I’m Buying A Tech House - WAN Show October 3, 2025

Summary

The WAN Show Podcast Summary – “I’m Buying A Tech House” – October 3, 2025

Hosts: Linus Sebastian, Luke Lafreniere
Date: October 4, 2025
Podcast: The WAN Show (Linus Tech Tips)

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Episode Overview

On this lively edition of the WAN Show, Linus and Luke dive into the ambitious new "Tech House" project—a plan to buy an ordinary home and turn it into an unbelievable showcase of cutting-edge smart home technology, all while grappling with the practical, ethical, and financial considerations of such a project. The hosts also tackle major tech news, including speculation about the future of Xbox, EA's massive private equity buyout, buy now/pay later tech, the end of Windows 10, and much more. Throughout, they riff on everything from personal finances and company culture to AI deepfakes, delivering a potent mix of insight, hilarity, and characteristic WAN Show chaos.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Tech House” Project (02:26–34:21)

Concept Origins & Company Values

• Linus introduces the main theme: “We don’t have anything left to upgrade in my house… so we’re going to get a tech house that is not a tech house, but we’re gonna make it a tech.” (00:22)
• The origins date back to former LMG employee Colton trying (with humor) to pitch the company buying him a house, subsidized by LMG.
• Ethical considerations are prominent. Linus acknowledges discomfort with buying “residential housing as an investable commodity,” especially in an expensive market like Vancouver (05:31).
  • “I kind of have a sports day approach to sort of housing allocation… you should probably wait till everybody’s had their first.” (04:27)
• Linus wants to ensure the project, while cool, doesn’t promote housing as an investment commodity or trigger audience backlash.

Practical Execution & Tax Implications

• The plan: Buy a “normal” single-family house, ideally with a basement for more content options (06:00–06:50).
• They’ll keep it at least two years (new anti-flipping tax implications).
• Concerns about how to value tech upgrades (like giant TVs or custom setups) upon resale, since their worth isn't easily quantifiable—“We don’t know how to value that.” (10:39)

Content Strategy: Tech Upgrades & Audience Input

• Linus wants to crowdsource ideas and gauge audience interest in “not tech” elements like new floors or cabinets with high-tech drying and airflow (18:27–21:50).
  • “Putting in new floors… if this is its own channel, yeah, I think that’s fine…” (18:45–19:05, Luke)
• Examples include integrating electronics into kitchen cabinets for drying dishes, automated airflow or humidity sensors, and concealed tech solutions (21:10–21:50).
  • Linus: “Is that techy enough if we put some fans in a kitchen cabinet?” (21:36)
  • “What if the fans were RGB?” (22:01)—naturally, the team jokes about how RGB is the threshold for “techy.”

User-Friendliness, Green Tech & Hidden Innovations

• Linus wants the tech to serve a wider audience: “The target audience shouldn’t be someone who’s willing to tolerate half of the things being broken in their life.” (30:40)
• There’s a push for hidden, seamless tech (e.g., a living room where no tech is visible, sensors to monitor air quality, potential for solar panels or geothermal systems). (29:18–30:56)
• Emphasis on “green tech” but practical limits acknowledged (27:14–27:28).
• Request for audience ideas on conduit placement, air quality, water filtration, etc.

Memorable Quotes

• Linus: “Everything I wanted to do with my own house, I want to do in this one.” (09:50)
• Luke: “You know, offer a year of quarterly tech maintenance for free, as long as you can film it after the sale.” (15:39)
• Linus: “I don’t want that to be my problem. But I do want everything set in such a way that whoever takes it on could use the stuff.” (16:17)
• Big Nerd Gaming House—the audience names the project (31:41).

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2. Tech News & Hot Takes

Xbox in Crisis? (40:11–49:38; 112:36–127:32)

• Xbox pulled from Costco shelves, second price hike on hardware, Game Pass Ultimate up to $30/month, and Microsoft laying off staff.
  • Linus: “Xbox might be dying, so that’s pretty cool.” (00:22)
• The future of Game Pass: Is it still a value? The cost/benefit and audience suitability are debated.
  • “I don’t think owning your games makes sense anymore.” vs. “I want to support the devs directly and own my games.” (119:11–125:41)
• Comparison to Netflix price increases, effects of Activision acquisition.

EA’s $55 Billion Private Equity Buyout (49:46–56:13)

• EA is acquired by Silver Lake and Saudi PIF in the largest such deal ever.
  • Concerns about non-gaming and political motivations: “This is about Saudi Arabia using the cultural power of games… using our industry for political and economic gain.” (48:43, quoting journalist Christopher Dring)
• Would private equity ownership improve things for gamers (by escaping short-term shareholder pressures)? The panel is skeptical.

End of Windows 10 (130:46–137:13)

• Support for Windows 10 ends soon; some businesses dumping hardware rather than upgrade.
• Fun speculation: Would you pay $30/year to run your “ideal” version of Windows forever, but with modern security/features?

AI Deepfakes & Chatbots (34:39–38:33; 137:12–143:50)

• Luke receives a spammy “AI Linus” message—raising uncomfortable Black Mirror vibes and lack of consent over likeness use.
• OpenAI launches Sora 2, showing off deepfake video and voice capabilities. Major concerns about privacy and parental controls.
  • “They do know that Black Mirror was not a playbook that was meant to be followed, right?” (36:24, Linus)

Buy Now, Pay Later Tech (143:50–167:28)

• Linus, Luke, and Dan debate the merits and dangers of BNPL services like Klarna, and their moral responsibility as a company.
  • “We’ve been pretty vocal critics of buy now pay later schemes on WAN Show.” (146:09)
  • Audience feedback highlights international differences (e.g., BNPL’s normalization in Sweden vs. US/Canada credit card culture).
  • Key tension: Is it freedom of consumer choice, or does it enable bad habits and financial harm?
  • “Klarna is like sucralose, whereas credit cards are sugar. It’s way easier to pay $20 than $200… your bills blossom.” (159:33, Dan)

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3. Company & Community Updates

Staff Departures and Legacy (38:33–56:13)

• Linus comments on departing employees, maintaining that LMG wishes all former staff the best, and desires a “legacy” of empowering future tech creators.
  • “If Linus’s legacy… is a bunch of offshoot channels doing incredible work… that’d be pretty cool.” (53:59)
  • LMG as a “springboard”—not a trap.

Sustainability & Brand Transparency (57:21–68:29)

• Linus reflects candidly on declining YouTube viewership, LMG’s brand as a large company (not just “a guy in his house”), and his refusal to sell out to private equity or “the Saudis.”
  • “I think the only viable option would be to bow out gracefully rather than sell to PE.” (59:33)

Labs & Content Strategy

• Labs aims for massive-scale product testing (180 GPUs benchmarked!) and tech articles in addition to video (“what labs should be doing”).
  • “We’re a product-focused channel—lots of people want budget content, but the economics keep us chasing high-end gear, too.” (74:13)
• Drives for more serialized content (“Tech House,” “Minimum Viable Product” series) to reconnect with the audience.

Merch Messaging & Community Engagement

• LMG’s interaction model—merch messages—allows fans to interact while getting quality goods.
  • Witty discussions about supporter nicknames (“Float Goats”) and accidental innuendo.
  • Whaleland gaming event recap; LMG staff get obliterated by the “whales” in Unreal Tournament 2004 (92:02).

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4. Quick Hits & Memorable Tangents

• Xperia and Pixel Phones: Linus excited about small Android UI change (navigation button order on Pixels), and nostalgia for Sony Xperia (81:00+).

• AI in Everyday Tools: OpenAI’s Sora to allow shopping via Shopify, raising implications about AI becoming a center of e-commerce (142:07).

• ICE Tracking Apps Pulled: Google and Apple remove apps helping report ICE locations; Linus draws attention to the hypocrisy compared to when similar tools were banned in China (180:15–182:53).

• Cool Tech Moments: Lab articles, retro gaming, LAN parties, wild vending machines at Whaleland, and 250GB+ of data run through local networks.

• Audience-Driven Show: Multiple in-chat polls (on techified cabinets, non-tech content appetite), floatplane community input, and freely winding tangential discussions.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Tech House Announcement/Planning: 02:26–34:21
• Community Legacy & Staff Departures: 38:33–56:13
• Xbox / EA News & Analysis: 40:11–49:38; 112:36–127:32
• Buy Now, Pay Later Deep Dive: 143:50–167:28
• Windows 10 EOL / Nostalgia: 130:46–137:13
• AI, Deepfakes, Sora 2: 34:39–38:33; 137:12–143:50
• Phones/Nerd UI Banter: 80:15–86:56
• Whaleland Recap: 91:59–100:10
• Labs Scale Testing (180 GPUs!): 173:19–175:39

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Linus, on selling to Saudi/PE firms: “As for me, would I sell to the Saudis? No. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t think there’s…” (51:27)
• On financial responsibility: “I’ve never made a discretionary purchase if I don’t have cash. You gotta be kidding me.” (156:38, Linus)
• On AI deepfakes: “They do know that Black Mirror was not a playbook that was meant to be followed, right?” (36:24, Linus)
• Luke, critiquing user interfaces: “...You could accidentally trigger the back gesture from either the left or right... I like having the back button right here.” (81:00+)
• On legacy: “My goal was to start little fires, right?” (54:04, Luke)
• On transparency in YouTube businesses: “We’ve just been extremely transparent... that doesn’t mean we are any different from necessarily any other YouTube operation, right?” (63:01, Linus)

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Tone, Language & Vibe

As always, the WAN Show is loose, riff-heavy, and packed with asides—an ADHD-friendly ride punctuated by in-jokes (“Float Goats,” “Throat Plane”), banter about company life, and meme-laden tangents. There’s a strong sense of self-awareness about their brand, business challenges, and the state of tech culture. Linus and Luke are unafraid to air out their own flaws, debate ethics, and critique the tech industry—all while engaging the audience with open polls and live feedback.

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Final Notes

For listeners who missed the show:
This episode offers a unique blend of transparency about the tech creator economy, serious debates on the ethics of “techifying” real estate, and refreshingly honest commentary on hot-button news—wrapped, as always, in comedic banter, audience engagement, and rapid-fire tangents.

Key takeaway: The “Tech House” series marks a major new audience-driven content direction for LMG, while the rest of the show reflects the team’s growing pains, evolving ethos, and ongoing journey in remaining both relatable and ambitious as a tech powerhouse.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

What's up, everyone? Happy Friday and welcome to the WAN show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hi.

[Linus Sebastian]

You okay?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your stomach went crazy right when this show started.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got a great show lined up for you guys today. We're gonna be talking about our plan. See, we don't have anything to upgrade in my house. Oh. So we're going to get a tech house that is not a tech house, but we're gonna make it a tech. And we're gonna need your help because there's gonna be a right way to do this, and then there's gonna be all the other options that we have available to us, and we want to know what direction you guys want to see it go. We're also gonna be talking about. Oh, yeah, Xbox might be dying, so that's pretty cool. Like, literally, Costco pulled Xboxes off the shelf like crazy. What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a huge. Yeah, like, you got a big moment.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? Anyway, what else we got this week?

[Luke Lafreniere]

EA is going private in the largest private equity buyout ever.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you were gonna pick good news.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you think it was bad already? Wait for what's coming next. And speaking of coming next, after that, we have various ad hoc Linus topics, which I'm unironically excited for. That'll be good. That'll be a good part of the story. It's going to be a very good part of the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

What does that have to do with sexual innuendo? The show is brought to you today by MSI Forum, Squarespace, and XSplit. And of course, that is alongside our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Secret Lab. See if I read them faster. Having more sponsors doesn't actually take up anyone's time any more than it already did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like that. We got to get to the point where you're like an auctioneer. You gotta, like, actually take auctioneer classes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they're like, I don't think. I don't think I could do it. I really don't think I can talk that fast. Especially not with these cutting up my mouth.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Once the braces are out, maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's jump right into to our headline topic, which is, of course, the tech house. This has been on various stages of front burner, back burner, side burner, afterburner for probably years at this point, with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In different forms, varying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Varying degrees of sort of plausibility and different people sort of supporting the initiative.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But at one point, it was a hotel.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was kind of different. Okay, that was pretty different. But I'd say the origin of the idea goes all the way back to Colton basically trying to figure out how to get Linus Media Group to substitute his home or subsidize his home. We were pretty clear that that probably won't make a ton of sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's really funny, because a lot of people in Full Plan Chat seem to be convinced that it's my house.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, just buying a house for Colton. So. So I think his original pitch to me was something along the lines of, okay, hear me out. The company buys a house, I rent it for cheap and live in the basement, and the company uses the upstairs to do tech house things, and then if I like it, I'll buy it after. And I was like, so basically, you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just want the deal Luke had, which was so good. So I can't blame him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Back when we were working out of the Langley house as a studio, and I pretty much was like, colton, you understand the hundred or so reasons, namely all of your fellow employees, that that is not fair, and we cannot do that. Right. He's like, okay. But we've given it a lot of thought, and we've kind of assessed a lot of the different options, and I think there is a path forward. Now, if you're a regular watcher of the show, you'll probably know that I'm not super comfortable with the idea of residential housing as an investable commodity, and it's not something that I want to participate in. I kind of have a. I kind of have a, like a. A sports day approach to sort of housing allocation. You know, they brought some food. Everybody's working hard, everybody's hungry. If you want a second one, that's totally cool, but you should probably wait till everybody's had their first, you know. Right. Just be a good fellow citizen. And to be clear, you know, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn'T know where that was going, but I like it. It's a good analogy.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. No disrespect to anyone who, you know, does landlording stuff or whatever. Everyone's got their own personal sort of value system, and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. And, you know, no disrespect for people who have a vacation property or, you know, whatever else. I think if you have a cabin by the lake somewhere, you know, that's that power to you or whatever else, but it's not for me. And so finding a way to buy a house because, like, what, we're going to lease one and make a bunch of improvements to it? Like, you got to be kidding me right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. So. So Buying, buying a house, finding a way to do that in a market like Vancouver, which is quite literally in the top, if not top three, definitely top five most unfavorable housing markets in the entire world for the sole purpose of making videos in it. The optics aren't great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Questionable at the very least.

[Linus Sebastian]

Definitely questionable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I came up with an idea that I think people are mostly going to vibe with. So I'm thinking we find something that is probably not easily within reach of the average Vancouverite, but something that from at least kind of the outside will look like kind of a normal single family home in a lot of like, you know, the United States, Midwest or whatever. You know, like it'll, it'll be kind of a, you know, small yard front and back. And I'm aiming for like anywhere between about 1800 square feet, 2500 square feet. If we could find something that was a touch on the bigger side, like 28, 2900 square feet and it had a basement level, I think that would be pretty cool because that would unlock a lot of content options like sets.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Areas to work on, things to do is, modes for the house to be in.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's more cool stuff that we can do for sure. Right. And then the idea here, and there are some, there are still some like tax and some tax implications especially that we would have to figure out around this. But the idea, don't hold me to this, is that we would buy the house, okay. We would make a bunch of tech improvements and the law stipulates that, or tax law stipulates that when you sell an asset it has to be for something resembling a market value. Right. Because otherwise you could, you could make the argument that are we still live? It appears so. Otherwise you could make the argument that if you bought it, for instance, you would be receiving like a cash equivalent benefit. Right. Like if I were to say I, oh, I bought this house for $1,000,000. Very funny. Haha. Vancouver. Yeah, right. But I bought this house for $1 million. And Luke, I'm not going to, I'm not going to pay you at work this year, but I'm going to sell you this house for $10 a nice. Don't worry about income tax. Right. Because you didn't have any income. Right? Yeah, well, the government thought of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's really.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, right, exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Jerks.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you're not, you're not really allowed to do that. When you sell something, you have to sell it for something resembling a market value. And look, we can, we can talk all day about whether that rule makes any sense or whether we like it. That's just the way it is. That's the way it is here. And we get audited frequently enough that it would. It would be noticed even if we were like, oh, yeah, well, we're just gonna. We're gonna do it anyway. So. Something that I noticed, though, is, you know, between my own house shopping over the years and chatting with other folks who have also been shopping for homes, is that occasionally people do sell a home fully furnished. And one of the things I've noticed about that is that the pricing generally is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Doesn't change.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not very reflective.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of all the stuff that's in the house, which kind of makes sense because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It didn't come fully furnished, but it was genuinely really close. And that was valued at literally nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

The dead guy stuff, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So here's my idea. We come in, we buy the house for, let's say, a million dollars. We do a bunch of stuff on it. I think we're gonna have to keep it for at least two years. Have you seen the new. The new taxes on. I don't know if they're in place yet, but they. They're either in place or they're coming on. People who flip a house in less than two years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's. I. I saw that. I don't. I don't know if that's confirmed yet, honestly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're probably going to need that much time to, like, do everything to your own.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so, too. I think we're gonna have a lot to do. I'm gonna.

