00)

In a similar thing to like the iPhone touch.

Linus Sebastian (68:02)

Yeah. Like social media. Social media, but like IRL and like, before it went crap. Like, if it was actual social network,

Luke Lafreniere (68:09)

that would be actually really cool.

Linus Sebastian (68:11)

That'd be very cool. Unfortunately, never going to work that way. Meta moved past being a social network and became an advertising monstrosity, antisocial demon many years ago. Yeah, Many, many years ago. Our discussion question is, is privacy dead? The answer is yes for sure.

Luke Lafreniere (68:28)

But there are things that you can do. There are things that you can do.

Linus Sebastian (68:32)

Like not wearing meta glasses.

Luke Lafreniere (68:34)

Yeah. And avoiding.

Linus Sebastian (68:36)

I've even, I've even wanted to try them because like, I think I've talked to you about this. Like, I felt kind of out of touch.

Luke Lafreniere (68:41)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (68:42)

Because you know, the, the new gadget hotness, I'm just, I'm just not using it. Like I'm completely, I'm not completely ignorant. Like I, I used them a little bit on my trip to Cabo for Christmas. I, David and I used them when we shot the Costco PC. So we just had one pair of glasses. Totally inconspicuous.

Luke Lafreniere (69:02)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (69:02)

Because we were just stealth filming. So we had one pair of glasses and we would like switch depending on who was on camera to share them.

Luke Lafreniere (69:10)

That's pretty funny.

Linus Sebastian (69:11)

Yeah. So I like, I've used them a little and like, honestly I gotta say they do some pretty cool stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (69:16)

Stuff.

Linus Sebastian (69:17)

Yeah, but this is horrible.

Luke Lafreniere (69:19)

Yeah, but I mean there, there is still stuff you can do. Like, like we were talking about earlier. You have Linux on one of your laptops. That can help a lot of people even outside of the either, you know, pirate hat wearers, tricorns, or people that are like, oh my God, I'm, I don't want the, the, the, the government seeing all my secret informations. Even people outside of those spheres are just getting a little tired of like videos of them going to the toilet, being sent to Kenya.

Linus Sebastian (69:49)

Okay. Hear me.

Luke Lafreniere (69:50)

Like maybe, maybe I just want my data to be my freaking own and they're just self hosting.

Linus Sebastian (69:55)

Hear me out. We all start wearing hijabs.

Luke Lafreniere (70:01)

I'm good.

Linus Sebastian (70:02)

You can't steal my face. You can't steal my face if I don't show my face in public.

Luke Lafreniere (70:06)

I think you can have it at that point.

Linus Sebastian (70:09)

Do you think so?

Luke Lafreniere (70:09)

Yeah. It is what it is.

Linus Sebastian (70:17)

Magical. 88321 says I'm in. Oh man. Oh. Apparently we're supposed to do sponsors. I thought the sponsor was just Threat Locker. They already had a whole segment on the show. Dan, how much did they pay for this?

Luke Lafreniere (70:35)

Said float point announcement first.

Linus Sebastian (70:37)

Okay, Floatplane announcement. Go ahead. Or should you want me to do it? Okay. The first part of the Linux challenge video is out early on Floatplane. The video fully goes over everyone's reasoning. So it's me Elijah and Luke, our installations and we go through popos continuing to be Linus's downfall. Sammy writes, personally, I can't wait for people to clip Linus using chat GPT out of context and say why is the biggest tech YouTuber using AI summaries to find the best Linux? You deserve the downfall. Nyarch is the best for my hen anime. That's a direct quote from Sammy. I do not take responsibility for that. Also, if you guys enjoyed the reboot video, we've got extras. It is 27 minutes of raw hardcore hardware. Fixing the the D1 deck with Mark.

Luke Lafreniere (71:32)

No, it's cool. I watched the whole thing.

Linus Sebastian (71:33)

Oh, you watched the behind the scenes?

Luke Lafreniere (71:35)

Yeah, that one I watched for sure, dude.

Linus Sebastian (71:36)

It's like oh, the behind the scenes

Luke Lafreniere (71:37)

I haven't seen yet. There's a whole main video.

Linus Sebastian (71:39)

There's 27 minutes of us just like working on the D1 deck. Mark is so knowledgeable and he's so well spoken. He just, he did such a great job.

Luke Lafreniere (71:50)

He's got a great voice.

