If Buying Isn’t Ownership Then Piracy Isn’t Theft - WAN Show June 20, 2025

Summary

The WAN Show: "If Buying Isn’t Ownership Then Piracy Isn’t Theft" – June 20, 2025

Hosts: Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere
Release Date: June 21, 2025

---

1. Introduction and Headline Topic: TeamViewer's Termination of Lifetime Licenses

The episode kicks off with Linus venting about TeamViewer discontinuing its perpetual licenses, a move that deeply affects longtime users like himself.

• Luke (00:53): "The show is brought to you by Vessi, Corsair and Squarespace..."

Linus delves into his personal experience with TeamViewer, recounting an email exchange from 2016 where he purchased a perpetual license for a significant sum. Despite assurances of no additional fees, TeamViewer's recent decision to end support for versions 11 and 12 (released in 2016) forces users like Linus to reconsider their options.

• Linus (09:04): "Anybody that has a service that takes active maintenance that sells a perpetual license, I question it."

The hosts express frustration over TeamViewer's shift from a perpetual license model to a subscription-based approach, highlighting the lack of transparency and the burden it places on loyal customers.

• Luke (09:21): "I was more offended than placated by them offering to allow me to use these versions for LAN connections."

2. Navigating Alternatives and Piracy Ethics

Faced with TeamViewer's changes, Linus and Luke discuss alternative solutions and the ethical gray areas surrounding software piracy.

• Luke (20:49): "I would never cut a perpetual license. I could use an alternative like Parsec, which still offers a free version..."

They weigh the legitimacy of continuing to use outdated software through LAN versus the moral implications of piracy, especially when ownership rights seem compromised.

• Linus (21:39): "I wouldn't question it. If it's through the actions and false representations of the license issuer, then a big, you know..."

3. Steam's Enhancements and AI in Gaming

Transitioning from software licensing, the conversation shifts to Steam's latest updates, including improved performance monitoring and accessibility tools.

• Linus (33:06): "The Steam client beta was updated earlier this week with improved performance monitoring,..."

They explore how integrated tools like frame rate monitors can aid gamers and developers alike, while also discussing the broader implications of AI-generated content in games.

• Luke (35:55): "Valve does so much cool stuff that just generally makes gamers lives better and easier."

4. Merch Messages and Show Announcements

The hosts introduce various merchandise offerings, including precision screwdriver bundles and adorable pet caves, encouraging listeners to support the show through purchases.

• Dan (43:53): "If you're gonna throw money at your screen, you should get high quality merchandise in return..."

A humorous exchange ensues as they demonstrate the ease of ordering and the limited stock of certain items, adding a light-hearted break to the show's technical discussions.

5. Restoration Projects and Media Preservation

Linus and Luke touch upon their involvement in restoring the old show "Reboot," emphasizing the challenges of preserving digital media stored in obscure formats.

• Luke (22:03): "We're actually in the process of helping with the restoration of an old show called Reboot..."

They reflect on the importance of ownership and accessibility of media over time, likening it to the issues faced with TeamViewer licenses.

• Linus (24:45): "I think that a generation or two from now could be the first generation for whom media from like 100 years ago could actually still be like entertaining to watch."

6. AI's Impact on Content Creation and Advertising

A substantial portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing AI's role in content creation, advertising, and the future of gaming.

• Luke (86:10): "AI generated media should have fingerprinting built into it so that platforms like YouTube could read that fingerprinting and see that it's AI generated and flag it as such."

They debate the ethical considerations of AI in generating content, the potential for misleading advertisements, and the necessity for transparency and accountability.

• Linus (185:02): "Our own review process is one of the reasons why I wouldn't use a generative AI's output because I don't necessarily trust myself to spot every single little tiny individual potential flaw."

7. Nintendo's Policies on Piracy and Software Integrity

The discussion shifts to Nintendo's stringent policies against piracy, highlighting cases where unauthorized use of software leads to severe consequences like banning consoles.

• Linus (116:09): "Rolling out new AI powered advertising features including the ability to upload an image of a product or write a short text prompt and produce five second video clips that can be used in an ad."

They express concerns over companies like Nintendo enforcing strict anti-piracy measures and the broader implications for consumer rights and software ownership.

• Luke (123:53): "The point is the creators who are relying on licensing these files that they have created, which may not be 3D printed, they may be something else..."

8. Conclusion: The Evolving Tech Landscape and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, Linus and Luke reflect on the rapid changes in the tech ecosystem, emphasizing the need for adaptability and ethical considerations in an age dominated by AI and digital rights management.

• Dan (250:00): "These are different things. There's people in chat saying, like, yeah, auto Complete is super helpful. That's what I'm talking about."

Their conversation underscores the delicate balance between leveraging new technologies for efficiency and maintaining integrity and fairness in digital ownership and content creation.

---

Notable Quotes

1. Linus (09:04):
   "Anybody that has a service that takes active maintenance that sells a perpetual license, I question it."

2. Luke (22:03):
   "We're actually in the process of helping with the restoration of an old show called Reboot."

3. Luke (35:55):
   "Valve does so much cool stuff that just generally makes gamers lives better and easier."

4. Dan (43:53):
   "If you're gonna throw money at your screen, you should get high quality merchandise in return..."

5. Linus (185:02):
   "Our own review process is one of the reasons why I wouldn't use a generative AI's output because I don't necessarily trust myself to spot every single little tiny individual potential flaw."

6. Luke (123:53):
   "The point is the creators who are relying on licensing these files that they have created, which may not be 3D printed, they may be something else..."

---

Key Takeaways

• Software Licensing Issues: The termination of perpetual licenses by TeamViewer has left loyal customers questioning their options and the reliability of companies that offer eternal ownership.

• Ethical Piracy: The hosts navigate the gray areas of software piracy, especially when ownership terms are ambiguous or altered post-purchase.

• AI in Gaming and Advertising: AI's integration into gaming tools and advertising presents both opportunities and ethical dilemmas, particularly concerning content authenticity and consumer manipulation.

• Content Preservation: Efforts to restore and preserve old media highlight the importance of owning and maintaining digital content over time.

• Marketplace Evolution: Changes in platforms like Etsy reflect broader shifts in how creators and consumers interact, raising questions about the sustainability and ethics of current business models.

• Future of Gaming: The discussion anticipates a future where AI could tailor gaming experiences individually, but also cautions against losing the communal and authentic aspects of game recommendations and experiences.

---

Linus and Luke's in-depth discussion encapsulates the challenges and ethical considerations of modern tech, from software ownership to the pervasive influence of AI. Their insights provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the evolving digital landscape and its implications for both consumers and creators.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

Psst.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your payments are showing, but with Apple Cash, your payments are private by design. There are no public feeds. Send and receive money privately in messages or with tap to Cash. Switch to Apple Cash. Apple Cash services are provided by Green bank member fdic. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the WAN Show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys this week. My highlight topic, of course, is that the TeamViewer license, which I have spoken about at length on this show. The perpetual license that I purchased for TeamViewer 12, apparently, I don't know those thousands of dollars you spent on it. Guess what? You don't have any license for it anymore. To which my response would be one of these, Buddy boy, what else we got going on this week?

[Linus Sebastian]

We have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I. I do, too, usually. You know what? We're gonna mix it up. We're gonna mix it up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we doing one, one, one one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

One, one, one. Yeah, that was right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're doing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Steam wants you to know about the fake frames being generated on your computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Trump Phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love the idea of only saying that. Trump Phone. What are we gonna talk about exactly? Who knows? Just Trap Phone and Nexus mods. Sold. And as a person who has kept a perpetual subscription just to support something that I enjoy a lot, I have questions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The show is brought to you by Vessi, Corsair and Squarespace, and of course, in partnership with our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Secret Lab, not to mention our hair gel partner, Dippity Doo. That is actually the brand I used.

[Linus Sebastian]

To use when I joked about has their branding that. Me too. Has their branding changed at all?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I doubt it. I mean, I never looked too closely at their branding. I just looked at that. It was cheap, yo.

[Linus Sebastian]

It still looks like the same. That's awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. And it's still cheap. $4.49 for a tub. Oh, three. 48 Canadian for a tub of it. Gotta love it. All right, amazing. Why don't we jump right into our headline topic this week, which is, of course, the. That TeamViewer has been killing off lifetime licenses. We're gonna get into Redditor CrazyCats911's letter that they shared. But first, before we do that, I would like to read from an email that TeamViewer sent me in 2016. In November of 2016. This was for quotation Q756412Y8F4P2TV 04082.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dear Linus, thank You for your email attached please your special offer to Update to version 12. We don't offer free updates, but since you purchased in August, I was able to apply a discount to your update. So this was clearly in response to me being like, yo, wtf? Your new software came out literally three months after I just paid. I believe it was either five or six thousand dollars. Do you remember?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but it was a lot, especially at that time. It was a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I spent a substantial amount of money, especially again in the context of it being in 2016, a substantial amount of money on a TeamViewer license. With the intention being that for, I believe it was for a remote employee to be able to access, slash, being able to administer some kind of something. Anyway, the point is I needed a perpetual TeamViewer license. I needed a couple of seats for it. Our licenses are perpetual licenses. When you purchase a license with us, you make a one time payment to purchase the version we sell at that time and all the updates within Your perpetual version 10 will be extended to you at no extra charge. Oh, apparently I bought version 10. Okay, I'm not, not sure of the details here. There are no additional monthly, yearly nor maintenance fees. That's good to know. Good to know. Thank you. TeamViewer TeamViewer releases a new major version EX V11 to V12 every 12 to 15 months. Version upgrades are new functionality that our users have requested throughout the previous year. As such, updates are absolutely optional and solely based on your decision whether the features of the new version offer you any added benefits or not. Should you decide the new features are of a benefit, you will then need to update your license. As an existing customer, you will receive a substantial discount off the new version list price. We support all earlier versions of TeamViewer. If you choose to stay with the version you originally purchased, you will always find your license supported here. And it sent a link. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Refer to our website for further information about your latest whatever, whatever, etc. So there's a couple more emails that go back and forth, but basically I said let's go ahead with the upgrade at $1,000. TeamViewer12 was when they added mobile to mobile remote access, which was. You know what I think it was for our two FA Hyper old school two FA solutions. Yes. Okay, so we had an old phone that we left plugged in that ran our 2fa. Like that's how old we are, man. I know, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

That was when like 2fa started.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know. So okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

2Fa through authenticator yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there was a phone that. That sat. Because in the. In the days before that, our 2fa was just all on my phone. So anytime anyone needed to log into anything, they had to come bother me for a 2fa code as mine for certain things. Yeah. As we scaled so in 2016, this is around the. That we, like, had a substantial enough employees that it was no longer viable for me to just have all the 2fa on my phone also. That's crazy. So we had this two FA phone, so that's what we ultimately decided was worth the upgrade cost. All right, so that's all great. That's all cool information. Thank you, TeamViewer, for letting me know how things work at TeamViewer. Now let's have a look at the letter.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That Crazy Cats 911 is sharing over on Reddit. Dear Customer, thank you for being a valued TeamViewer customer. So, Luke, tell me something. Hold on. We're gonna go back to the cam for a second here. How much work is it for that email to say dear your actual name? That's been a solved problem instead of Dear Customer?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's pretty easy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's like, if I sent you an email, I'm like, dear Luke, thank you for being a valued Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What have we been doing here?

[Linus Sebastian]

You know how, like, when you. If you repeat, like, the same intro to a paragraph over and over again, it's like, clunky.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

This feels like the same thing, but at the end of the sentence. Dear Customer, thank you for being a valued customer. It's like, just find a different word.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're reaching out to inform you of an important Update regarding your TeamViewer license. Support for TeamViewer versions 11 and 12 will officially end on 31st December 2025, as we continue advancing the security and performance of our remote connectivity platform. How does this affect you? Well, licenses will no longer be supported on our global network infrastructure. Excuse me, that's not what you sold me. Yeah, I just read you guys the quote. Q756412Y. Okay, sorry, I won't read the whole thing again, but I just read you guys the quote where TeamViewer sold me a $1,000 upgrade to software that I just paid. Maybe it was a year prior. What? The point is, I had just paid five grand for this software. K. Here's the thing. TeamViewer, there's two models for licensing software. There's the subscription model where you charge a low fee. Okay. Over a long period of time, while I'M using it. Or there's the one where you charge me an exorbitant fee and then I own it forever. Like you said, our licenses are perpetual licenses.

[Linus Sebastian]

Any. Anybody that has a service that takes active maintenance that sells a perpetual license, I question it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's their problem. That's not my problem as the customer.

[Linus Sebastian]

With you in this situation, it just. It makes me question things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is. Honestly, I am. I'm more offended than placated by them offering to allow me to use these versions for LAN connections.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On a lan, I could just use Windows Remote Desktop Connection. Like, what would I need TeamViewer for if I was on a LAN with the. I've never heard of vnc. Like, what are you even talking about? Why this change? As security standards evolve, older software versions like TeamViewer 11 and 12 become more susceptible to vulnerabilities. And that's fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

100%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair enough. Yep. Maintaining these poses security risks and, you know, limit our ability to provide you with the most stable and secure experience and that. You know what I mean? That's valid? That's valid.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Except for one small problem. Our licenses are perpetual licenses. There will be no additional monthly, yearly, nor maintenance fees. Luke's laptop. Again. Your options.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're here. You're here now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm done with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your options. We highly encourage you to consider upgrading to the latest version of TeamViewer. As a valued customer, we're pleased to offer you an exclusive upgrade discount should you choose to transition to a subscription plan.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have an idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you think they should have done?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a good question.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I know what I would have proposed in this scenario.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hmm. What should they have done? Okay, well, so I gotta admit, you know, I'm a little bit emotional in this case.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. Because I'm like. I'm in it. We talk all the time about how unacceptable it is for whether it's a software service or whether it's. Whether it's a hardware service or, like, a smart home thing where they just turn off the infrastructure and what people paid for, the deal is effectively altered. Pray I don't alter it any further. Right. Like, we talk about it all the time, but in this case, you know, I have skin in the game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I paid thousands of dollars for this software that explicitly, like, I made real. Darn. They were proactively communicating to me that this was a perpetual license in perpetuity forever with no additional cost. So with that in mind, you know, I think it's hard for me to look beyond. Well, if they don't want to maintain this version of the software anymore, then they should give me the new version of the software.

[Linus Sebastian]

My answer is that, but only sort of, I think. I think, because, you know, I don't think upselling is necessarily a horrible thing as long as you're still taking care of the customer. So I don't think you can just abandon them. You have to give them something. I think you could give them your oldest currently supported version, but then you're kind of just asking to do this song and dance again. Pretty soon you could give them a like, feature cut down version so it matches the features that they used to have. But it's on the new infrastructure or something. I don't know. New app thing. I don't know what all the changes are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's the thing. Is they that same infrastructure that email about how they have new versions of TeamViewer every 12 to 15 months?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So they'd actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's from 2016. What are we even up to for TeamViewer versions now? Like, they are clearly not updating.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everybody use TeamViewer much anymore?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah. Who does?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do they even have. Oh, God, look at this site. Okay. Ew.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What am I even looking at?

[Linus Sebastian]

It looks pretty normal for a site to me. I don't like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is this product? How am I supposed to know what this product is?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, to be fair, that image on the right means nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely not.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you meant like the layout was gross.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I just mean I have no idea what I'm even looking at here. What even is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Does it have like. Oh, it's AI junk.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Is it. It's called Team Viewer. Remote View Plans. View plans and pricing. More like View Lies.

[Linus Sebastian]

View Lies. He's not upset at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, does it even have a numbered version now? What if you. What even is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think you'd want to go downloads. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, I'll check Download. I can't even. I can't even find the stupid downloads now. Contact guides and manuals. So it's all just by. Hold on. Okay. Free download. Hey, there we go. There we go. Okay, so if I. Here, maybe if I download it, it'll. It'll tell me the version number somewhere. Where's my download?

[Linus Sebastian]

It does not, by the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it doesn't. Okay, maybe so anyway.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or something. I'm not sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, the point. The point I was trying to make is I don't. I don't need AI nonsense in my like remote access application.

[Linus Sebastian]

So latest version is 1566.5.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there you go. So in nine years they have managed to find three 12 to 15 month, you know, feature drops to do for.

[Linus Sebastian]

This software AI junk. I don't know what else they would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Add, which seems to. Which seems to. Well, I can think of things they could add. They could add super low latency, like parsec. That's something they could add. They could add super high, high bit depth, like color for, you know, color accurate work. I don't know. They could add all kinds of things. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. So basically what broke down was them being able to develop compelling reasons for their customers to continue to upgrade.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely. Yeah. And I. You can't, you can't just cut those people off. You got to give them something. I think you could not give them more than they had, but you can't just leave them behind. And you could use this as an opportunity of like, hey, you know, use some of that, you know, the email fill where you replace customer with their name and do like you've had the service for X amount of years. We'll give you some like modulated discount based on that if you upgrade to the newest version. This is the free upgrade we're offering you now because we don't want to support that old version anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tell me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Seems fine to me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tell me this because a big part of my issue, a big part of the reason that after TeamViewer like harassed me once they switched to a software as a service model rather than a perpetual license, they like badgered me. Like I had to call them out on WAN show to get them to stop emailing me and even calling me, if I recall correctly. Did they, did they call me?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think they called me. Yeah, they called you more than once.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They were bothering me to upgrade to their software as a service subscription model. A big part of the reason that I decided to never give them another penny and never upgrade is that they don't offer a perpetual license anymore. If they did. We absolutely had remote employees who at the time were using VMS to access our infrastructure so that we didn't have to have other solutions that we have now that give people remote. Yeah. So you would remote into a VM and that would give you access to the server locally rather than us having a tunnel off site. Don't worry about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have way better stuff now. Okay. The point is that there are definitely times that I would have considered upgrading TeamViewer for more features or better multi monitor support or like whatever, I don't know. But one of the big reasons that I decided to never give them another penny and Never upgrade from 12. And one of the reasons I was so angry about their persistence in badgering me to upgrade was that they didn't offer a perpetual license anymore. Like they, they gave up on the business model that was successful in extracting $1,000 from me for a version upgrade. For what? So that I will never give them another penny. I mean, if they came to me anyways. If they came to me and we're like, hey, this is unforeseen, but we didn't know that nine years later we would only have three new versions. But how about this? We'll do the, we'll do a perpetual license with the understanding that it might not be forever. Forever. But it's not a subscription.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's, well, let's call it five years or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you give us like, can you give us like a grand and we'll get you on the latest version or something like that? I'd consider it. I would actually consider it. But what I will not consider is just paying forever for something with no, no end. I can't do it. Unless your name's Adobe, Microsoft, Google. I mean, yeah. Am I the unreasonable one? Should I just, should I just take it on the chin on this one? Tell me like I want to know.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you bought a perpetual license. You couldn't on those other services. You know, I mean, technically, I think the problem is actually value, now that I think about it. Because you would have had a perpetual license to some of those old versions for Adobe. And Adobe is one of the last companies on earth that I want to sit here and defend.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, but, but, but CS6 technically still works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. And you don't want to use it. You want the new one, therefore you'll go get the new one. There you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But CS6 puts absolutely no strain whatsoever on Adobe's infrastructure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because like I said earlier, anytime anyone that requires consistent investment in order to provide you a service.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anytime they sell a perpetual license, I squint my eyes a little bit and I question and I wonder what's going on. And sometimes it's explainable, sometimes they need a effectively VC style cache injection.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right? Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's like, okay, maybe that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've got to get over the next.

[Linus Sebastian]

Suspicious to me, to be honest, because that makes me question how sustainable this is in the future. But it can make sense. And there are a bunch of different versions where I've been like, okay, you know what? Sure. At this point in time in your company, it totally makes sense that you need a cash injection. I will buy the thing because having a perpetual license to me is awesome. I would way rather that than a subscription. But like, if I'm looking at a service that, that I run, like perpetual licenses for, for Flow Plane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that would make no sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not doing that. We don't need the cash injection and that would suck for us because they need to maintain that like five years from now. And we're not planning on flipping going anywhere. So if I know I'm going to have to maintain it this whole time, that's just going to suck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So tell me this then, because we've talked a lot about piracy. A ton. We've had some views on it that largely the community has agreed with and we've had some views on it that largely the community has not agreed with. And you know what? That's life. Sometimes people agree about things and sometimes they disagree about them. I feel that my ownership of a teamviewer license, that, that was perpetual. That was promised to me as being perpetual. I believe that even if they have changed their terms of service, I'm entitled to pirate their software now. Do you. Do you think that I'm not talking from a legal standpoint?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm talking from just like my personal moral code standpoint.

[Linus Sebastian]

Justice instead of judicial.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe that I am. I would not lose a wink of sleep.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wouldn't question it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If I pirated team viewer software now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wouldn't question it at all. Obviously for work, we like can't do that unless you want to fight legal battles. But like on a personal level. That's right. Yeah. No way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So tell me this, because this is, this is an area that I've always felt is a little bit more gray. We're actually in the process of helping with the restoration of an old show called Reboot. Did you ever watch Reboot? Okay, anyway, so it just. This is kind of hypothetical, so bear with me for a little bit here, guys. Because normally you wouldn't have consumer media on a format that is so hard to play back, but it's actually the, the archival, like masters of the show that are on a format that is so obscure that Jake Tivy is, is kind of managing the, the project for us on the background. We're kind of like sponsoring the restoration sort of. But also Kyoxia is involved. Shout out Kyoksia.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, they're they seem to decently often be involved in cool things. I know, like I have nothing to do with any of this. This part is not a sponsor for them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They just get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just, every time I'm like that sounds like a crazy project. And then I hear like, yeah, and Kyoksey's behind it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm like, yeah, Kyoksed just likes their name attached to like cool. As far as I can tell.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sweet, easy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So anyway, they reached out and they were like, hey, we need another $7,500 because the only two, I want to say like reed heads or something like that, the only familiar with this, the only two brand new read heads in the world belong to this guy who's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like really old, wants $7,500 for him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if we don't get them now, that's basically like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, because they could estate sale or something. You might not know what happens. Who knows?