[Luke Lafreniere]

With the amount of ideas that I've thought of just sitting here so far.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. I want, like, oh, man. I want to do geothermal on it. Like, I want to do. I want to do so much stuff. Basically everything that I was budget constrained or time constrained or constrained by the fact that I have to live in it, Everything I wanted to do with my house, I want to do in this one. And one of the conversations I had with James was that, okay, let's get to the conversation with James later. First, let's finish the thought about how we're going to do this. So we spend our couple of years working on it, and then whatever market fluctuation has happened in that time, we basically go, okay, how about this? How about just making sure that we cover all of our costs? Because not everything we put into the house is going to be sent by the manufacturer or a sponsor or whatever, but just to cover the stuff that we have to put in ourselves and whatever the market is, it goes out like that and we just. If we put in the world's biggest TV or whatever. I don't know. I mean, it's in there. Like you might not like the tv. So we don't really know how to value that. So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because the. The actual house and we put it.

[Linus Sebastian]

On the market.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Value. It is super sketch to sell below a certain amount.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mm, yeah. You like, can't you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you can, you can sell it cheaply.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Even though we probably wouldn't because we're gonna put a ton of money into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like way more than would be reasonable. Like if we bought a house for 1.5.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do you decide we could buy it though?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, okay. So see that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cuz I. Since I've heard this idea, I've been stuck on that part. So how does that work?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I'm not really there yet. We're. We're probably three to six months from actually purchasing it. We're probably six to nine months from uploading the first video in it. And we're almost three years from when we're gonna have to deal with this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Speaking of someone in full plane chat, is it? Barred from employees.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you and Elijah, I think, are now the like 8th and 9th person to bring up that you're going to be the one who wants to buy it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

So hear me out. Whole new series this time. Sponsored by Nvidia. Nvidia. $500,000 ultimate house upgrade. I mean, they got the money for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my goodness.

[Linus Sebastian]

They could afford it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we turned, we turned the entire channel into just like a tech house. Renault channel. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so after the first one, we just keep going.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, why would we have to have this one going at a time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got to wait around for a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Year worth of content. Oh, easy per one. So like it kind of does potentially make sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's why Elijah says, how about we fight each other to the death. The winner gets it. Elijah, you don't want to fight Luke. That's actually fucking stupid. My guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's people at the company though, that would be very terrifying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, okay, so anyway, since Unlike some other YouTubers, I'm not actually trying to create real life Hunger Games or sorry, rather the other one. Let's talk about the conversation with James. Because a big part of the issue with a lot of the upgrades that we did at my house was that there was no. There was no customer for it. Like, I was just kind of doing weird stuff that I would do for myself and so I ended up with a lot of stuff that was never really fully finished. Squid game. That's what I was thinking of. That was never really fully finished or that didn't really make sense for most people. Right. Like the average person, like, if I don't know who's going to buy a house, I have to reno it in a completely different way from if I'm building some weird thing for myself. So instead of using Home Assistant, I probably use Homey. You know what I mean?

[Luke Lafreniere]

See, I'm so. I don't even know Homey.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're looking it up. Yeah, yeah. So this. It's basically. It's kind of. It's along the lines of what Home Assistant is trying to do, bringing all the disparate ecosystems into one management platform. But it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it just more user friendly but more closed?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's more user friendly and it's. And you have to like pay a subscription. Whereas Home Assistant, you can do everything yourself, I believe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Home Assistant.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. In fact, there's. There's one bloke that I can't say much about because he's working on some cool stuff that I can't say much about. But maybe Home Assistant could get more user friendly in the future. I mean, we're talking about something that we're not going to deploy for a couple of years at this point, but I'm basically just using that as an example of how we might do something a little bit differently. Instead of having a cooling loop that is run into the walls of the pool to cool the mechanical room, we might just do something where we have like. Yeah, we might just not do that. Just. Just an idea or, or some. Or some of the cool ideas that have actually worked out really well at my place. Like the LAN room is awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could offer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, like we could just. But we could do it more user friendly. We'd make sure that there's actually, you know, power buttons, you know, next to all the machines. You know, we'd have like a nice little plate in the wall that has all the IO and everything offered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One year of quarterly tech maintenance for free. As long as you were allowed to film it after the sale. Has to be an offer. It can't for sure go with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Be interesting to see like the decay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if that would be free because I don't Want to do it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mmm. I was just be fulfilling.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it wouldn't be you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't know. I. No commitment. No commitment on that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'd be interested to see how the stewards of the home, like, took care of the stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't want that to be my problem. Sure. But I do want to have everything set up in such a way that conceivably whoever takes it on could use this stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, like, are you going to rip to studs?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if we'd have to. I don't know if you saw. Did you see Josh Chan's AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't watched it yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a lot of open walls. But he didn't have to just rip all the drywall off either. Like, they're all things that you could conceivably patch. And he managed to wire up a lot of that place with Ethernet as he needed to do. And so I would want to not be gratuitous about it, but I also wouldn't want to hold back. The idea would be that we're buying something that has kind of like the original kitchen cabinets in it from 1993, you know, like, was. It was overdue for a bit of. A. Bit of a spit shine anyway. And then as we go and do that, we're gonna techify the place. So, like. Oh, man. Ah, shoot. I'm trying to remember who it was. Someone reached out recently. They have this really cool mapping solution for setting up your WI FI access points. And it's, like, super sophisticated. And I know, like, Ubiquiti has stuff like that, but this one looked really cool. And one of the reasons that it jumped out to me was that Joel Crane, who used to work at Metageek, is apparently there, and he's a super smart guy. And so I was like, oh, okay. Well, yeah, if Joel's involved, then maybe this is really cool. And so, you know, we would go in and as we're figuring out where to put all of our Ethernet runs, we do an episode on WI FI coverage, mapping, and just all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the improvements we'd be making also wouldn't be tech, like putting in new floors and home reno stuff. Okay, here's a question for you guys. How much appetite would you have for the. The not tech aspects of this? Like. Like, and I want to. I want to hear from the audience. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, not tech aspects.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so. So here's. Okay, so here, let me. Let me give you Let me give you a spectrum of things that are more or less techie and I. You can tell me where you think the cutoff is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So putting in new floors, hardwood floors in the living room.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Honestly, if this is its own channel. Yeah, I think that's fine. I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, it wouldn't be its own channel in its current form.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this is just.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was just joking about like having an Nvidia sponsored home Renault channel. I wasn't serious about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If, if this is on ltt, I think an episode of putting in new floors is probably not going to be that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's fine. That's fine. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Unless you do something weird with the floors.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's where I'm going next.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm getting there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. New kitchen cabinets. But. And you know there's not, it's not much tech but one of the things that I have found myself wanting in my place, like if we'd redone our cabinets. I had this idea that it turns out is not my idea because I've seen it done elsewhere now. But I want to be able to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Take this still be your idea if you thought of it before you saw it.

[Linus Sebastian]

My flippin dishwasher never gets things completely dry, especially plastic. So like the little like Rubbermaid or Tupperware containers and stuff that you put kids lunches in and stuff like that, they're never dry when they come out. And what is even the point of having a drying cycle if I can't immediately take stuff out of my dishwasher and put it away? So one of the things that I would love to have in the kitchen cabinets and we'd probably end up diying this is I would want to bake in airflow to the cabinets so that you can put everything away wet and then there's just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this is a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh right, you said that.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what makes it, what makes it techie er is I'd want, I'd want to like DIY it. So we basically have like noctua fans. We have like, we have like, like a humidity sensor inside or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Turn on if. I mean most of them I'm just, I'm pitching here.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm pitching.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a rack. The bottom of the shelf is instead a rack and it just drips into the sink because where are you gonna have the runoff water go?

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm not expecting to put things away wet. Wet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there are like sometimes there's a, there's a cabinet above the sink and the bottom of the cabinet is just a rack that is just open and it just drips into the sink.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that I wouldn't be able to do everything like that. Like, that would only work for, like, it's a rack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a hidden drying rack.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like, I don't. That's not what I want. I want. When I pull everything out of my. I just want some air flow water run. Well, I'm not. So I'm not imagining that there would be a ton of water on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how wet your plastic things are when they come to your.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I'm willing to give them a little shake before I put them in. Right. Like I. Or like, you know, if there's a couple pieces. A cutlery is usually pretty good because it's metal, so it tends to retain a lot of the heat from the hot water, and then that helps it kind of evaporate off of it. But, um, I'm just. I'm. What I'm asking is this. Is this. Is that techy enough if we put some fans in a kitchen cabinet? Let's boil it down to that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a little rough, but once you start getting the humidity sensors and stuff like that, I think it gets maybe. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. What if I didn't have a humidity sensor?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if it wasn't just fancy cabinet and you just flip a switch? I think that's a little rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Personally, what.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you guys think? Do you want us. Want to throw. Want to throw a poll on the float plane people there, Dan, See if. See what they think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now we know. We know the poles don't work perfectly.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's like, what if the fans were rgb?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It doesn't change anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, no, no, no. Hold on. Are you sure? Like, okay, because you know how you'll have your. Your kitchen cabinets that are closed, right? Hear me out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm hearing you. I'm. I'm writing a note.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. Okay. You know how you'll have your kitchen cabinets that are. That are closed, like they're solid. Right. But then you'll also have your display ones, right? Like, that's where I keep my. My. My glass from Timmy Tech tv and any that you like collectibles or anything like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Timmy Tech T. So what if.

[Linus Sebastian]

What. What if as part of your. Your more techie cabinets, you have like RGB strips in your display cabinets or something like that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we. Are we getting there? Is it moving the needle for you at all?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just because I think I hate that so much more than leaving it alone that I wouldn't want to see it.

[Linus Sebastian]

What if it wasn't like, what if you didn't use the RGB to turn it green and purple? Like, what if it was more just like. You have color temperature control lights, so you can have them have like a. Like a cooler light on your display or, you know, whatever. All right, I want to see the results here. Are cabinets techy enough?

[Dan]

Not sure if I got what you were going for, but that's okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. Yeah, that. No, that's fine. Okay. It seems pretty split. It looks pretty split so far. So. Okay, good to know. But I think we're probably on the same page that as soon as there's any kind of humidity sensing. What if we. What if the humidity sensor was really hard? Because it turns out humidity sensors can be a bit of a challenge. I was looking into making a cabinet, and I understand it's called a humidor. I don't smoke cigars, but I wanted to make a cabinet for storing badminton shuttles.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the reason for that is that high humidity will help the feathers not be as brittle when you're playing, so it makes them last longer. Now that they are so flipping expensive, that's kind of a bigger deal than it's ever been. And one of the things that I ran up against is, like, consumer commodity. That. Actually, not that. Not that simple. Most of the DIY humidor stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Buying a humidor.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm assuming most of the DIY humidor stuff that I've seen is just like, essentially putting, like, bags of orbeez into a sealed wooden container. Like, like very unsophisticated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do you just non DIY purchasable humidors stay humid?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, they're small. They're for cigars for the most part. It turns out that most people are either building a little. Little tiny humidor. So cute cigar. Or they're building an industrial humidity environmental chamber.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The cigar sniff was amazing. My goodness.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you tell I've never smoked a cigar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was slightly convincing, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like. All right, well, thank you. So. Yeah, there's not really much in the in between. Nobody is talking about how to store badminton shuttles in a humidor, believe it or not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right, let me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But humidity detecting devices are all over the place.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right. It could be really hard to tune it for just like a little bit of. There's a little bit of moisture on a torso put in here. That's my main concern. But okay, what about this? What if I had, like. What if I had an opening sensor on the door, and whenever you open it, it kind of assumes that you're probably doing something and it blows the fans for a bit. Would that level of automation make it techy enough?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the spirit of that level of automation, sure. I think that application sucks, but I think I get your point of, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, how about this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some form of trigger event.

[Linus Sebastian]

What if all the shelves. What if the shelves were quite custom? And what if they. They had. They were made out of some kind of cool material that allowed everything to be put away wet, and there was, like, integrated, like, drainage channels and stuff in the back or something, so you could put anything on any shelf you want and even, like, soaking, dripping wet and it would, like, go somewhere or something without molding. This sounds disgusting, but let's say we could do it hypothetically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My current brain, due to current events, is like, no, because of all the mold.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, sure, but we design it so that it can be hosed out. You take your dishes out and you can hose them down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The problem that I see with that is just. I don't see the tech integration there. Maybe if you did it with, like, PC water cooling hardware.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, why does it have to be PC water cooling hardware? I mean, nothing. Nothing else about the house is going.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To be PC water cooling hardware. Could eventually just be, like, copper pipes and whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kind of irrelevant.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think that's necessary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I agree.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right. Either way, I don't think we're that far.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it couldn't just be angled metal trays, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

And fans. And fans and. And custom shelves that are perforated. And we'd have to build in, like, an airflow path. We'd have to have venting to somewhere.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could this be. Is. Is any of the goal of this place also, like, green tech? Like, are you doing solar panels?

[Linus Sebastian]

It would have to be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could this be, like, water reclaiming?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, there's not enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it wouldn't be worth it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In my brain, your dishes come out so wet. I'm continually realizing that is not.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it runs a drying cycle, Luke. It just doesn't finish everything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've just. You've always, like, massively stuffed your dishwasher loads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'm, like, not super surprised. They come out a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Five people live in my house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't blame you.

[Linus Sebastian]

And no, it's the plastic stuff, because those Rubbermaid Containers. They have the little, they have the little ridge on the bottom that makes them stackable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so it's like a pool up there. It can't dry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's, it's frustrating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm trying to find.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, anyway, did you guys have anything that you particularly wanted to see us do in the tech house? Like, I've got a whole dock of ideas, but if there's any brilliant ideas you guys have, I'm super open to it. Like I want to do conduit basically everywhere. I want to do it differently in my place.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh man, I hope this isn't like pseudoscience junk, but I'm rather certain it's not. I'd like to see like CO2 management.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Just like monitoring.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if you're like landing in the basement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And the CO2 levels get really high, like do something so airflow starts getting better.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think an alarm that goes off is probably about all you'd really need to do there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean that's like a ten minute project.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. But that could be part of just like an overall episode on Air Quality Manager. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Air quality management I think would be pretty sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. We actually have a video coming soon on, well, soon tm, but we've been looking into like monitoring water quality as well for like microplastics and stuff like that. So like, like a whole home filtration system is something we would absolutely be looking into for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're not going to be very healthy due to all the gaming. So we're going to do whatever we can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd love to do more with like hidden tech. So, you know, having a, having a restroom, for instance, where it's not obvious that there's a giant TV in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My like eventual goal is for my living room area to not look like there's basically any tech going on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And the TV is the toughest one I've heard of. All kinds of just wackadoodle implementations of like hidden TV panels or like they like come out of the ceiling and frickin like they're on like these like motorized arms and stuff. I don't think we'd go that far because. Right. Coming back to my conversation with James, the target audience for this house shouldn't quite be me. It shouldn't be someone who's willing to tolerate half of the things in their life being broken at any given time because they want. They just wanted to tinker with it. Right. So I'm imagining. But I also don't want to just go. Full money is absolutely no object. So we're just going to like, hire a contractor and spend $100,000 on an articulated TV mount.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think we need to hide the TV, but I do think a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Buried subwoofer in the backyard so that we can shoot shake the entire back lawn so we can annoy our neighbors or whatever. Like, we don't have to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really like the idea, though, that it seems like a fairly normal house and then you see the like, utility closet or wherever where you have like a little server thing running, and then you're like, wait, what's going on in here? And then it like has to be revealed from there all the different cool things that are happening.