Linus Sebastian (71:51)

Not just of doing the work to make reboot rewind happen, but of explaining it. Because a lot of the time you get people who are just like, let's say super focused, let's use that word. And they're really great at doing incredible stuff. But people don't properly appreciate it because they don't know how to present what they've done and communicate it in a way that relates with people. Mark, he's got the whole package man. And so as he's walking me through everything we're doing on this old like, like third of a million dollar tape deck, it was, it was so much fun. There's so much to learn and he just, he just did such a great job. It's totally worth watching. You can go check it out at LMG GG fpwan the show is brought to you today by Threat Locker. Every day, hacks and data breaches are happening at companies all around the world. And it would be nice to think that multi factor authentication would be enough. But phishing websites have gotten pretty good at mimicking MFA sites. But our sponsor ThreatLocker uses zero trust enforcement, so it makes sure your device is validated through a secure broker before connecting to different services. Even if you get phished, then there isn't anything attackers can do without using an actual trusted device. With secure network and secure cloud Access Added to ThreatLocker Zero Trust Platform, organizations can implement zero trust controls across applications, endpoints, networks, storage and software. As a service within a fully integrated and easy to deploy solution. So don't wait. Proactively. Keep your business safe today by checking threatlocker.com LTT go back to the two. Hey, there we go. And you can see we're actually here in their. In their studio today. We were just at Zero trust World on stage. I thought we did okay. Adam Savage was talking, and I have once again managed to not meet him. I don't know how. I've traveled in the circles that I've traveled in while he's been traveling in the circles he's traveled in, and I have somehow never managed to cross his path.

Luke Lafreniere (74:01)

He's a pretty cool guy.

Linus Sebastian (74:02)

I'm looking forward to it, though. Yeah, like, he's met him.

Luke Lafreniere (74:05)

He likes the screwdriver.

Linus Sebastian (74:06)

Really?

Luke Lafreniere (74:06)

Also really liked the really big screwdriver.

Linus Sebastian (74:08)

He likes the screwdriver? Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (74:09)

I mean, I really like the really big screwdriver. He might. I know.

Linus Sebastian (74:12)

You know, I mean, he's a man who knows tools. He actually. He turned me on to. He turned you on to a particular tool. I'll accept tool file, but I don't know if I'm a Savage file, but he turned me on to. What are they called? Basically, they're like. They're like a special plier. It has, like, a grippy locky thing here. And then you put, like. I think it's called aircraft cable. Just like that. That wire. That's great for, like, making hooks and hangers and stuff. And then you just, like, pull a thing. You pull, like, a plunger, and it twists it and makes it into, like, a twisted thing. Someone. Anyone. No, not forceps. For crying out loud, you guys.

Luke Lafreniere (74:57)

Safety wire pliers.

Linus Sebastian (75:01)

Safety wire pliers. Is that it?

Luke Lafreniere (75:03)

No idea.

Linus Sebastian (75:03)

I think that's what they're called. He. He made a video about them, and it, like, seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the ones. And that seriously helped me with my motorcycle painting project. Are you gonna show the screen, Dan? He's not gonna show the screen. He doesn't want you to see it. No, Dan doesn't want you to see it. So I'm going like this there. Forget it. Forget it. We're over it. But those are super cool. He's so petulant. Petulant, man. You know what else is super cool? Lego's smart brick is here, and it's got some actually kind of neat tech. I had really wanted this for tonight's show. I thought. I thought this would have gone pretty

Luke Lafreniere (75:43)

hard, Done pretty well.

Linus Sebastian (75:44)

Lego has released their new smart play sets, starting with eight Star wars builds like Luke's red 5X wing and Darth Vader's TIE fighter.

Luke Lafreniere (75:54)

Weird. It's like they know the popular stuff.

Linus Sebastian (75:55)

I know. Each powered by a new electronic smart brick that adds lights, sound effects, and interactive reactions. Inside, the smart brick is essentially a tiny computer built around a custom ASIC chip smaller than a standard Lego stud. The brick also includes motion sensors, a speaker, and LEDs, so it can react when the model moves, fires, or interacts with characters. The system also uses smart tags and smart minifigures, which contain unique identifiers that the brick can detect using near field sensing through internal copper coils. That makes sense now, when a tagged figure or piece is placed nearby, the brick will trigger the appropriate sound or lighting effects. How cool is this? Multiple smart bricks can also connect together wirelessly using a Bluetooth based system called BrickNet, allowing different sets to synchronize effects and interact with each other. Okay, now our discussion question here, though, is one for the ages. Does adding electronics and wireless connectivity make Lego not Lego anymore? Does it take the imagination when you're not doing mouth sound effects for the X wing? Have we lost something or have we gained something? Come on, guys, hit us up in the chat. I want to know what you guys think about this.