[Luke Lafreniere]

And anyway, anyway, anyway, what it made me think of when we were going through this team viewer topic was like, tell me this, if you bought a copy of some media and we're getting to the point where, you know, I think you could make a very strong argument for the coming generation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Mushroom and flipping chat said Kyoksia is the red bull of storage. And I just thought that was really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kind of makes sense. Yeah, we're getting to the point where I feel, and I could be wrong about this, but I feel that a generation or two from now could be the first generation for whom media from like 100 years ago, like a movie from like 100 years ago could actually still be like entertaining to watch. Like would you, when you were a kid, when you were a kid in 1990, would you have really consumed any media from 1890? No, like I, whereas like, okay, you know, 25, 35, 40 years from now, do you think you could potentially watch? Oh man, it's tough because like will everything just be like stereoscopic or like I don't know, I, I free Vaughn. She won't watch anything where the audio quality sucks. So that was like a major turning point in music recordings. Like anything from like the 50s. She won't listen to it because the audio quality is just like not good enough. But as soon as we got into like the 70s when amplifiers and when tape and when high fidelity recording instruments started to.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's some stuff really appears that I think can stand up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. So I guess, I guess what I'm, what I'm trying to say is there could come a time when you could have purchased a copy, a license, if you will, for a piece of media, say, say a movie. Let's use a movie as an easy example because movies are so central to the conversation around piracy. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Um, so there was a movie that you purchased that is on a format that through no fault of your own, you can no longer playback. Kind of like the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a thing that happens. This happens with video games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. But is in a format that you can no longer playback or access. Would you, as the owner of said license, said physical license for it, would you lose any sleep downloading the 18K Blu Ray or whatever, you know, whatever exists in the future for that content, knowing, like my teamviewer license, that it has been upgraded in that time, it's been upscaled or remastered in Dolby Atmos 3 or whatever it is. You kind of get what I'm saying, Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

My general action here is that I buy the new thing, you buy the new thing, and I see that as if work has been put into it. But I didn't. My problem is I don't think this is an equivalency because I didn't lose access because of the company's actions that I bought the thing from. Yeah, that's a huge distinct difference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so we'd have to have a hypothetical where it's some Disney movie and it was on some Disney exclusive physical format that they then EOLED and like bricked all the players for.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then that's different.

[Linus Sebastian]

That becomes a little bit more gray. I don't think I would care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that one's black and white.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I would just download the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So basically what we're. What the way, what I'm picking up, what I think you're throwing down is that. Sure. In that case, it wasn't any fault of your own, but it also wasn't the fault of the license issuer. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's like if I'm not a dvd.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they, you know, they don't make DVD players.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I can't get DVD players anymore. This isn't true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, I get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if it was true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's a no fault, it's an accident.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Then I'll buy the new one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Okay. But if it is through the actions and false representations of the license issuer, than a big, you know, you pretty much.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would also like to point out top IMDb list. You've got 1994-1972-2008-1974, 1957.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Embarrassingly, I have not seen any of them. You haven't seen the Godfather? We should add that to our movie. We're having movie night tonight.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have a feeling if I did, it was a super long time ago, probably with my parents or my dad or something. It's very likely I saw part of it. A lot of my like TV and movie watching forever ago was because my computer was in the room that the TV was in. And I'd be like on the computer playing games or messing around with operating systems, doing whatever the heck I was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Doing, sort of printing out pictures.

[Dan]

Not.

[Linus Sebastian]

When they were home and. And watching TV on the side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's how he got busted. Once there was a printing out photographs.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like a spooling issue and it printed the last one out like way later and I didn't know and it was just still in the tray. My mom found it and go bad off the computer for like a month. I don't remember the details on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Knowing your mom, you're lucky you only got a month.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there was some. That's actually if I remember correctly, that's why the computer was there, right? I think it was upstairs. Oh man, I'm trying to remember it right now, but anyways. Yeah, like, dude, once you get to the 90s, it pops off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, shoot, we're not on your laptop anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How watchable are all those movies today?

[Linus Sebastian]

Then again, Shawshank Redemption.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, maybe part of that is just that that was the media of our childhoods.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fight Club.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I have a hard time. I have a hard time imagining the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Goodfellas, like people trying to watch it and just being like, no, no, this is it. Forget it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, apparently this is a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no. I mean my kid. My kids can make it through it, but yeah, I just mean for people who like.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's also might be like a little young for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Maybe it was my son, so he's probably not. Yeah. Would it come out in 2001?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Fellowship of the Ring.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, 2001. So I would have been. Ah. Yeah, I would have been 15. Yeah. Maybe he's. Maybe he's a little. Maybe he's a little younger. Cuz like I enjoyed the heck out of it when I was 15.

[Linus Sebastian]

I loved it and I really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? You love Lord of the Rings?

[Linus Sebastian]

I was. Unless this released after November 12th. I was 10. What the heck? That doesn't make sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, aging's funny, it's been a long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I just thought I was older when that came out, that's all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, in summary, guess not each team viewer. I will never give you another scent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, time to get pirated. Or alternatively, actually, you just kind of suck now and we'll use something else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. There.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does that make it less bad? I guess the impact is lower. Yeah, we haven't really used it in like a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I still. I still use it just out of convenience for one VM that I just like haven't bothered to install something else on. Well, that I've. A VM that I've just had for like years and years and years that I've just never bothered to install something new on.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to figure something out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, it's pretty. I'll just use Parsec. Parsec still has a free version of the service.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what I mean by figuring something out. To be clear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think, don't we have corporate Parsec anyway?

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So like, whatever. So, okay, here's a question. Why am I willing to pay a subscription to Parsec?

[Linus Sebastian]

They didn't change the deal on you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, also that interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

But we would and you didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't actually know that. Yeah, interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

But they didn't change the deal. They didn't alter the deal. This was the deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's. That's true. And they offered something that the competing service didn't. Extremely low latency.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which during COVID when we added it to our infra, was essential for getting our videos edited when the office was effectively a quarantine zone.

[Dan]

It's got great multi monitor support as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It didn't in the early days, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

We played video games over it. We played tape to tape over Parsec and the latency was fine. Good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, what's next? What do you want to talk about next, Mr. Luke?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's see here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're on topic two.

[Linus Sebastian]

Steam. Steam. Steam.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Steam. Really? You think that one's that big of a deal? Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just think it's cool. I'm not even. I don't even necessarily want the fight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't want the fight? You don't want the fight.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't even have to stand up. You didn't get that much higher than me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

And my seats down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Steve wants you to know about fake frames. The Steam client beta was updated earlier this week with improved performance monitoring, which is super cool. I saw the notification for this, but I didn't have a ton of time to look into it because this week was very busy for me. The old in game FPS counter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tell them what you were doing this week. Is that a thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

I can tell them the one, but I don't know if. Do we want to announce that one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We shot Scrapyard Wars 10.

[Linus Sebastian]

We did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was epic.

[Linus Sebastian]

The premise was genuinely amazing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Anyway, carry on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyways, yeah. The Steam client beta was updated earlier this week with improved performance monitoring. The old in game FPS counter has been updated into the in game overlay performance performance monitor. Okay. Adding more detailed information about frame rates, frame generation, CPU and GPU performance, and more. Try it yourself by enabling the client beta, by going to settings and then in game. In other Steam news, Valve has introduced what it says, our first of many accessibility tools. This is other stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why don't we talk about this first?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you think that this is a really big deal and I don't necessarily disagree, but I just. I want to hear your take about how big of a deal it is that they have more detailed information about frame gen specifically, I think is what you were sort of focused on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Again, I haven't personally actually dove into this yet. I'm hoping it also has frame time stuff, but I just really like back in the day, you know, needing to get fraps and all these other kind of things to figure out what the heck was going on. Having this built into Steam is really cool. And having a tool built into Steam where you can learn more about what's happening to your system because like, crazy. There's all these videos and people talking about trying to figure out like, oh, like what is the. What is the impact? What is. Why does my game feel kind of weird right now? Yeah, because people playing competitive shooters dealing with frame gen stuff. I'm not necessarily like. Like I said, I don't necessarily want the fight. I don't actually really care so much about the fake frames versus real frames war. The part of that that I do care about is when it's highly misrepresented. And we've seen that a lot in like the Nvidia presentations and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But the technology by itself is super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

In the right scenarios.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why does marketing have to ruin everything?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's just marketed horribly because it's. It's false promises really. It's a cool tech on its own.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like even, even multi frame gen, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'S a cool tech on its own.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has a place and it has A purpose.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cinematic single player games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. As long as they're not too fast paced.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes it's a problem and as long as the base performance is enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

But tools like this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Make it so that you can turn it on, see how many fake frames are happening, evaluate the game, play it a little bit, see how it feels, dial things in. Like it's just, it's another cool, useful tool. I love these types of things I love, you know, like tools for nerds. What does Google call it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stats for geeks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stats for nerds. I love stuff like that. Give me more tools, I'm gonna poke around, you try things. I'm excited to just see with ease on any one system what's kind of going on. Like if somebody's like, oh yeah, I'm trying to play this game, but like aiming feels sluggish for some reason or like I feel like I'm on target, I'm not hitting people or whatever we can, like now we have another tool to try to evaluate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can also do like, you know, screen record and slow it down to see like maybe, maybe you just suck. But, but those tools, those tools already exist.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So have you tried getting good?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think this is, this is sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, we actually have like a direct appeal to Valve. Valve does so much cool stuff that just generally makes gamers lives better and easier. And there's one tool that I feel they have neglected over a long period of time that I really want to see them update. We have a new edition of the most average PC build coming. So are you familiar with the series?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is number three or four, I can't remember, but it's, it's updated to 2025's version or the, a recent 2025 release of the Steam hardware survey. And the Steam hardware survey is an invaluable tool for determining what exactly it is that gamers have in their systems. It does a great job both for people who are configuring gaming PCs to be able to look through and figure out, okay, what's the norm, what should I be targeting to play games that developers are likely to be building their games around then it's also great for developers because it gives them a really great idea, especially over time, of what the changing trends are in hardware configurations out there. So that as they're developing their games and their performance targets, they know what kind of hardware that Steam gamers have. And while it does a pretty good job of the granularity of certain components, like GPUs, for instance, you can see exactly which model of GPU in many cases, sometimes the mobile ones kind of get mixed in. But minor stuff, you know, for things like CPUs they just tell you how many cores and what clock speed range. Like we're talking like, like net burst era of information here. So, so one of the examples that Elijah gives in the video is he goes, well, okay, six cores clocked between this and this. That could either be this 12th gen CPU or this Xeon from 10 years ago. They literally both fit the bill. We're gonna assume it's more like the new one. But come on, this is the point we're trying to make. And so, and some of the information they have on monitors, for instance, really good, really useful, we know what resolution people are running, that's great. What refresh rate are they running. As a game developer, I might want to know that. As a gamer who's just, you know, trying to figure out the competition out there, I might, I might want to know, hey, you know, am I falling behind a little bit right now because I'm one of the only people still running a 60Hz monitor? Which to be clear it's not, that's not the case, but that it is changing. High refresh rate monitors are becoming more prevalent. How prevalent? I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it would be nice to know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If the Valve Hardware Survey had it in there, then that would be great. And for us in the media it also helps us to tailor our content to whatever people are most likely to be having questions about. You know, as there's a big transition, there's a big transition to 1440p right now. So okay, we're looking at that going, all right, so we should do like a 1440pmonitors buying guide or whatever the case may be. The Steam Hardware Survey is an invaluable tool. It's one that they have, that they publish for free for everybody to use, which is wild, which is great, but also self serving because it's to help developers and gamers meet together on Steam so make it better. There's some key area, there's some key ways that the Steam hardware survey needs to improve. And so we kind of appeal to Valve's generosity I guess because that's the only reason they have to do anything now that they're just a money printing machine and ask them to bestow upon us mere mortals a better version of the hardware survey. I don't remember how we got in the subject.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think, you know, a couple people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There I do, but they're Valve people so, like, they're great and do whatever the they want, I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I know their, their company's super flat and there's, there's these rumors that I've heard that you can like, kind of work on whatever, which is clearly not 100% true or else nothing would ever happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like, I have, I have contacts there that are clearly in like a role.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, job title and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like customer support tickets are still answered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if that was purely elective, just like no one's ever going to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, like, I love answering customer support tickets.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I used to pitch in when things were really busy at ncix.

[Linus Sebastian]

I still do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Part of life. I don't, I don't exactly love it, but, you know. But on that dark day when Gaben's light finally fades, what do you think is going to happen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's idea. I think a lot of the reasons why Valve has been so based and you know, I sometimes bark at their 30% and stuff like that, but they.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have overall been a force for good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For the most part.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. They take a lot of the pie. Yeah, I think they do good stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think. I do think that Gaben just like not needing any more super yachts is a big part of why they just don't bother to try to squeeze more money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like nothing, as far as I can tell, nothing prevents Valve from upping their cut to 35%, but not even that, like 50.

[Linus Sebastian]

You look at the handheld market and they could have just gone with Windows, but they didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they did a ton of work in order to not. And like, you look at what's happening with, with Bazite and stuff now and it's like, wow, they are really pushing this forward in a way that nobody has. I don't know, they, they do cool stuff. I wish they made more games still. I know people talk about Half Life all the time, but like, give me another Portal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd enjoy another Portal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'd play it, but it's co op. I love the hack out of Portal 1 and I felt like Portal 2 was rehashing a lot of the same territory. I don't see what Portal 3 would bring to the table.

[Linus Sebastian]

More co op.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, in other news, Valve is introducing what it says are the first of many accessibility tools to Steam and SteamOS. Players using Big Picture and SteamOS will get a text size slider, high contrast mode, a reduce motion toggle to disable some animations and screen transition effects, and in addition, Steam OS devices. So Steam Deck and Legion Go s for now will gain a customizable screen reader, a color filter that affects both the Steam UI and in game graphics, and they can choose between. Oh, and you can find all this in the new Accessibility tab in your Steam settings.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm really surprised they didn't already have like high contrast mode and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Classic Valve. The only thing that's surprising about them being based is that they weren't already that based. Dan, what are we supposed to be doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty good.

[Dan]

Why don't we do a couple merch messages and announcements?

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, let's do that. Merch messages are the way to interact with the show. If you're gonna throw money at your screen. The way we see it, you should get high quality merchandise in return. So all you got to do is go over to LTTC lttstore.com throw some cool stuff in your cart, and then head to the checkout where you will see a box that prompts you to leave a merch message. And look at that. We have a WAN show special on lttstore.com right now. This is the. Which site is this? So this is the US site, I guess. Yes, we are in the. On the US site. So we have the Precision screwdriver and the Precision bit set each for $30. Or we have the Precision Precision Bundle for 59.99 and then if we go to the global region, 64.99 Canadian dollars for the Precision bundle. So you guys can go ahead and throw that in your cart and then you can leave a merch message. It will go to producer Dan, who will send it to someone who can answer your question, answer it himself sometimes, maybe not that accurately, but certainly comedically and. Or send it to.

[Dan]

It's called dodging the question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me and Luke as a curated merch message. Dan, do you want to show them what curated merch messages look like?

[Dan]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's see.

[Dan]

First one up here. What can be done to combat AI generated content on YouTube that uses AI to impersonate other people's voices to imply that the person is saying this content when really they are not. It's everywhere.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, there's a lot of conversation. There's a lot of very plausible solutions. You know, one solution would be that any AI generated media should have fingerprinting built into it so that platforms like YouTube could read that fingerprinting and see that it's AI generated and flag it as such. Unfortunately, now that Pandora's box is kind of, kind of open and not every actor is interested in having their AI generated content fingerprinted. The horses has bolted from the barn. The cat's out of the bag. The ship has sailed. The. There, there's. There's pretty much. There's pretty much nothing we can do to un. Release AI into the world with no safeguards, no clear markings whatsoever on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's rough. It would be kind of neat if. See, I don't know, because I feel like. I feel like they're embracing it, but I was gonna say it would be kind of neat if YouTube started using AI to detect AI and just kind of mass bandit YouTube. It's not AITube. Unless maybe if you can get your thing approved somehow. Oh, that gets really tough because I don't think mass ban actually makes sense. I want to walk that back. It's got to be impersonation. So they'd have to like, oh man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how they do it. Like, we. We could count on the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we. Dude, I don't know. We could count on the. We could count on the detection to continue to get better. But as it does generational get better.

[Linus Sebastian]

And wait until somebody just has like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fairly unique like, like a medical condition or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

They get flagged. And then you get that Twitter thread about like. Oh, so that doesn't work at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Totally see that. It doesn't work, especially with like kind of bad lighting and like a low resolution camera or something like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be insane.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there are acceptable usages of it. Right. It's mostly impersonation that we're complaining about right now, which sounds like an incredibly fair thing to complain about. Yeah, yeah. Legacy Uprising said like all the Joe Rogan ads that aren't him. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or Mr. Beast. Tons of scams that aren't him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it was, what was it, six months ago or something? The whole site was Tesla.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Everything's computer. Wait, sorry. Everything's Tesla. Sorry. Wait, should we talk about. Should we talk about Trump phone?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, Good segue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll do another merch message after. Dan. That was. That was just too irresistible of a transition. On June 16, Don Trump Jr. And Eric Trump, along with the Trump mobile team, unveiled T1 mobile and the Trump phone. And this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's called T1 mobile.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but doesn't. Isn't, man, what's his name? Darn it. Summit is Summit like pissed?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Summit T1.1 T1G.

[Linus Sebastian]

Was it 1G?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. What are you talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Doesn't T1 refer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, this is a quote.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tyler1.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tyler1's gotta be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. This is a quote. A transformational new cellular service designed to deliver top tier connectivity, unbeatable value and all American service for our nation's hardest working people. They are offering 5G service through all three major cellular carriers. Subscribers to the 47 plan, which is $47.45 a month, gain the following unlimited talk, text and data. Complete device protection. That's in quotes 24, 7 roadside assistance through drive America Telehealth services. Free international calling to more than 100 countries, including many with American military bases to help honor the families who are bravely serving in our military abroad. That's a quote. And no contracts and no credit check. They're also touting a customer service call center based in the usa. You got a couple of different options here. You can bring your own phone or you can pre order a Trump phone. The made in the USA T1 phone 8002 gold version. Okay, this is where things get pretty interesting. Let's head on over to Trump mobile dot com. Oh, Lordy. No, I don't need to subscribe to whatever this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I think I'll. I think I'll pass.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love the. The picture. Can we compare to like any other cellular service? Like name one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

T Mobile.

[Linus Sebastian]

T Mobile. Let's see. Let's. That's home Internet. Stop auto creating. My goodness. T Mobile's website. Just a phone. There's some people hanging out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

More phones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Somebody with a phone, scooter or something. Some people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's not a serious mobile network. This business is a serious mobile.

[Linus Sebastian]

The action plan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, let's check out the T1 phone key features. Proudly made in America right here in the usa. With care, precision and top quality materials to deliver a product you can trust. $500. $500. Okay. Fingerprint sensor, AI face unlock. What else we got here?

[Linus Sebastian]

Advocatus Diaboli in full plane chat said their site took down their coverage map because it didn't label Gulf of Mexico's Gulf of America. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's hilarious if it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, they're still working.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's a service and it's a phone and it's a service that goes through other people's services.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're still working on some stuff. When I checked out the Verge article on it earlier, it pointed out some errors on the site that appear to have not been corrected yet. They still don't know the difference between memory and storage. Oh, what are some of the other issues here? Actually, I thought some of the stuff. Some of the stuff might be. Might be a little bit better. Oh, wow. You can call. You could. Should I call?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. We got to think about what you want to say first.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you should have to call. No, I just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just. I just want to. I just want to ask how I can. I want to ask how I can know that this phone is made in America. All right. Dude, I don't remember the last time that I saw a phone number advertised with, like, T9 in it. Like, can you. Do you. Is that. That this is such a boomer thing to do?

[Linus Sebastian]

Some where it will show both versions, but I've never seen one where it only shows the T9.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm calling the line. Yeah, they. They literally don't even show that. Okay, hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Speaker.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Um, hello? Even dialing. Oh, can you literally, like, not even call it if you're outside the U.S. didn't even work.

[Linus Sebastian]

Put one in front.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

You totally did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not new.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, hold on. Is there. Do they have. Do they have, like, an alternate non. 188 number? Okay. Here. I'll try Support. Need help. You're in the right place. She'll help you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

From. Wait, What? Saturdays from 8:00am to 1:00pm oh, okay. Oh, you know what? They're closed. They're closed. I think they closed 20 minutes ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But why?

[Linus Sebastian]

Why should probably have their phone tell you that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, why did it just hang up?

[Linus Sebastian]

They're new Things happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, okay. You know what?

[Linus Sebastian]

They're changing the world one step at a time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan, this seems like a thing that you could probably help with next week. Can we start the show by calling Trump Mobile? And can we have like, a Google voice line or something with a US Number? Is that the kind of thing that Dan is capable of? It seems like the kind of thing Dan is very capable of. Oh, yeah, look at it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He knows. This guy knows. Anyway, so what was also interesting from the Verge article is that as far as they could tell, the whole the this phone is made in America thing appears to be complete nonsense. There are only renders on the website. No physical units have been spotted. They didn't list the processor. I believe there is a similar looking Chinese phone, although that's actually not in our doc. So maybe this is very much like developing right now. There was a similar ish looking Chinese phone, but I don't see that in our dock. And this is, this is fun. Eric Trump says the phone will be built in the US eventually now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Eventually, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The site doesn't say anything about it being built in the US Eventually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, this is amazing. I'm checking out a Reddit thread because I'm trying to verify this whole Gulf of Mexico thing. Yeah. So I'm reading a Reddit thread and this guy linked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my God, there's so many fun gaffes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Somebody said there is zero phones made in America. And somebody replied saying there is one Linux phone that has awful specs that starts at 2k called the Liberty Phone. I looked it up and yeah, 1.5 GHz quad core. Wow. 720 by 1440 display.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Wow, that thing is horrible. I mean it has Wi Fi 6.