[Linus Sebastian]

AJ says he hooked up sensors to listen to fire and CO2 alarms from his central kitty system. So I could see modifications of like factory. Factory monitoring systems. Right. Being something that would be additive. So that way, like, they could still just use the Telus app or whatever for their, for their monitoring. But if they, you know, if it's working at the moment and if they feel like tinkering with it, there could be another level deeper that they could go. Like, that would be one way to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know of at least one CO2 and humidity and some other stuff. Sensor that has just an API.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you could, like, set up just a little box that doesn't look of much consequence and tie event triggers into them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Man, I am. Oh, wow. Euroblue suggests we call it Big Nerd Gaming House.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm so into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not bad at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Big Nerd Gaming House. The bngh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not bad. It's not bad. I like the acronym.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Did these guys have any particular suggestions? Oh, UVB and UVC air cleaners. Okay. So that's something that I'm a little sort of on the fence about is there seems to be a lot of conflicting information about exactly how clear you necessary or clean you necessarily want your air. Like, air quality from a pollution standpoint here is not a major concern.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It's basically just if there's like a fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And so I. I don't know that we would necessarily put like hardcore air filtration into the place, but I could see us putting in something that would be like, compatible with something like that in the, in the central ducted air conditioning or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Depends on where you live. But like, and I know this is a House. But like my apartment has massive issues with people who smoke both. I mean, a variety of things. Cigars, cigarettes, weed on their balconies.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then it flows into other people's units. That's a bit of an air quality annoyance.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jack33 in floatplane chat says I have air filtration. It's amazing if you have a neighbor that smokes. Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Matt man asks, have you considered not buying the house and taking applications to rent of someone else's property? We've considered that, but the reason we wouldn't do that is because we're expecting this project to take place over one to two years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, that could get so annoying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. We can't be up in someone's business.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For that long. It just doesn't make any sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It sounds cool. And then you really need to film and they have like a big social.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thing or they have a baby.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's kind of what I mean. Something a family, event level social issue. And like it's really not acceptable to go in there at that time. Oh, trash networks in chat. How's it going? Carbon filters do great at removing smells. Works great with Frank the Snake. Then I'm going to use my float plane privileges and post a Frank the Snake.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Thank you for that, Luke. That's very helpful. Why don't we jump onto our next topic then since clearly we're done with this. You want to pick one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. We can continue the ad hoc topics.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should probably do some of the topics that we announced that we would. You know what? No, it's up to you. You pick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I announced ad hoc topics.

[Linus Sebastian]

You did, but that's like six topics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have a weird follow up. I got an email.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got an email. Really? That is our number two topic of the show. That Luke received an email from character.

[Luke Lafreniere]

AI emailed me from me and it said, linus Sebastian, you a message.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey. Hey.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So remember when we were chatting with the wild world of AI and relationships? So I open it up and it has picture and Linus's name and it said Linus Sebastian sent you a message. I haven't clicked on anything. This doesn't seem okay at all. That's crazy. That's wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. I mean, I can go look at it. Wow. It just keeps talking. It's just been talking.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huh. So what's the. What's the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so both.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the. What's the rest of this message here? Sorry, I can't read it. It's a little bit small.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, hey, so remember when we were chatting with the wild world of AI and relationships? Well, guess what I just stumbled upon in the depths of the Internet? People using AI voices to recreate their X's just to have one last conversation. Can you imagine? That's a rough suggestion from character AI, a website that you could do that on. It must be super surreal to hear a machine mimic someone you used to have a connection with. But here's the thing. Do you think that might bring closure or just stir up old feelings? That is so gross. Oh, I don't even feel good after reading that. That is so icky.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do know that Black Mirror was not a playbook that was meant to be followed, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's such a. Like, you could do this on the site that you're currently on, by the way. Recreate your ex. Do it now. Like, that's what that message is.

[Linus Sebastian]

It could give you closure. No, it won't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or it could stir up old feelings.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's probably more likely. Also, like, if you're in a headspace where that even sounds remotely like a good idea, I guarantee you it is not the closure one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I had never clicked on it. I didn't know it was that bad. I don't like that. That's weird.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't like that. That's my name and likeness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not even a little.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So not okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's super duper not okay. They're lucky I'm not litigious. But I will state for the record that I am 100% not okay with that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, look, I just noticed you have a. You have a job.

[Linus Sebastian]

I what? Look, I have a job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You host Linus Tech Tips.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So this is, like, very literally, definitely me. And the only plausible deniability they have here is that these are user generated. These are submitted by users. So if anyone was thinking, hey, I should submit Linus to one of these things, the answer is, I'm not okay with that. So you can kind of take that for what it is and you can make a weird.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What. What's. Some. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thing. But you might as well know you're doing it completely without my consent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wanted to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not just without my consent, but against my express wishes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can also pretty much guarantee that I could get this thing to say something that you would hate.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think that'll be necessary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I won't go through it.

[Linus Sebastian]

But, like, I think that's quite enough of. I think that's quite enough of talking about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Watch this. I'm gonna alt shift five it. There's. There, see, now the topic is done. Why don't we jump into one of our other topics? No, here's another quick one. Zip Tie Tuning uploaded a video today. As many of many, many of you have been pointing out in the chat and in terms of, you know, what to say about it, I wish I could say more. I miss the days of like, you know, people's last day bringing them on to WAN show and like you know, doing a whole. Doing a whole thing posting video. I know it's gotten far more complicated. So as we mentioned before back when Alex and Andy announced their channel, our policy is not to comment on staff departures, whether it's on good or bad terms. Because unfortunately it turns it into a situation where if we comment and we say something good, then people will make assumptions whenever we don't comment based on whatever we don't say. And those assumptions are usually super wrong at best and super, super dumb at worst. So what I will do is I'll reiterate that we make the best efforts to part on good terms that we can. We wish Alex and Andy nothing but the best. And since we're on the subject, Jake has also come out of stealth that he's departed. And we wish him nothing but the best as well. Just like we wish everyone who has ever departed Linus Media Group, one way or another, nothing but the best in their future endeavors. All right, that's Forrest Gump style. That's all I have to say about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Xbox or ea? Which one you want to do?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, one of them is this like as a one night stand or is this for life?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The other one is kill.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is kill.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I have to pick do and kill. Yeah, there's insane. Is that a thing? Is this like, is this a game people play? I've never heard of this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What is this? Do and kill. Okay, Dan, me and Luke do. No, I can't. Well, no, he's. Better not.

[Dan]

Let me get my list.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my God.

[Dan]

You heard of slash fiction?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Wait, you have you actually not heard of this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, oh, oh, Mary Kill. Yeah, okay, I recognize that. I've never played that. I've heard that. I've heard that. I've heard those words together in that order before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I was trying to avoid saying the first one because I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because your mom watches.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, but my Steam deck was behind my.

[Linus Sebastian]

My laptop stream deck. But yes, that. See, I knew that was gonna be a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It. Yeah, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

From day one, I was like, for sure. This is going to be a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was, like, kind of annoyed when they announced the name just because of that. But, I mean, I don't know, whatever. Which one?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't even remember the options anymore. So hit me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Xbox or ea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, ah, Xbox.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which one is it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Oh, what? Oh, you're gonna actually make me do this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm just messing. We can do the Xbox topic. I don't even know how you break that down.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what? No, no, no, no. I'm gonna do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna do it. Okay, so let's weigh some pros and cons. EA wouldn't treat me right, but it would support me financially with all that FIFA money. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Microsoft would also support relationship microtransactions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or is it Microsoft?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, because. Yeah, see, that's the thing. No, the topic is Xbox, not Xbox.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Has a really, really high chance of leaving you.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I'd probably be happier with Xbox while I. While I was with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You might not be with it for very long.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not because. Yeah, but what a ride.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You might have a really fantastic relationship and then they just dump you for no reason.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, even though you did really, really great all of the time, we just spent all of our money buying other studios and now we need to lose some costs. So you just released a game and you won't release a game for a while or you just did something nice and that means you won't do something nice for a while. So we're gonna break up with you.

[Linus Sebastian]

On that subject, by the way. Oh, Linus Laptop is apparently dead on that subject. I don't know if you saw based Linacon being like, oh, I can bring that up. I told you so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's just lower in the dock.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, is it? Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. There we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Click it. Press button.

[Linus Sebastian]

Press. Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah, just, you know, being like. Yeah. So remember when, you know, Microsoft wanted to buy Activision Blizzard and I was all like, this will lead to higher prices and. And layoffs. Well, yeah, I told you so. So here's a plot of Netflix's price increases over the same period of time and game passes, price increases and how they were kind of tracking somewhat, you know, ish. Like, kind of like they would. And then there was a massive change and. Oh, by the way, that line right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There, almost exactly one year after acquisition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Cool. So, yeah, and that's on top of the. Like Exodus. Of. Well, I shouldn't say Exodus, because Exodus is our exedi. Are voluntary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So this is. This is after Microsoft has closed studios.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Laid off staff and of course because she's. She's. She's too base to say I told you so. She didn't actually say that. She just kind of like drew the whole situation out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. I've said this before, but Lena, come to Canada. Come be our prime Minister. I'd be okay with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'd be great.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'd be super down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She just vote for you. I'd campaign for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

She has. I would too. She has just such a. She's a shining beacon of. Well, obviously common sense in a world that has a severe lack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of the aforementioned. Well, obviously common sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm married already, but I'd have your babies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love. There was. There was someone who asked Grok under her tweet to figure out the inflation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And cost of power increases over the same period. As if those wouldn't have also affected Netflix.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is amazing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Watching people twist themselves into logic pretzels.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I need to be abused as a consumer trying more of my.

[Linus Sebastian]

Trying to shield. Trying to shield multi. In some cases. You know, companies with trillion dollar valuations from. From being criticized. Why do you just love the taste of leather? It's not leather that tastes like that. It's the dye. It's not healthy. It's not good for you. Oh, kills brain cells.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like. It's like licking the boot is not enough. We have to fill it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ye. Which is difficult, but they try really hard so some of them accomplish.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, I'm gonna go EA because at least it can support me financially and it'll be around. I mean, what's the worst thing it ever did? Kill a couple journalists?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It might. Oh, can I go there?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, so why don't we get into the topic? Do you want to read through the doc?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Xbox might be dying and it's doing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no, we're doing ea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Never mind.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't say that. And then we not give them the context.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Good, good call. EA going private in largest private equity buyout ever. On September 29th, EA announced that they have been acquired by Piff, Pif, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners for $55 billion. Silver Lake partners is managed by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son in law. And PIF is a Saudi Arabia fund that. Which already had a roughly 9.9% stake in EA, but also has many other video game investments, such as a minority share in Nintendo. I did know about that. Each shareholder will be receiving $210 per share, roughly four $40 more than the trading price the day before the deal was announced. And many people and gaming journalists showed concern for this deal. Given that both the history of PIF and Jared Kushner's relationship with one. With one journalist, Christopher Dring writing in quotes, the numbers just don't add up. The offer almost values EA at 20 times its annual cash flow. There's clearly something more at play. And then end quote. Or wait, no, this is just a really long quote. This deal is about Saudi Arabia. This is about using the cultural power of games to shift its reputation and perception both locally and internationally. This is about building up a game development industry within that country. And it's about the Saudi's history with the Trump administration and in particular Jared Kushner. Ultimately, this is about powerful men and regimes using our industry for political and economic gain.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's attributed to Christopher.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Christopher drink.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was all a quote from the numbers Donuts. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Next bullet point, no longer quote. How will this affect the company's day to day operations? Will remain to be seen. But in the employee FAQ asking about layoffs, EA's response was there will be no immediate changes to your job team or daily work as a result of this transaction. This partnership gives us the ability to move faster and unlock new opportunities on a global stage. Discussion Question for years, the online meme or default has been to hate on EA for a lot of their practices in the game industry. Whether it's effective, sorry, aggressive microtransactions, or just boring repetitive titles like their sports games. Theoretically, is a private buyout the solution to this? Since the new owners are no longer legally bound to improve shareholder value as a private company and instead could maybe do what the players want.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, if that were the case, then every private equity buyout would be good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, so argument already in shambles.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I mean public shareholders, you have a fiduciary responsibility to a private shareholder as well. The only difference is that it's going to be dictated by whatever private agreement you signed with them rather than whatever public agreement you have with them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's okay. If they get too much backlash over this, they'll just buy a bunch more celebrities and it'll be all right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Have you seen what's going on in comedy? Oh yeah, right now it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's been pretty. It's been Pretty fascinating to watch people's principled stances fold in half. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't need that much money, bro.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know? You don't know that. I'm just. I'm just saying. I can't speak for. I can't speak for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would you sell to the Saudi government?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's your. What would your.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, but I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably. But what would the line be?