Luke Lafreniere (77:21)

I have kind of a two prong answer.

Linus Sebastian (77:22)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (77:23)

For kids, you lost something. I think for adults, you might have gained something. I think the ability to have fun with the. I'm gonna do the Vader voice and do all that kind of stuff kind of fades a little bit, but I think it would actually be worse and less mentally stimulating and stuff for kids who would naturally engage with those things making the noise effects themselves.

Linus Sebastian (77:45)

All right, I got some bad news for you. Here we go.

Luke Lafreniere (77:49)

Specifically targeted to kids.

Linus Sebastian (77:50)

They seem to be, for the most

Luke Lafreniere (77:53)

part, I mean, it's Star wars references, so it might not be.

Linus Sebastian (77:56)

That's true. That's true. Okay, let's have a. Let's have a look here. Okay, Dan, you got my screen? Yeah. Here we go. Oh, my God. Okay, so there's the smart brick. Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (78:08)

Blah, blah.

Linus Sebastian (78:09)

Smart play system. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, show me. Show me some smart sets. They're pretty small.

Luke Lafreniere (78:18)

Pretty small.

Linus Sebastian (78:19)

So there's kind of. I can see what you mean, Luke. There's kind of conflicting. There's some conflicting information factors because, like,

Luke Lafreniere (78:30)

a lot of adults that I know that are into Lego build them very much as, like, showpieces.

Linus Sebastian (78:35)

Yeah, this would not be a good show kit.

Luke Lafreniere (78:38)

They build it exactly as it's supposed to be done, and Then they leave it exactly as it is. A lot of kids, like, when I was growing, I didn't care about the kid at all. I wanted the pieces. Then I just build random stuff. So it's like two extremely different ways of engaging with it. And if you're just building a kit and you want to look cool and sound cool. Smart brick. Sweet. Sounds good.

Linus Sebastian (78:58)

This is looking pretty rough, dude. Not gonna lie. $90 for this. Three stars. Three stars, boys.

Luke Lafreniere (79:11)

Smart brick is expensive. Okay, where are the low reviews?

Linus Sebastian (79:16)

Good idea. Poor execution. The X wing looks like a four plus set. They mean age. And the integration of the smart brick compromises the look of the fighter too much. The back of the R2 looks terrible. To accommodate the smart tag. Yeah. And the. That price. Oh, oh, oh. Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right.

Luke Lafreniere (79:51)

Yikes.

Linus Sebastian (79:53)

Well, that's unfortunate. You know what else is unfortunate? An Amazon change means that wish lists might expose your address. Amazon is changing how they work starting March 25, and the company is removing the option that allowed users to restrict purchases to only items sold by Amazon, meaning that items on your list can now be fulfilled by third party sellers, even if you previously blocked them. This change means that those sellers will receive your shipping address in order to fulfill your order. And because these independent merchants handle their own shipping and tracking, your full address could appear in delivery updates or tracking information that buyers see. Amazon says the goal is to give buyers access to a wider selection of items, but it is warning users to switch their wish list delivery address to a PO Box or non residential address if they share lists with the public. So by buyers, they mean the buyers who are like, for your gift registry.

Luke Lafreniere (80:59)

I understand, but my. My brain immediately went to gift registry, and I was thinking most of those

Linus Sebastian (81:05)

wouldn't care too much unless you're a twitch streamer. Twitch stream or something.

Luke Lafreniere (81:10)

And. And a lot of the or something.

Linus Sebastian (81:12)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (81:13)

I think it's mostly the or something.

Linus Sebastian (81:15)

I shouldn't need a P.O. box. No, it's not a bad idea to have one, but I just, you know, wish I didn't need one.

Luke Lafreniere (81:25)

You don't.

Linus Sebastian (81:26)

I just mean in general.

Luke Lafreniere (81:27)

Okay.

Linus Sebastian (81:28)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (81:29)

Yeah. You still don't though.

Linus Sebastian (81:31)

What would you do?

Luke Lafreniere (81:32)

Your office is. I would just ship it to the office. Oh.

Linus Sebastian (81:35)

What? Okay. I know. I just. I was talking from like a. Like a more. A more general sort of standpoint.

Luke Lafreniere (81:41)

I never had a wish list. I think most of the wish lists are the or something category, which I'm for sure not in. And then in that case, I mean, I'll just Flip the thing. Right.