[Linus Sebastian]

Two grand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

But things like if you, you know, if you manufacture there, it's gonna cut. Look at that thickness. It's got a, it's got a headphone jack though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it USB C? I can't tell.

[Linus Sebastian]

Looks like it. I'm not certain, but it looks like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pd yeah. USB C. Okay. Man. I kind of want one now. I kind of want to. I kind of want to try it. Outfitted with hardware kill switches.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, right here. That's kind of cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is kind of cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like that you can do that with the, the camera, the mic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I kind of want to try it. I mean, I'm sure it's like terrible, but that's pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyways, manufacturing things like phones in the States.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on a second. Someone posted in chat what they think is the, the model of phone that the Trump T1 phone is. Just a second, just a second. I'm gonna pull this up.

[Dan]

Thanks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Floatplane chat Having a look here apparently. Oh no, this doesn't look the same, guys. That, that does not look the same at all. The, the render on the Trump Mobile site has like three cameras and. I don't know. Yeah, I mean other than that, phones just kind of like look like phones, I guess. Yeah, that's, that's. That.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know you're talking about. Okay, so there's some gaffes. The terms of use page appears to be basically copied from Liberty Mobile. The privacy policy was also likely copied and allows Data collection from searches, web browsing device and location for its AI systems. And it has collected complete account credentials, whatever that means, and mail, email and text message contents over the past 12 months. What does that even mean? Wait, what? Oh, you read that past tense correctly. They didn't spend much time editing when they copied it. Oh my gosh. There's no refunds. And yes, it looks like the phone is made in China, but then they're saying it's the Revel 7 Pro. But like, oh, is that just the only phone that has the same specs? And then these renders are just like. Maybe these are just like random. Random renders of what could kind of look like a phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are there any other pictures?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like this is like this is clearly just like these. These curves don't even align. Like what are you even. What are you even talking about? Like, this is obviously not real. Why is there a pretend home button here? Is this is the idea that they're showing where a fingerprint sensor might be or like what? Sad. That's all I have to say about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you gonna get one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean I don't think realistically anyone is going to get one. So no.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I think people might get a phone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You think so?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea. But they might have a phone at some point. Revel 6 Pro 5G Somebody said I am just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am, I am. I am mind boggled by just how just like obviously fake, you know stuff is that certain people you know do and how obviously like you know, constantly lying certain people are and how not noticing many people are.

[Linus Sebastian]

This time it'll work out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is. This time will be different.

[Linus Sebastian]

This and if it's not this one, then next one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The next time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mind boggling.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe you're a time three better. That's a pretty long view though. You gotta wait a while for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I mean I'll pre order one because just like whatever arrives, whatever it is, it's gonna be hilarious one way or another.

[Linus Sebastian]

Somebody said all in on trump coin. It reminded me, didn't I? Thought I had a. What was my idea you wanted?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't want to do minus coin but like backed by the gold standard.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm pretty sure that's already a thing. I'm pretty sure there's already a crypto.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm really not in that space.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crypto coin gold backed. There's no way nobody thought of this. Gold backed stable coins are asset backed stable coins that have physical gold as their underlying asset. They're gold making them A less volatile financial instrument. That's a quote. I am reading that. I don't necessarily agree with that thing that I just read.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because a stable coin, you are basically taking somebody's word for it that. No, no. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Got all that gold.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's a. There's a few. They actually. One of them actually lists out, like, the amount of gold bars that they have and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are they telling the truth?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. I mean, why would they lie about it? I mean, I'm sure they're a strong Christian with good values and would never be a scammer.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a reference to something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a reference to something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let me just put it this way. We filmed Scrapyard wars this week, and I ran into some scammers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I heard this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't want to spoil. I don't want to spoil much. I don't want to spoil. I don't want to spoil anything. Actually. It's going to be a great series, but I ran into some scammers, and I definitely had.

[Linus Sebastian]

People are saying when. Probably not for a while.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's gonna be amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Strap in for a. Wait.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's the thing, right, guys, because on the one hand, we're gonna have the people that are like, give me the first episode. Give it to me now. And on the other hand, you're gonna have the people that will get that first episode and then realize that the second episode isn't coming for, like, you know, three weeks or a month or whatever and be like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why don't they pre edit all of it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why schedule the releases?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there's no way for us to.

[Dan]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, really. When? We'll do our best. I think we're going to aim for, like, a week or two in between, and I think that, like previous Scrapyard wars, we're probably going to have early access on float plane, so lmg, gg, Float plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pump it up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, Dan, where did we leave off?

[Dan]

Well, we were in the middle of announcements.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I specifically wear in the middle.

[Linus Sebastian]

We just explained merch messages.

[Dan]

You explained merch messages. We did a merch message. You showed that we have a deal on the precision screwdriver bundle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Dan]

And that was about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. What else is there?

[Linus Sebastian]

We are on CW announcements.

[Dan]

Yeah, the final. The very top of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, just start with the red.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow, look at this. Do you want to show the show the link?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, folks, it might have taken a few years, but that one. Yeah. But we finally did work. We. Oh, it did it. But. Oh, is there not a link?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, but the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should I call someone?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The link. Go to the forum. Oh, that is not good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Make sure it's not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will try a thing. Dang it. Well, do you want to see if. Yep. No, that definitely goes to the forum.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Technical difficulties.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is there someone to call?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I don't know. I. I don't know who to talk to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Conrad's got us. Conrad's got us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks, Conrad.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're gonna have to change it. I got. I'm on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. No key. Also knows it's. It's in the float plane. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. We are finally ready to announce.

[Dan]

Go ahead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Throw it, you coward. All right, fine. Are you gonna bring up your screen?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is painful.

[Linus Sebastian]

There we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There it is. The transparent screwdriver. That's right, my friends. The very first ratcheting screwdriver that allows you to see the ratchet mechanism in all of its glory.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is world first.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so. Well, who else would make this?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can also see the bit storage through the. Through the handle. It looks freaking sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

We used them all week for Scrapyard wars, and they were awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is launching next Friday on June 27th, and you can sign up to be [e-mail] Transparent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. It's kind of cool that you can check if you have the right bit without even pulling it out. That's kind of sick. I never actually did that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The whole time people are asking, does it yellow? That is a super duper, super duper question. One moment, please. I will. Who do I want to. Oh, who can I bug about this? You know what? The person I'm thinking of may still be, like, en route and therefore maybe not too bothered if I bother them. Oh, man, I love teams so much. I love waiting, like 23 minutes for my call to be placed. How is teams like this, Luke? This is the company that bought Skype. They bought Skype. How does it take this long to even try to connect a call? It's still not trying to connect the call. This is the most disastrous product launch since the cybertruck, or announcement, rather. Oh, there we go. But. Hello, sir, can. Is this working? I have no audio.

[Dan]

This is why we need Trump Phone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? Even exactly The Trump phone T1 wouldn't have this problem. There we go. Sorry for the ptsd. Everyone who uses teams at work. Oh, boy. Why is it randomly louder sometimes? Did you hear it was or ran.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hear it. I have heard it the whole time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is he doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

I hate teams. There's a reason why the software dev teams are still on slack.

[Dan]

I couldn't find a replacement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Well, okay, I'm. I don't know if it yellows, so probably not, but who knows.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people are saying they're not seeing the sign up portion of the forum. To be clear, it should be right there at the bottom in the white box. If you're not seeing it, pause your ad blocker, please.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hey, got him. What? What was I supposed to be talking about? Oh, right, right, right. People had some questions about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

One of them, Sorry, somebody misinterpreted me. I did not say teams devs are still on slack. I'm saying our devs are still on slack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Our dev team. Thanks. There was one other thing I wanted to talk about real quick. One of the big issues that delayed the development of this was the durability of the plastic. So there are lots of different transparent plastics. So anyone in chat who is sharing their wisdom about the characteristics of transparent plastics can just not. Because there are many different plastics that can be transparent and they have vastly different characteristics. So what now? Plastic knowers pretty much actually though pretty much better not to make assumptions. And one of the big, one of the big issues that we were running into in the development of this was getting something that met the durability expectations of our LTT screwdriver customers. Another major one was down to the quality of the, of the plastic flow in the mold. And we don't really have the tightest camera angle on me here, but we had this like these kinds of seams that were forming as the, as the plastic made its. The molten plastic made its way through the mold and then it would kind of like flow around a thing and then come together. Oh good, it's Kyle. Thank goodness. Now I don't have to try to do this myself. Hello, Mr. Thorette, you are live on the Wan Show. Hello?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me put you in speaker. Hello, WAN show, Can you hear me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're not actually the one who has to put your phone on speaker for the WAN show to hear you, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I need to put my speaker.

[Dan]

On so I can hear you, mate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that makes sense. Perfect. They want to know if the, if the clear plastic will yellow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus got there eventually in our testing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. Okay, and what did we do to test that it's the same plastic that Nel gene bottles are made Got it. Wait.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're saying that publicly. Are we allowed to say that publicly?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? Are you there? Okay, bye.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm here. My reception is terrible because I moved away from my router.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Wow. Okay, cool. Okay, thank you. Kyle.

[Dan]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, are we. Sorry, I might have misheard you. Are we allowed to say that it's the same plastic as the bottles? It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's made.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

So the plastic that it's made from is Triton. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan]

Triton is a similar plastic that is used in Nalgene.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if I got cut off. I got misheard. But at least that's our understanding. I think that's Nalgene explains out of their website.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Okay. And any other characteristics I can share with the people. So we believe it is non yellowing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nalgene does say that they use Triton.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. They say they use Triton renew.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

It's. It's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not saying anything that's like super secret, mate. I'm just making sure I. Dude, you never. You never know. Okay? Come on, man. Tell me that you've never encountered a company being cagey about the materials they use. Like. Okay, that. You know what? That is fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. Okay. Any other cool stuff that we can say about it?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's stronger than Triax, our previous plastic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pain to it.

[Dan]

It's a pain to injection mold.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why it took so long?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Another three year screwdriver project.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tell me about it. What's the next three year screwdriver project?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't want to. I don't want to think about that right now. All right. I want to get into that. All right. Good chat. Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate you. Okay, bye.

[Dan]

Have a good weekend, man. He was really transparent about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Press the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got to do it.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Press the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Job.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good job.

[Dan]

I don't feel good now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's only one way to find out for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of course. Any excuse for Linus to bash things on the table.

[Dan]

My poor table. Covered in skins now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, not bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is there anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, the bits came loose.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean that kind of makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, what else we got? We have. Oh, we have any pack of individual magnetic cable management components for 14.99. And then we have the. Oh, the precision screwdriver bundle thing. Apparently they've updated the pricing and the last thing that we have for a WAN show deal is the Pet cave is back. Oh, pricing reboot. Retro monitor. Pet caves are available with a WAN show special price for a limited time only. So you guys can go check those out. These are so cute.

[Linus Sebastian]

Agreed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My cats actually legitimately love theirs. These are like one of our best reviewed products ever. It's just like five star. Five star. Five star. Four star. Five five, five, five, five, five,.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cute. Someone included a picture of their pet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, right. Surprisingly few people use the photo upload feature of our review function.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like. It's an awesome, awesome feature and I'm shocked at how few people use it. That's flipping awesome. You love to see it. This is one that I do think gets a greater proportion of photos uploaded though, just because like if we find even one more that'll be more than people normally.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will never see photos.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Is that. Is it only the one? I could have sworn there was another person who uploaded a photo. Do they like expire or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Well, anyway. All right, cool.

[Dan]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What else are we supposed to be talking about here?

[Dan]

How about a merch message? Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

Hey guys, can you comment on what's happening in Greece? A new anti piracy law that fines anyone watching pirated content. €750. The base monthly income here. Other than using a VPN. What can we do?

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seriously? How did I not hear about that?

[Linus Sebastian]

How does it even work?

[Luke Lafreniere]

How does it. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Grease Anti.

[Dan]

Might not be true. Maybe you heard of it two months ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

Greece's strengthens its.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh no. He's using the AI overview. No time.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No time for us to turn the WAN show into AI slop. Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go. I'm here for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or am I? Am I even real? Look at this hair. It doesn't even look real.

[Linus Sebastian]

So yeah, it's. It sounds like it's a thing as far as I can tell. Not finding like a lot of superficial stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So they introduce a framework to fine IP pirate tv. Like, like the user stuff.

[Dan]

It seems to be more like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like streaming.

[Dan]

Like if you start a streaming pirate.

[Linus Sebastian]

Service or watch it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. Finding the users is a new step that I don't think I have seen yet very. From any other government going after the administrators of these pirate like streaming services. Yeah. That we've seen before. There was a really interesting case I was reading about recently where I think it was a couple of Americans were. We're just like running a like pirate streaming service out of like a few locations, including like having racks in their house and stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, don't do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, yeah, you know, try to, try to at least have some plausible deniability.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or have a really ready to go sprinkler system, but finding actually that won't do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Finding the user is a heck of a step because that's, that puts the onus on the user to determine whether they are subscribing to a legitimate service or not. And I could actually see a lot of users, quite frankly, no offense, not being sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a real, you know, legit streaming service and a very legit looking pirate.

[Linus Sebastian]

Streaming service, which is a thing now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, how would they necessarily know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like this. Good plausible deniability.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm serious.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have known.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm actually serious though. Like, how would I know? Bill's streaming service is not licensing content.

[Linus Sebastian]

They like charge you, which is possible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which. And people like, let's make this very clear, a lot of these users who could be fined, theoretically. I mean, we're obviously just finding out about this right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we don't know all the details. I'm not finding amazing sources.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Theoretically, these users could conceivably be fined for using a service that as far as they can tell, is legit because they are paying for it. So that, that's how a lot of the piracy streaming services work, is they, they're not actually, they're not actually. Their users are not necessarily pirates per se, if that makes sense, or at least not knowingly. But what's appealing about these services is that they have such a broad content library for one low streaming fee. It's almost like, it's almost like we solved, you know, content piracy not that long ago with just the one low monthly fee. And it kind of including everything that you wanted to watch. Remember that? There was a, there was a thing, what was it? Fenix, New Fence, New Flix, Fenlex.

[Linus Sebastian]

Flixon, Netbox.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't remember. I don't think it's going to come to me. Net Ticket, but, but that's, that's what I would. At least I would imagine that's what a lot of these users would think that they're signing up for is just like, oh, finally someone who's not going to gouge me. But if they. €750 as a free fine, that is, that is considerable. Like, I could even, I could even see having like a minor infraction fine. Like a, you know, like a $30 ticket or something like that for, you know, hey, you know, don't. Don't do that or whatever, because you. We're talking about individual users, right? We're not talking about commercial entities. €750 is a flipping ton of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Massive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pretty crushing, especially in the context of. And I don't. I haven't validated the, you know, the typical income in Greece or whatever. I don't actually know if that's the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Case, but assuming it's true for now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Assuming that's true, that is very crushing. I mean, that. That's. That's like. That's like finding what, like, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of like 4,000. 4,500 Canadian dollars or something like that. Like, I think the. I think median income is around 4,500 CAD right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Per month? Yeah, per month after tax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I think that's pre. Tax.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay, but then if the fine. The fines after tax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that. I don't know. We don't have all the details for.

[Linus Sebastian]

It would have to be, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's wild, man. Man. How awesome would that be if, like, fines were tax deductible? I'm sure if you're a big enough corporation, you can figure out the. The accounting map to make that work. I don't think as an individual, you get away with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gross. Okay, what else we got?

[Dan]

How about some more topics?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, fixing a problem here. No, not more topics. There's another thing in there. I don't remember what it was because my. My computer's being annoying right now, but I'm fixing it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. You can show us your multi monitor setups for a chance to win a new LG Smart Monitor swing. There's a pinned post on the subreddit if you guys go check that out, submit your janky weird setups. Or if you want to go that extra mile, tell us how you'd use the LG Smart Monitor swing to take your setup to the next level. You can learn more about the LG Smart Monitor swing here. Doopity doop doop. Yep, that's a smart monitor swing. All right. Look at it go. That's a lot of degrees.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whoa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It can go the other way. Oh. Cable management inside. Oh, that's kind of nice. Cool. All right. And then. Is there one last thing here? Float planning outside.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Oh, you got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

7 foot, 4 inches. This actually says 7 inches, 4. So those are two measurements.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got to be more passionate when you're saying this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I'll do it. You got to get into it, handsome. Seven inches for jacked. Oh, Rich.

[Linus Sebastian]

Damn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

These are only some words used to describe Sammy, our video production specialist who focuses on our social media and floatplane exclusives. And he just released his Meet the team. What? Linus, don't leak. I said this, please. What am I looking at here? Oh, yeah, here it is. Meet the team. Sammy, you all right? What. What else is there to say here? There's also one of the funniest moments of why is Wan late?

[Linus Sebastian]

I've watched it, like, three times.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also uploaded as a float plane clip. Watch here for. For as long as you want. What do you mean? Watch here for as long as you want. Okay. Dan, do I have audio? Okay. Oh, wait, hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Clearly, whoever was on this account watched it as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wait. Well, where. Where am I supposed to go?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I'm assuming the beginning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Watch here for as long as you want. I'm okay. Hold on, hold on. Okay, I can't hear Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then Lucas late.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

More than two minutes to move his car and skip. Sit back down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then Lucas late.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because Luke made Luke. So Luke thought he beat me, but he was parked illegally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, I jumped the stairs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, you're booking it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I was flying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you're booking it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love how it takes so long for the exposure to change that I'm just, like, at the end.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. Wait, where are you going? Oh, I remember this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's not our stall. It's not our stall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't park there. That's.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm showing off parking spot number two that I shouldn't park in. Jeez.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why you at wan? You'll be at wan. I knew. I knew we had no spots available. Wait, where's he. He's going now? Where does he think he's going?

[Linus Sebastian]

I was calculating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You trying to run me over in reverse?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no, no. I was trying to see if I could make this. You guys ended up spotting it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I knew I took the last spot.

[Dan]

He's just ripping it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You think he could have tried to get in here?

[Dan]

Only you can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He could have maybe gotten in, but he wouldn't have been able to get.

[Linus Sebastian]

Out, so I had the same.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, I'm telling him I'm winning. Why is Wan late? Because he was parked in the handicap stall.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, can't do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't do that. You can't do that. We're.

[Linus Sebastian]

So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think Luke is the main we. 14 seconds to be Here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I had to park yet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where's he coming from? Like, doesn't he dark, I think down the street. Did we have you running toward the building? He went running that way, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

He. You can't do that. I can't do what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Park in the handicap spot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know I didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's only been a handicap spot since we moved into this building almost 11 years ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't worked out of this building for so long, I think I haven't actually worked on this building since like 2018.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's hilarious.

[Linus Sebastian]

You think about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love it. Anyway, meet our most handsome, hard working, high iq, charitable, chivalrous, ambitious, dripped out Skibidi employee at LMG gg. Slash floatplane. He once lent me one of his seven lambos when I was stranded. Super chill guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

What a chill guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Thank you for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Repeatedly saying don't leak it is him, like, trying to get us to leak it or 100%. So are we supposed to leak it then?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Leak what? I said all the stuff that he wrote.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, like the video that you wrote. Oh, no, not that. With the. The meet meet Sammy1.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, no. We can let them watch that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the people can watch.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of course it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Colton interviews him, and honestly, I think he did a great job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that's cool. I haven't watched it yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. What do you want to talk about next? Talk about float plane doing a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where's that topic? Is there any. Yeah, just talk about it, I guess. Yeah. So float plane did a thing. This is something that had been, like, very minorly leaked in the past. Not a lot, but some people kind of picked up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've also been teasing it a lot. Like, if you guys have seen Luke, like, like, show me something on his phone. But be like, oh, we can't tell the people about it for pretty much the last, like, six months almost. It's usually that. It's usually something to do with this. This deal that's been ongoing in the background for quite some time. Can I flip over to your screen?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So sauceplus.com you might recognize the name sort of because it's very close to open Sauce. So we're working with open Sauce. You might know William Osmond's convention. It's a company, which is why I'm referring to it as open Sauce. Because we're working with a variety of people and they have some other creators that they're Bringing on. You might recognize this guy. He has a channel on the platform as well. And I believe there's more creators coming in the future. And one of the big things that they're pushing is some exclusive shows, including Scare the Coyote, which I watched. And it's very fun. It's relatively similar to another show that I like a lot. So it was kind of a shoe in for me. Enjoying it. But yeah, very cool. Especially if you're interested in. Into the. The creators that are on it. And if you want a. If you want to know more about it on William Osmond's YouTube channel, there is. I probably could have prepped this part, but yeah, there's this video. We made a show, Scare the Coyote episode one, and you can go check that out and he'll talk more about it. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've got a question from Noki.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why not just integrate this into Floatplane as a channel like many other channels have.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was an option we offered that they wanted their own thing. They have some of their own ideas of, of how they want to kind of take stuff and how they want to work with different creators. It is a 1 fee for the whole platform model, which is interesting how they end up kind of divvying that up. We're on the tech side of things. We are hosting the service, we develop the service. You will notice even the front page is like float plane related. I think theirs looks a little better than ours, but it's related. And if you go into the service, the service looks quite similar, but we're hosting the things. So what they actually do with it later on is kind of up to them. I don't want to say too many of the ideas that they've brought up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because yeah, you never know what they'll.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ran into those problems before because you might change your mind or do you think slightly differently. So I'm not trying to commit them to anything, but it's a. It's a little bit of a different business model and they are more the ones that are handling things like creator recruitment or. Or whatever else. So yeah, we've had on our end. I can talk about our end. It's been going pretty well so far. We had one bit of a kerfuffle which we've ran into way in the past. But it's been a really long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Email is hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Emails really hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like you, you take email for granted. But like as far as I can tell, it's just like Canada Post. Just like Canada Post. Sometimes it's just on strike.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so we had, I think it was. Yeah, it was. Google got upset about, you know, some new domain blasting out a crazy amount of emails.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we, so our email stopped blasting.