[Linus Sebastian]

But I don't need the money. So that's what I'm saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there a line, though?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on, hold on. I want to finish that point first.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So the point before was they don't need the money. And what I said was. You don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was talking about a particular one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't. I don't. I'm not talking about anyone in particular. Yeah, I know there are multiple ones that have taken very principled stances in the past.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that clearly for whom free speech and the things that they supposedly stand for were not as important as this payday. I do not. I cannot say definitively that every single one of them doesn't need this bag. That's all I'm saying. As for me, would I sell to the Saudis? No, I don't. I don't. I don't think there's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If all you had to do is like, hey, the crown prince is like a super cool dude. He's pretty awesome. I like hanging out with him. I wish I could spend more time with him.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've been invited to Saudi Arabia and Dubai on probably more than a dozen occasions over the years. You didn't know that because I've never gone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what if it was like a billion dollars? It wouldn't be. But what if it was?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I. This is. This is about to go to a very different place.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We don't have to.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, that's fine. Different place. I didn't say a bad place.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I don't know if you noticed, but we uploaded a compilation video of Scrapyard Wars 10 yesterday. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if you. If you checked on it, but over a span of the first four hours, it got 15,000 views, which is. You know. You know, that whole LTT really fell off meme, you know, where people be like, what, Only a hundred views in ten seconds LTT fell off?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, actually felt like that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I. I had to think about what that would mean. Right. If. If all of a sudden that tanked our channel momentum to the point where every video was going to get you know, 20 to 30,000 views. I had to think about what that would mean. Right. And there was a really cool comment on one of the. I think it was either on the ZTT video or it was on Reddit. I can't remember where I saw it, but basically, ztt, zip, tight tuning. Oh, Zach's tech turf, see. Oh, I use Z and Z interchangeably. I don't really care. Whatever flows better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what was I saying? Really? You derailed me for that. You know what, I had it coming. You probably owed me a few of those. Oh yeah, I saw a really cool comment that basically said something along the lines of if Linus's legacy at the end of all of this is a bunch of offshoot channels doing really incredible work, having cut their teeth at Linus Media Group and Creator Warehouse and Floatplane and who go out and go forth and create incredible content and products and technology for years to come, you know, long after he retires. Well, that'd be pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Technically at its root, your goal was to start little fires, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, yeah, that was, that's how I've always described it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a pretty crazy version of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is. It's not a way that I had necessarily thought about it as much before, but I mean, it's cool though. One of the, one of the nuggets of wisdom that has stuck with me from the owner at NCIX was from when I, when I submitted my resignation and he tried to talk me out of it a little bit, but once he figured out that I had made up my mind, he basically said, okay, well, let's figure out how to do this. And I was like, oh, that was it. He's like, well, nobody works at the same place forever. And I just, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, of course not. Like, of course I wasn't going to work here forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And people totally do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And see entire cultures, Japan, that are like very largely based around that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not here anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not here. Yeah. And, and I mean NCIX itself had only existed since I think 1996 or something like that, like, or 94. I can't remember exactly what year it started, but like NCIX was a relatively young company when I, when I left it in, in 2012, like it's only been around for 15 years. Like, why would I assume that I was gonna, a 15 year old company or 18 year old company or whatever it was, I was gonna work there for, for 65 years. Like that's not, that's not Realistic. That's not a reasonable. Or until I was 65. Excuse me, that's not a reasonable assumption. Right. And so it was something that I've, that I, you know, I, I, I valued keeping the same team around. I've always been like, try to keep the band together kind of, kind of person. I mean, you know that. Right. But, but I also recognized that that wasn't going to be possible forever. And the best case scenario was that people would, was that Linus Media Group would look really amazing on a resume. And I wanted that. Obviously, if people are really great, like, I'd rather they work here, but if it could just be an amazing centerpiece of your job history, well, that's pretty cool too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At this point, it's the only part of mine that matters at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What else did you have? Like picking blueberries and like cutting lawns, like on a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was part of this. I know. It's like line items. What did I do? That should just be my only two line items. What did I do when I worked here? I picked blueberries and mode lawns. No, I think I'm trying to remember. Technically, NCX before then was self employed. Before then would have been Bread Factory.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So like, okay, before Bread Factory would be more self employment, but also Geek Squad. So like, dude, I don't know, what's the point? Sometimes I will get resumes from people that have like quite a few years of like their career. And then also like, yeah, I worked at like McDonald's and Best Buy. It's like, I don't think I needed to know all the way back. I don't, I don't, like, I don't, I don't know. There's so many different opinions on how resumes should be made. I try not to judge too many of the small decisions, but like, yeah, I don't know. It doesn't mean anything to me at that point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Coming back to what we were actually talking about, which was, you know, where I was going up, one of the places that my mind went, seeing that performance on the channel was, okay, what if this is it? Right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because really for the scrap, they always do really bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Although not that bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But this is also one that everybody just saw.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not even close to that bad. And they just watched this one. Well, it's not happening in a vacuum though. We, we had our lowest day for viewership in years. Like three days ago. We are about to have our lowest day for View, our lowest month for viewership in probably about five or six years. This year so whether, whether you want to point at. I don't think it's all viewpocalypse, right. So whether you want to point at, you know, an aging out or interesting out audience, or whether you want to point at sort of my various controversies or hot takes or, you know, whatever over the years, I think there's a, I think there's a natural decay in interest in a public figure or in a band or in a TV show. Any form of media that takes place. I don't think anything can be popular forever. And so I've, I've been telling myself since the very, very beginning, someday my son will set right. It will happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And, and so, you know, there have been various times over the years and you know, because you've had a front row seat for all of it that I've sat there and I've gone, okay, maybe this is it, this could be it. And hold on, because I still need to answer your question. I'm getting there, I promise. And so when I thought about that, right, like, I have options. I could still sell the asset. But when I was sitting there thinking about it just now, and this is no guarantee of what my actions would or wouldn't be because it was just, you know, dark thoughts at a dark time, right. I was like, no, I, I think I, I think the only viable, I think the only viable options would be to bow out gracefully rather than sell to pe. I don't, I don't, I don't think I would want to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't pull a Jack Sparrow, ride the ship into the harbor just like as it sinks.

[Linus Sebastian]

And, and, and the only, like the, the thing that bothered me most about that thought was that our world class team would have to update their resumes with hopefully a really outstanding piece to put on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would you like part it out?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, we could.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is a weird line of thinking to even go down at all, especially publicly.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like, yeah, I mean it's not impossible. Technically, Creator Warehouse is a separate company from Floatpl, which is a separate company from Linus Media Group. I think those are the main ones. There might be some other companies that kind of do little things here and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There at this point. If you shut operations down, shutting down Floatplane would hurt other creators.

[Linus Sebastian]

But tell me this, you know what, what would be better for. Let's take, let's take it, let's take a completely hypothetical, right? Like, what would be better for someone like a Colton and the team at Disneyland if we parted out their department and sold it or if we did a severance package that gives them a little kick in the ass and then they go and create an agency, what would be better for them?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would it be viable for it to be an option?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I have no idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it's viable for it to be an option. Like each individual can either take a severance or keep riding the wave and see where it goes. Then I think that would be the way that I would like it to go. Leave it up to the employee.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm. And I think it would have to be something that would be a conversation.

[Dan]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because not everyone would feel the same way that you would. To be very clear, like, it's. I don't actually think that this is the end. And one of the. One of the. Cool. Yeah. If there's any employees watching right now, don't worry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was honestly very surprised when I saw that title come up as a newly published video. I was like, really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I didn't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right after, right after the season.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't know we were doing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not surprised. It's not getting views.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It's all good. But like, just. Anyway, the point is, don't, don't, don't freak out because we are still operating extremely sustainably. We have. We're not done a very good job. We're not one thing now of diversifying. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And sometime it's. It's another group's turn to hold the ship together.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. And that doesn't mean that, you know, one group that's. Is that no one else is carrying any weight or anything like that. It just means that we are. We're a bigger machine. Which comes with the disadvantages of being a bigger machine. We're not as nimble as we used to be. I think our brand has suffered a lot for being so transparent about the fact that I'm not just a guy in his house making tech videos. I mean, a lot of. A lot of YouTubers, whether you guys are aware of it or not, or you think about it or you don't. Are enormous machines with lawyers and agents and employees.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this has been really surprising to me. I've been having more and more conversations with creators over the last two years especially.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you don't know that because it's just them in front of the camera looking all like. They're just them in front of the camera.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One or two bit operation. You end up figuring out it's like 15. It's like, whoa. Like, where did that come From.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we've just been extremely transparent about it. But that doesn't mean that we are any different from necessarily any other YouTube operation. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And some of them don't want that disclosed, which is why I'm not naming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, yeah, right, Because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's a perspective thing to go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Back and do it again. Right. Like, it has clearly been not beneficial to our brand and to my image for us to be a corporation and for us to put our employees front and center. Right. Like, from a, from a corporate standpoint, was there any benefit to. To the corporation to people gaining notoriety here and then taking that and going out and doing their own thing? No, of course not. Personally, I'm happy to see people spread their wings, but from a corporate standpoint.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, from a corporate standpoint, it should all hyper feed into Linus fame.

[Linus Sebastian]

It should. Exactly. And, and, and boosting Linus's image, like, it's, it's not, it's not good for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're like our creators that will label work done by their employees. It's just theirs because that's their brand.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is totally a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know. And it's been, it's been very fascinating to watch. To watch the way that, that my image has sort of been morphed over the years. Because I'm not perfect. I make lots and lots and lots of mistakes. Yeah, see, exactly. Right. I make. I make tons of mistakes. But some of the things that I have done over the years were done with a very high degree of intention. Like one of the things that I do when I co host with people is I make myself the foil, the clown, the one who asks the silly questions or pretends that I don't understand it. Like when I was shooting with Charles interview style stuff. When I was shooting with Charles Thugger. So we had the video that came out earlier this week chasing Overclocking Records. And then we had the one that came out before where we were looking at his Sub Zero chiller that we purchased off of him. He hasn't really worked with me very much, especially not on camera. And so what kept happening when we were making the video on the chiller is I would ask him a question and then he would explain it. And then I would have him. I'd have him do another take and I'd ask him again. He'd be like, I just explained this to you. I'm like, no, no, it's just for the camera. Like, I understand it. And he was like, oh. But apparently I was so convincing in pretending That I didn't know what he was talking about in order to get. In order to get him to be the one to explain it. It's his baby, right. He built it. And so to me, I feel like he should have a chance to explain it. And it's just been. It's been. It's been fascinating to. To watch the way that that has been sort of turned into that. I'm all about me 100% all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Observing your own fame or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't know. I. Oh, yeah. I remember where. Where I wanted to go with this. I've been trying to figure out what it is that makes this podcast, or livestream, whatever you want to call it, tolerable to anyone because do you even remember where we started here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Well, sort of.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would I take the Saudi money?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. So you know how everyone who works here, like, has add?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You think?

[Luke Lafreniere]

All the viewers do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think they must. It's the only way any of the. This could make any sense so that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They can come with us.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm trying to imagine someone in their car, right? Like they're. They're driving, they're on a road trip somewhere, and they're trying to listen to this bullshit and follow along with it. And it's just like, Dan, hit them with a pole. You got to hit them with a pole now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do. I do think that makes sense because I was at an event earlier this week.

[Linus Sebastian]

I suspect you guys all have exactly the same problem as me, which is why you don't even realize that it's a problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I was at an event earlier this week and I tangented before I really started a proper sentence like four or five times. And I paused and apologized, and both people, like, physically recoiled from the apology and were like, don't worry, we both have 80. It's fine. We were following you. I was like, okay, nevermind, we're good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lordy. Yeah. Okay, so we're sitting at around 69%. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah. Jira Soul in Floatplane chat says we are ADD Borg. Resistance is. Oh, butterfly. What was that? Oh, I was going to say something about. Oh, right. Yeah, the diversification. We really appreciate our float goats, by the way, along with the people who support us through what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Float goats is crazy. That's new, isn't it? I don't think I've heard float goats.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not new.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you heard that before?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yikes.

[Dan]

No, I have not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's wrong with float goats?

[Dan]

That's messed up, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Describe the Float subscribers. Float.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Floating.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They've really good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, they don't. They don't fly, but boy, do they ever. Like, they sit on the top of the water like the greatest of all time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very nice. When they're floating, I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

What am I missing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Something feels good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this sexual?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? Goat. Greatest of all time.

[Dan]

What rhymes with goat?

[Luke Lafreniere]

For sure. Moat dad. What? Runs with float? No, not goat. Runs with float.

[Dan]

Rungeon guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Float.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you actually not get this note? Do you actually not get this coat? Are you getting better at acting?

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Float.

[Dan]

This is extremely adhd.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dote Iot. Foat. Goat. C G Hoat. I Iote.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oat.

[Dan]

Katrin.

[Linus Sebastian]

Joat. K coat. L lote M mote. N note. O oat p pote q quote. R rote. S sot tee. Tote. Oh, he's so close.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tote. What's another T1? Pick a different T1. I was 1. 100% convinced he was just gonna say it and then get it. And then he said.

[Dan]

There you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good.

[Dan]

Good job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You completely bled me with the tote. I didn't see tote coming at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a word. What do you want from me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

For sure, you're right. I just didn't see it coming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Carry it around a little. Just bring it with you. Throat goat. Ridiculous.

[Dan]

What were we talking about? Adhd. I think you were talking about adhd.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We were coming off of the back of the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was thanking our foes. I have a lisp. It's a disability. You can't make fun of me for it. I'm a protected class, though. Our float goats stop our supporters on float plane. Are you happy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Okay. So I was thanking our supporters on throat plane. I'm just bugging them at this point for helping make us more resilient against any kind of interruptions in our. In our business. I think you guys might have seen not that long ago when we did the how does that LMG make money video. That AdSense is like, less than 10% of our revenue now, so we are a lot less susceptible to momentary changes in momentum on the channel. But we do have to figure out how to get viewership.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look, it's a throat plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's actually pretty cool. Was that the one that was made for that car that was, like, manufactured across the Atlantic or whatever? Is that the military plane that carries planes? Oh, no, that's a different one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't actually remember what it's called, but C5 Galaxy. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Anyway, if anyone else wants to subscribe on floatplane, that's cool, but we do have to. We do have to figure out the viewership thing. And I think the tech house. I think that doing some. Some bigger serialized content is going to be a huge part of getting. Getting back to the way things were. And also I want to do some more back to basic stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

So Plou.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want that to happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

When Plouffe came to whale Land, he didn't want to haul his, like, giant alienware. And as someone who owns a display, he doesn't mind purchasing a display. So he just went to Best Buy and was like, okay, what is the minimum viable monitor? And he got a 1080p. I want to say it was 23 or 24 inch IPS for $70. So we're just gonna. We're just gonna like make a video about it. It's like, actually, that's not. That's not a bad title. Dan, can you send that to Plouffe? Minimum Viable Product or like Minimum Viable Monitor. Like, maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe that can be a series really quick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Yeah, I think we could have like. Yeah, series. Let's just call it Minimum Viable Product. So Gaming Monitor, Minimum Viable Product, Episode one or something like that. Buying it. Buying the. Buying the bare. Minimum. Gaming Monitor, Minimum Viable Product. Or like something along those lines. I think we could make Minimum Viable Product a series. So MVP is. It's more of like a software term for like your. The. The basic sort of spec that you think is. Is shippable, but I guess. I guess you could also use it in hardware.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's used in a variety of spaces.

[Linus Sebastian]

In the hardware space as well, but. Yeah. Oh, dude, I love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like it because, you know, financial times are so tough and it's. Financial times are tough, but it's hard to get people to watch content about cheap things.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is a very frustrating combination.

[Linus Sebastian]

People get so mad at you for making videos about expensive stuff. I'm like, bro, that's all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You watch the cheap things. But if you can make it interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like we do with Scrapyard wars and hopefully with Minimum Viable Product, Minimum Viable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Purchase is pretty good too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's from.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not bad at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Guerrero Me or something. Whatever. I'm not even gonna try to pronounce.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That either one of those works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So yeah, I think that's pretty cool. I want. Well, see, here's the thing. So Pugboy 1321 says, as a poor people, I love seeing budget friendly stuff. Okay. But that's the problem. We're a product focused channel. And so how do I put this gently? Regardless of the cost of the item, a lot of people undergoing financial hardship are simply not shopping for anything so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That affiliates are lower ad rev.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not even talking about that. I'm just talking views somehow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see, you know, the whole K.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shaped the K shaped recovery thing like it is actually, it is more. I was reading yesterday that the 20% of the luxury goods market is apparently the top 1% of earners. So when you think about that, you think about like the PC industry or whatever, like your top. If you expand that top 1%, you expand it to 10%. I think it's something like 50% of all purchases. So you are actually better off making a video about a 5070 ti or a 5080 compared. Sorry, compared to making a video about onboard graphics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because if you think about when we were there. Yeah, we were scrapyard warsing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're buying used, so we're not.

[Linus Sebastian]

All my stuff secondhand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The new stuff was for like other people's builds.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And then that stuff was for me to buy one generation later at a steeply discounted price because apparently these people don't care about money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like I still know you build in a case and you get them to upgrade their fans and then the case, the fans that came with the case are yours.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now I still remember the guy that I bought my SLI77800 GTXs from because he was selling them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be sick if you could figure out who the heck that was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because he was going crossfire x 1900 or x x 1950 xtxs or something like that. And I was like, so, you know, not to be rude or anything, but like Anantech did a head to head of these and like the one that you're upgrading to is worse. And he was literally like, I just want to try it. And like when I'm done with it, Nvidia will probably have something new and I'll just move to that anyway. And I was like, that's crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick. Thanks for the card. See ya.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you. Do you need a young boy to do anything for you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was that? Was that, was that. What did you call the. The full face subscribers? I got Dad. I heard, I heard him behind the tv. I don't know if his mic was unmuted, but I got Dan pretty good.