Linus Sebastian (81:51)

Can you clarify what you mean by or something? Because I'm. I think I'm losing you hands and stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, lordy.

Luke Lafreniere (82:00)

I think most of the usage out of this outside of registries is going to be that is. It is. Is there something else?

Linus Sebastian (82:05)

Is that a thing?

Luke Lafreniere (82:06)

I don't know. This is genuine safety hazard for women. I don't think. Like, I. I don't know.

Linus Sebastian (82:18)

Okay. It's not us. A thousand percent only fans. Yes, it's a thing. Yes, it's a thing. Buying gifts but like money is so easy to send. Isn't that more convenient?

Luke Lafreniere (82:32)

No idea, dude.

Linus Sebastian (82:34)

Well, no, they're telling. They're saying it's.

Luke Lafreniere (82:35)

No, I know, but you're like, I don't know what the. Like, I don't know the reason.

Linus Sebastian (82:40)

Like, I just, I don't really.

Luke Lafreniere (82:42)

Most models have a public Amazon wish list.

Linus Sebastian (82:45)

Why?

Luke Lafreniere (82:46)

I have not a clue.

Linus Sebastian (82:47)

Are people more likely to like stretch and spend a little bit more if they, if they buy you a gift versus if it's money? It's been a thing for Twitch streamers for years and years. Okay, okay.

Luke Lafreniere (83:06)

Yes, it absolutely is. Exposing the person's address is especially dangerous to the women on Twitch. Okay. Okay. Totally. Yeah, for sure.

Linus Sebastian (83:16)

Feels more personal. Remember, these are people looking for a connection for professional work.

Luke Lafreniere (83:21)

You can probably get a PO Box, right?

Linus Sebastian (83:25)

But a PO Box is inconvenient because you have to go to it and like, you know, going all the way somewhere for the things that people bought you.

Luke Lafreniere (83:32)

You might be able to get a courier service.

Linus Sebastian (83:34)

That's terrible.

Luke Lafreniere (83:34)

No, you totally could. You totally could. You could get the Uber package thing to go to your PO Box and bring it to your house. You could totally do that. You could definitely. I think the big problem, well, it's saying like that it could be from third party people now and you'd have to update your stuff. But I don't think this is gonna screw over anyone that's currently on there because they would only have things that are fulfilled by Amazon. Is that right?

Linus Sebastian (84:02)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (84:02)

So it'd just be as you're updating

Linus Sebastian (84:04)

your list, don't add things not fulfilled by Amazon. It could be fulfilled by anyone. That's the problem.

Luke Lafreniere (84:09)

No, I know. That's the change.

Linus Sebastian (84:10)

Got it.

Luke Lafreniere (84:11)

So what I'm saying is, if you already had a list, I don't think it's going to suddenly compromise you because I think you would have only been able to add things that were fulfilled by Amazon.

Linus Sebastian (84:20)

Yeah, but you can't control where things are fulfilled by. Sometimes it changes.

Luke Lafreniere (84:23)

Okay, so you don't add a specific listing because the specific listings are fulfilled. It's fixed fulfillment, right?

Linus Sebastian (84:30)

I don't think so. I don't know. I think. Yeah, no, I think a listing can be fulfilled by multiple place the Amazon GrapheneOS is coming to Motorola phones in 2027 Motorola made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress earlier this week. For those unfamiliar GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused fork that features significantly improved sandboxing, exploit mitigation and permission models. The deal depends on Lenovo owned Motorola producing hardware that satisfies the unique demands of grapheneOS, which is a standard that most current Android hardware doesn't meet. Currently, graphene OS is supported on Google Pixel 6 through Pixel 10 devices. According to a post on Graphene OS's Twitter account, support for Motorola devices is expected to start with 2027 flagship devices and may expand to a broader range over time. Our discussion question is Linus tries Grapheneos episode 2 win I would actually.

Luke Lafreniere (85:32)

I mean this is genuinely compelling.

Linus Sebastian (85:33)

I would love to give it another shot. Yeah, genuinely.

Luke Lafreniere (85:36)

This is really cool. Actually,

Linus Sebastian (85:42)

I probably won't yet. There were a lot of things that I ran into with graphene OS that just were not really compatible with all the services and all of the applications that I use. At least with the amount of work that I wanted to put into getting it all set up and working correctly. Okay, but I think they can get there.