[Linus Sebastian]

We had a temporary fix for that and then a more permanent one is coming in there. Luckily people seem to be reacting pretty quickly, I think largely because the emails are pretty obviously not spam because next to everything so far is just, you know, hey, verification link, hey, payment confirmation, just stuff like that. So it's, it's pretty simple. But yeah, it's going well so far. Excited to see the. The future of it. A lot of the work that was done on this. One of the. Honestly, one of the only reasons why we were. I can't even say one of the only reasons why we were interested. One of the only reasons why we were able to be completely honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is because the vast. I'm talking over 90% of the work that was done on this is work that benefited Floatplane. Like there was things that benefited the stability. We touched server architecture. We touched like people. One of the leaks as to like, yeah, we've been working on a thing is the April Fools thing that Floatplane did where. And you go to my screen and we left it up because people like it so much. We'll probably move these into user settings at a certain point. But you can change the appearance. Appearance. Wow. I wonder why. We may have needed a really simple and easy tool for managing Reskins and, and changing appearance of things. So like, nice. There are things that were done where the, the thought process for like Jaden or Peter or Jonathan or AJ whoever else was working on this largely went like, okay, how do we adapt and build this thing so that it's going to benefit us and them and make it so that when we maintain this thing in the future, it's maintaining one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thing pushing everything forward.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like, okay, say we push an update to the player. We want to make sure that that update to the player that happens updates both sides. So like it isn't a completely copy and paste of all the maintenance that we need to do. It's not a complete copy paste at all. There's a bunch of little changes here there. But like even, even little things like their, their buttons work slightly differently. Like their home button works slightly differently than our home button.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I thought you were going to show me.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not logged into this one. But. And the reasoning why is if you, if you think about the flow, there's this one platform, all creators for one subscription. Ours is individual subscriptions per Creator.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So their home button, they want to see all the creators.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. That makes way more sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our home button bringing you to all the creators on the platform would be silly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So Jaden built a thing where it's like not super annoying to like maintain that moving forward, which was smart. So we didn't just go in and just change the links. We built a tool that makes it easier to maintain. It makes so that if we wanted to change things or experiment things, whatever, it's like scalable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wicked smart. I remember telling NCIX back when they hard for forked ncix.com and ncixus.com that what a disaster that was going to be. And even though I had like no background in development or whatever, it was amazing how right I ended up being like by a year in, it was just like catastrophic. How far behind the US site had fallen in terms of like features and implementation and appearance even.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Unique Username says now it's Linus swallowing yawns all the time during this show. That's rare. It's usually Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's been a very long week. It's been a very challenging week.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure my numbers are slightly off, but when I woke up yesterday, not today, I had roughly calculated that I was, From Sunday morning, 11 hours of sleep in Nice on a Thursday.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because we were launching this new platform and scrapyard warzing at the same time, along with like, other stuff going on in my, like, personal life and whatnot. So it was, it was wild, but it was a good time. Launch went pretty smooth. You know, you always expect a couple bumps here or there, and we had a couple bumps here and there, but it seemed to mostly be okay. The email one was the most major one. There were some other smaller ones, but they were dealt with pretty quickly and people seem pretty happy so far, which is cool. Another thing that's cool about this is just like, you know, flow plane bit off a lot when it first started. We committed to a lot of different features and stuff. So a lot of our time has gone into just keeping up with that already. But as the Internet does, you want to grow and improve over time. So we're hoping that this helps scale up the income that Flowplane effectively has so we can grow the team so we can bring more features to Flowplane and also Sauce. Because now if we improve something, if we add a new feature to Flowplane, Sauce is going to get it. If Sauce wants a new feature and we build that feature for Sauce, Flowplane is going to get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Say trials for instance.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. Which is something that we've wanted for a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's Dave since day one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Many documents of things I can list out that we've wanted for a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like it would also benefit them. So if we can build it now and it benefits both and, and you know, this is, it's standard business stuff, but it's exciting for me because there's so many different things like we want to. Our casting is like a problem. We don't have TV apps which those things go hand in hand because like a lot of places kind of like cheat in how they handle casting because they don't actually handle casting. They just pass the request to an app that's on the tv. Because casting even, even for like Google, if I remember correctly, Google doesn't even use Chromecast the way that like Chromecast is originally supposed to be used. They just pass the request to a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

YouTube app on the TV which makes way more sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So like ideally we want to have TV apps so that we can do that because most of the pure casting solutions that I've found are a little bit clunky and ours is pretty notably clunky. So yeah, we want to invest some time into a TV app. We want to do lots of other things down the line. Trust me, there's many features we would love to add, but the spice has got to flow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The spice has got to flow.

[Linus Sebastian]

And this is a way for us to scale, which is super cool. I'm really excited.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what else has got to flow is our sponsor for the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The show is brought to you today by Vessi. It might officially be summer now, but according to the weather forecast, tomorrow has about an 80% chance of rain. That's pretty typical here in Vancouver, but we have a secret weapon, Vessi. Their shoes contain a patented material called Dymatex which is designed to transfer sweat away from your feet which while keeping moisture or water from coming in. So if you feel like jumping in some puddles this weekend, take along a pair of Vessi's and experience their dry sock guarantee firsthand. Speaking of the weekend, their weekend sneakers are a great choice for the summer thanks to a fashion forward design that's appropriate all year round. They're easy to slip on or off and are great for just about any casual occasion and come in handy if the weather decides to take a turn for the worse. With a one year warranty and 30 days of worry free returns and exchanges, why not pick up a pair. You can even get 15% off your first [e-mail] Wan show or by scanning the QR code on the screen right now. The show is also brought to you by Corsair. If you're like me, you know that four feet might not sound like a lot, but it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it. Corsair's Platform 4 sit to stand desk takes your work from home setup and elevates it. Pun intended. Customization is a breeze thanks to their modular T channel rail system, which adds support for hundreds of attachments. It takes four feet of space and makes the most of it, but hey, we've all been there. Sometimes a few extra inches goes a long way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you need a bit more room, you can add some more desk space with side extensions and even go full space optimization with side pegboards to hang your headphones, backpack or loose cables. Not that you'll need much cable management thanks to their rapid Route wire management tray and an in desk storage cubby with USB type A and type C charging ports. There's so many features, you should probably just check it out for yourself by going to LMG GG Platform 4 or by clicking our link in the video description.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can I pause you for a sec before you go on to the next ad? I suppose you're done that one. These could be cool for some of the scaling of the vention desks in labs because they have like I saw one of the buildup features where they had an overhead shelf. Sure could be pretty sweet. They look good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Finally, the show is brought to you by Squarespace. You guys should know what Squarespace is by now, right? So instead of just reading off talking points, I'm going to tell you some random facts. Okay? Did you know that 2025 marks the year the Hudson's Bay Company, the oldest company in Canada, closed all their stores? Among other reasons. They just didn't pivot well into E commerce, which is something that you could do with a beautifully designed website.

[Dan]

Made.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Easy with Squarespace's code free drag and drop elements. Or hear me out. How about this? The first fast food chain to widely adopt credit card payments was Burger King. Pretty cool, right? But Squarespace has support for most major credit card companies and can even take payment methods like Apple Pay and PayPal all directly through your site. How about one more? Did you know that going to nissan.com doesn't take you to the automotive manufacturer site? That, my friends, is why it can be so Important to register your own domain early. Something that you can do with squarespace domains with each being protected by robust end to end encryption. You can go find some more fun facts later after checking out squarespace.com when and getting 10% off a post personalized website that fits your needs. All right, what would you like to do next, my fellow wanon?

[Dan]

We could do merch messages or some more topics. You get to pick. You want a six or a seven?

[Linus Sebastian]

We do another merch message after the other announcements.

[Dan]

Yep. Okay, we did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why don't we talk about zip tie tuning? Yeah, Zip tie tuning is a thing now normally policy these days because I don't know, I guess we're corporate now or whatever and there are reasons for it. Thank you for that, Luke. That's really, really helpful when we're trying to explain, you know, why we have the policies that we do.

[Dan]

And anyway, just add it to the pile a spit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Normally policies, we don't really talk about employee departures, but I am going to make a bit of an exception here and just beg for forgiveness later. Alex and Andy have launched their new automotive channel, Zip tie tuning. So I just wanted to give a shout out and make sure everyone takes a minute of their time. Maybe not a full minute. Like you should probably get good if it takes you a full minute to do this. A moment of their time to go check out zip tie tuning on YouTube. We are extremely grateful for everything that they've done and everything they've meant to our team over the years. We're confident that they're gonna crush it and of course you guys are gonna be a key person part of that. So making a judgment call here. No one's called me yet. There we go. Zip tie tuning is a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I found their channel in under a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Minute, so way to go, gamer.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, what else we've got for today?

[Linus Sebastian]

Start minimizing some of these things. I have not been.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been minimizing stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have not been doing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's my fault, novice. Oh, you didn't minimize Team Viewer. Way to go. He lies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't have to minimize TeamViewer because I'm deleting it. Boom.

[Dan]

We pay for an alternative. Go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. GPU Trend Study 2025 from Liquid Web. Liquid Web has published a white paper with some interesting statistics on GPUs. 57% of gamers have been prevented from buying a new GPU due to price hikes or scalping, with another 43% delaying or canceling a GPU upgrade due to other financial obligations. 73% of gamers would buy Nvidia if brands performed equally. 64% of gamers are currently using an Nvidia brand GPU.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I guess if we count integrated graphics, it sounds like they're not talking specifically about discrete graphics.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that stat is maybe a little useless.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's pretty misleading.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. 42 that, that happens a lot with these types of studies. 42% of gamers have a maximum GPU budget of under $500.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I should hope so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, over $500 used to mean you were like a mega baller spending mega cash on your gaming PC.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm surprised it's 42%. I would expect a lot higher than that, to be honest. That makes me feel like this might be a skewed demographic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, we have. We have a.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many people have over $500 GPUs?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's a combination of things. I think it's a combination of three things. I think it's really effective GPU marketing. I think it's the general wisdom being that you just dump, you know, most of your budget into your GPU to get the most gaming performance. And I forget what my third factor was, but I think basically it's a combination of things that have led people to purchase more and more and more expensive GPUs. And we have a video coming very soon. This one I worked with, I think, yeah, Jordan. I worked with Jordan on this one where we investigated bottlenecks again, which obviously is something we've talked about on the channel before. I mean, you make 6,000 videos, eventually end up retreading some ground. But in the context of the 5090 and Elijah's most average PC. So we took the most average PC, which had a 3060 in it in its most average configuration, and then I think it was like a. I want to say like a 12, 112, 400. I can't remember. It had some six core processor in it. And we upgraded it from a 3060 all the way to a 5090 and evaluated how that impacted the performance at 1080p and at 4K. Now, as you can probably imagine, you know, performance went up a lot, but that's a, you know, 20. Realistically, by the time you get an OC1 with three, four fans or whatever on it, we're talking like US$2,500 if you're lucky. Right? So hold on a second. With this very average PC how much of that performance jump could I get spending, like 800 bucks on, like, a Radeon 9070 or 9070 XT, I think is the one we have.

[Linus Sebastian]

It echoes the conversation we had about the price predictor thing we were talking about a while ago, where, like, you need to consider the price of the whole system.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so, you know, it looks like 58% of gamers have a maximum GPU budget that's over $500. But unless 58% of gamers have, honestly, a pretty banging system, maybe they shouldn't. Maybe we've just all been kind of suckered in by the conventional wisdom here. Oh, right. I remember the third thing. Right. So the. The three things I meant to say was GPU marketing, conventional wisdom, and the fact that, like, GPU really have been. I mean, we've talked about it extensively in Scrapyard Wars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where we would put like 80% of our budget into a GPU and then put together whatever craptastic system we possibly could just to get the thing running. And I think now that GPUs have kind of slowed down a little bit in terms of how much they're improving gen over gen, I think CPUs might have kind of, like, caught up a little bit to the point where.

[Dan]

You.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don'T necessarily need the latest GPU to get the best gaming experience. Especially if you're still gaming at 1080p, which, as we saw when we did our Steam most average PC video, most people still are.

[Linus Sebastian]

And even if you're not, I think the allure of 4K doesn't actually seem in the, like, TV space and stuff. Absolutely. On the desktop monitor for me, prime resolution is 1440 and has been for a long time. And, like, I feel like it kind of will be for a while. Moving forward still. Yeah. Last year for scrap yards. Yeah. Yeah. You did, Elijah. We both did. I bought in. I bought in. It's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If only. If only there was someone who could have told us that.

[Dan]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Who's that guy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. He looks like an idiot, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who the is Linus Sebastian?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anything else? Oh, wow. As many as 62% of PC gamers would apparently switch to cloud gaming if latency were eliminated. I mean, I guess, yeah, that's fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

If latency were eliminated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's. That's basically like saying, would you. Would you switch to. Would you switch to a 3D printed food if the flavor were identical to your regular food and the nutrition was perfect? It's like, well, okay, yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't just be like, if this hypothetical thing I can't achieve were the case, would you use it? Well, yeah, I mean, but latency cannot be eliminated. Latency can only be reduced.

[Linus Sebastian]

Surveys are so tough, man. Like, what about the video encoding this all the time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, exactly.

[Dan]

You watch a train going past a Forest on YouTube and it just turns to blocks. I'm gonna have the hyper detailed like speckles and stars that so many games are putting in now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly.

[Dan]

Even Mario Kart World has tiny little particles and pizzazz and sparkles and stuff like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly.

[Dan]

It's not gonna be possible to get rid of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I mean, not possible is a strong statement. I don't know, I'm just trying to.

[Dan]

Will the universe to make me wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love it actually. Good strategy. Impossible.

[Dan]

Impossible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's impossible. It can't be done.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even with inside out encoding. Oh, compression rather. Excuse me.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like the demonstration.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, keep doing very good. Wait, how'd they do the demo? Did they do it like this?

[Dan]

No, no, back and forth. It's tip to tip.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Four of them. I think you were on the earlier model.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's right. Sorry, yeah.

[Dan]

Not efficient lineup.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then you can adjust for heights as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Requires the gimbal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

It was a sorting algorithm. Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Switch 2 users report online service bans after using MIG Flash cartridges. Okay, I haven't. We knew it was my first thing. My first thing here is what were you thinking being the first one to put a MIG Flash cartridge into a Switch two? Surely you. You knew the risk, right? Anyway, whether you're loading up games you own or games you've pirated, inserting a MIG card into your Switch 2 is going to result in a bad time. Evercode 213-44508 will pop up. You will be banned from online activity. YouTuber ScatteredBrain received the error message, tried to factory reset their Switch 2 and essentially bricked it. Because they are no longer able to sign into a Nintendo account, MIG creators are telling users to be extra careful. The cartridges product page notes that it serves as a backup and development device solely supporting gaming using personal game backups. To maintain the MIG Flash warranty during online play, it is essential to utilize self dumped backups with authentic certificate UID and card set id. Now, with all of that said, our discussion question is, has Nintendo gone too far?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't like the e waste of this even outside of the like, ethical questions of like you should own something that you buy, which is like a massive important conversation here, but just e.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wasting devices, like devices that they made a profit on. Just throwing that out there. Nintendo has been very upfront about the fact that they are no longer following the console pricing sort of paradigm of selling the hardware at a loss and then making it up on the software. They controllers and stuff. They sell the hardware for a profit. Some of it, yeah, to your point, at a very considerable profit. And I don't know man, this is one of those things where on the one hand obviously I understand that companies want to try to mitigate piracy and mitigate the, you know, let's, let's put ourselves in their heads for a second. Right. Like the, the theft of their intellectual properties is how a lot of companies perceive this. And I think that Nintendo would absolutely be one of them. So I understand the motivation here, but the flip side of it is like I have such a hard time with companies punishing users for not buying enough of their stuff. And it's something that has always kind of bothered me about the Apple ecosystem. It's like, oh, you want battery, battery monitoring for your AirPods that we could easily implement on Android? Well, we don't because I don't know, you buy an iPhone and it's like I already gave you, I already gave you $250. Was that not enough? I'm, I'm sorry. You know, and I love how in.

[Linus Sebastian]

This, in this you're looking up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's how. That's where Apple is. That's interesting that that's, that's where their own ass is. Oh. Which is where they're inside.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so, and so you know, for, for Nintendo here too, like, especially like to Luke's point with how expensive the first party accessories are and stuff. Oh man, like I could, I could see them. I could see them, you know, doing something. I don't even know, I don't even know what, what they would do exactly. But forever bricking the console, I just can't. Yeah, like this is, and, and it was pointed out actually in some of the comments on our videos sort of discussing the Switch too, that Nintendo is not the first to reserve the right to do this. But to my knowledge, I don't think Sony has ever actually bricked a PlayStation for inventing Sony. I, that's what someone said in the comments under our video. So make of that what you will.

[Linus Sebastian]

John Deere or something.

[Dan]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So this is, this is from as far as I know, this is new ground that we're treading, is it not? And I. I don't. I don't like it. So. Okay, Scrappy. DP says they just bricked the console or the software, not the console. But does it. I mean, I. But I mean, come on, what are.

[Linus Sebastian]

You buying when you buy a Switch 2?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bent Bob says Nintendo has not gone too far in their opinion. If the Switch 2 ban was due to the console being connected to Nintendo servers at the time of using a MIG Switch cart, then this is more or less what Microsoft and Sony have done on prior hardware connected to the Internet. If it's baked into firmware to check if offline, it would still be in line with prior consoles. If you hack or run backups, you'll have to be careful and accept the consequences. I mean, yeah, that's. That's fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do be careful. The MIG site says it's compatible with Switch 2.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seriously? Still? That's insane. That's insane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Full plane shot. Said it. I did respond to them. It's not technically false. I mean, yeah, it just for sure gets you banned. Well, not necessarily for sure, but it's like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'S. That's crazy. It's like them saying their genitals are compatible with your butt but not warning you about like that. It might be uncomfortable. I think I'm gonna move on. Nexus mods has been sold.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Speaking of which, the world's biggest modding site has been sold by founder Robin Dark one Scott after 24 years. The site was founded in 2001 as Tess Nexus or Tes Nexus or the Elder Scrolls Nexus. I remember that time. The new ownership was initially only known by first names and handles, but has now been revealed to be a company called Chosen, whose website doesn't reveal much. I don't think we have it linked, but says it doesn't reveal much, but smells an awful lot like venture capital. One of the new owners posted an announcement that Nexus mods core model will remain unchanged, saying mods will always remain free. That Chosen has no plans to claim ownership of uploaded mods and. Whoa. I mean that would be a. If you want a PR disaster, pull that move and that lifetime accounts are safe. A Nexus mod spokesman told PC Gamer that the new owners are on site with Nexus mods team of 40 people and that the focus is on continuity. The new owners have made it clear that additional monetization is on the way, but that users will likely see less ads and that they'll reveal more about themselves when they've earned that Right. Everything else sounded pretty cool. But it's not about earning the right to reveal more about yourselves. It's about being transparent at the beginning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like this screwdriver.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Coming [e-mail] that was beautiful.

[Linus Sebastian]

But, yeah. Figure it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You really did like.

[Linus Sebastian]

You. Yeah. Just like, tell people who the heck you are. That's. That's. It's pretty straightforward.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's step one.

[Linus Sebastian]

The less ads thing to me actually does kind of make sense a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does it though?

[Linus Sebastian]

If you think about the people going to a modding site, what percentage of them have ad blockers? How much are you actually making on the ads? They're probably just looking at it and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Going like, this is just friction. For what?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Might as well find things that make, like, real money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like what, though? I really don't know because that's my concern.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not like they would have bought this out of the goodness of their hearts.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I think their model right now is decent. You get, like, better download rates and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Do you know if collections are locked behind subscriptions, Dan?

[Dan]

I have no idea. The only thing that I know about it is the download rate limiting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like, I think most of the Mods.

[Dan]

Are like 5 megs, so it doesn't matter. They're just like, any tweaks a lot of the time. And then you get the big texture overhauls.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Stuff like that. Which are mini gigs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Especially if you replace, like every texture in a game. Like, I feel like Skyrim modding is like, more impacted by the. By the download rate thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

Because you gotta download 500.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want the new ideas, though. Like, other than jacking up the price on that, like, what's. What's the new ideas?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no. I genuinely. No idea. They're not adding their. Oh, man, the ads are annoying. There's an ad look. It's actually being hidden partially. There's this banner all the way across the bottom for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, God.

[Linus Sebastian]

Icky thing. And then there's this other thing that's actually covered. Wait, one ad is covering up another ad? You can't fully see it because of our box that we're in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

But this right here is another ad that half of it is covered up by the banner ad at the bottom. That's wild. I would be so pissed if I was the ad in the background.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yo, dog, I heard you like ad, so I put ad in your ad so you can add.

[Linus Sebastian]

While you add this all is an ad too. I Actually thought this was just like talking about mods. So the entire site right now is this sliver in the middle.

[Dan]

Hot take.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Is this okay for what you get out of Nexus mods for free?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, yeah, sure.

[Dan]

Can I get boards?

[Linus Sebastian]

They have 40 employees. Seems they have to pay for something somehow. I mean, it does seem pretty bad, but they all have close buttons on them and I just wasn't pressing them. So like, let's see, do they actually close? Yep. And then it's not that bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's another ad.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if I scroll down from the big one at the top, then there's just this one which I can also close.

[Dan]

Was that one behind the other two ads?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty wild. You can see where there's subscription. Oh, here we go. Go premium. So what do I get? Don't tell me to register first, just tell me what I get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Downloads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Uncapped. Download speed. One click. Collections. Yeah, so I think collections are behind it. Ad free experience. All right. So that's why I wasn't familiar with how bad it is. Support mod creators. You thank. This is a big part of the reason why I do it. Cause I know money goes to the mod creators and I do also think this is cool. So maybe they're going to add things to the premium. Can't imagine what.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's my problem. I've been sitting here the whole time you've been talking, not really listening to what you're saying, trying to think of what they could add that would add value to. Okay. Actually, are you aware of what collections are? I assume it's just like a bunch of different mods and people can like make them and then you just like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Curator who plans out a package and they also plan out like a load order and everything. So all the difficult parts of modding can be done in a collection and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then you just put it in, which.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is actually like a killer feature. And I think that. I think you can still engage with collections without it, but you have to like individually do everything so they. They remove a lot of the tedium of modding, which is a big part of the reason why people don't do it. So that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they could figure out a way to. Now it's kind of an outdated idea. Remember that thing I pitched you like a billion years ago where it was like a system tray tool that would make every unskippable thing skippable, like at the beginnings of games and stuff like that. So it basically like run on your system and Then just like it would just like delete the the files for like pre game launch videos and stuff like that. Yeah. Because that used to be something that you could mod out of games. And I feel like either it's become more difficult or people just don't bother anymore. And they've become so much more unskippable and irritating.