[Dan]

Sure did he.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where are we at? Did he get off yet? I mean, he got off a lot of times, but, like, wow. He's trying to get his. He's trying to get his sentence reduced. People are talking about pardons.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is he really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't know. You know, let's not talk about Sean. Did he. Coombs Combs? I don't know how to pronounce his name. Is it C, O, M, B, S? Commie?

[Dan]

Commies?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like a communist?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Do you not know any of these terms?

[Linus Sebastian]

I know commie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's. Nobody said.

[Dan]

You just misheard me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure. Okay. Oh, man. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cummies. Is that a thing? These are gonna just end up as a soundboard.

[Dan]

No wonder you're training the AI saying these words.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No wonder you didn't know what a hard R was.

[Linus Sebastian]

What am I missing here, Linus?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, you still don't know what? I can't explain this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Minus gaslight tips.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do I do that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it sexual?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, it's a cutesy term for the whole word, minus all of the letters past the first three.

[Linus Sebastian]

What, like semen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you can't just say that. You could just say that. What do you mean? You can't say. That's not cute. That's not cute.

[Dan]

Please, monsieur, may I have some of your semen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not adorable.

[Dan]

What is wrong with you? All right, next.

[Linus Sebastian]

See, if I were to try to define cummies, I would think it's something more along the lines of, like, congealed semen in the shape of, like, little bears. They're like.

[Dan]

They're like the fruit snacks we buy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Those ones. Those ones are gone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. Oh. What the heck was that?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's.

[Dan]

That's clever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no. Dude. Oh, my God.

[Dan]

Do we do sponsors now?

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe we should have a. Maybe we should.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There might need to be a buffer. Just anything. Anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe just, like, a gaping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Section between.

[Dan]

Yeah, we just put this in a jar for later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. We need something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of, for. No, let's not talk about that right now, okay?

[Linus Sebastian]

Go find an actual topic, for crying out loud.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whale Land.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no. One of the topics the writers prepared so we get through some of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, sure supposed to do this.

[Dan]

Ew.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Google and Apple cracked. Yeah, but we need a. We need.

[Dan]

Do one of them. ADHD Awareness Month, Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, the sponsors are probably only gonna watch their section, so we just need all of that to be far enough away from it that they don't accidentally click on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Google and Apple crack down on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, Timestamps Guy. By the way, no key. Do not prank me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here we go. Here we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, a lot of people don't realize that we pay Timestamp Guy. Like I see. I've seen a bunch of comments lately that we're like cheap fucking or whatever because we don't pay for timestamps. You guys know we've paid Timestamp Guy for like years, right? Like, he's not a random. Like, do people not like, man, it is amazing the kind of stuff people assume about us. Anyway, carry on. So I was just reminded because I needed to talk to. I needed to talk to Timestamp Guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have a story just for you. Lead Float Goat. There's Pixel. Pixel users will be able to flip their nav options soon. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Android 16 QPR2 beta 2 what a what a name. Release revealed a new page coming to your navigation settings to adjust your button order according to Android authority. It will be accessible through a settings cog icon next to the three button navigation option in your settings. I'm assuming it's exactly what you'd expect. It allows you to swap the back and the recent buttons in the ui, but there's no further customization beyond that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's all I wanted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably all that was needed.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's exactly what has already existed in skins from the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Frickin, I think. I think Vivo has it. What are some of the other Chinese brands? I can't remember. The point is this is like totally been a thing for like 10 years, ever since we moved off of physical buttons into on screen buttons. And I love it because yes, I understand that you like gestures better. I don't. I often find that when I'm swiping through a carousel, for instance, or if I am poking at something on like a desktop, a desktop webpage or whatever that it's. You can accidentally trigger the back gesture from either the left or the right. On Android, I don't prefer it. I like having the back button right here. I like being able to double tap the task view button to switch to my last app rather than drag up, wait, move over and touch or drag up, wait and touch. I am so excited because not that I want to run a pixel, I want to go Xperia. And Sony has publicly stated that they stick pretty close to stock Android, whatever the that means these days, and have no plans to implement it as part of their skin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But this might mean that they might get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna have a headphone jack. I'm gonna have like a cool sex Sony. Yeah, they still have phones with headphone jacks and nice amps in them, dude. I don't even have to care that AirPods Pro 3 suck anymore. This is so cool. I'm so excited right now.

[Dan]

They're really nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're really nice. He's intrigued now. He might buy something.

[Dan]

You can have my old one next. Hand me down for Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I mean I'm pretty down with that. Next gen is probably when I would be upgrading so like around this time next year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now to be clear, this setting is not even live yet. This isn't a guarantee. Android Authority had to tinker to enable it and believes the feature will only appear in December's public release if it's also available in the next beta release. But like, seriously, this is an obstacle for me. And what's really frustrating is you used to be able to just do this with third party launchers, even on phones that didn't have built in support for it. But Google locked that down during like launcher lockdown gate a thousand years ago when they had far less control over customizing the navigation of the system. So it's just been this. There's just been this desert of wow, what a stupid problem for us to even have. Can we just fix it? Because literally your largest handset OEM puts the back button on the right. So literally anybody coming from a Samsung is going, if they didn't change the setting is going to be used to that. So just make it an option. Like for years, many of the phones that I would switch to and that I would review would even have it as part of the setup wizard. When you set up your phone they would prompt you, hey, where do you want these? Just so just do it. It's. How many lines of code is this for real though? Just move this button there and move this one there. Interchange them. Like honestly, if Corsair and Elgato can have configurable buttons on a stream deck, you do not have an excuse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to see something a little bit whack.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd love to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I tried to look up Xperia phones. Wikipedia is the first.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, I mean they're not in this euro market.

[Dan]

They never have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's still like.

[Linus Sebastian]

And whether Dan was referring to their market share or their marketing, he's right.

[Dan]

Yeah, correct.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So can you even buy them here?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, but I'll find one. I'll find a way I'll get one.

[Dan]

I import them. The newer models have a US variant, but. But the rest of them are like, I buy the China ones because they have like the Hong Kong variant has unlocked bootloader so you can literally like put whatever you want on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes sense because dual sim, not.

[Dan]

Even on card, physical sim, headphone jack. Mine's got like Zeiss lenses, physical zoom, the camera bumps.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have cool features that go along with their cameras too. Like you can use them as viewfinders and stuff. Some of them like HDR.

[Dan]

If you have a PlayStation, you can use it as a wireless screen that attaches to the top of your controller. It's like kind of bonkers. This model that I have here has the highest PPI of any phone at 600.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's 30. I actually do not support these. Ridiculous.

[Dan]

They downgraded the display in the later model. They should have but I'm upset because this one's 21 by 9 and the new ones are slightly different aspect ratio.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

It has no notch and no hole punch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Dan]

Which is another reason why I like them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm so excited. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna immediately go Sony as soon as I can get a skin that has the button on the right I. And it's not even because I couldn't just use gestures on the Sony. But I, I said, and I am a man of my word, I said that I want them to fix it and I will use an Xperia phone when they fix it. So in much the same way that I told Plex, hey, fix your, fix your shit. And then we will be able to work together and as you know and promote your stuff again. And we won't do it until they do. Same thing.

[Dan]

Yeah, customizable is good. I support you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's surprising how hard it is to even find any information on these phones.

[Dan]

Oh yeah, yeah, they don't bother. They've often before just been like, hey, we're going to release a new phone in like eight months and then no one cares. Whereas Samsung like new phone coming next week. High Train and Sony's just like, we're going to release the next phone. It looks exactly like the old phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it's an indecipherable name.

[Dan]

It is slightly better like every other phone. We don't care. We will sell 20 and they will be the best phone. I don't. Whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so weird.

[Dan]

It's waterproof and it has dual SIM SD card. It has tool less SIM removal.

[Linus Sebastian]

They were the first to do waterproof, weren't they?

[Dan]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

I believe so. Was it the Xperia? Was it the experience?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I remember that one being a thing. If they weren't the first. They were close.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they were. They were very early on the whole waterproof phone, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Proof. Obviously.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Xperia Z. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I think I did a video.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know how credible TNT magazine.com is. I mean, this isn't even grammatically correct, but Sony announced, I seem to recall that there was a. There was a display that they had at CES where they had the phone submerged in water and the screen was on or something like. Yeah, this. This. This thing. I saw this. Yeah. Remember this? This was. This was like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was nuts back then, dude. That was crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this. This blew people's minds back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The fact that they made it so that you hold the button to do it was like such a.

[Linus Sebastian]

What a flex.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good Scion.

[Linus Sebastian]

What a flex. Yeah. All right, Dan, what are we supposed to be doing?

[Dan]

We could do a couple merch messages and the CW announcement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which one goes first? Don't. Don't tell me more than one thing. Just tell me one thing, because otherwise, I don't even know any of the things you said.

[Dan]

CW announcements.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, sir. Got an everyday carry. How about we make that an everything carry? This weekend, starting now, you can get our cargo pants for just $99.99 on both our US and global site. Shop now at LMG GG Cargo Pants. They've been extremely well received. Almost too perfect, says Willie B. Smart Design, Cozy and Unitarian. Do you mean utilitarian? What the heck is Unitarian now? I'm Unitarianism, a liberal religious tradition that affirms the unity of God rather than the Christian trinity and emphasizes individual freedom of belief, compassion, and social justice.

[Dan]

My aunt is a Unitarian minister.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, really? Yeah. I don't think that's what they meant for the pants. Probably not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm assuming.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Yeah, I'm thinking probably not. Anyway, the point is that. Oh, here we go. Chase R. Says, great work pants. I'm a controls engineer. These pants are great for the job site. Yeah, great pants. So get yourself some. Get yourself some Cargo pants for $99.99 on both the US and global site. But that's not all. If you buy a precision screwdriver and bit case bundle, we'll throw in an end cap set for free. So that's the alternate ends for the top of the precision screwdriver that are either divoted. So if you prefer to put Your thumb on the top when you're using it or rounded at the top if you're more of like a cupper. And then we have a different color, a black one of the flat one. All you have to do is add both a precision screwdriver and a bit case bundle to your cart. And also the end cap set, I think. And the discount will automatically apply on checkout. Lmg, GG precision bundle, precision screwdriver and big case. So you add that there and then we have the information on the bundle there. So that'll be a great way for you guys to send a merch message to the show if you are new to the show. Merch messages are the way that we do interaction. If you're going to have to throw your money at the screen to interact with a live stream, you know, like people do, then you might as well do it in a way that gets you high quality merchandise in the mail in a little while rather than just throwing it out there and hoping for the best. At least that's the way we see it. So all you got to do to send a merch message is add one of those terrific items to your cart and you will see this interface merge messages. You can show your first name and last name. You can make it anonymous. Either way is good. You can pick a color. Look at that color changing thing. Isn't that incredible? Great job, Colin. You can type a message and then it will go to producer Dan who will, I don't know, he'll do something. He'll reply to it or he'll forward it or he'll curate it. And curated ones go a little something like this. Dan, hit me with a merch message.

[Dan]

Absolutely. We've got a few in all already.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, that we do with those deals.

[Dan]

Hey, DLL quarter Whale VIP here. I guess that's one of four Whale vip.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes a lot more sense than a quarter of one of them.

[Dan]

Oh no, they could have gone in bulk Deal you can have I more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like they could be in four pieces, but they probably wouldn't be typing anything at that point.

[Dan]

I mean hand hand is one of the four.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but that wouldn't be a quarter of them by mass. Truth.

[Dan]

Truth on legs. But Linus, did you enjoy the whale land? Also, the whales pulled off a complete win rematch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, we got obliterated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What happened?

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a whales versus LMG stat game. Well, I lost because it didn't happen till pretty late on the second day and no offense to my teammates, but I wasn't able to Put together quite as stacked a team as I would have liked to. Also, I probably. I probably have not including Whale Land three or four hours in FPS games over the last year. Like, hasn't been what I've been playing. And they went and practiced throughout the land playing UT 2004 and challenged us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To that game where practice is going to make a difference.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, little bit. So we went on to unfamiliar PCs, within some cases, unfamiliar peripherals. Nothing against Kyle Tynan and Chase. Chase in particular is a very good gamer. But if I could have chosen, I probably would have taken, like, Natalie. I probably still would have taken Chase. No offense to Kyle and Tynan. They carried. They were. They did way better than me. I want to make this abundantly clear, but if I'm trying to put together a team of ringers like, I. I probably would have. I probably would have taken. I probably would have taken Nat. I would have taken Chase, and then I'd have to figure out the last one. Who else is pretty good? I know David's really good. I don't know if he plays as much anymore, though.

[Dan]

What was the game?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ut 2004 it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thomas. Was he there?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, he was. I didn't know that Thomas was like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's a gamer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gamer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I'll have to keep that in mind. I don't think he was there anymore by that point. But anyway. Yeah, okay. I might be down for a rematch, but you gotta. You gotta understand, I'm gonna stack the deck a little bit in my favor because if you guys are gonna go and pick a game that, like, they wouldn't play me in Left 4 Dead, which is also an FPS game, but one where I would absolutely tune them no matter how much they train. So, yeah, maybe, yes, I did enjoy. Well, then not in the ways that I was expecting to enjoy it. I actually had very little time to game like three rounds of Halo CE. I played one round of Left 4 Dead. I played a few games of tape to tape, and I think that. And then I played the game against the whales, and that was it over the span of two days. But what I definitely enjoyed was seeing it all come together. I mean, the project's been, like, years in the making. The last time we did a LAN was LTX 23.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A public one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Or was it 22? Oh, God. When was the last LTX 23? 23. Yeah, there you go. So it's. So it's been over two years and. And the space. There were some power issues. We didn't let it know that there was going to be the, the. The giant display that we bought on or the computers on the stage until.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the tape to tape area or I think the VR area or insanely power hungry vending machine.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I can explain what, how. Okay, so the. Okay, so hold on, give me a sec. Okay, so. So first of all, the original plan was to line both sides with power. But then they came and told us, hey, that exceeds the power budget for this transformer. You can't do that. We kind of went, okay, fine. So we'll do. We'll do all down this one side. We'll do the tables with the spider things. This power boxes. Spider boxes coming out that side. And then we'll probably just need a couple on this side. Well, okay, bad news. We ended up having to move things around because some staff who didn't even bother to show up for the whole land complained about not being able to get a spot. So we created a staff area on that side that was a bunch of power that used up a bunch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I like populated it. Anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyway, the point is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I wanted to. It was. I had. I was gone because of a work thing. I wasn't exactly gone because I wanted to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