Luke Lafreniere (86:03)

Do you think that's a normal amount of resistance? And your answer is very likely just going to be like yes, to be clear. But do you think that's a normal amount of resistance to work for an average user? Or is that a resistance to work because you switch phones every freaking month?

Linus Sebastian (86:19)

Oh, definitely.

Luke Lafreniere (86:20)

So it's. You think it's more that.

Linus Sebastian (86:22)

Oh yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (86:22)

So you'd be more willing to if you were not switching phones.

Linus Sebastian (86:27)

If I was not switching phones all the time as a. As a hardware tech. Hardware person and if my job wasn't so dependent on my phone. Yeah, if I just used my phone as a phone for a lot of

Luke Lafreniere (86:39)

people is fairly true.

Linus Sebastian (86:41)

Totally fine. Then I would. I would be strongly considering graphene OS at this point.

Luke Lafreniere (86:45)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (86:46)

Seagate is shipping 44 terabyte drives to the data center. Ten platters. That's all. That's all I really wanted to say. They use Hammer so it'll heat a tiny section of the disk to over 400 degrees Celsius in nanoseconds, which temporarily reduces the magnetic coercivity to allow data writing. Hammer allows for higher capacities and more stable storage than conventional magnetic recording or shingled magnetic recording. Freaking hard drives are still, they're still doing stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (87:19)

Hammer drives are so sick.

Linus Sebastian (87:20)

They're so cool.

Luke Lafreniere (87:21)

It's actually so cool.

Linus Sebastian (87:22)

It took forever. They were so far behind roadmap. But now that they're here, well, sort of here. I mean you can't buy a hard drive to save your life. Plouffe is working on a like an I built an ass video. And it's funny, he actually had a line in the script that I like. I turned to him and I was like really? Because he said something along the lines of like I've never done a storage or networking video in the five years I've been at lmg. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah. I mean not everybody knows everything. The man owns the display certainly we could say that with, with absolute perfect certainty. But owns a nas? We couldn't say until now. Yeah, so we're doing that NAS video anyway. And he had to, he had to go all the way to. It was either Calgary or Edmonton, one of the. One of the Albertan cities to find hard drives. It's not just a question of price, it's a question of in stock at all. Can I find a hard drive right now it's getting pretty nuts because just everything is going to the data center. And just like with RAM where you might think intuitively but I don't need the server ram. Surely the desktop RAM would be perfectly not supply constrained for hard drives. Okay. Even though consumers don't need to buy 44 terabyte hammer drives. Well, yeah, but those same platters could be used to build a lower capacity drive now. They won't get wrecked. Yeah, you're done, bud.

Luke Lafreniere (89:01)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (89:03)

Speaking of the ongoing memory crisis, analyst firm Gartner is predicting that entry level non gaming PCs under $500 will have, this is a quote, disappeared by 2028. And they predict that worldwide PC shipments will decline 10.4% in 2026. The firm expects memory costs to rise as much as 23%. To be as much as 23% of the total bills of material price. Bill of materials price. Good lord. Up from 16% in 2025. However, not everybody agrees. Tech radar writer Desire Atho reminds us that Gartner also predicted that Windows Phone would overtake the iPhone by 2015 and that NFTs would be foundational to the brands of 50% of publicly traded companies by 2024. So yeah, just throwing that out there.

Luke Lafreniere (90:04)

That's a pretty good thing to point out.

Linus Sebastian (90:06)

And also, you know, Apple just released a MacBook that is technically sub $500 if you jump through the, from my understanding, educational hoop, fairly small hoops to get the educational discount. Yeah, that's something that I actually wish I had emphasized more in our launch day coverage that you can get this thing for $500. I didn't realize how apparently this is just from like Americans commenting on the video, but how apparently like trivial it is to get the educational discount even if you don't happen to be a teacher or student.

Luke Lafreniere (90:41)

Fantastic topic. Microslop bans the word microslop in its Discord server. Microsoft has been fighting a losing battle against the community in its official Copilot Discord server and have filtered the words microslop from use in the server. Users quickly circumvented the term with elite speak. So Microsoft began locking access to certain parts parts of the server and disabling posting permission for some users. And now Sloppy Soft is in the news for it.

Linus Sebastian (91:12)

Why would they Streisand affect this?

Luke Lafreniere (91:14)

I don't know, but I love it.

Linus Sebastian (91:16)

When I saw it, I was like

Luke Lafreniere (91:17)

so happy about this. Anyone who gets banned from that server is like, that's a badge of honor. That's so sick. I kind of want to go over there and just see if I can get banned from that server.