[Dan]

A lot of them have moved in engine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

One thing that I've been seeing a lot of in response to this is people being worried about not safe for work mods, which I don't think is going to happen because like crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be like buying Tumblr and not realizing that it was all about the pool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What I was gonna say is okay, that did happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

This isn't Yahoo though. This is like who knows who they are. Which is part of the problem. But like, especially because of the who knows who it is, I don't expect they're gonna take away the Nazi for work stuff.

[Dan]

What if they leaned into it? That would. They'd make money there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, my gut tells me if anything it will be more. Because if you look at the trajectory of the Internet over the last while.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't go from 100% to more than 100%.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not 100%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, I know there is. I just mean the Internet in general.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

From the last little while. Try from when it was invented.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but it's also been way more socially acceptable. Like look at that. That fan company.

[Dan]

Ah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? Dyson OnlyFans. Yeah, we were literally. We were literally a creator on it. You're gonna avoid saying the name.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was doing a laugh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He thinks they're cringe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People who subscribe on OnlyFans?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You support mod creators?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, same thing.

[Dan]

No, identical. You are just as bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll show you all my mods.

[Dan]

Please don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right now, fans, I love the. Please don't.

[Dan]

Not on stream. We. We want to keep our.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't mud that way, Dan.

[Dan]

Oh, you're lame.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of keeping.

[Dan]

Oh wait, you have a girlfriend. Never mind.

[Linus Sebastian]

One of. One of the like. One of the like first comments in floatplane chat, before we even went live, was talking about this and they were like don't take. What's that? Something Blade. What is new social blade, like PlayStation game that came out, but it's also on PC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mountain Blade.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Dan]

Oh, the one that like you will not know. The ones that like mods are totally fine. Was that the. Some company just came out with it recently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stellar Blade.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that one. Gunner Blade, That's a nickname for it. Oh, and it has mods on Nexus mods. And one of the first comments in Full Play Chat that I saw was like, don't take those ones away, please. Anyway, I think it's that community that's mostly worried because that's where there's been like a bit of a line. There's been some political lines with Nexus mods and there's also been the not safer work line, which is there is a level that they don't accept.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see.

[Linus Sebastian]

So are they going to pull that level back and be more restrictive or are they going to push that level forward and accept more stuff?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I had to guess, if it's one or the other, if they adjust it at all, they might just leave it. But if it's one or the other, I think they're going to push it forward and allow more stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Speaking of keeping our stream online, I was really hoping to use that segue while we still remembered that Dan said that Twitch trying to set you up for it. Twitch has posted new simulcasting guidelines that TL Dr. State that the WAN show could get us in trouble on Twitch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe, sort of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They state that the Twitch user experience of a simulcast stream must be no less than the experience on other platforms or services, including chat engagement. You also shouldn't provide links or otherwise direct your community to watch your stream on other platforms. Say for instance, lmg, gg Floatplane. Well, no, that's not really a good link down there. You can't use third party services to combine activity with other platforms. And there was a immediate question from our community and here I'm just going to. I'm just going to bring this up here. Does this mean. Because we have to provide the same experience to all platforms that view the WAN show when it is simulcast, does this mean the WAN show will finally read Twitch Chats?

[Linus Sebastian]

Elijah is saying these are not new, by the way. They're almost two years old. Old. They're just enforcing it now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He didn't even check with me before posting this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it wouldn't make any sense, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He'S a hundred percent right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, agreed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Twitch Chat lost it lost its chatting with us privileges, man, a long time ago. Now I think just by being.

[Linus Sebastian]

You held on for a while.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

I gave up a long time ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did. I held out for a while. Long time. But Twitch Chat, they. They. They lost their privileges. They lost their privileges a very long time ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we still have our little custom agreement thing going on. I don't know, you used to have some, some fancy boy privileges.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we, we had a pretty special agreement that we signed with Twitch a very long time ago. We were the first to be allowed to stream non gaming content on the platform and we were also the first to have a carve out for simulcasting that was explicitly allowed under our agreement with them, to my knowledge. And that was because Twitch was expanding into the YouTube MCN or multi channel network space back in the day and recruit, they wanted to make a big push into tech and recruited us, I believe as their first first channel. So we, we signed a deal with them where they were our MCN. We got a 100% revenue share for our YouTube AdSense, which I insisted on and made absolutely no sense for them. So I don't know why they did that, but they did. And then they also agreed to special terms for us because I was like, guys, look, I can't, I can't be Twitch exclusive for like streaming. And like, like I can't, I can't do this stuff because I'm, I'm a YouTuber first and foremost and foremost. And you're like my YouTube MCN, you're not looking to like, you're not looking to kneecap my ability to grow on YouTube, are you? Like, that would be, that would be wild. And so they, they signed these special carve outs for us and then within a matter of like, I forget if it was months or it was weeks, our contact at Twitch for the whole MCN program was gone and it just disappeared. So to my knowledge, nobody else ever signed with them or maybe like a handful of other people did. And I don't know if they had the same carve outs. So we have always been allowed to multi stream with no restrictions and we have always been allowed to upload non gaming content with no real restrictions on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if not, I guess, and if.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They decide not to honor that agreement anymore, well then I guess people give them the old F you team viewer. Yeah, which is fine. I mean, realistically, I don't think we really need Twitch that badly at this point.

[Linus Sebastian]

I used to like Twitch so much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there's, yeah. Used to like fanboy over them like super hard. Like I was at one point I was worried you were gonna quit and go work at Twitch. No, I mean, I can understand you never. Don't pretend you never thought about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I don't, I don't mean seriously consider I don't mean sat there thinking, do I sign the offer or not? I just mean, like, don't tell me you never, like, thought about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, there was one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't going to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what I'm talking about. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. You fanboyed pretty hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

They were really cool. I really liked a lot of people that worked there. That. Hold on. Stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on a second, guys. You cannot like Twitch. You know, Luke is less enamored with them these days, too. Yeah, totally fine. But let's. Let's be real about why we don't like Twitch. Kate James and Floatplane Chat says Twitch went so money hungry, it was disgusting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Still lose money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Twitch has never made money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't agree with that, to be honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, if anything, Twitch might be a healthier, more vibrant platform if they could figure out how to be profitable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is. That is not. Yeah, that is not a dude. Oh, Elijah's in the chat, brother. They went money hungry because they have never had a profitable year. Yeah, that's the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I know people compare them to. I think it's Kik, because people are actually making more money on Kik. But I. I mean, Kik is still.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Funded by, like, gambling stuff. Crypto gambling money. Like, what do you. What do you want? It's not. It's not funded by the actual viability of what the platform is doing. So we have to compare apples to apples. If you want to call Twitch money hungry, like, butt heads or whatever, you have to compare them to someone who is running a healthy, self sufficient, profitable business and is, you know, doing better by their users. Like, you can't just.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not why I'm not as into Twitch these days.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I know, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's mostly the vibe. Yep, the vibe just changed. The vibe shifted. As much as, like, what you're not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Into just, like, girls in hot tubs?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not really, to be honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I always thought about that boy. That boy. I always thought about him.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. Yeah, I don't know. I. Now you can do anything on Twitch, which, like, sounds cool, but it also means that it just doesn't feel very focused, if that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Why Twitch? Like YouTube?

[Linus Sebastian]

I like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, I love YouTube, to be clear. And YouTube is super not focused, so, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but that's its identity. YouTube is. It's you on the tube.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Twitch had kind of a focus. It had an identity, and now it's just sort of kind of everything. And then because it's kind of everything, but then also not. People are constantly trying to fight and push the boundaries on different things. And like, it's just. I don't know, it was. It was a simpler time, which is a very generic and boring and easy thing to say, but it just actually kind of was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

JamesH with the. I don't know. What's a. What's a terrible take? Is a terrible take ice cold or red hot? I miss Facebook gaming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hashtag mixer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't worry, I know you're kidding.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jameshaw if you wanted a mess, but low latency mess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Oh, man. Why is it always bad news? Wan show? Why do people even tune into this show if they want to leave feeling good about the world?

[Linus Sebastian]

The Nexus mods news is who knows yet?

[Luke Lafreniere]

News23andMe, Kofi. I mean. Oh, dude, come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's gonna be bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Name, name, name three. Name.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if I can name.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One name one time private equity has acquired something and made it better. One time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not gonna be able to answer this, but I actually wonder if the chat even can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is there an example? I don't have one. Straight up. Give it to me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Give it to me right here.

[Dan]

It's not the point of private equity.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come on. Right here. Put it right here. The one time Toys R Us.

[Linus Sebastian]

Eli.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lily. Oh, my chat froze. Dang it. Hold on. I'm missing all of this.

[Dan]

Twitch chat. Mrs. Farmville.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I don't think anyone did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Valve acquiring devs is YouTube Private Equity. No, private equity. Hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So private equity is a company that serves no purpose other than to be a vehicle for acquiring companies and then gutting them. And not venture capital. Venture capital is more like investment in startups with the idea that they will. You're funding them to develop new ideas so they will, like, grow exponentially. Most of them will die, but some of them will be, you know, moonshots and will be very successful. Private equity takes established businesses and buys them and then just milks them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, wait, am I thinking of the wrong you think it got. You think Eli Lilly got way better?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Disney buying Star Wars. Okay, again, that's not private equity. That's an M and A. That's like a merger and acquisition. Disney is a media company. Also, you're wrong. Let's see. Psychotech says Toys R Us in Canada is owned by Putman Investments. Okay. And Toys R Us Canada did. Did manage to do. Okay, again, you guys seem. Oh, man, a lot of these, you guys seem to not quite be giving me private equity examples. So when Future Shop was about to go bankrupt in Canada, Best Buy bought them out and carried on their gift cards and warranties, etc. But Best Buy is not a private equity firm. Best Buy is an electronics retailer that bought an about to go bankrupt slash defunct electronics retailer and then absorbed their them effectively to take over their leases to to take the customer base. So that's not private equity. I forgot the question. Apparently Nabisco according to Gemini says Angry Panda PC. Yeah I'm not getting a lot of Ambler says oh Jagex the Runescape devs has apparently been private equity a few times and is still going to. But that's mostly due to certain staff actually getting through.

[Linus Sebastian]

People are misusing the term private equity. Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like who are they acquired by? Yeah, no private equity. You have to be like. Like a Berkshire Hathaway where you are not a real company. You don't actually like make cars or games or media. You a lot of the strategies just a vehicle for money to come in and then be spent on things and grow. That's it.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of the strat is you buy a bunch of the same type of business in an area, unify them all under one banner, use the same like IT hr, whatever systems to save some money and then pump up prices because you own all the businesses of that type in the area. It's like an effective way to reduce some costs in the business in order to increase profit margins and then effectively have a monopoly and crank the price on everybody and put the grips on consumers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that can be done by private equity or it can be done by just a large monopolistic participant in the space. Like I remember chatting with a friend of mine who works for a company that does software for medical offices like managing customer lists and stuff like that. They were acquired at some point by a competitor who is just basically noming up all the little guys and then consistent consolidating and so that they can. So they can raise pricing. But that's still not private equity. That's just a monopolistic competitor buying everybody. Geeky vapor says VCA Canada, the vet company. Yeah, there you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

GLOW says today Linus learns nobody knows what private equity is because they're all ass. Okay, okay. Steven in floatplane chat says my company Transact Campus was under private equity and we were sold to Roper Technologies and it worked out.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you were interesting. I don't think that's the question though because they were under private equity. And then they sold out of private equity.

[Dan]

You weren't profitable enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

They got better. Which is like the opposite of what we're talking about, I think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I mean. Yeah, they were sold again. Is that it working out? Maybe that's it working out.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, you know what? Let's move on. Let's move on. The point is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The 23.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure there's an example somewhere.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The 23andMe co founder bids to buy back the company.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ann Wojcicki's winning bid was 305 million. How do you get to run a company that so catastrophically collapses and have $305 million?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, there are so many examples of this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. My goodness, Luke, it's a rhetorical question.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go. Now we've got examples. Now I can make lists.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She resigned when the company announced the bankruptcy. Declared concerns over privacy issues. Has a non profit now, ttam23andme, which made the bid. She gets substantially all of the genetic testing firm's assets. TTAM will comply with all applicable state privacy laws as if it were a for profit entity. They've also stated they won't sell or transfer customers genetic data in case of a merger, acquisition or bankruptcy unless the entity is another domestic nonprofit research institution that will adopt the same privacy statements. Bankruptcy court case. Still has to approve the sale. Hmm. Okay. I mean, this is better than it just like being out there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, I'm a little lost here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Has a nonprofit now, ttam23andme, which made the bid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like she's running a nonprofit called 23andMe, which essentially a company called 23and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Well, good luck everybody. I still strongly believe that anyone who submitted their data to 23andMe is eventually going to have it available for sale at some point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean it was just the same person bought it. Okay. Etsy is cracking down on 3D printed project products. Etsy has introduced new. Which I kind of like because I think being able to sell 3D printed products is cool. But I'd like some distinction personally. Etsy has introduced new rules. New rules changes stating. Okay. That anything made by a seller using computerized tools, really any, including CNC. Wow. Such as laser printers, 3D printers, CNC or Cricut. Is it Cricut or Cricut Cricket. Cricket or Cricut. Machines must be produced based on the seller's original design. Okay. Originally an online bazaar of handmade crafts and vintage clothing, Etsy became flooded with mass Produced trinkets sold by dropshippers, resellers and large 3D print farms. All three DP notes that if your Etsy business model is solely based on 3D printing licensed digital models and you're not interested in adding custom features to your products, now is the time to transition from Etsy to another platform.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is pretty interesting. Well, hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on a second. I think that it's cool that Etsy has defined an identity for themselves and is taking steps to enforce it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's why I think it's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

However, however, this is one of those decisions that I kind of am looking at going. What will be the unintended consequences? Let's say that I'm someone who is super into creating cool designs and I license them to a lot of people which is making money for me and allowing me to continue to create more designs, maybe even do it as a full time job. Are we cutting off that lifeline if that particular person is not interested in running a 3D printing farm and dealing with the logistics of shipping out hundreds of little, little bird shaped water feeders or whatever?

[Linus Sebastian]

I understand the argument. I don't agree with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not making an argument, I'm just asking a question.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, and I'm not saying it's necessarily your argument or anything but to pose it as an argument. Regardless, I don't agree with it because of what Etsy like is. And this doesn't cut off the lifeline for those people on every website. It just cuts off that path through Etsy which I think should happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's the alternative? Where should I buy that? Because that's where, honestly. So down to Etsy's. Etsy wants their identity to be like bespoke, handcrafted. Yeah, but I gotta tell you that I don't see Etsy that way. And their identity is partially.

[Linus Sebastian]

They should be able to defend the way that they want their identity.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's partially what they want it to be, but it's also partially what it just is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I agree, but if it, if what it is is not what they want it to be, they should be able to take actions to defend what they want it to be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they are able to. And I'm not, I'm not saying anything about their right to do that. The only question I'm asking is what happens now? Because where I, some people are going to get bumped off where I would. No, I don't. I'm talking about the original designers. I'm not even talking about the 3D print farms. So about those people, if I, the end user was like, I want 3D printed, like some random thing, I would think to go to Etsy. I confess to you, I would have no idea where else to go for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wouldn't, but I understand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where would you go?

[Linus Sebastian]

A 3D printing website.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But like.

[Linus Sebastian]

There'S many of them where you can see a design, you can just order it and it just gets printed for you and then delivered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what if the thing about Etsy is it's not all 3D printed?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also like laser engraving and there's like, for like Etsy. The only thing I've ever really thought to buy on Etsy is like gifty stuff. And I don't necessarily just want to see 3D printed stuff. So what's that? What's an alternative marketplace?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, they're still going to be 3D. They're not banning 3D printed stuff. I know, yeah, but Etsy is supposed to be creators.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

So they should defend that. I think this completely makes sense. It's not banning it off of the Internet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense. Hold on, hold on. I'm asking if the creator of the design does not want to run a 3D printing shop.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there? Okay. Is Etsy creating a path by which that creator through one licensed third party or something could have it for sale on Etsy?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think they need to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what? Okay, why not?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because their thing is about connecting. Like I, for Christmas I bought these little wooden birds for Emma and they were through Etsy and when I did the transaction it put me in contact with that person and we talked about it and any customizations that might be wanted and also that kind of stuff. It's supposed to be a. From my understanding, and I don't know, I'm not Etsy, I could be wrong. But from my understanding it's supposed to be a way to get consumers in contact with creators that are making things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bespoke things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And if this is not doing that because it's a pass through, then that is not how they want their website to really work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's fine. Where do I go to find that now?

[Linus Sebastian]

And other websites on the Internet?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now I know there's other websites on the Internet, so. Okay, but we keep, let me see.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I can find something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We keep dodging my question. My question, My question is maybe Dan understands my question. My question is, Mr. Dan, I am the creator of something. Maybe it is an engraving template. Or maybe it is a 3D printed thing. Or maybe it is. It is. It is some kind of, you know, STL for some kind of, you know, CNC something. It's something. I do not wish to sell it directly and deal with the logistics. And Oak and Hedge in Floatplane Chat says creators who don't want to bother with the logistics will probably just hire out to a management firm which will do all that for them and manage their account and stuff. That is very optimistic, but probably, probably not.

[Linus Sebastian]

If they didn't want to do in the first place, they probably don't want to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if they. So. So right now the, the. The. The reseller of license to Designs network that, as far as I can tell, largely uses Etsy to sell these, these creations. If, if their source of income is those people, all I'm asking is what will happen to them? Where does that customer go to find that? What's the Etsy alternative?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's sites online where you can sell your 3D printing files.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, but I'm not only talking about 3D printing.

[Dan]

I think the consumer in this case that Linus is talking about wants the 3D printed object finalized or not 3D printed. Just the file or engraved. Or engraved or some. They want the physical object.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They want the physical object.

[Dan]

And the store themselves is just getting stuff off thingiverse and then making the physical object and then selling that. One thing that I've been trying to figure out just kind of in the comments. I. I produce 3D print designs. I have no interest in selling physical goods, but I take commissions. I sell them on a store or something like that. If I'm a 3D print farm, this design looks really cool. I'm going to buy a. I can sell this license of your 3D model and then I'm going to sell it on my Etsy store. Is that allowed by Etsy? If the store were to go to that person directly and commission an STL for them, could they sell that on their store?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That I don't know.

[Dan]

If they had a team or an employee, would that also count?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think yes.

[Dan]

Yeah. So is commissioning not a bad idea? So what is wrong with licensing then? Would the commissioner give a license for only that store?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because you could sell that stuff on Shopify. You could sell that stuff on Amazon.

[Dan]

Exactly. The thing that's getting in the middle here is that they're just producing physical goods that don't require craftsmanship or that much craftsmanship. I shouldn't be too disparaging, but the file is the problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's the owner of the file. That's where Etsy is drawing the line. They're saying that the only person who can sell a good created with a file if they own the item, is the creator of the file.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's more creator than owner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, it's the creator of the file because licensing is not allowed. And to be clear, I fully understand what they're trying to achieve here. They're trying to take the site from what it is now, which is essentially like a, like a dumping ground of reproduced digital hoo ha. That's sold by a whole bunch of licensees of, in many cases a lot of duplicate files just grabbing free stuff, right?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I want to make it abundantly clear that I fully understand the issue, that is not the problem, and I fully recognize Etsy's right to maintain their own identity for what they are. My question is the people who are making their living licensing these files that they have created, which may not be 3D printed, they may be something else for me as a, as a pretty normie in terms of like, you know, shopping online. I actually don't do a ton of shopping online. I, I can't, I don't know like what the, what the place I would go to to just like find kitschy sort of, in this case, I guess licensed, you know, stuff would be like what Etsy wants its identity to be, what they want their identity to be. That's well within their rights. But as a consumer, that isn't the identity that Etsy has managed to maintain over the last five years plus years. So now that they have morphed into that, they have become a central part of the business model of the creators of these designs that is now gone. So where is the so where.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. So you're, you're talking about the creators. Their business model is selling to Etsy shops.

[Linus Sebastian]

I personally think you're overblowing how much that happens and in the inverse how much it's just people taking models or buying them for like $20 from stores that already exist, which aren't going anywhere. So that model is not going to change.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't want us to be too laser focused on 3D models like literally every post in chat is telling me. But thingiverse, Thingiverse think. Well, hold on a second.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're talking about things like drop shipping, then they still laser engraving, exact same leather work, pins.

[Dan]

It can all just be mass produced out of a file, right? Yeah, I know a lot of creators too. Who produce this stuff and sell the files. Selling the files is a lot easier.

[Linus Sebastian]

It could be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What's that? What's that type of like stitching where you. Embroidery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Embroidery, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could do embroidery patterns.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Which is great. So where's the hub for it?

[Dan]

Exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

This stuff is currently available now on Amazon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All of it. Like, there are drop shipped things, there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are embroidered things, there are 3D printed things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I don't particularly want to buy on Amazon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't think that's a valid answer to the statement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I don't actually necessarily think that the shopping experience on Amazon is very similar to the shopping experience on Etsy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like if. Look, I really did not mean for this to be a particularly contentious topic. I was just asking.