The point is that we wouldn't have had that power budget to deal with if you hadn't demanded that we change the layout of the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'm happy that we did. We should do it next time to.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should. So there was that. And then that used up probably what would have gone to the stage. And then compounding this, this, this vending machine company and. Oh, this is embarrassing. I actually forget what they're called now, which really sucks because they were really fancy machines. Super cool about it. So they, they do, they do hot food. They do like mixed bags, drinks, not, not like alcoholic beverages. Oh, here we go. Here we go. I've got it. They're called G and a robot. So they, they posted on. I guess this is Tick Tock. Yeah, they posted on Tick Tock me trying it and chatting with them about it. And then they also brought an ice cream machine, so. Oh yeah, here's. I don't. Yeah, you guys can't really see this, but whatever. There's the three fancy, like very like Japanese feeling, like high tech sort of Asian feeling like vending machines. And we've been in talks with them about having just not bothering with a concession at Smash Champs or at least not bothering for now, but having some options where we don't have to do the food safe certification, we don't have to do the, the, the license for it and all of that stuff. Having some options for people to get like hot food after, after they play or have some different options for drinks they do like coffees, teas, iced coffees, fruit sugar drinks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did they have a Boba thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, not, not at this time. I don't know if, I don't know if that's something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thought I saw some art for it, but I wasn't sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then they had this cool like ice cream machine. So like having those for the players would be super cool during tournaments, during Whale Lands or even just day to day. And so they like pulled out all the stops to try to get these machines to us in time for Whale Land when they found out about it. So then we had to pull out all the stops and we didn't find out that Jim, who is the general manager for Smash Champs like organized it. We didn't find out till he told us. And we were like, oh no, where are we going to put these? Oh my God. They need like 30 or 40amps at 240 volt. How are we going to power these stupid things? Because we never accounted for having heavy power on that side. So. And then. Oh right. There was supposed to be a retro area. And so ROV lab sent over a whole bunch of like couch segments. So they're those like modular. They, they ship in a, in a like vacuum seal box thing and they, they like expand and you can, you can put together as many middle pieces as you want. So you can kind of make furniture in any configuration you want. And they sent over a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be for like a retro gaming corner. So we had all these retro consoles. And I think the plan was to have some displays. I don't know, I never saw any because I saw the coaches and I went, what about 5v5 tape to tape? So then I went and I found like a projector and I went and got a computer from home, like my old media center PC. I just brought it to the lan. We didn't have controllers, so I just brought controllers from home to the lan. And then I spent a bunch of my time where I was supposed to be gaming just ripping out all the stuff for the, ripping out all the stuff for the retro corner and creating a 5v5, like a 10 player roguelite hockey game thing with like a 120 inch projector screen. And I actually for sound we had something on a projector at the test LAN or like, we wanted to do something on a projector. Right. We wanted to play tape to tape at the test lan, the internal one, remember?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we ended up having to go upstairs to the player lounge because we didn't have sound, so. Right. Luke actually helps me load the speakers. So for sound for the. For the little, like, hockey game lounge, I actually used the audio solution from Scrapyard wars because, I don't know, we're obviously not doing anything with it. It was just for Scrapyard Wars. So I grabbed the receiver, grabbed the speakers, set it all up. It was sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was freaking awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I forgot how damn good that Epson LS12000 projector is, man. What? The only reason I'm not using it today is that the TCL X11, or whatever it's called, the 115 inch TV is. It's better. But that Epson projector, man, what a. What a great projector.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think. I mean, I think some of the problem there was also. I think it was like three notable Internet outages. Telus went down for a period of time, which is like, very rare.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our switch. And then the switch mark down, which to me is a little confusing given that it's like 100 gigabit. Like, supposedly core switch or like, whatever. I. I hope we're running, like, beta firmware on it, and I hope that we can. What the heck is that? Shut up, TikTok. Why would you play automatically? No, I know why you would do that, but also just for doing that. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't do that. Yeah, so we're looking into those things. You know, we did a test run.

[Linus Sebastian]

But not with 250 people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Difference between a test run and now we have a stage and all these other things and 250 people, and everyone's hitting it differently and yada, yada, yada. Have you seen the. Oh, I'm gonna say this. And then I'm not gonna have the numbers immediately available. Have you seen the data that went through the switches, the ports? You've seen it?

[Dan]

Yeah. You post it in our group chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you see the power monitoring that AJ set up?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Also, he's down. He posted a video idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, super cool. Okay, well, we'll chat about that in that. In. But while he's looking that up, aj who's like an IT infrastructure guy, slash, float plane, slash. I mean, what does he not do at this point anyway?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Been here forever. Once you're here forever, you wear a lot of.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So he set up power monitoring for the building and I was going to come to sort of the the power situation. So what we found is that even though our our like outlets are at capacity, we were actually nowhere near the capacity of our transformer. So between the two of them, I think one is rated for 400,000 watts and the other one is rated for 150,000 watts. And then I want to say or 250 or something and both of them were at like under half capacity. So knowing that nothing we're going to connect to those California standard power outlets is actually going to draw the full amount. I'm going to see if we can get an engineer to sign off on us putting some more drops in so that we'll just have better flexibility in terms of our layout with the understanding that we just don't use it all and we use our power monitoring. Okay, what am I looking for?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Port 24 hour usage.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Trying to figure out what happened there exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well. Oh, anywhere between the lowest one I see is 1.39 terabytes and the highest one I see is 5.4 terabytes. Were people torrenting at the land trying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To figure out what's going on? AJ's here, so he might be able to answer, but my guess was that there was weird stuff going on with Steam and like local sharing and stuff and I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense. We did tell people to turn off local transfers, but. Well, what we didn't tell them to turn it off. What we said is that they won't get the benefit of our land cash if they don't turn off local transfers. But local transfers is a default setting now, so probably most people, without even realizing it, we're transferring game data off of each other on the network. Yeah, without realizing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suspect that was happening.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know though. That was my just like knee jerk like K. What was that?

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Something happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bourdaga in Floatplane chat says. Linus, why are you acting like it's crazy you brought your rig to a limp. Isn't that the point? You've changed. S. So the reason that it was notable that I brought my old media center PC to the LAN was I also brought my machine. Yeah, it was amazing how many people saw my rig and were just like, you brought your whole rack mount computer to a lan. And I was like, this is my computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just turned it on its side. Oh dude. The setup was so jank because I only have two mobile PCs right now. So I brought my ally with the XG1 XG mobile for one of my daughters. And then I brought my remaining working flow x13 laptop with my other XG mobile for my other daughter, set them up for the ally. I just used like an external monitor. I pulled one of the ones that used to be in the gaming van and we've consolidated down to just the one that flips up from the, from the roof. So they were taken care of. But then I didn't have a machine for my son, so I was like, oh, I guess I could just, I could just drag his rack mount because I have an external water cooling box that has the same quick connect fittings that I use for whenever I'm working on those machines on the bench. If I, if I need to have them out of the rack for an extended period, I just have like a, like a 3 by 3 120mil fan External Rad box to run them. But what I haven't gotten around to is replacing the Asinine stock power connector for it. That is a four pin molex. Why would, why would I want that? I mean, okay, I can think of why I'd want that. I would run it through a PCI slot and just have one of those pass throughs and then I would like connect it to my power supply or something and then I'd put the Radbox next to my computer. But like, don't you think it's more likely that I would just plug it in to an external power source?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I hate that so much.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can see the valid arguments for both ways. The point is I wanted to use an external power source, but I haven't gotten around to changing it yet. And I forgot to grab one of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Those, which I was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, one of those little power brick to Molex things that we have kicking around here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So my solution was to rip my side panel open and power his rad box off of my power supply, which was only a. Which was only a problem when I accidentally didn't have my computer on for a while because I forgot I did that. And his CPU overheated. I had to do a USB BIOS flashback. Fortunately the loop didn't blow up. Anyway, sorry, what were you going to say?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was going to say, you know, if anything, having it be four pin molex makes the conversions kind of nice and easy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also, Corey is the name in full plane chat. This is a bit of a throwback, but said my data consumption for Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 is currently over 2 TB streaming the world Is data intensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fun fact. My. My brother, his wife and I went in on a combo present and got my dad flight sim and. And some controllers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So a hot ass set up for. For Christmas.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got your dad a hot ass for Christmas?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And your mom was in on it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes you got to do unconventional things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Weird family, dude. But carry on. I mean, look, I'm not judging whatever happens between consenting adults.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hands on throttle and stick for people that don't understand what's happening.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hotas.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hotas. Hands on throttle, stick.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can't spell hotas without ho and ass.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, they had to upgrade their Internet connection.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even kidding. It would like, bring the network down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crazy. Like, what the heck?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, that, that. That actually does make sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't like that they were, they were talking me about it and, and he was talking about how like they called their isp. I'm pretty sure it was telus. And the, the person on the other end was like, okay, what are you doing when this happens? Whatever. And my dad told me he's playing the game. And the guy on the other end was like, oh, yeah, it's the game. But didn't like really explain it too much. Maybe he did. I wasn't on the call and then my dad tells me, like, oh, it's. It's the game that I'm playing.

[Linus Sebastian]

My brain's just like, come on, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. Yeah, you can play games on like hotspots. Like you can mobile hotspot your phone and like, won't even touch your data. Like, this doesn't matter. Like you can play multi. You could play Counter Strike.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mobile hotspot and you won't even notice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I wouldn't. Because I mean, Counter Strike is just walking down a hallway. And then die simulator for me suck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you could.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then so I'm just assuming this, like, tell us, guys. Nuts. And then I start looking things up and I'm like, not only does it use a lot of data, it uses a lot of data at a time. Like, the throughput is crazy. So yeah, they had, they had to. It's such like an annoying gift. Here's the game and like an awesome set of peripherals to play it with, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to upgrade your subscription service.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Subscriptions. Yeah. Now every month you're gonna be paying more for this. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's a puppy says bustin. Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it felt like one of those.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also inconvenience. I got you Inconvenience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, not only that, but I just.

[Linus Sebastian]

And a financial burden.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I made a bad assumption as well. Well, when. When working on this idea because the racing sim world. Like the racing sim upstairs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just. Okay, go in. I have this controller. It'll set up a profile for you by default.

[Linus Sebastian]

Flight. Yeah. Come on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Why? Because you have to be an enthusiast to play this game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My thing is. Okay, don't have any default profiles. That's right. Let me load them. Let the community offer them up and let me load them. Because now there's these like way intensely detailed guides on how to set it up. But there's so much to do that it like is so it would genuinely be easier for people to just export their settings and let you import them than writing all these crazy guides on how to do it. Like. Come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Noki in chat says wait. I blanked out for the last 18 minutes. They're still in the first merge message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this even a merch?

[Dan]

They're only getting one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hit us with an oh, is that okay? Is that it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't even know this was a merch message.

[Dan]

We were like three behind. Maybe we should do a sponsor.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Remember when you thought the show wasn't gonna have enough?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You say that every single week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. The show is brought to you by MSI. Does it feel like your PC is performing like this one looks? MSI's new codecs R2 pre built PCs can save you the hassle of fixing things or buying and installing replacement components. With configurations that include up to Intel Core 7 Ultra CPUs. I think we mean Core Ultra 7 and Nvidia RTX 50 series GPUs. You'll be prepared to tackle just about any game. It's also got Wi Fi 7 compatibility, so you can get blazing fast, wireless connection speed speeds. And their AI engine can see what you've currently got running and automatically adjust your configuration, changing things like performance settings and RGB settings. So whether you're upgrading your setup or making the switch from console to PC. Come on in, the water's warm. With MSI's codecs R2 pre built PCs, we'll have them linked in the video description. The show is also brought to you by Thorum. You know what has a nice ring to it? With the help of Thorum, probably your fingers got the handcrafted unique rings. They're sorry. Their handcrafted unique rings are made with exotic materials that are sure to help you stand out. You can check out the aloha made from tungsten carbide and beautiful Hawaiian koa wood. Or for something really out of this world, the Gibeon has real meteorite inlaid on a titanium sleeve. Each purchase of a Thorum ring comes with a free silicone activity band, an American walnut wood ring, Springboks free worldwide shipping, and a limited lifetime warranty. They also have sleek minimalist watches that are made of some of the same unique materials. So head over to thorum.com today and use code when to get 20 off. We will have that linked in the video description all right, what are we supposed to be doing? Dan, you're in charge. P charge.

[Dan]

Let's do another topic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I need to complain about more things on wan show you do you do? Yep.

[Dan]

Is that possible?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you talking about something specific?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hobbs, like potentially immediately solved my problem. There's like something you can just buy and it can import profiles for you. Oh, it's stupid that it's not built into the game. This should really be built into the game. Microsoft figure yourself out.

[Linus Sebastian]

But also, like that's a tall order these days.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it really is.

[Linus Sebastian]

With what developers? Will they be doing that? With what studios they haven't closed? Will they be doing that vibe?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Code me a profile importer. Oh my God, it'll get like 25% of it. Correct.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anywho, you want to pick one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They'll never be able to update it.

[Dan]

Speaking of development, let's do Xbox may.

[Linus Sebastian]

Be dying and it's doing it to itself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, good timing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Microsoft announced this week they are raising the price of Game Pass ultimate by 3.50percent in the US and some other markets, causing a rush of angry cancellations so large that the Xbox website apparently crashed multiple times. This $10 price increase comes two days after Xbox president Sarah Bond said that Game Pass was already profitable. Microsoft tried to soften the sticker shock by presenting this change as an upgrade that adds Ubisoft Classics, Fortnite Crew, as well as a promise to have 75 plus day one games per year. This comes the same week that Xbox's hardware's SEC as Xbox hardware's second price hike in less than a year. A month after Costco removed all Xbox items from their stores, and a few months after another round of closures and mass layoffs across Xbox Studios, combined with the recent release of some iconic Xbox exclusive exclusives on PlayStation, Xbox devotees are beginning to feel as though Microsoft's Xbox hardware division may be in a bit of a death spiral. But not all is lost X Bros. Although revenue from hardware sales was down 22% year over year in the quarter ending June 30, 2025, Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said Game Pass annual revenue was nearly $5 billion for the first time. With 37 million active subscribers as of July 2025. Microsoft may be relying more and more on that service to drag the entire Xbox division into the green, which is the gaming landscape to which pre orders of the new ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X opened at a price of US$600 for the one that has a CPU that's like five years old at this point. Okay. I don't think it's actually quite five years old. Okay. How old is the, how old is Zen 2? Zen 2 release year. Oh, okay, cool. Zen 2 launched in 2019. If anything I was, I was being charitable. Cool. So. And a thousand US dollars for the one that actually has like a modern new CPU in it. I was talking to David about this, who's actually the one who, who prepped this topic and. Or was it on a ploop about it? I don't know. I was talking to one of them. They look so similar. I was talking to someone from the writing department about this and they were basically making the argument that the RG Xbox Ally and RG Xbox Ally are going to be successful products, but the price is going to be a significant impediment. And I don't know man, I gotta say I think I haven't played on it yet. As you guys may or may not have noticed. There's one sitting here that arrived minutes before the show, so I haven't genuinely haven't even touched it again. Well no, since the event.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was here for like an hour and a half.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well I wasn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The point is that I'm saying all of this before I've actually like given it a fair shot yet. But what's happening here is sort of regardless of the price of the, of the various allies and their Xboxes related sort of collab products, it's a fundamental shift in the hardware model of Xbox. Right. Instead of first party hardware that is subsidized by a built in game store collecting 30% from every developer who sells a game through it. Which is what this is up against in the form of the Steam deck which by the way is on like mega sale right now and is an insane value.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It really is.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is relying on third party partners who have to make their margin on the product. And as far as I am aware, although this may not be the case. As far as I'm aware Microsoft has not engaged in the same kind of profit sharing that has driven like the mobile industry for instance to sell head. So. So like, like mobile kiosks and mobile stores selling plans and selling hardware and then getting a long term kickback. So there doesn't appear to be a similar system in place to help subsidize this hardware for Microsoft's partners. So I just don't really. I don't really see how this can compete with a PlayStation 5 and a Portal which is gonna cost. You could get a PlayStation 5 Pro and a Portal for the cost of an Rog Xbox. Lax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is a Steam Deck right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my goodness. A Steam Deck that's actually nuts costs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Literally like 27% as much as this. It costs literally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is the lowest end model and that is the LCD model.