Linus Sebastian (91:29)

Now that they're drawing attention to it by banning the word and by and by taking action against their community community. It's so much funnier.

Luke Lafreniere (91:37)

Oh, it's so funny.

Linus Sebastian (91:39)

It's gone from like haha, that's pretty clever to like oh, Microsoft maybe.

Luke Lafreniere (91:44)

Maybe if someone tries to tell me Linux takes I'll just be like are you banned from the Microsoft official Copilot Discord server?

Linus Sebastian (91:51)

If not, I'm not listening. Forget it. I don't have to. Yeah, I don't have to listen to you.

Luke Lafreniere (91:56)

You're not Linux enough. What else we got here?

Linus Sebastian (92:00)

Yahoo is selling end gadget. There's a couple key things to take away from this. One is that Yahoo still exists and the second is that bummer because Engadget was decent at some point and more consolidation of what precious little remains of independent tech media sucks. Our discussion question is has Yahoo ever sold a company for more than what they paid for it? I genuinely, I genuinely don't know the answer. But it's a. But it's a hilarious question.

Luke Lafreniere (92:35)

Calm down stock info app now Dan

Linus Sebastian (92:38)

is going to have an aneurysm if we don't switch over to checkout messages. But I. There's one more thing that we really wanted to talk about really quick here. Hours after the government blocklisted Anthropic for refusing to let the Pentagon use cloud without safety guard rails. And yes, that's how I like to pronounce it now. Cloud boot, sommelier scam. Altman, love it, swooped in, announcing that OpenAI sound, a deal with the Department of War, which is not actually renamed, but that's what people are calling it. Chat GPT uninstalls surged 295%. Cloud shot to number one on the App Store. And OpenAI employees signed an open letter supporting Anthropic. Altman admitted that the deal looked opportunistic and sloppy.

Luke Lafreniere (93:31)

It was.

Linus Sebastian (93:32)

And said that OpenAI is amending the contract to prohibit domestic surveillance of Americans and to bar intelligence agencies like the NSA from using OpenAI without a separate contract. Okay. According to the Verge, though, the Pentagon never budged on its terms.

Luke Lafreniere (93:51)

Yeah, as far as my understanding goes, their. Their contract just isn't as tight as. I got this from Lemonade Stand. I think their contract just isn't as tight as Anthropics. And what it says is that. It doesn't say that they can't do that. It says that they have to follow the law.

Linus Sebastian (94:08)

Well, OpenAI's former head of policy research came out and said that employees should assume that OpenAI caved and is just framing it as not caving.

Luke Lafreniere (94:18)

Yeah. Yeah, like what? But like, the. The way that they caved is that they said that they have to follow the law. But then, if I remember correctly, the Pentagon can just like, not. So it actually just means nothing. I think that's how that works.

Linus Sebastian (94:28)

The autonomous weapons ban is similarly weak. It only applies where current law or policy requires human control. And current policy.

Luke Lafreniere (94:36)

This is.

Linus Sebastian (94:36)

Doesn't.

Luke Lafreniere (94:37)

This is exactly the point. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (94:38)

Oh, no, we were getting to that. Yeah, yeah, we were getting to that. All right, Dan, do you want to hit us with a couple of checkout messages? There's no way you can change the lights here. Can you purple, please? Is that a thing? No, no. Purple. No, that's fine. How's my mic? Let's see here. Maybe make. Bring that up a little bit. Hey, lld, I need a tech tip. Should I be worried about added latency when using a kvm? Sharing a desk with the gf, and want to share peripherals, but not at the price of my. My absolute gaming prowess? I don't believe so. Okay, to be clear there, from my understanding, are KVMs that do add latency however. Here we go. Apparently Wendell.

Luke Lafreniere (95:35)

I suspect Wendell's are like virtually zero.

Linus Sebastian (95:37)

Yeah, Wendell has replied to this user sly joker over on the level one tax forums that Dan is eventually going to. There we go. Saying I would try moving the logitech stuff to USB3. Usually what you're describing is a symptom of problems on USB 3, blah, blah blah. I get that you have the mismatch of installed version of logitech utilities could cause issues. So from his understanding it sounds like. No, latency should not be an issue if you are using a quality kvm. And I have not personally noticed a difference using the Level 1 text KVM. It is not cheap, but it is a high quality piece of kit. And high quality stuff sometimes isn't cheap. No apologies for that.