[Dan]

It's just a really complicated topic. Nuanced topic. Because there's a lot of different creators involved in something like a print farm. Some of them are being stolen from. Some of them don't care because it's like, okay, I want a 3D printed benchy, which is now available. I can go get the file. But I don't own a 3D printer. I want one. Or you know, I would like the Disney logo cross stitched into a T shirt. Or print it onto a T shirt. Yeah, somebody's maybe selling that pre done. There's like a bunch of different avenues. Some. Some creators will embroider your stuff, but that's like you're going to a business service. It's very confusing and I don't know how they're gonna try and crack down on it more than just like a vibes thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's. I think it's largely gonna be a vibes thing.

[Dan]

I think it's gonna be a vibes thing. 3D printing is probably a little bit easier than the other stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. I. And like, I think the. I think the theft angle that, that Luke brought up. Brought up is probably a really critical element, not only in the way that you brought it up, but also from like an IP standpoint. Like this could be Etsy just trying to cover their butts. Dan, bringing up the like the Disney logo thing.

[Dan]

I've had some friends get banned from Etsy for making very similar things because people want like, good thing for the thing they like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sometimes you can't get. A lot of branded things are trash.

[Dan]

A lot of the stuff that my friends make on Etsy is like better than the quality that you can get. That is first party.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm not surprised.

[Dan]

But that's not really allowed, but it's almost, it's, you kind of have to know that it's your kind of special little guy interest thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know. I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what is, what is the special sauce that you're describing with Etsy? What's the shopping experience that I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Know, it's just full of like kitschy kind of crafted looking stuff. That's it, that's its identity to me is it's kind of like, it's kind of. Remember ThinkGeek? ThinkGeek conceivably could have sold anything and Amazon probably had everything that Think ThinkGeek had. Not that, not everything. Some things were ThinkGeek exclusive. They made their own items. But ThinkGeek had an identity. Its identity was if I wanted to, if I had a gamer geek person in my life and it was their birthday and I had absolutely no idea what to buy them and for some reason they were an adult who still wanted birthday presents, I could, I could go to ThinkGeek and I could probably find like a cool map of Middle Earth or something that they would think is cool. And I could, I could buy that and you can go there for inspiration. I guess is part of what, you know, the identity of a store is to me is I have something in my back of my mind that I kind of need something like that to serve purpose X. And that's the store that I would think to go to. Obviously I could go to ebay. You could buy anything on ebay. Like I, it's not that I can't solve this problem, it's just that, you know, I think the, I mean, Luke.

[Dan]

Supports the mod creators on next. The Etsy is very, very similar to that sort of mindset. Yeah, I can go to ebay and I can get, you know, 3D printed services or like plates. I'm not going to Etsy to buy from a store. I'm there to buy from a creator and a small team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I honestly think we're talking an incredibly like, we're, we're talking about the. Where do they go? For an incredibly small percentage of, of the platform, I think the vast majority.

[Dan]

It'S a small percentage, but it's the same type of thing and it's getting bigger and bigger because when somebody goes cute bulbasaur plant holder, it's Etsy by the bulbasaur plant holder.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I don't think, I guess. No, no, no, I, I, no, I understand what you're saying, Luke. You're saying that the people who are relying on licensing their designs to people who are using a marketplace like Etsy to sell them in volume are very few and far between.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think a lot of those people are being like robbed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you know what? I, I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about the, the economics of these engagements other than that I do know that people, people do survive definitely a thing by creating designs, licensing them to, whether it's engraving or 3D printing or leather working farms and then using marketplaces like Etsy to do numbers.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'll show you. I'm going to try to find it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

By the way, this is, this is really sad. Thinkgeek apparently was bought out by private equity. Throwing back to what we were talking about before. Think Geek was so cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Do you have a particular site that you like for like buying. I don't know if you ever have, but like buying 3D printing files, I suspect you probably just make your own, but.

[Dan]

Oh, I mean not necessarily. It's really kind of dependent on what's needed. There's some very specialized things that you might want, but most of them are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Available for free and a lot of these people are printing and then selling. Like my, A big part of my problem I think is a huge amount of Etsy is people downloading free 3D models that a lot of the time come with a thing saying you can't sell this.

[Dan]

Most of it's open source licenses.

[Linus Sebastian]

Printing a thousand of them and selling them on Etsy. That's the vast majority of what's happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's. We know that's not all of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, read articles about it before. Where Etsy is concerned about.

[Dan]

I think that's kind of what they're trying to maybe and that's what they're.

[Linus Sebastian]

Trying to stop now. Linus. This scenario I am certain is also real. I think it's just a really small percentage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do we enable that scenario? Like how do we get more money into the hands of the creator without necessarily telling the creator, putting a gun to their head and being like you need to start running your own 3D printing farm. And late putting, putting little trinkets in packages and putting little.

[Linus Sebastian]

What you want to do because you like creating things.

[Dan]

This kind of comes back into.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what I'm starving.

[Dan]

Starving artist.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where, what store do I go to where, where like I can find the Etsy Etsy Ness.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's interesting because it's such a similar question to like the Nexus mods idea. And with Nexus mods, the way that they've done it is they've tried to add kind of platform features under a subscription and they've used part of the subscription to benefit the creators of the mods, which are the only reason why one is on the platform, if you know what I mean. So they, they're kind of reciprocating a little bit. Okay. The mod creators are putting their mods up for free. And the only reason why you're on my website is because the mod creators did that. I'm going to charge a subscription. But obviously the only reason you're here for these mods really. So I'm going to lock this. Some platform features that make it nicer to use my platform, but I'm going to give some kickbacks to the mod creators. So is there a solution? Like does, for example, this is the problem. Is there a subscription model? Is there anything going on?

[Dan]

You know, if, if, if it's, it's like artist versus I guess the printing company at this point, if you want to think about it in terms of art, prints and painters, you know, the people who are designing the 3D models are kind of the painter and then they're like, here's my painting. Do you want to buy one? I don't really want to deal with shipping things and then somebody just buys a license to it and then starts printing it. And the only way that the consumers is going to get it, like, because Thingiverse and printables and those sorts of things are kind of like Nexus mods right now anyway, you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like, I found this. I have no idea, but I found this creator on printables and there's an option to support and join club and then you can join like a thingy which gives them some form of kickback.

[Dan]

There's loads of these types of.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I guess you can probably set up your own tiers. Yeah, I'm assuming there's loads of these.

[Dan]

Types of websites and especially for models for games as well, it's really important. A lot of people will buy assets and a lot of people will make assets. Something like a 3D printed kind of desk toy or, you know, definitely amusement. They're normally simpler and even there's super complicated ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like all this architecture is going away is. I think what my, my point was.

[Dan]

Absolutely not. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I just think that this is an effort to reduce slop in a way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay, so check this out. So again, on printables, there again, there are a lot of these Other websites. This is just the one that I'm poking around on. You can see these purple things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pink things. Whatever I highlight over it saw exclusive model. So you have to be part of this person's collection club to download it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then that's a subscription.

[Dan]

Some people sell individuals.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. There are also ways you can sell individual models. So this is like, this is the market that these places have had in the past.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so then do you think it will have any impact on the number of people that will subscribe to Buddy there if there are fewer resellers, fewer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Places for them to sell? Yeah, I think there are other.

[Dan]

Does he sell, does he have a license if somebody wants to reproduce it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, we're just talking in theory.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, yeah, I'm talking, I'm talking.

[Dan]

I'm also talking in theory by, by.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Reducing the, the sales avenues for these designs. Will there be an impact? Was my original question and I don't know the answer to that. And I do agree that the slop on Etsy is an absolute problem and I do think that it's a great point that tamping down theft is 100% necessary. But like I'm, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to figure out, I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just really think, I am sure there will be an impact on some people doing this legitimately. I really think the amount of effectively pirated non condoned slope on Etsy should go way down. Well, no, I think it was the vast majority of all of this type of arrangement. I really think the percentage of this that is fitting under the category that you're talking about is like incredibly small. And I think the reason for that is whenever you see the prices to buy the files for these things, it's cheap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you think that part of the problem that I'm experiencing where I have this perception of Etsy is that which.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is a legitimate perception of Etsy is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That Etsy took too long to take action.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely, dude. Yeah, they should have done this like you said five years ago or whatever because this has been true on Etsy for a long years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, okay, I think we've, I think we've done it then. I think we've come to what was kind of the core of what I was trying to explain where they have their idea of what their identity is, but for better or for worse, through their actions, their identity has become something that has created a marketplace for someone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so what's the replacement? What is going to fill that vacuum Now. Yeah, because like you said ebay maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think the traditional stores that I listed. But, but like you said, you don't want a store that's like 3D printed junk dot com. No, you want a store that is things that you're interested in. Dot com.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That might also have 3D printed things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean what if I did want a store that is. Again, I want to, I want to make it really clear I'm not just talking about 3D printing. Right. So what if I did want a store that was 3D printed or laser engraved or, or, or etched or custom T shirt or CNC or screen printed junk dot com. What is it? Which store is that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Temu.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Temu. You think so is there, is there much 3D printed? I have no idea. I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tossing them under a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can like speaking of sites where they could go sell this stuff, you can third party sell on team. You for example, example.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fiverr. Someone said, I don't think, I don't think Fiverr. You can't browse on Fiverr. Fiverr. That's the thing. Like I almost wonder if Etsy should like, should still have a marketplace for this but like call it something else or something like. Did you kind of get what I'm talking about? Like it feels like there's, there's a bit of a. Because obviously nobody would be listing this stuff on Etsy if nobody was buying it. So it's clear that there is a marketplace that exists and I think they.

[Dan]

Should pivot to being like a second site for maybe micro services or something like that. Because the people on Etsy are maker type people and I think what they're trying to target here is just like I own 15 3D printers and just make things or I own a laser cutter and make things that are random. But, but you segment that into a different website which is just kind of like makering services type things and they can advertise all the random models like Linus wants.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you take those out though, if you split the service, yeah, you're going to kill the whole vibe that Linus likes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not. Because honestly I miss the days of going on Etsy and being like, oh wow, that's a like totally custom bespoke thing that someone created me too. So okay, why don't I give, why don't I give some context. The last time I was like browsing on Etsy I found it was actually, it was a 3D printed thing that I wanted to, that I wanted to buy. And it was like, like, like a topographical legend of link to the past world map. And it made me think about a lot of things. I wondered who had actually made that design, whether they were properly compensated. I wondered what the printing quality would be like because it was clearly 3D printed rather than injection molded. I wondered what the licensing and trademark issues were around Nintendo's obvious ownership of that intellectual property. And I didn't end up turning that into a Wancho conversation until this kind of sparked it. And so, you know, random pirated, you know, thing.com. right. What is the replacement for Etsy and shopping, you know, for like cool, you know, topographical wall maps and the way that Etsy sort of led me down a rabbit hole where I could find all these kind of cool different designs. I don't know. It was a, I didn't end up buying one but it was, you know, kind of a cool shopping experience.

[Linus Sebastian]

It might not exist in exactly that way anywhere else.

[Dan]

I know exactly what you mean though.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like Dan said a lot of the times, unfortunately, yeah, that's going to end up being higher quality than the real first party stuff. But not always.

[Dan]

Sometimes it's just not always.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably most of the times all made.

[Dan]

All makers are not created equal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of them are just 3D printing.

[Dan]

Some of them just make little dumb trinkets that Linus likes and where are you going to go?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, so I don't know. I, that's the only, that's the conversation that I wanted to have. There's some people who have a while, there's some people who have kind of tried to give some suggestions. Someone said tindy but like they're really focused on like hardware.

[Dan]

This kind Etsy's of brand now, isn't it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is interesting. Etsy Hub is apparently for sale for just US$2,500. Like honestly that would, that would kind of solve my problem if Etsy Hub was just kind of like the dumping ground and then a little bit less policed and then Etsy was just like the, the actual bespoke. Because another thing that I think is going to happen to Etsy as a result of this, that maybe is a good thing but could impact the shopping experience that Etsy's users expect is that I suspect prices will go up a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, I have an idea.

[Dan]

What if you had verified type sellers? So somebody who was like a maker maker got a little, got a little check mark.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do you verify, man?

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly I like this concept that they're going down. I think it's impossible. I've been thinking for a while that, like, I mean, I had this conversation with potentially both of you my idea for an AI app. Because, of course tech bro has an idea for an AI app. Everyone's stunned. Have I given you this pitch?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll give it on the WAN show because I don't think I'm gonna have time to do it, and I just hope that someone does. The name that I thought of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Was you could shorten it to Lil Bro. Or it's Little Bro Little or Little Guy.

[Dan]

Little Guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Little Guy.

[Dan]

My little guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's specifically little Guy. Not Little Bro. Little Guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. And the tagline is it's a microphone and speaker that lives in your pants.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you can talk to it anytime you want.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Dan]

Not micro guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you can talk to your little guy. Get out.

[Dan]

I could have been talking about me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Please don't fire me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Let's get back.

[Dan]

This is why I'm not allowed to talk on the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

We need a mute Dan button.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have one. It's in the bottom left.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, get wrecked. Okay, so the. The name is Little Guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Little Guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

The tagline is the anti AI. AI. And so you. You. When you're using it, it will. It's like the system prompt or the base prompt or whatever will have it recheck kind of everything it wants to suggest. And it's mostly based on the suggestions. So if you ask where you can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Buy a suggestion, is it mostly based or fully based?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hopefully it's fully based, but it would try to find small mom and pop brick and mortar options instead of major chains. And if. If you're doing research through it or something, it will try to detect if the text or the video or whatever resource that it's reading from or showing to you or whatever is AI written. It won't suggest it. So it tries to keep it focused on things that are real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Real but small. And like our little guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it focuses on the little guy. It tries to help the little guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I think it's actually kind of how.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Much money there is in it that's the problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All the ideas that, like, are based and. And cool are not that profitable. It feels like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. If someone wants to steal that idea, please go for it. Let me know that you did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or don't.

[Dan]

We can sell it on Etsy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but like it's something that I see people going towards is like verified main made by people stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think we're, I have a theory that we're going to see a rise of like a very like non social tier of almost content creators, which is like people really just sharing evidence that they actually made this thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right? Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like do you get a video file.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Along with your product that shows them making it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And you notice that, that one slight scratch and you can see the. Yeah, you can see the timestamp in the video when that tiny accidental scratch happened. And now it's on your product and you, you know that it's real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not that having more or less fingers is a problem. As long as it's not AI.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just throwing that out there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So like, so I think I have a theory that things are going to kind of, maybe not that exact form, but I think real actually I know this was made by a person. Things are going to start going up in value for people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think there's a space and that's why I'm happy that this is happening with Etsy. And I think there's a space for little guy to be a thing if someone wants to make it. If nobody makes it, maybe I'll do it someday, but not right now. I'll say that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of AI, Google, AI search and other AI chatbots appear to be causing a significant drop in traffic to news sites. So our sources for this are futurism and Axios. The Wall Street Journal reports that the traffic being sent to publishers is plummeting as users are shifting to not clicking on the sources that are cited by AI search tools and chatbots.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is so bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like search traffic to Business Insiders to Business Insider has reportedly dropped 55% between April 2022 and April 2025. As a result, Business Insider has cut roughly 21% of its staff last month, citing the need to to endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control. Google and other AI companies will likely continue to see legal challenges in regards to scraping copyrighted materials. The News Media Alliance CEO stated links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just take takes content by force and uses it with no return. The definition of theft. Yeah, the DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the Internet by one company or a handful of companies, I guess. But that was a direct quote.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

According to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, 10 years ago, Google crawled two pages for every visitor it sent to a publisher. Six months ago, that ratio for Google was 6 to 1, while OpenAI was 250 to 1 and Anthropic was to sent 6000 to 1. Now for Google it is 18 to 1, for OpenAI it is 1500 to 1, and for Anthropic it is 60,000 to 1. Cloudflare is working on a tool that will obstruct bots that ignore no crawl directives. We are, we have even. I don't think we even bothered to implement no crawl directives because we had absolutely no faith whatsoever that they would actually, would actually do anything. If Cloudflare could implement this though, I guess we probably would. Hey. But I mean, realistically, they've stolen the vast majority of the data that they could want from us anyway for something like the LTT forum. That's probably the greatest example of a treasure trove of, of data that, you know, we have and now every AI company has because they would have just scraped it from our site.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we've had discussions about this turning on Cloudflare's version. So we have cloudflare on all our sites. I don't remember if this is a known factor or if it's a theory. I genuinely don't remember. But it was brought up that your ranking would be hurt by doing this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, by not allowing crawling.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not allowing, yeah, this type of crawling because they could still like page rank you and have you show up in results, but now you're less valuable to Google or whoever else. So maybe they just bury you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then sure, you didn't get crawls. People would have to go to your website to get your information.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, original content, just go elsewhere. Original content is going to die.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is why we need little guy. This was the whole, this is the whole reason I thought of the solution. I just, I can't even.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not even a little guy. We need even the, the big guys to survive. I mean, say what you will about, you know, news media and people have varying levels of trust in the varying news organizations. Is there maybe still a consensus that there is a place in the world for professionally sourced and curated news? But do we just want, do we just want everything in low resolution videos on Twitter?

[Linus Sebastian]

If you look at, if you look at how people use these types of tools, I think you're going to see people like, if you ask them if you did a survey, we had a survey earlier in this show where we didn't necessarily agree with the results of the survey. If you did a survey and you asked people, do you think having like actual news agencies is like, good and stuff? Probably there's going to be some people saying no, but overall I think people are going to be like, oh yeah, we should probably have real news still. And then those same people that say that are going to go and use AI summaries and move on because it's easier and ultimately they don't care. We see this with vote with your wallet all the time. Like, is, is, is microtransaction monetization in games gone too far and is it like, super definitely a bad thing? Oh, 99% of people say yes. How many people engage with microtransactions in games?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way more than enough. So it's, I don't know, like people are raging.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Says real general journalism is a lost art. It's now all meant to drive clicks. Sad faith, but that's exactly what he just said. Yeah, it's because people didn't engage with real journalism. They just read the summary or they.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's because of user behavior. Everything is driven by user behavior in wallets. Like it's. Here's a whole. Man, here's a really spicy hot take. I think a lot of Nintendo games don't have tons of microtransactions. Right. I'd rather pay 80 bucks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that is a hot take. David actually specifically said that in our Switch 2 review. And a lot of the really negative comments on the video are about that. Yeah, sure. And it's, it's one of those things where it was interesting as David and I were working through that script. One of the, one of the challenges that we have now as an organization, whenever we talk about anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not hyping up the Switch too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I didn't say that at all. Down. Why do you hate hot dogs? Yeah, one of the, one of the big challenges that we have is that as the perception of me has changed over time, it has become extremely difficult for me to make any kind of statement around value of a product.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right? Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or affordability. Like, I could look at something like the Switch 2 and be like, hey, these games are, are going to be. Are the, the unaffordability of these games is. Could have an impact on the success of this console. I could say something like that and there would be a not insignificant number of people who would rightly make the observation that, no, you can afford it. The 20 difference in the games means nothing to you, you YouTuber scum of the earth. Right. And so one of the things that you Know, David and I talked through. So he wrote the script and then I, in my role as editor, not video editor, but editor of the script, went through it and we kind of worked together on which paragraphs each of us would deliver because we felt we both spent time with the console and we both worked actually together quite a lot on the pre release video that we did, kind of summarizing all the rumors and stuff. So David and I have been kind of like Team Switch too for the content that we've done around it. And one of the things that we talked about is realistically it would cause less of a complete storm if he was the one who delivered the paragraph. It was his take. Interesting, but deciding who would actually read it because we worked together. Like I'm all about consensus building. We're not always going to agree on everything. And you might have noticed that in scripts in the past where I would say, yeah, the writer of this script felt X, I actually feel Y. Take that for what it is. Right. So in this case, David and I actually agreed and it was very much what you were saying. He was saying like, look, in the age of microtransaction hell, if what it takes for Nintendo for it to be worth Nintendo's time to continue to create bespoke single player and couch, couch co op and competitive experiences is another 20 bucks in their wallets, then I'll pay it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Especially when it's for kids, I'm just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gonna pay for fewer of them. Yeah, and maybe I'm gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

Doesn't mean I can afford it. Just because I understand does not mean I can afford it. These things can be different.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And, and, and it was. And I think that if he hadn't been the one to say it, it probably would have faced even more backlash over it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's just like I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's a, that's a hot take now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like even just for the idea of not having that in the game, I'm willing to spend more money. Personally, I hate even seeing it. It like actually bothers me. Like I'll play a single player game and go like, oh, I can buy more like gold and resources in this single player game by a microtransaction. I am now almost certain that my progression systems are going to be messed up. So it's way harder to get those resources because they want me to use the microtransaction system. Or at least the developers were not necessarily given enough time to balance the resource income because it's not worth it as a company when players could just buy extra ones. Like, that's immediately my takeaway. It's same with cheating, right? If cheating passes a certain threshold in a game now you're suspicious about every single interaction you have where it's like, no, I don't want to sit here and be suspicious about the game. I just want to enjoy the game. Especially if you're like, letting a kid play this game. Normalizing the idea of microtransactions to a child sucks. So I don't know. It is what it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. See, people seem to have kind of chilled a little bit on this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Seems like it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My chat was frozen for a bit. Do you want to talk about more AI ad horribleness? Yeah, I. I love the. I love our title and shad ification. Oh yeah, AI ad products are here.

[Linus Sebastian]

TikTok is rolling out a new AI powered advertising or, sorry, rolling out new AI powered advertising features including the ability to upload an image of a product or write a short text prompt and produce five second video clips that can be used in an ad. It's part of TikTok's existing Symphony product, which already lets advertisers use AI enhanced spokespeople avatars to help promote and sell products. It's interesting when a platform promotes the idea of replacing the creators on the platform. Amazon's improving.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not the creators so much as advertisers.