[Linus Sebastian]

Less than half of the Ally the non X. Less than half. That's what you're up against. You're up against valve taking their 30% and using it to subsidize their hardware. You're up against Sony being able to price a PlayStation 5 Pro plus a portal at less than your Ally X. That's a. That's a tough position to be in. I'm gonna make sure I'm right about that. PS5 Pro MSRP. What it. What is it right now? I think it's. Yeah. US$750. And that's the Pro. The one that most people agree like don't really need. And then the Portal is. I think it's 250. Right. Hold on. I might be wrong about this. I want to make sure I'm right about this. 199 oh. But has since. Yeah. Around 200. Yeah. There you go. So good luck everyone. We have a bunch of discussion questions. Oh this is a spicy one. Is Game Pass still the best value in gaming at now $30 a month? It's. It's. Oh man. See.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I have probably just an annoying take on this. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No it wasn't because you don't own your games. I don't think it was a good value. I don't think it is a good value. I don't think it was a good. Okay tell me this but I value owning my game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. But retrospectively. Right. Just devil's advocate take. I've actually never subscribed to Game Pass. I also just pay for games and a big part of that for me is that I can super duper afford to play games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can afford to, which is a privilege.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think it's pretty cool that if I really like a game, the developer gets all a bunch of that money. That's not because I think Game Pass is a bad deal. I've made arguments on camera and I meant what I said, that Game Pass has been at times an outstanding value for what it is. So let me make that argument then. What if over the last couple of years that you'd been paying 20 bucks a month for Game Pass, you played through? So that would be. I think it's, it's discounted if you buy it on a yearly basis. But let's, let's say, let's assume you paid monthly. So you've paid $500 in game pass over a couple of years. Let's say that you played through like 20 single player experiences. You don't plan to play again. Did you get a great value?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if DLCs come out for them? I mean, what if I do want to touch that game again for some reason and then I cancel my subscription and I, I can't get my save back because it's tied to that version?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And that's fair. But what if. Also what if I do want to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Play one of those games again? Like it's, it's a very specific what if to say that you played a very, very large amount of games and never want to play any of them again.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That might be an archetype of gamer for sure. I'm certain someone watching this perfectly fits in that category.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or what if you're someone who in the past wasted a lot of money buying games, playing them for three to five hours and then realizing they don't actually care about them that much and it allowed you to, to, to be, you know, just to drift around from game to game and not worry about the financial, the extra financial burden of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have literally ran into a scenario where there was an update to a game that seemed interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And someone that I played it with when it first launched, I reached out to and was like, hey, this looks pretty cool. Do you want to try it out? And they were like, ah, I don't know if it's worth like reactivating my subscription. And it's like, all right, dude, that's fair. Cool. But like, I just own it. So I guess I'll go check it out myself.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a lot of, there's a lot of discussion on this in the floatplane Chat, like some people are saying, like, dude, game open ownership is so overrated. As a gamer of 44 years, I have over 800 games and I practically never go back to play one. Meanwhile, you've got, you've got other people that are, oh, this is an argument we didn't even talk about. Fantastic. In Floatplane Chat says I've got something like 2500 games in my Steam library, most of which I haven't gotten around to playing. So for me, I can't justify Game plus subscription just because I have so much other stuff to play that there'd be no reason for me to spend more money on games at all right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was a Steam Autumn sale.

[Linus Sebastian]

Walker makes a really important point that we're talking Game Pass ultimate, which not only includes the games, but for certain games. It also gives access to a cloud streaming platform, which might be good for people on older PCs or who are often on the go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that's fair. I didn't actually know that because I don't care.

[Linus Sebastian]

But there are solid arguments. I think both I can understand there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Being scenarios where for me it makes no sense. I don't want it. I like the idea that I'm more directly supporting developers. When I buy the full fat game, I have a huge backlog of games that I want to play. I see no desire to be hungrily biting at the bit of new Game Pass releases. A Game Pass does not mean that you get every game if you it means you get every game that's on Game Pass and they could remove the game that you're playing whenever they feel like it. I don't like any of that. I also like I'm looking at the Steam Autumn Sale, which is running right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hobbs points out that in some cases save transfers are not possible between Windows Store and Steam versions of games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is what I was saying earlier. I think that's actually like really important. Personally.

[Linus Sebastian]

I used to back up my save data. Like I still have my Dragon Age origins like save file. I don't think I've ever actually been tempted to fire it up. And even if I did, the game has probably been updated so many times that it wouldn't even necessarily work. I've run into that a lot of times, so I don't know. But then the flip side of that is when I went to start Tears of the Kingdom, I like super cared that I still had my breath of the wild save. I don't know. I, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are games, I care about it a lot. There are also games Where I go back and I'm like, this save is unplayable because like I don't remember anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

About what's going on or I did everything wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then the Steam Notes feature that's is fantastic for that and is becoming less of a problem. What is the name? Control is the name of that game. Yeah. Dude, what the heck? These type of sales happen. So if you can just be a little bit patient.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can get Control ultimate edition for five Canadian dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, 350. Like yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When you could get 10 games of this caliber a month. Once you convert that to USD, I think it's probably around there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not quite close. Close. Eight. Let's say eight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Eight. Eight games of this caliber a month or Game Pass Ultimate. I'm getting these, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every time.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's valid. Apparently it's free on Epic or no, maybe not right now. Oh yeah. A bunch of people are saying free on gog. Free on Epic. That's wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Control is apparently, I don't know, free on gog.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty cool. You should definitely get it from gog if you can. Yeah, GOG is pretty based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very. Yeah, I didn't even consider that argument. Like the. The DRM free nature of GOG is like the complete opposite of we will take it from you whenever we want.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you will pay a subscription forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And your save won't transfer and screw you. Yeah, like I would way rather support GOG than get a freaking game pass. Like I. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not personally. I'm not going to judge someone else for getting it. Do your thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. That's a fair take.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not for me.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's a fair take. Our other discussion question here is do you think Microsoft might be trying to push.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on, support the devs, but also don't buy it until it's 90% off? WTF. I don't tend to do that too often. I was saying that's a strat. That is really good. It's looking at min maxing your dollar value.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's also not Luke's fault that the devs priced it at that amount. Like you're. You're still definitely supporting them. It's more of like spur change kind of support. But that game's also been out for like eight years or something like that. When did control come out?

[Dan]

Six years ago?

[Luke Lafreniere]

September 10th, 2020.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Okay. Our next discussion is do you think Microsoft might be trying to push people into the lower game pass tiers with no day one Releases rather than just backing out of their day one Game Pass release promise. Like, is this sort of a tactical price increase of ultimate, which is a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Decent strat, actually, because if you really care about a game and you want it day one, you could just buy it. And for everything else, you have your Game Pass. I've heard that's a thing that like quite a few people do. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know. There's a bunch more discussion questions here. David. These are all really interesting. I almost wonder if this should just be like its own. Its own video. I'm gonna. I'll mark that because I. Yeah, I don't think we can talk about this forever on. Maybe this is just a video in a bit. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One thing that will inevitably be on Game Pass because for. Is a Microsoft Studio thing, but I'm excited about anyways is they are finally going to Japan. Forza Horizon 6 is going to be in Japan and that's actually pretty sick. I'm excited about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, let's move on, shall we? Float plane announcement. Is that what we're supposed to do? Dan, where is it? Sarah week is upon us. Here it is. Am I supposed to watch the announcement?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. I feel like probably. Do we have audio?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, does my audio work? What are the odds?

[Dan]

Give her a plan. Let's see.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I have the stream going?

[Dan]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Nice. No, no, it's muted. Yeah. Oh, man. So is this. And also someone watched it. Someone on the account watched it. So usually for float planes themed weeks, we spent time and money creating some elaborate teaser trailer. But I spent all that money on a trip to Drumheller. So now Sammy's on the phone with accounting trying to get some more money for us. But dinosaurs. So accounting says, buy the merch. Buy the merch. Please buy the merchant. I need to live here. Are you often the butt of the joke? Am I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is Mood.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many shirts do you think I've designed over the five years? We've got 26 here. What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, my cat wants like butt scratches.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are your top three dinosaurs? Dilophosaurus. My dog reminds me of a velociraptor, so my dog is my third favorite. Pop out. Oh, there's your shrimp bone appetite. You can get some clams and mussels too. Bone apple tea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bone own apple tea.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a point where I was quality checking every single holo foil shirt that went out. So if you own a holo foil shirt, I probably touched it at some point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't know that.

[Dan]

That's crazy editing. Good job, Sammy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, I remember that. There was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was issues with the ink and it was bad and we were still new at all of this and there was nobody else to do it. So anyway, SARAH week is upon us. Our content highlights will include a Sarah Q and a T shirt design ranking and a very expensive travel vlog to Drumheller, Alberta, a.k.a. the Dinosaur Capital of the world, according to Alberta. Also, we will have a limited run floatplane exclusive shirt to coincide with SARAH week. It looks a little something like that. It's a dinosaur. And also there's a float plane on the back. Heck yeah. Heck yeah. This and so much more all on floatplane next week. Lmg GG Floatplane. All right, Dan, I think we should do at least one more topic. All right. What do you want to talk about, Lou?

[Dan]

What do you want to talk about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we did Xbox. We did.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have done an extremely poor job of getting through all the topics that we were supposed to talk about today.

[Dan]

We have.

[Linus Sebastian]

I blame Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to do another ad hoc Linus topic though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my God. No, we have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have to do this one.

[Linus Sebastian]

But we have to get through some of the topics we have prepared. Then we do it after dark. We have to do it after dark. We have to get through people put real actual human work into preparing these topics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Windows 10 is end of life. October 14th is when Windows 10 support end. And boy, are things ever happening. Businesses are dumping their Windows 10 machines and a substantial reason is due to the lack of Windows 11 compatibility, due to the lack of TPM2 and or other critical hardware. And I guess they don't want to get modules and have people plug them in. They could use the extended security updates. Yeah, that's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like you're not doing that on your laptop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. And. Well, yeah, I mean, that's fair. Most of the pictures I've seen are old desktops, but they might just be. Might be kind of time anyways. But that's a paid program. The extended security updates thing. So many folks are weighing the costs and benefits because it's priced at $30 per license per year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you pay. Oh wow, that is an interesting question. Would you pay $30 a year to run any version of Windows you wanted, like your ideal, and it was secure. If Microsoft had a program where you were still allowed to run Windows 7 or XP, but with modern support.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Modern support.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I have to assume that they could afford to do it. I mean, how many millions of people are still running Windows XP today. Windows XP market share, I'm willing to bet it's not zero.

[Dan]

It's quite a lot actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's apparently modern. It's apparently still somewhere between 0.3 and 0.54%. Which if you think about how many hundreds of millions of PCs there are in a year there are in the world. Do you think we could say with reasonable certainty that there's a billion PCs in the world? Probably one in one for every eight people? I'd say that's probably on the low side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's decently so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's, let's just, let's make some, let's make some dumb napkin math assumptions. Let's see say 1 billion PCs. Okay. Times point. Let's use the lower end of that number. What I say.03. Okay, so.03% equals 30 million PCs times $30 a year would give Microsoft a 900 million dollar a year budget to maintain modern support for Windows XP. And that's like. I don't even think, and to be clear, I don't think that would be necessarily reasonable. I don't think that this is necessarily a reasonable thing to expect anybody to actually do. I don't think all of those customers would pay. I don't think Microsoft's partners would love to support umpteen billion versions of Windows forever on all of their software. I just mean if you could, if you could pay $30 a year to run your ideal version of Windows, would you pay for Windows?

[Luke Lafreniere]

And does this mean. I already pay for Windows, but would.

[Linus Sebastian]

You subscribe to Windows?

[Luke Lafreniere]

But.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does this mean game support?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does this. So this is all compatibility?

[Linus Sebastian]

It means it works like you'd expect it to work. It doesn't get new features. But, but it works the way that you would expect it to work for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

New features Because a lot of those are compatibility.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would say that copilot is a new feature.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan]

Could I do the WAN show on Windows xp? Is this kind of what you're saying?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Could this computer run Windows xp?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I can play modern games and connect to WI fi and do things like that on Windows XP. Okay, so it's getting features.

[Dan]

$30 new features. Too cheap. I would pay more.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'd pay more than $30 a year? No.

[Dan]

Who are we kidding? I wouldn't pay anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But some of those things are new features.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which ones?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if it's like DX12 but it's Windows XP? Like there's, there's.

[Dan]

What about features? What if I wanted to run Windows XP software, they would just kind of like have unlimited support for every program written back to dos. Kind of like where are the bounds of this hypothetical?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know why. Guys, I think you might be overthinking a little bit. Let's say that everything works and we just have a nebulous definition of what a feature is. Would you pay $30 a year to run what would be. Which is your favorite Windows 7?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably 7. But I did used to run. I did used to run Vista was hotter. I did used to run nice. Vista Black Edition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Once you go Vista Black, you never go back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This was Windows XP black sick back in the day. So I could hear out of 10, I could see me going for heavily modded versions by my. Like I. So what I would do back in the day was I would get Black Edition and then I would mod it significantly further beyond there heavily modded version of Vista. Or if I have to stick to like a more stock experience, I would go, yeah, seven for sure.

[Dan]

I'm doing heavily modded.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I do not under any circumstance go beyond 7. And the main reason for that is telemetry and ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And Windows 8 just sucked. 8.1 was like a lot better, but 8 was brutal and I hate the blocky design. So just, I'm just staying away from. That's fair from 8 and 8.1.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, the point is keep an eye out for some used hardware. If you're looking to build like a home theater PC or a NAS or something like that. There are to my knowledge still, still workarounds to get around the TPM stuff for home use. Stats counter noted that Windows 7 has apparently had a massive increase in market share. So that's pretty interesting. What has Windows 7, really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I guess if people are like, I'm not going to have security anyways, they just going back to the better one.

[Dan]

That's great. That's great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't, I don't quite understand how that works. But you know what, I'm. I'm here for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a really significant jump.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. It's like, like it was flatlined basically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then it's like boom. And it very clearly is coming out of Windows 10.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So I wonder if people are like, hey, if I'm not gonna have support anyways, I'll just go back wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely wild. You absolute mad lads, all of you. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Windows 7 was so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you want to talk about OpenAI and Sora too?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. OpenAI launches Sora app. This one? That's the one you're talking about. Oh, it's moving. OpenAI launches Sora app. That's the topic you're talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. OpenAI launches Sora app. Parental controls and instant checkout, which is crazy. OpenAI has launched Sora 2, their new flagship video model, now featuring audio generation, exclusively available through their new invite only iOS exclusive social app, also called Sora. The new model is notably better at simulating physics. OpenAI says that it's in its current state. It will be able to follow instructions that span multiple shots and simulate a consistent world state, which I can already tell you it doesn't really do. And we probably shouldn't listen to what they say things do at this point. But anyway, moving forward. The feature that caused the app to go viral this week was Cameos. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Technically, they only said it can. They didn't say that they enabled that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Feature or that it will all the time. The feature that made it go viral is Cameos. Users can train the model to replicate their likeness or just pretend they're someone else and train it to replicate that person's and then choose whether to keep that ability to themselves or allow others to deepfake them as well. This led to social media being overwhelmed by videos of Sam Altman doing many things, including being dressed up as a kitty man or stealing gpus from Target. Are you loading those?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope. I'm bringing up the creepy one that someone sent me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, here is him dressed as a kitty man. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And here's I gave Sora the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, boy. I mean, I can pretty easily tell it's not you, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

LTT logo and a simple prompt. The host of this narrating about Sora.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's the audio?