Luke Lafreniere (96:19)

I have experienced very, very old, very, very cheap KVM's.

Linus Sebastian (96:24)

Are you talking like those purple ones?

Luke Lafreniere (96:26)

Like I barely even remember with the

Linus Sebastian (96:28)

PS2 and the VGA. I mean PS2 probably wouldn't have any additional latency anyway.

Luke Lafreniere (96:31)

It's a long time ago and they definitely did add some.

Linus Sebastian (96:35)

Yeah, we've got VNG Supernova in chat saying I use a level one text KVM and have no noticeable change.

Luke Lafreniere (96:40)

I also have a Level 1 text KVM and has never I' noticed a problem.

Linus Sebastian (96:44)

Cool. Love the precision kit. That's probably a bit too quiet there. Love the precision kit. Buying one is a grad gift for a student worker. What do you like to keep in your tech sack?

Luke Lafreniere (97:04)

He's checking, he's checking.

Linus Sebastian (97:05)

I'm checking, I'm checking.

Luke Lafreniere (97:10)

Ah, yeah. Someone said buy once, cry once, meta I. My level 1 text KVM is like old and also flawless.

Linus Sebastian (97:18)

All right, so in here I have a scribe driver that's not really the like designated pen spot, but I like it there because I can access it without opening up this monster and having to dig through it. I carry one of our little bit sets with all of my not in the screwdriver bits. So I've got my metric hex, my Imperial hex, and all my most common Torx sizes. Those are the ones that really come up for me in daily use. I got my pliers, my side cutters, a regular screwdriver, a stubby screwdriver, one of our extensions. I apparently also have one of our. Another one of our pens. Whoops. Okay, well that's not supposed to be in the.

Luke Lafreniere (98:02)

There.

Linus Sebastian (98:02)

Get, get. Go on, go on, go on, go. Go on, get. Thermal paste. We've got a chalk marker that's Only in there because of a recent video. So that's not going to normally be in there. I'll take that out. I've got a 2 1/2 gigabit framework Ethernet adapter that comes in handy way. Way more often than you guys with

Luke Lafreniere (98:21)

anything USB C. Yeah, doesn't even have to be a framework.

Linus Sebastian (98:23)

It's pretty freaking useful. I've got this ancient Patriot 64 gig. You recognize that? Yeah, I use that a bunch. I've got little. This is a sabrent 4 terabyte if I recall correctly. So I need to move like bulk stuff fast. I've got. Dude, do you recognize this?

Luke Lafreniere (98:40)

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Linus Sebastian (98:42)

My Molex stripper. That was given to me by Charles Harwood, the creator of Murderbox and Pro Forma Forma X Pro whatever the whatever he rebranded it that crazy super expensive case. I've got. Oh yeah, always one of these. So a little 3 1/2 millimeter breakout in case you have a recessed port that you can't get at. I have of course our precision screwdriver set. I've got some medical tape. This is great for attaching lav microphones. I've got. Oh, always one of these. USB to four pole audio. Three and a half millimeter. You never know when you're just like not going to have audio.

Luke Lafreniere (99:24)

That's another one that you. You've been using this for like over a decade easily.

Linus Sebastian (99:28)

Oh yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (99:28)

Probably closer to.

Linus Sebastian (99:29)

Oh yeah buddy. Mechanical pencil. This is in the wrong thing. Okay, there you go. It's one of our scribe driver mechanical pencils. You probably recognize this. This is a tool for. Just like the other one from Molex. This is for depinning ATX and EPS and PCIe connectors. It has saved my bacon so many times. Times. I've got a dead SSD that is probably dead because I keep it in my tech sac without anything around it. That's the one that I tried to install Linux on and did not work. So that's unfortunate. I've got. Oh, USB C to display port framework thing. That was from when I was daily driving the framework. I haven't been lately but it was in case I needed a DP out. I've also got. What's this? Oh yeah, Emergency Micro SD and Emergency SD card. Always got to have that in case the camera ops forget. This is my old portable drive. I've forgotten to take it out of here. That old Angel Bird one.

Luke Lafreniere (100:24)

Finally I still use mine.

Linus Sebastian (100:25)

I've got a USB 2 drive. You never know when a motherboard is not going to accept a USB3 drive.

Luke Lafreniere (100:32)

Sometimes it really just boots off.

Linus Sebastian (100:33)

USB2 for BIOS flashing.

Luke Lafreniere (100:35)

Yep, yep.