[Linus Sebastian]

AI enhanced spokespeople avatars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can see what you mean. So why pay a popular TikToker? But. But these would be like random. They wouldn't actually be like recognizable as a TikToker.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but like, I think to a certain degree what you're paying for is to end up in people's feeds. Yeah, I don't know. It's a blurry line. Amazon's improving their generative AI ad creation tool by allowing advertisers to create realistic high motion shots of their products in use. Transform still images. This should so not be okay. Transform still images to movement with a single click and offer more creative options for brands of all sizes. The next one is not WhatsApp too. Ads are finally starting to appear in WhatsApp as of Monday, they'll only be visible on the Updates tab. And the company says those who use the app only to chat with friends and family won't. What else do you do? I don't use WhatsApp that much. Won't see any change to their WhatsApp experience for now. He's so practiced at that. Reddit has a new tool for Advertisers called conversion summary add on it lets Brads showcase positives only. Brad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nailed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lets brands showcase positive user posts or sentiment summaries below their ad campaign. Creative. Great. Great. If your name's Brad, I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So I hate all of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I. The generative stuff for products is messed up because it's very often going to get stuff wrong. What's up? How's it going? We're getting. We're getting close. This is serious. Do you want. Should I do the same?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope. Okay. You got to tell me this, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've talked about this extensively on the show. We can be uncomfortable about AI.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can even hate it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We could think it sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. We've also talked extensively on the show about how at the end of the day, cat's out of the bag, horses bolted from the barn.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pandora's boxes open.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should we do AI ads for a transparent screwdriver? No. And I can explain why.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think it's just a knee jerk.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hold on. I should. Hold on. I should finish. I should finish.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The conversations that we've had in the past around now that it's. Now that it's out there is. It's basically. It's out there now. And we've talked about how, you know, if you want to succeed in the workplace, learning to use AI.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not even just AI. You got to keep up to speed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In general, you have to. You have to keep up. So then I guess what I'm asking is, as a company, should we do what literally everyone else will be doing and use AI to pump out creative to market their products, or should we not?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think so. And if you want to hand it over, I can. I can partially explain why. Although I think this is going to be true in some form for practically everything with the. You're talking about the positives.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It won't open right now because the bits are all jammed. Don't worry about it right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure. You're talking about the positives of like the. I don't know what it's called, but the particular plastic that you used that Nalgene also uses and whatever else, a lot of that's going to come down into the appearance.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're using an AI ad, and I know there are AI ad generating services where you drop an image of the thing that you're selling and it tries to use that image as much as possible, but it is going to manipulate that image.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you actually want to sell your product on the merits of your product, you need to have actual shots of it. Now if we wanted to have like the intro of the video be AI influenced and it doesn't show off the product, but it, you know, classic ad thing where it shows off like, oh, this horrible scenario, that would be better if I actually had it, and then it goes into actual, real coverage of the actual real product, I think that's fine. And I think we've already kind of done it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it. Or are we literally eating the snake? Eating our own tail or not the snake?

[Linus Sebastian]

We've already done it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are we eating our own. Are we eating our own tail? Because our job is to, like. I mean, I feel like that's sort of ironic use.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where's the line?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, that's a good question. I mean, like, that's, that's why we're having this conversation. Because, I mean, this is here. This is from. From. From chat. Where am I finding? Yeah, so Hatho says the world will be using AI for ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have two options. You can use AI today or you can start using AI in a few years.

[Linus Sebastian]

My main line is when it could mislead or improperly influence the consumer.

[Dan]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, well, okay, that we obviously.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wouldn'T want to do, but companies are doing now. It's already happening because the AI interpretation of the product is not always perfect.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is really interesting to see people's takes on this because a lot of people's concerns, I feel, are not really. Not really the questions I'm asking. Because there's no way that we would. That we would not have a human review something at some point to make sure that it is actually representative of the product. Right. Like to your point, that's not what we're saying. Like, what did someone say?

[Linus Sebastian]

But even then, there's very, very small things that like one person reviewing a thing might not notice. We have experience with this. We have a review process for videos internally. It can often go through quite a few hands. But there will be one really small thing that people don't notice. And 99.9% of the audience doesn't notice either. But that little 0.1, somebody will notice it and then they'll mention it and then everybody sees it from there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like many pandas says AI hallucinates. It gets things wrong. And that's totally true. But in the case of like, you know, using it to generate a bunch of different. A bunch of different colors of backgrounds for like a product photo or something like that it kind of doesn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

It does.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's wrong in the background? Hold on, hold on. If you, if you, if the product photo is like, was taken by an actual photographer and is the real product and you're just like, you know, what is the more eye catching background color?

[Linus Sebastian]

Generating a layer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's not generating an entirely new picture, just the layer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So, but, but, but however, however. Holy crap. We're a media company. Literally. We like, you know, do graphic design and, and photography and videography and, and you know, you talk about like AI TikTok spokespeople and I'm kind of sitting here going, wait, hold on a second. If you want like a spokesperson for your tech thing or whatever. I thought that, I thought that was like, you know, potentially my job. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

My line has always, I don't know if I can say my line has always been this, because we've been talking about this for a long time. But the line that I've been on for a long time now is that you, you don't use its output.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you can use it as a research tool. You can use it as a rubber ducky. So there's the whole rubber ducky concept where you talk about your issue out loud to like an object or something because it can actually help you think through things. I use AI often these days, but I never use its output. I'll ask it for feedback. I think a lot of names of products might dodge international issues if they asked like, does this word mean anything in any other language? Because you hear about products like that all the time. So you could use it for something like that. Yeah. Someone says read but verify. Not even, it's not even in a verify. I don't use its output at all. Like I'll, I'll get it to, I'll input something to it and ask it for its thoughts. Yeah, I don't, I don't use its output. If it gives me some thoughts, I might edit what I wrote. But I'm editing it myself. I'm not going to ask it to edit something for me and then use its output. So I think, you know, someone trying to design an ad could use generative AI stuff to think effectively and then a brainstorm. I would like our creation to be our own. And the reason why I say that is because you are effectively stamping this thing as it goes out the door with the IBM quote. Right. No computer should make a management decision because no computer can be held responsible. You're stamping, saying that you can be held responsible. That's the way I see it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. So that's your job as a human.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I send you a message, do you think it's from me? Or if it's from generative AI? And if it's from generative AI, do I get an excuse?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, of course not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly. So if we're going to put an image of one of our things up online, we have to stamp saying that we are owning the interesting issues with this image.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's an interesting line.

[Linus Sebastian]

And for me that just means I'm just not going to use its output for someone else. That might mean they're going to go through with a fine tooth comb and make sure that they are genuinely fully okay with the output.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And for a lot of people they'll just take a slot and most people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are going to do that. And there's already evidence of that. And I just, I have problems with that because again, you look at the video review process, right. We have a really in depth video review process at this point that goes through a lot of people's hands and it honestly takes a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's still a lot of stuff that makes it through. I did some video reviews today. I was like on my phone during a, like a, like a graduating from there from one grade to the next grade. Stupid ceremony at the school.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I don't know, between the two of them, I think I probably had to make 20 to 30 corrections or something like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. And there's stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And to be clear, that's with a world class team. Like actually though, seriously, like humans are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Human and there's stuff that'll get through.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Humans hallucinate too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yours. Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fun fact.

[Linus Sebastian]

Big time. We all are right now. Sort of. That's a whole other conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that it can, it can get through multiple stages of review process. Including yours. Including other people's. I've done it before and then still have a minor error that goes out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like if that's true, I can't really accept. But this is why I won't use. Honestly, I don't think I've thought this before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I'm going to say it now. Our own review process is one of the reasons why I wouldn't use a generative AI's output because I don't necessarily trust myself to spot every single little tiny individual potential flaw.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because what we see often is that like I said earlier, 99.9% of people aren't going to see this one little issue, but the 0.1% person does, and then they comment on it and then everyone sees it and then it's a problem. I'd rather those be my problems.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So how's this for a potential, like sort of policy vision? Right. Because I don't know if we have a clear internal policy on the use of AI. We've obviously, obviously used it a handful of times.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've had discussions within my own teams, but I don't think we do company wide.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So how's this for like a policy vision is like, basically, at the end of the day, it boils down to accountability. We wouldn't dictate to you whether you can use a hammer or motorized drill to do that work. But what we will dictate to you is what the expectations are for the quality of the output and what your responsibility will be for said quality and for said delivery timeline.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I think that is generally fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

However. However, you know, would we ever.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not usually the individual's reputation that is on the line, unfortunately. It's often yours. Well, yeah, because the. The audience just decides that every single thing that this over 100 person company does is actually just you. So then there's like. So maybe this line needs to be more aggressive than it seems on the surface because in a way we're actually protecting, like there's, There's a lot of. There's a lot of output like that at the company. Right. And it would reflect negatively on the company if somebody did just publish AI slop. And then do you really want managers to have to micromanage to the point where they're combing through every single thing that everyone does all the time? It gets to be kind of a lot and has the same flaws as other things. So I do generally agree with the line that you drew that I like that line.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, it was based on your line.

[Linus Sebastian]

But the way that you said it. Okay, I like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks. I did good. That was. That's management.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, you take the. You take the employee suggestion and you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Reframe it a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, reframe it. And. Yeah, and this is my idea. Leadership.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's maybe a bad lesson.

[Dan]

That's what you learn in management 101.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I don't know if anyone in management ever made it past first year, so that's all anyone knows.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, there is. So I like the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they did, they'd probably be engineers instead. No offense. No offense. MBAs are real degrees.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I like the line. But the unique Circumstances that this company is in with certain things that we do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Makes it tough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah. Well that's, that's the thing, right. Is there's, there's going to be in the tech savvy cohort that we cater to. Right. There's going to be a lot of emotional elements to this as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw people in floatplane chat that are like, the second I see an AI generated anything in an ad for an LTT product, I'm canceling my subscription and it's like, fair enough. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Already happened.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Has it?

[Linus Sebastian]

We have AI influence in our ads? I guess not. Else. Well, has there ever been any for LTT products?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess it's just been external brands.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so, you know, I, so, so I'm, you know, duly noted. And I just have a.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's. There was a conversation that happened in the lab.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have people writing labs articles right now. We have a writer selected but they haven't started yet. So we have non writers writing labs articles. And honestly, in my opinion, I think they've been doing a great job. There's some really cool labs articles up, but the question came up of like, you know, I'm not necessarily a writer, can I use this to help me? And we had a discussion, but it ultimately came down to like, your name is on the document. When, when someone's on the site and they're reading this thing, it says written by you. If. And like, not only that, but again, there's the perception of like, if we're writing a thing about something technical. And no, this is not okay. Don't try to read into stuff too much. This did not result in an employee action at all. The. If, if something is wrong in there, not only does it reflect negatively on the person whose name is on the article, which it will. Absolutely. But it'll reflect negatively on the company. It'll end up reflecting negatively on you. Because of the conversation that we just had. Reasonably. Sorry. Recently. It's. I don't like it. I don't like using its output. I don't want words that were output by an AI to end up in text on the labs website.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it just shouldn't be necessary. Yeah. And like I. Absolutely. You can use its influence.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean you've. I know that you've done tone passes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do tone passes literally daily. Yeah, always. But it. And it. I'll even ask it like, I'm not asking for a fixed version. Just give me input and it'll be like, if you want some help with that, here's a rewritten version. I just don't use those.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I absolutely use it for. What about an outline? Sure. Like, there's. There's absolute. I use it for helping me with writing stuff all the time. But it's. It's about owning the output and the way that I do that to just kind of shortcut. The question of it is I just don't have it right. For me. Some people might want it to write for them, but then you still have to only output. It's. It's going to reflect on you. It will happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I gotta say, it's interesting you talk about it that way because I've been trying to figure out why I don't use it, because I think, you know, that I don't. I still. I type it about a hundred, one hundred ten, one hundred twenty, sometimes words per minute. So, like, for me, typing is not a major burden when it comes to conveying my thoughts. Like, I type, like, not quite at the speed of thought, but like kind of as fast as I need to be able to. And I. Shoot, I was going somewhere with that. It doesn't matter. The point. The point is just that I've been trying to figure out why. Why I don't use it. And it's. I think what it is is that the burden of checking someone else's work. Right, right, right. That's where I was going with this. So. So typing is. Is not a hindrance to me for getting my thoughts down. And so it is actually less work for me to put my own thoughts onto a page than it is to have someone else, in this case an LLM, you know, rearrange them or rewrite them or reword them in such a way that I will have to go through it with a fine tooth comb to figure out if there's any I wouldn't touch issues. And so. And so I think you. I think you nailed it. I think the reason that I don't use it then is because whether I made the decision consciously or didn't, it is actually a greater mental burden for me to check someone else's work than it is to simply output my own.

[Linus Sebastian]

And therefore most people won't and they'll just publish the output, which is why I ask it things like what it thinks of the tone of something because it doesn't even give me output unless it just decides it's going to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But then I just ignore that part. I just want its opinion on the thing. And sometimes, honestly, I'll be like, I'm looking for this tone. Does it match that? Or I might not be looking for a specific tone. I'm just interested in what it thinks. So, like, can you do a. Man, what is my line? Can you do a. I have a specific prompt, but I don't remember off the top of my head. Sentiment. Can you do a sentiment analysis? There we go. Can you do a sentiment analysis on this? And then it'll. It'll let me know. And sometimes it'll be like, oh, I think it's too much this way, or whatever. But I read its prompt and then I read my thing again, and it's like, no. Like, this is just how me and that person communicate. So I won't necessarily agree with it. Like, you shouldn't just take it as a. For sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the kid across the street asks, would humanize AI fix that? Truthfully, I have no idea, and I kind of don't care. Rest assured. Says, it's much less work for me to read and understand than to write. I guess my issue with that, though, is that you still have to write. Yeah, like, that's the thing. You still have to write if you want to fix it. And in some ways, it can be more complicated. And take this from someone whose literal job it has been for over a decade now, whose job it has been to take other people's output and then re. Voice it into something that is appealing to the LTT audience. It is extremely mentally taxing to.

[Linus Sebastian]

And.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you've done script reviews with people?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I've done a bunch. I still do them, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is extremely mentally taxing. And in many cases, until you've invested tens, even, let's say. Let's say tens of hours, at least tens of hours into training, there is absolutely no hope whatsoever that it will not be very burdensome to do it. And if there's something that, you know, you feel is very important to include the odds that it will flow well from what they've given you to you. Being able to just kind of insert it and make minor changes is pretty, pretty low.

[Linus Sebastian]

And here's another sidebar thing. Yeah, I think it's terrible at writing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It depends what you're after. Like, we have a. We have a video coming up on that. Those. Those wacko 48 gig 4090s that you can get on, like, ebay and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

So the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're, like, modified with double the memory.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, if you get it to just, like, write a goofy you know, I can appreciate it for what it is. I asked it to write a short story about Nicholas Plouffe, the man who owned a display, and his love of displays or something like that. And for what it was. It's quirky and funny and like, I. I kind of enjoyed parts of reading it, but, you know, it's not artful. It doesn't have a soul. And so I agree with you there, but I. I don't know that it's bad. It feels good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. There was a test thing you and I did a while ago on. On could we detect which parts of something were AI written? And I nailed it, if you remember that. And for me, a lot of it is. It doesn't feel human.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I don't know how. And there's certain vibe checks. Like, there's the. There's the big dash. I think it's called N dash that, like, almost no one ever types. And AI is just, like, obsessed with outputting it all the time. There's like, little things like that where it's like a pretty surefire way to be like, okay, yeah, I have literally never once seen you in years that we've been working together. Use this one symbol, and you just used it throughout this entire document. And then there's a document that you made after that that doesn't use it ever. And I just don't believe it. Like, there's little things like that that can tip you off, but there's also just like a certain clunkiness that most humans kind of communicate with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Says AI writes in Spock mode. Yeah, too perfect.

[Linus Sebastian]

It really. It really does. So that's usually what tips me off. And one of the, like, we've been talking when checking out these. These labs articles, which, again, I think they've done a. I'm, like, surprised at how little input I've had to have because they're actually just pretty good of, like, I've said quite a few times, like, this is great. It's very human. And it. Sometimes it's like, because you're. You're bringing more of yourself to the article.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fallineth says EM dashes are apparently used by professional writers a lot. You know, the people that you would want to steal your training data from.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes a ton of sense, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I use dashes when I write a lot too, Dan, but I use the small ones. I definitely have idiosyncrasies in my writing. You'll see me use two periods a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I Have I kicked that? But it took me years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I. It's because our old prompter software could not detect special characters properly. And the version of Microsoft Word that we used the default setting back then when we wrote scripts in Microsoft Word. We use Google Docs now, actually. But it would automatically turn three periods into a single special character, ellipses. And so if I put three periods after something, then it would turn into a special character that I would then have to manually go fix. Unless I remembered to change the settings on Microsoft Word for every computer that I ever sat down at to write something or do a script review. And I was changing computers constantly, always. Or I could just type two periods, which would tell me that it was more than a period. It was like a longer pause, but it wouldn't change to a special character.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. And I use dashes for the same reason. I've never kicked the dashes habit, because they're like a break or a breath for me, but in a different way than a period. And also in a different way than two or three periods. Like. And I. I can't kick that one. I just. I will always do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Um, Jamish says floating chat. I overuse ellipses. Like, way overuse them. Nice. Okay, I think that's probably enough talking about everything being terrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't even remember the core topic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Xbox and AMD joined forces. I don't think I care. Something, something. Actually, let's push this to next week because I think I do still care, but I think that it's time to move to after dark.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually, if you can find a merch message for Luke real quick, I might need to use washroom.

[Dan]

All right, there we go. Let's see what I've got.

[Linus Sebastian]

It sounds like you're sitting down.

[Dan]

I was laying back.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Actually. Okay, I got you.

[Dan]

Ow.

[Linus Sebastian]

You okay?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Arm.

[Dan]

Sorry if I'm waving it all over the place.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you're good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look at me.

[Dan]

Look at me.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're good, man.

[Dan]

I mean, keeping on the same topic maybe is a bad idea. Linus and Luke, how do you see the future of gaming in this AI crazy world? Are we just going to end up with games auto generated for each gamer to fit them perfectly?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's interesting. I kind of hope not to be honest, because to me, that ruins the ability to, like, kind of suggest games to other people. Because if you had a particular experience, but it's tailored to you, that other person might not have that type of particular experience. I'm also honestly hoping we stay away From Live Auto generated AI stuff. There's been a couple games where I've like been interested in that because you can often mod it in. Like, I'm pretty sure there's a Skyrim mod that I played with a while ago.

[Dan]

Oh, there were some interesting tech demos. I think that was back when the latency was super huge. So you'd be like, hey, how's it going?

[Linus Sebastian]

Pause. But even. Are you doing the pause? Are you going to talk?

[Dan]

I was going to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

But it's fine. Okay, you get the point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So there, there was like, it's good.

[Dan]

How about you?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the pause thing would effectively be solved now, but it still doesn't. Like, it still felt so unnatural. And I think it felt unnatural because of in some cases how natural it felt, if that makes sense. Like, I kind of want the game to feel like a game.

[Dan]

It's also hard to tune them perfectly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like sometimes I'll just be like yelling because it doesn't.

[Dan]

Who did the. Who did the emperor in Oblivion? Oh, I think it's Picard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I can never remember his name. Didn't they give him like a 400 page backstory book? Yeah, I don't know if that's true or not.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I believe it. From the Patrick Stewart.

[Dan]

Thank you.

[Linus Sebastian]

From the team at that time. I, I believe it personally. But yeah, it's. I'm not feeling good about that. I'm feeling pretty okay about AI being involved in the coding. And to be fair, AI has been involved in coding for quite a while now and it actually doesn't really feel like it's a huge problem. It's one of the spaces where, like, I think the developers are pretty on board.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But being what That's a red hot take for me to come back.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think it is genuinely okay. I actually know very few developers that are like completely against it. There's.

[Dan]

There's also stack overflow too. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Part of the problem is the range. Like, I, I know there's developers that are against like vibe coding, where you're just asking it for outputs. What I'm talking about is AI assistance, like in your development environment. That's been a thing for a long time and I don't know that many people that are against it. I'm sure there are some. I'm 100% sure there's some. But there's a huge difference between like assistants in your development environment and vibe coding, where it's just filling stuff out.

[Dan]

For you and then having the AI write the actual Game the player is.

[Linus Sebastian]

These are different things. There's people in chat saying, like, yeah, auto Complete is super helpful. That's what I'm talking about. Like, smart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I clearly walked in at the wrong moment there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, yeah. But so, like, that I think is okay. I think we're seeing some issues with AI art in games where characters are inconsistent. I've seen some of that. I think there's also some issues with. In my opinion, any. Any dialogue has been bad and I think will continue to be bad personally. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Dan]

What else we got in here? Hey, wan dll. What are the things that you regret doing or not doing the most throughout LMG history? Although this one has two questions in it, Normally we do one, so you can pick between the two. Is Antoine's car the most expensive thing that you've had to compensate for your staff?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, man. What would be something that was really expensive that we had to comp Andy's bed?

[Linus Sebastian]

Whose car?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Antoine's car got hit by a wrench.

[Dan]

Yeah. How did that happen, Linus?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, Nick threw it because I told him to.

[Dan]

You're trying to get it on the roof?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. He'd thrown better than it wouldn't have landed on the car.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my goodness. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. My floor, when it was damaged by Dennis, but I never actually replaced it. It just still has those deep scratches in it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not a comp.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's mine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, technically, Linus Media Group Incorporated would have compass. Not. It's not my fault that happened. Dude, the fact that I took.

[Linus Sebastian]

Company owes you money. You got to sue yourself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, the fact that I took Flack over, that was so crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's because you're being, like, mean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, that's not what I took Flack over.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People were giving me a hard time because it was like I was criticizing Dennis for moving my furniture when I was the one who instructed him to do it, but I didn't. He was hiding in my house like that. That's. That's the most watched LMG clip. And the number of people commenting on that video angry at me because if I wanted it moved properly, I should have hired professional movers. It's like, insane. Is actually completely unhinged.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is why the AI summaries are going to work because that's a. I think it's not even that long of a clip and people didn't watch it. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no. Dennis in the attic. Yeah, we put his foot through my attic. No, no, no. Comping something has to be when like the company screwed up someone else's stuff and we had to replace it for them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think that's ever happened with me. I don't think this happens often.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm trying to think like in the earlier days. This is one of the.

[Linus Sebastian]

In the earlier days we just wouldn't have done it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, no, this is one of the reasons that I was always pushing like the, the, our earlier camera guys to not bring their own equipment to work. I remember this because I didn't want their stuff to get busted or damaged or whatever at work. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's get Luke a new card. Paid for by ltt. I don't even really want a new car. And also LTD has never done anything bad to my car.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't think of. I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't really think of much.

[Dan]

I don't think it's happened much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As for things that I regret not doing, I. I regret. I regret not. Water cooling. More editing workstations. We should have done a whole room water cooling here.

[Linus Sebastian]

We still can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Still can. All right.

[Dan]

Hi Wan dlo. I work for. I work in safety. As you grew as a company and added cr, how easy or difficult did you find implementing formal safety processes? Or was it something you were aware of from the start?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, we were super aware of it from the start. Lots of formal safety processes back in the day.

[Linus Sebastian]

Man. If we were cutting something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Total safety.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If we were. If we were up on the roof of a. Of a building. Speaking of whole roof room water cooling, installing a radiator, I'm sure that we were wearing the finest of safety harnesses.

[Linus Sebastian]

100%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It's been. I don't know, it's been kind of a mishmash. I feel like the pendulum is kind of swung both ways. We were very loosey goosey in the early days and we shouldn't have. We should have done way better. We're kind of lucky that we like have all of our fingers. Fingers and functioning eyes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember that the tape.

[Dan]

Safety squints are a company issue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. No, he's talking about using clear tape as eye protection.

[Dan]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Linus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, that was him. There's no way I would come up with. Yeah, that tracks.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was. I didn't actually think it was going to actually protect.

[Dan]

Maybe for dust.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, obviously chemical burns. Anywho then I think without before we had like, kind of learned like guidelines properly. We just kind of. It was like Vibe safety. And I think we kind of overdid it a little bit. Like, we, like, we. We had an employee at one point. They've been gone a long time, so you won't be able to guess who they were, but we had an employee who would throw like, a conniption, like a complete fit anytime there was an open flame near anything to do with anything. And, you know, I'm like. I'm talking. Having a candle on set, you know, with a person standing there with a fire extinguisher was, like, not enough for this person. And it's just like, dude, I don't know. Calm the down pretty much.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's going to be okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not what I said. I implemented a, like, no fire policy because I just, like, didn't really know how to deal with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's a pretty. I mean, we don't really do that much with fire.

[Dan]

No Samsung phones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got them. That's. Wow. Dated burn.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's good, though.

[Dan]

Very dated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but a burn. For sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

He deserves it. You can. He's just relaxed. He's vibing.

[Dan]

I don't ding myself. That's not fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was his.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I said it was a burn.

[Dan]

Sorry, I'm out of it now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Dan]

There you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, I think since then, we've kind of, like, swung back the other way a little bit, and I think things are pretty reasonable these days. I can't promise that I'll always, like, you know, go get a proper ladder to climb a warehouse rack or whatever, but, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Or install a projector.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, it shouldn't be other people. So my line has always been I can basically do whatever I want because what am I going to do? Sue the company? It's my own liability. But I can't have people under my charge getting injured. So I will. I will. I will give people a pretty hard time if I say see them. Like, someone was going to ride that stupid go kart from the wasting money on tech ads video without a helmet. And I was like, yo. No. And they were like, well, you did it. And I'm like, doesn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm putting. You are. How do I say this? I'm talking as Linus right now. I'm putting me at risk. You are putting me at risk, but on yourself.

[Dan]

Lead by example.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I should.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I should do better. No, he's not wrong. No, he's not wrong.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Dan]

But also both of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Dan]

I don't have a narcissist button for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Dan]

Yet. Hello from Texas. In your recent overclocking video, you said intel benchmarks higher than amd. Is there any value left in synthetic benchmarks if they can't even show accurate relative performance?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. I mean, for years, we didn't include 3dmark or any other synthetic benchmarks in our GPU reviews. My mouth is too dry to swallow. These are horrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do you keep getting them? You get them every time. You get the same thing every time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they're just.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have a variety of snacks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's something to settle my stomach, and they're not a lot of calories.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is there nothing else like that over there?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not really. That I saw.

[Dan]

There's candy figs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Those fig bars. Those are a decent amount of calories, aren't they?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And yes, that.

[Dan]

I think we're out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, they're. They're. They're basically. They haven't been relevant for pretty much ever. I don't really know what to tell you. Like, they. They can be somewhat of an indicator. They're a data point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also, sometimes people specifically want to, like, compete on that thing, which is fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's totally fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I guess there's value in that.

[Linus Sebastian]

But technically representative of anything other than its own competing against itself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love.

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love the opening of this. Sorry.

[Dan]

Other than conduit. I wonder if this is the same guy. I replied to saying conduit. I'm sorry if that was me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hellmark says probably was. Dennis left a week earlier than Alex and Andy. Not sure why he left. It seems like it was on good terms. It seems to me it was on good terms, too. I'm actually. I'm not. It's his news to break, but I'm very excited for him. Yeah, I think he's. I think he's still stealth mode.

[Dan]

They're then. Conduit. Sorry, guy. Do you guys have any home remodel tips? Tech or not tech, my entire home is exposed right now. Possibilities are endless. Conduit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The dude conduit. I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

[Linus Sebastian]

The draw to just say conduit is so strong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Run the power. Now, if you. If you think about it for longer than. I'm gonna say, five seconds. If you look at a spot and you think about it for longer than five seconds, would it be good to have a power outlet there? Put one there. It's like, so useful. Or. Or hear me out. Put conduit there. Then you could put anything there. Actually, I Don't think you can run high voltage AC through conduit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Seems like a good idea. Paint goes a long way. Even though I've never done it, I'm still going to say that.

[Dan]

Think about your heating and cooling.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. If you want to do like surround, you know, a surround speaker setup or something somewhere, now is the time to run all the cables. Even if you, like, can't afford the receiver, you know, the like $6,000 Atmos receiver or whatever yet that. That'll be 600 bucks someday. So put the wires in.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like that. Which you could do with conduit.

[Dan]

See, my response was reasonable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it'd be cheaper to run the wires now than to run conduit everywhere you'd put a speaker though. Wire's cheap. Conduit is actually pretty costly to run anyway. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just like conduit.

[Dan]

Have you guys seen lossless scaling on steam? You can use a second GPU for frame gen while your first one does native work. Would love to see results with a 5090.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have seen it. We've been wanting to make a video about it for a while. We have not gotten to it yet. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry your tech tips are late. We will do it.

[Dan]

Hi, gang. Looking at getting my first house question for you guys. Would you get a retro house and modernize it or buy something with all the new tech already installed?

[Linus Sebastian]

Tough question.

[Dan]

Why are you both doing this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I'm looking around. I don't know. I think in our area, it doesn't help that, like, a lot of stuff, if you look at, like, idealized pictures of, like, cool places online, a lot of that type of architecture doesn't really exist in bc, like, at all. When I first started with my realtor, he was like, do you have any ideas of what you're looking for? And I was like, well, I can send you, like, a bunch of pictures of things that I found online that I like. And I sent it to him and he legitimately broke down. Like, here are the reasons and the history behind why none of this exists here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, nice. Okay. BCs, like, kind of young.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

And full of wooden structures, a lot of which the really old ones are, like, not in a great state.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're made out of wood. Yeah. The BC box, stuff like that. So I don't know for us, kind of depends. I would also look into the. I like the idea of retro house and modernize it personally, but there's a lot of problems with that. And you have to look into what are the particular difficulties with this house. And then one of the problems with that is that the market often moves really fast. So by the time you can like come up with an idea or a plan, it's gone. So it's. It's tough. I like that option more on the surface, but it. It doesn't always feel like the most realistic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Andrew 21:19 has the solution though, minus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Town, that that is the solution, realistically to all things.

[Dan]

It's a good idea. It's a good idea. Hello, Dll. I'm a doctor and many of the hospitals I work in are now using AI to record patient encounters and help doctors write notes. I was wondering how non med people felt about this. Good answer, Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a huge problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean. Okay. Actually, you know what? It's not like the stakes are very high. Sorry, I tried to keep a straight face. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did I spit on you?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. I think it all got caught by your filter so I was trying to see if I could see it because it was such a high volume.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's food bits.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was so much material.

[Dan]

I'll put it. Well, I don't change Luke's filter very often.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, dictation is not fine. Dude, the number of times that dictation does not work and obscures the meaning of what I'm saying is wild. Like literally, if dictation worked, then texting and driving should be a thing because it should be able to just dictate to me whatever someone said and I should be able to dictate back to it. And I should be able to carry on essentially a phone conversation with text. Except literally nobody has launched that because literally everybody knows that that is not ready. No, it's not good enough. I'm sorry, I can't even. Okay, carry on.

[Dan]

Hey, Duke, Dan and Dynus. Love the content. Me and the. So, just finished playing Split Fiction. Wondered if any of you have tried it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I tried it very briefly in the video with my son where he chooses a console which is not out yet, but that was it. I literally played it for like three minutes. So not yet. It looks pretty cool though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have it. I wanted to play with Emma. Just haven't really found the time yet. But we still intend to. It's not going anywhere. So that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That like classic, classic Steam library building mentality.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, fair enough. But that. That studio I think it is that has made what it takes to Split Fiction and something else. They're all these like co op only games that have Been honestly, they're a way out. There we go. Really cool. A way out was very fun. That was their first one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yvonne and I finished Unravel two recently. Was fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's good. Just something to do. Something to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Oh, I threw one out. I'll find it in a sec. Wan dll I remember when you used to give actual tech tips like Registry and OS tweaks to make the user experience better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you.

[Dan]

Do you miss those kinds of vids and why don't you do them anymore?

[Linus Sebastian]

When the heck did that happen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

When did I ever give a registry tweak?

[Linus Sebastian]

What.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that a thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that an AI written merch message?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you not attack our customers?

[Linus Sebastian]

Bad after I said it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Jeez, I'm sorry. Okay, so this is always. This is always interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean it's happened, but it was usually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So do I miss giving tech tips? Okay, we've got a silly project that actually includes many useful tips for. For sound deadening. We've got a very useful tech tip for building a really great performance inexpensive PC. Here's a fun project where we talk about basically just overclocking. Here's a review of a game console. I'd say that qualifies as a tech tip. Switching to Mac for a month. I'd say there's a lot of tech tips in there. Things that are good bad about the the Mac ecosystem. Summary of Apple's WWDC 2025 here's some news about the new Xbox console. Okay, this is probably more entertainment. We do lots of tech tips. Oh, we got. We poked around in the registry in this one actually showing how Windows Recall worked when they first launched it, how it works now. Here's GPU review. I don't know. It's a really interesting narrative that LTT is just entertainment. Just because something is entertaining doesn't mean that it is just entertainment. No, I do not miss the days of us giving tech tips because they didn't go anywhere. Here, let's continue. Here's like an AMD ultimate tech upgrade. I'd say that's more entertainment.

[Linus Sebastian]

Didn't you do Registry? I'm assuming I didn't watch it. I'm assuming you did. Registry tweaks in the how to set up Windows properly video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually, no, there's more to it than that. We did get into some. Some more advanced stuff. Oh wait, I think we did end up in the registry at one point. Yeah, you're right. So we had to go back only three weeks to find two videos where we End up in the registry, evaluating best system integrator, reviewing a VR headset, looking at a. An evaporative style cooler with no pump. I don't know. It's. It's. It's really weird the way that. And I think, yeah, I think I contributed to it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's just people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I contributed to it in a big way. I think I talked about how we want to make tech entertaining. I didn't say it's my fault entirely.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's only. Not only is it entirely, it is only Linus's fault. It is no one else's fault.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're right. You're right. If anything happens, it's because it was about me or something. Press the button.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, right. Just press the button. No, I think, you know, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hit me. Dan.

[Dan]

Question for Linus, for semi serious gamers who don't really do social games, what do you recommend? Steam Deck, Ally or Switch two?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't do social games. You're semi serious. Are you really considering a switch 2?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You want to spend that kind of money?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's odd.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Semi serious. I mean, I don't know. Get a Steam Deck. Steam Decks, it's such bang for the buck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Price is amazing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like the Allies. Great. It's a more powerful piece of hardware. And you know, especially don't discount the Ally. Xbox X. Xbox Ally X, whatever the one that's coming is called. You know, that's. That's coming too. But they're not price comparable. Right. Like, if you just want to play a lot of games, then Steam Deck is such a. Such a great package.

[Dan]

Wave one. OG Backpack owner back for round two?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Heck yeah.

[Dan]

Has there ever been a service you've been banned from? And if so, why Comptia, I guess. Club Penguin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I. My A plus certification was rescinded when I talked about the experience of obtaining it in a video. I don't know. Is that a service? That's the last thing I can think of that I've been banned from.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm trying to think. I know I've been banned from things. I just don't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I've been a public figure for so long that it's sort of inherently. It's better to just not engage with me if you're. If you don't like me rather than like ban me. So probably there have been some, some risk calculations. I'm just assuming that.

[Dan]

I don't remember my commuter backpack fell off my low coffee table and my laptop screen. Absolutely Shattered. Are there any suggestions for better protecting the corners of a laptop when in the commuter bag?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, man, we, like, we do have the. The buffer zone in the bottom because we anticipate that people are going to, you know, kind of drop their bags down a little bit.

[Dan]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But like, I don't know what. I don't know what to tell you. It's not a pelican case. Right. So, like, electronics is heavy. High. High weight. Density. Mass density. High density. That's the word I'm looking for. They're high density. They're fragile, I think. I think be more careful with your stuff. Might probably be in order.

[Dan]

I had a packing sleeve for mine in a backpack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's true. You can get laptop sleeves and then you can slip the whole sleeve with the laptop in it into the. Into the thing. But Taran Van Heemard used to. Used to always talk about reducing potential energy when you ever. Whenever he would take. He would like, whenever he was going to walk away from a camera that was on a tripod, he would. He would take it off and he would put it on the floor. And I'd be like, you're coming right back. And you'd be like, but it has lower potential energy there. And so I think reducing the potential energy of the things that you value in your life is probably the best advice that I can give here. That. Or that that backpack probably shouldn't have been on the coffee table. I'm surprised that it was damaged from that low, even if it wasn't in a backpack. But freak accidents happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or if you want to have fun, increase potential energy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Drop it from a roof next time. Yeah, that'd be fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'd be more entertaining.

[Dan]

Onto an employee's car. Hello there. What is stopping Nvidia from always displaying the default amount of rops instead of the really available number in tools like GPU Z? Also, discount free yearly float OG payment, please.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yearly? Yeah, we'll do it sometime maybe. Or not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, I am not aware of there being a discrepancy between the number of what? There's a description. Sorry. There's two different numbers for, like the. Like the operations pipelines. Am I missing something here? Sorry, I have absolutely no context for this.

[Linus Sebastian]

I lasered more in on the float plane side of it.

[Dan]

Displaying the default amount of rops.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Instead of the really available number in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tools like GPU Z. Livin says he's talking about when the GPUs were missing ROPS. So those 50 90s. Okay. Why couldn't they just fake the output in GPU Z. I truthfully am not the developer of GPU Z and I don't know exactly how they measure.

[Dan]

It's like magic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All of this metadata off the card. That's a. That's a wonderful question for the developer. Super cool. Very interesting.

[Dan]

Any updates on the Zuck shirt?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Dan]

Hey Luke. Luke and Dan, thoughts on Sam Altman's take that AI outputs should be private, similar to doctor patient confidentiality or attorney client privilege?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Feels like. Feels like a can of worms with a lot of potential for unintended consequences. I mean, generally speaking, sure, yeah. Pro privacy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But also like, is he just trying to shield his own company from liability for something that his AI said to somebody? Potentially most likely like why am I protecting open AIs?

[Linus Sebastian]

I was trying to figure out what this statement really means. Because you can just run an AI locally and then because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Notice he's not advocating for the user input to be private. So why do I care? No, actually I am reversing course on this one. I don't care about Sam Altman's privacy and I. I want. I want AI companies to be held accountable for potentially negative consequences in cases of say for example, encouraging self harm.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could derive. You could derive. You could often derive what the input was from the output.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Can of worms. I don't think this we are not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Going to solve AI policy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right now on the Wancho 17 hour question. To be honest.

[Dan]

Great question. Hey DLL, is the OG backpack updated with the two bottom layer or is it the singular going on 20 days waiting on it in the U.S. i.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Believe all the ones shipping today should be dual layer. But I'd like to remind everybody that all of the ones that did ship with a single layer carry the trust me bro virtual dual layer guarantee. So if for whatever reason your single layer rips through or wears through is really what we'd do be talking about if you like put a knife through it like I did. No amount of two layers would prevent that. But if it wears through, we got your back.

[Dan]

Adam says all dual layer since mid 2024.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

And remember the. The trust me bro, it is specifically Linus. There's no one else here that. That oversees anything that could potentially have anything to do with the products.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean when it comes to major expenditures like changing warranty policy or whatever else, I generally do get consulted on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's actually fair, I guess.

[Dan]

Good day. Humanoids specifically Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what up?

[Dan]

Any chance of opening up some small projects on GitHub for floatplane so that community members can help with debugging and improving floatplane. Much ADHD love.

[Linus Sebastian]

Every time I talk about this stuff, these people get really angry.

[Dan]

Just say it's complicated. Next question.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's complicated before I go. Next question on it. Managing those things is overhead. That might be honestly enough to explain it. I understand that people would want us to do it. We have some stuff that is open. A lot of the labs work is open. You can go check it out. We also contribute to open source projects ourselves, but just making our stuff public and then needing to look over other people's contributions. This is actually very recently. I mean, we've been talking about AI a surprising amount on the show today. This has very recently become a big problem because people have been contributing to open source with AI slop. And it's taking senior developer time to sort through or maintainer time. I should really say it takes maintainer time, sometimes very senior maintainer time to sort through all of this AI slop contributed garbage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And basically he's telling you guys you're not skilled enough to contribute to Flow Plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're a private company and as much as there's more features that I know people want and there's problems here, there and stuff like that, we'll try to figure it out. The team is really small and we are aiming to hopefully try to expand a little bit soon here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And the mental burden of checking someone else's work compared to doing your own.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not about to ask my people to do that when they already have so much work. Yeah.

[Dan]

Linus, you sent me a dm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Dan]

You want to show that off before or after the last merchant?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's do our last merch message first. That's true. I'm not like me now.

[Dan]

Hello, Lenny. Luky Dan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At least it's not dinny Dookie. Lan. It doesn't matter.

[Dan]

Yeah, get better. Anyone?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dookie.

[Dan]

Get better on the insults. Am I blind or rack studs gone from LDT store?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're gone. They decluttered the store. They moved really well when we first launched them. And then they like stopped moving. So we were like, okay, now what? And then we discontinued them.

[Dan]

And then I have a picture. Would you like me to show the picture?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Looking good. Looking good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the. I bought the decals.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I was gonna say how do you get the lettering back on? But I guess you just. Okay.

[Dan]

How did you get all that orange peel? That's gotta take real skill.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. He's gonna Come over and kill me. No, I'm beautiful.

[Dan]

No, no, that was a joke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there's ton of orange peel.

[Dan]

Okay. No, I was just, just being mean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And honestly this is one of the better looking pieces.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's paint dummies. Can you explain what orange peel is?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Orange peel is a non smooth texture in the surface of the paint that looks kind of like the texture of an orange peel. So instead of being like mirror, like in its smoothness it has little ripples in it and it is the mark of an inexperienced paint sprayer operator and or suboptimal conditions.

[Dan]

Which is why I said that to be only mean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yes. Oh yes.

[Dan]

Not knowing that there was orange peel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sorry, dude. It's a, it's a, it's a ten foot job. It's a ten foot job. I'm resigned to that. Anyway, I found this really cool company in the UK I think that specializes in basically just like having a, having vinyl paper and just like printing stickers. I paid like 80 or $90 for these stickers and then a handful of others that go on the bike. But their whole shtick is that they have the graphics for like basically every vehicle. So if you want to redo a bike like this, those vinyl stickers are actually under the clear coat out of the factory. So there is no way to like remove them and, and, and, and, and salvage them or something. So you just, you like sandblast them off and if you want it to look factory except a different color, then you have to, you know, go, you have to produce them yourself or you have to like go find it. And most of the graphics, I shouldn't say most but some of the graphics are more complicated than just the letters. S U Z U K I. So yeah, so I ordered custom decals from them and I actually think it's, I think it's going to end up looking pretty, pretty factory. I'm very excited. So that's with my one clear coat on it. And then I've already done two shots of clear coat on all the black which means that the very last thing left I actually would have shot two coats on this. But the reason I couldn't was because a couple little fluffs got on it and it was still tacky. So I couldn't remove them without damaging what I had put on it already. So I need to wait for it to cure, then I can like get those fluffs out. I'll hit it again with clear coat and then I am done. The shop says I will ride in July.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is pretty exciting.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's just a API front for now, but Noki made a version of the little guy, apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow, that was quick.

[Dan]

This vibe code he used Comic Sans, which makes me deeply, deeply happy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I want to try that soup. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do we. We don't really, like, have, like, someone whose job is to, like, do wan show things at this point, do we? I think it'd be pretty cool if we ate that. No, not you have. You have other jobs. I mean, we kind of used to have someone whose job was to kind of, like, prep things for wan show, and we don't really right now ask.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fans to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we could. Okay. We should eat soup from there.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should next wan show. How well did the little guy pre, pre, pre, pre, pre alpha do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I want to eat that soup next wan show.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Dan, do you mind arranging that with Vance? Maybe?

[Dan]

See, there you go. Now you get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan, can you delegate, please?

[Dan]

There you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There we go.

[Dan]

That's. Now you're learning about management. I came up with this idea. Somebody else do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And someone else do the outro. We'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

See, I'm just. I'm just outsourcing my subcontractor. Yeah, yeah. Someone in the way. I introduced build little guy. I don't know what's going on.

[Dan]

Bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Show now.

[Dan]

It's a overlay of the whole.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whole stream.