Linus Sebastian (100:36)

And then I've got a handful of more SSDs that are for installing more SSDs for the Linux challenge. There, there. That's my tech stack. You're welcome.

Luke Lafreniere (100:45)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (100:47)

Hello, Linus, Luke and Duman. Linus, as an FFT fan playing Chronicles, how do you feel about things like the JP scroll glitch being fixed? Does this improve the game or take away nostalgia? Oh, I am not familiar with the JP scroll glitch. What is it? You could glitch the game to give certain classes to instant 9999 job points. So you could just learn all the abilities. I mean, I would have fixed that if I was them. That's not like. Oh man, I don't think you bother

Luke Lafreniere (101:30)

if you have to go way out of your way to solve it as a single player game, who cares? Yeah,

Linus Sebastian (101:39)

I guess I never minded the. The grind like that thing, tactics.

Luke Lafreniere (101:43)

You go to the doctor and you're like, when I punch myself in the arm, it hurts. And they're like, don't do that.

Linus Sebastian (101:51)

Yeah, just I've beaten it without. Man, this is a tough one. Because the only people who need this glitch would be probably people who are playing on like tactician difficulty but don't want to grind. Because you don't need to grind if you're playing on a regular difficulty. But then I think the definition of grinding has changed a little bit these days. In the, in the remaster you can skip random battles. So in the days when you couldn't skip random battles, there wasn't really. You didn't have to grind.

Luke Lafreniere (102:23)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (102:24)

To like beat the game at normal difficulty naturally.

Luke Lafreniere (102:27)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (102:28)

But now if you were to skip random battles and do only story battles and you just wanted to like have lots of cool abilities and fight through the story, I could see. I would. I could see them fixing the glitch, but I could also see them doing something similar to what they've done for some of the. From the. Some of the re releases of other older final fantasies. Like when I played through FF9 on PC, it had just like a9999 damage mode that you could just like toggle at any time if you're just bored of a fight and you just want to finish it. I could see them just having like a. Just like a cheat that you can just enable like an assist. We don't call them cheats anymore. We call them Assists. I could see them re implementing it that way. Hi Wan dll. Love the content, but gotta save up for the produce. Would love to get some of the cargo pants for work, but I must have black work trousers. Why no Black? Feel like 250 characters would be better. I gotta be honest with you. We just didn't. I. I don't have a good. I don't have a good reason for us to not have black cargo pants. Maybe someday we will. I like black cargo pants. That. Yeah, black cargo pants would be pretty sick. It won't be anytime soon though, because we just launched as, you know, two new colors. Yeah, but. Yeah, maybe. Last one I got for you today. Cool new set. Linus, do you remember the first PC part that you toasted? I do. It was a sound card. I didn't realize that the CD audio connector was not a floppy power connector.

Luke Lafreniere (104:03)

Oh, my God.

Linus Sebastian (104:04)

So I plugged a floppy power connector into it and I released the magic blue smoke. And I learned. I learned all about not to plug in a thing that I don't recognize into another thing I don't recognize. It fits on. The spacing's right.

Luke Lafreniere (104:21)

I think. I think mine was one of your motherboards.

Linus Sebastian (104:26)

Thanks for that.

Luke Lafreniere (104:31)

I'm not even kidding. I. I know that I had mineral oil on my hand at one point and I was handling a hard drive and it slipped out of my hand and hit the ground.

Linus Sebastian (104:39)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (104:39)

But I have some memory that it, like, still worked.

Linus Sebastian (104:43)

They're surprisingly resilient for how.

Luke Lafreniere (104:45)

Yeah, because it wasn't like, run. It might have died. I don't remember. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (104:50)

You know what else I don't remember?

Luke Lafreniere (104:53)

Ending the show. Because you haven't yet.

Linus Sebastian (104:54)

That thing you do at the end of the show. Can you do it?

Luke Lafreniere (104:57)

I think you have to do yours first. I think it's an order of operations problem.

Linus Sebastian (105:01)

You think so?

Luke Lafreniere (105:01)

I think so.

Linus Sebastian (105:02)

So first I would have to say, we'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. And then you say by. Wait, did the stream die?

Luke Lafreniere (105:14)

I think it died Anyways. Thirty years ago, blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone. Over 25 million windows later, we're celebrating by giving our customers up to 50% off site wide during our anniversary service sale. Whether you DIY it or want a

Linus Sebastian (106:35)

pro to handle everything from measure to install, Blinds.

Luke Lafreniere (106:38)

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