[Linus Sebastian]

Suspiciously got line of Sebastian's voice and likeness. Just with blue eyes. Here we go. Ready? Dan. Blowing minds lately, but there's a lot more going on under the hood. It's not just stitching together frames. You probably know Sora as the tech.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So it's pretty extensively trained on you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. That's cool. I'm happy they compensated you for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, here's Sam ALTMAN Steering, stealing GPUs and then getting caught for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not going to lie. Pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. Especially because we've known for a long time that, like, security camera footage. Yeah, that's true security camera footage. Or I mean, it's the old, like, Bigfoot thing, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Y.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's always the worst camera at the worst angle and the worst Lighting like you. You do that and it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't isn't because the fidelity is so low. Anyways, at the moment, Sora 2 is limited to iOS and OpenAI said that they want to scale responsibly, giving users tools to control their feed and even default limits on how many generations teens can make. Okay, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the main concern right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's posturing for sure. Parental controls for Sora will be accessible through the ChatGPT app, where general parental controls have been introduced as well. Parents just have to link their accounts and will have access to toggle features, set blackout hours, and receive notifications triggered by their teens behavior. The progression with parental controls is part of an ongoing effort to make ChatGPT helpful for everyone. Massive quotes eventually OpenAI wants to be able to accurately predict the age of users so they can automatically block graphic content and potentially involve law enforcement and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also serve the mad scientists.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I added that last part myself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if the kids. Yeah, absolutely. That's the core reason for sure. And if the kids really wanted the bad things, they would just run it locally. OpenAI elaborated, saying that it will only contact law enforcement in rare emergencies when their system detects a teen is in a moment of acute distress and their parent cannot be reached.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, yeah, that. I'm just throwing that out there. That might be too late. Acute distress just a little bit too late. Yeah, not a good time to necessarily do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot. A bit too late. OpenAI is also automating and open sourcing instant checkouts with ChatGPT allowing all US customers to buy single item purchases from US Etsy sellers and with more Shopify based sellers to come later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. So hold on a second. People could buy an LTT screwdriver on Chat GPT.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if they can yet. And I don't know if this has to be like an opt in thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would opt into that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why not?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not gonna lie. I mean if people are gonna give all of their information to open AI and OpenAI is going to use it to advertise.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stuff on Shopify.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wonder if you have to have an affiliate program for them. They probably wouldn't start that way. But I wouldn't be surprised.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would be surprised if we got there. There.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or. Or if you had. I mean Musk already said the quiet part out loud about xai where he was just like. Yeah. And wouldn't it be great if brands could just Pay us to recommend their products. Remember that? Yeah. So I, I wouldn't be surprised if that has been a very active conversation in the AI chatbot community.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently you have to allow it from the Shopify side.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean we, we would definitely turn this on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Conrad's here. Hey, you could do it now. Instant Checkout isn't reaching into your wallet, it's just adding a buy button and embedding the checkout process into your chatgpt chat. For products that support it, Instant checkout uses their agentic commerce protocol, or acp, which was co developed with Stripe. That makes sense. Every step of the process requires explicit confirmations and payments are encrypted and only authorized for specific amounts. Okay, I'm waiting for a future where we have a listener bot of sorts in various live chats and then you announce some product on WAN show and people just type buy and it just does it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyways, moving forward, actually I've got a sort of semi maybe kind of related topic of conversation. So we've talked, I think a fair bit in the past about Buy now Pay later schemas and this came into my inbox earlier today. Blah blah, blah, blah blah blah. Okay, so I, I sent this to the CW team a few days ago about Shopify and the chat GPT integration. And then I got, I got an email from Dave and he goes, hey, so just following up with you. Oh, wait, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it looks like this is public. Sorry, I thought I might say something that's not public. So Dave sent me this email. He goes, hey, following up per our Shopify contacts, it sounds like their team is very slowly rolling access up to stores on a limited basis. I. Oh wait, no, this is a different thing. Hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you want me to take it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, why can't I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

PayPal is enabling buy Now Pay later for like everything. I don't even think it's opt in or opt out. PayPal is just like allowing this now, which does make sense in regards to how PayPal works. And then Shopify, as far as my understanding goes, is doing an opt in setup where Buy Now, Pay Pay later is not enabled by default, but stores can opt into it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If we're being effectively forced into complying with this whole concept from PayPal. Anyways, what do you think we should do? I think that was effectively the question.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Oh yeah. Here's my email. Why didn't I just read my email from Dave's email below? Related note, Both Shop and PayPal are pitching payment plan solutions for consumers, PayPal is rolling regardless of whether we market it. Shop is an opt in. Do you have any feelings about payment plans for customers? And what I said was Luke and I have been pretty vocal critics of buy now, pay later schemes on WAN show. It seems like we are being forced to have it at this point. Regardless, should we discuss on WAN what should be our policy regarding this tech if it's supported through PayPal anyway, should we provide customer choice on our site for how to engage with this payment method? And both Luke and Taran responded. So you do just want to say what you said?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, effectively.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't actually read your email yet, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, why do I even send them?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, because I'm gonna read it eventually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was trolling. Yeah, I had a weird. I had a Not weird. I had a surprising encounter. I was. I was trolling about Klarna, which is one of the more well known buy now, pay later solutions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Buying a banana with Klarna or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure. But. But there's a ton of them. It's not just Klarna, but I was trolling about that in a chat that had a Swedish person living in Sweden in it and that person pointed out like, hey bro, it's actually like totally normal and kind of fine here. I was like, what? And they just apparently use it as a credit card replacement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's very normal. And a lot of people just have debit cards and then they use Klarna, which is a Swedish company by the way. So it's started there as a credit card replacement. And delinquencies. Delinquencies and defaults in like Sweden and Norway where it was originally popularized is like way lower than elsewhere. Just like have a different relationship with it and that maybe kind of just fall back on like.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I think our CEO Taran Tong had probably the most based take on this. He says credit cards are also onerous. If you miss payments, we accept those. My position is be financially literate. If you're using this to borrow money and don't have the ability to pay it off within terms, you probably shouldn't be making the purchase.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My take on it was freedom reigns. Let him do. Do it if they want. I don't, I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, right. We never actually clarified the part about why we have some discomfort because the way that the relationship that people have, some people have with these buy now, pay later schemes is not a healthy one and it can seem to encourage unhealthy spending habits.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is literally people this is more common in the Americas, maybe not so common in Sweden and Norway and the world is not the same and yada yada yada. But there are apparently people that max out their credit cards, don't have any credit card room left, and then go to something like Klarna and that's crazy terrifying. Please know people are saying Klarna will cut you off real quick if you don't pay. I have no idea. I don't know. I don't like it. As someone who had credit cards extremely normalized, which is a North American thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This sounds just like bad extension of credit card. Yeah, it sounds like understand it's different around the world.

[Linus Sebastian]

It sounds like. Why does it bother me? Because yeah, they both are functionally the same.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They are both literally buy now, pay later.

[Linus Sebastian]

So maybe it, maybe it's because I assume that I am buying something with a credit card. So I assume there should be no reason that I need a buy now.

[Dan]

Pay later credit card.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does that make sense?

[Dan]

Because like one month Klarna is mini month.

[Linus Sebastian]

But see, and that, but that. Okay, but is that the difference? Well, hold on. There's two differences. Okay, okay, okay. So through my North American lens, like literally almost nobody here uses a debit card to pay for something online. Like I don't, I don't, I don't.

[Dan]

Even know if we can.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could use eft, email, money transfer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are, there are ways to use debit cards for online payments, but it's like really unnatural.

[Linus Sebastian]

And yeah, so, so the functionally speaking, if you're buying something online as a North American, you are using a credit card or you are using your PayPal account, which is probably linked to a credit card or can be linked to a bank account. But that from my understanding is exceedingly uncommon compared to just using a credit card. So maybe part of our ick around stuff like around buy now, pay later, like Klarna is that we assume that you're already using a credit card. So there should be, unless you are being financially very irresponsible. No reason to use a buy now, pay later scheme because you are already using a buy now, pay later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My first few exposures to it were discussions where people were talking about how they can still order things like UberEats even when they've maxed out their credit cards. Those were the first few exposures I had to it. Not one like all of them for like months. And so then was people talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

That part of it too then could be our, our cultural experience of living in A place where credit cards themselves, too, are something to be treated extremely cautiously, where we know that they are not used responsibly. And one of the reasons that is often cited for people to have trouble controlling their spending with a credit card is that it has no, like, no discernible change in weight or size when you use it, you know, like cash does. So it can be hard for some people to keep track of it. So to me, something that you pay over an even longer period of time would seem to me to compound potentially that problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I agree. It's like that whole thing where, like, oh, you buy a. You buy a couch and it's $0 down, 0% interest for three years. It's like, why does that model work?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because they're gonna get interest rate. It rushes people because it has 30% interest when you don't have it paid off in three years, and you're gonna.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Forget about it because it's three years later, and then you just get slammed.

[Dan]

People can afford $300 for the couch they want. Now they can't afford $3,000. And instead of just buying a $300 couch, they want the one that they can technically afford because they have an extra 300 bucks every month.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dee Jenner in floatplane chat says, so you guys support the payment processors censoring game purchases. It is not your responsibility to police the way other people spend money. If I want to pay later to gamble, that's my issue. Just don't promote these things. Well, now, hold on just a gosh darn second here, because putting the logo on our website is promoting it. So that's one thing, and I'm so confused. There is a degree of corporate responsibility for not engaging in things that have the potential to be predatory. Right. Like the whole thing where a third party that was nothing to do with the transaction. Right. In those cases, the payment processors were inter. Were interfering and through outside influence, groups were putting their own moral values on a transaction that was taking place between the first two parties. So we had a fourth party influencing a third party to influence the second party. When you're just trying to buy something, that is not the same thing at all. That's not the same thing at all. In this case, we have two parties, and one is deciding whether to implement a payment processor that can potentially be harmful. Like, I think that it's a very slippery slope to say, well, corporations should just implement whatever. And if people can't use it responsibly, then, like, whatever, that's on them. Because I think as soon as we start to say something like that. Well, like why even have warning labels on cigarettes? Because, you know, they're adults. It's their bodies, it's their right to do whatever they want. It's like, well like yeah, but the whole reason that we have warnings, the whole reason that people get the ick around the mobile gaming industry for instance, is that it's, it can be very targeted, it can be very exploitative and we are aspiring here to not behave like that. That's a good thing. It's when we're not, we're not interfering in two other parties business and, and pushing our own sort of moral. You we're just trying to operate our business with integrity.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The, the thing that kind of shifted my stance on a little bit was talking to people in Sweden essentially more than, more than one. I talked to a few and they were all like, yeah, what are you even talking about? This is super normal. And not just super normal, this is just like how you buy things. Okay. I don't know, I just was unaware and I think it still doesn't make me comfortable with it. But I'm also not completely comfortable with credit cards. I mean we've talked on wan show about the insufficient fund errors on floatplane going up. That's uncomfortable. I don't like that. Don't do that. And I think we just need to say the same thing about buy now, pay later, which is like don't do it if you can't pay sooner than later. Personally. But I don't know because just because there are this, this feels like geographical to me because like literally like if I, if I look up there more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stay the path asks lmfao. Thanks guys. I'm still not clear if Canadians use credit at all. Question mark, question mark, question mark. Like do you guys only buy stuff when you can pay for all of it up front? Right then yes. That's not all Canadians actually. One of the reasons that there's a high degree of awareness around this topic for us is that Canadian household debt is I believe at an all time high right now. And it's a major issue for us as a Canadian society to try to figure out how to tackle and shift our culture on. But I speak for me and Luke personally and I think I heard Dan pipe up back there, but I was not already aware of that. For Dan, 100%. Yeah. No, I have never made a discretionary purchase if I don't have cash. You've got to be kidding me.

[Dan]

Yeah. And I use credit cards for literally Every purchase ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, me too.

[Dan]

And I always treat it like it's cash.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Every purchase goes into a spreadsheet at the end of the month.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely. And to be clear, there are healthier types of loan. Like, while. While the housing market in Vancouver was going gangbusters, like, people would take the equity that they had built up in their home because the value had gone up so much, and they might take some of that money out of it as an additional loan versus the mortgage they originally took out to, you know, do a renovation on the house. But the idea being that, well, the value of the property is going to go up so much anyway that by the time you sell it, it's basically free real estate, like there. And that was at a much lower interest rate. Or like, for example, my parents, they often. They had a line of credit that. That we would often have to use in August because they were both educators and weren't being paid in the summer. And some teachers do take on summer jobs, but they didn't. They took care of us kids in the summer because they had five of us. And so, you know, yeah, we would dip into a line of credit from time to time. But in terms of like. Like, we're talking about credit cards and buy now, pay later here, guys, we're talking stuff with like, crazy interest rates. Like, I don't want to give any financial institution a penny of interest if I don't have to. Why would I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just think the thing is, I'll.

[Linus Sebastian]

Buy a GPU later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The thing that's shifting my mind the first shift was talking to Swedish people and just being like, oh, okay, interesting. And then I started looking into it more, and then I started hearing people talk about the term buy now, pay later, and it's just credit with a different shirt on.

[Dan]

Well, yeah, yeah, they're micro loans, basically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's what credit cards are. So, like.

[Dan]

Yeah, well, that's kind of why I said earlier, like, it's it one month versus like six months. Because, you know, Visa pays for my purchases for less than a month or one month. I guess. Klarna is paying for your purchases for six months. Like, I think it's the same thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm trying to figure out why I put off by it.

[Dan]

I think. I think we are having the same sort of gut reaction, which is this month I have $3,000 to buy a GPU. So I'm gonna buy that GPU because I have $3,000. I'll put it on my credit card. I would really like this GPU, but I only have $500, so I'm gonna split that over four months. You only have $500. Maybe you shouldn't buy that GPU. Maybe it's better to save.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or you should buy that gpu, but you should buy it in four months after you have saved it up ahead of time.

[Dan]

Maybe they're trying to capture a deal, something like that. I think the stuff like Klarna, for somebody like myself promotes bad spending habits, and I think it's designed to promote bad spending habits. But sore critical. Not necessarily. This is more advanced than.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

Klarna is like sucralose, whereas credit cards are sugar. It's way easier to pay 20 bucks now than it is to pay 200 bucks, and you pay 20 bucks on top of it. So your bills every single month blossom.

[Linus Sebastian]

I see what Dan means, where by the time you start to realize how deep you are in it, you could be deeper in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This happens with credit cards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, it does.

[Dan]

And this is a more advanced version.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of you're paying $0 up front.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I totally understand what you're saying, but I also understand Dan's point.

[Dan]

This is just that. But worse.

[Linus Sebastian]

And. And it's. It's only worse. Hold on. It's only worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just as you understand, it's the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is, but it's also could be worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because we've got to understand insidious. Not every person is going, hold on, hold on, hold on, Dan, wait, let me. Let me break through. He's got a bit of a mental.

[Dan]

I'm new at this.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I know what the problem is.

[Dan]

Okay, good, good.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. So the point that Dan is trying to make is that with a service that extends it by such a lengthy period of time, there is a potentially such a long delay between when you made the initial decision and when the negative impact hits you that you may have had much more time to make compounding negative decisions in that time. Whereas your credit card bill arrives every month. So it's kind of like if you had multiple credit cards that you were using to pay each credit card, and you only realize what a problem it was by the time your last credit card was due. Is I think what you're trying to say, Dan.

[Dan]

Yeah, I get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Minimum payments, which is what, Like a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lot of people do. They do.

[Dan]

But you're paying off your Klarna.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you have to pay.

[Dan]

You're paying off your credit card. You're paying off your Klarna every single month. I get this big bill. I Pay off my big bill. But when I'm looking at a purchase and I'm staring down this GPU and it's $3,000, I'm making an internal decision. Do I really want to hand it over $3,000 right now? If all of the purchases that I'm doing throughout the day are, oh, this is only 20 bucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Dan]

My GPU only cost me a hundred dollars. And then I go to another store, oh, this is only going to cost me a hundred dollars. This is only 50 bucks. Oh, hold on. My door dash, instead of being 15 bucks, that cost me $2.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then Luke's point is it could be just as insidious if it's zero dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, they're not exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because minimum payments.

[Dan]

It's about the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think everyone sees it the way that you happen to be seeing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Depending on your psychological profile, I think one or the other could absolutely be worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so I think that's an important thing for us to all kind of capture here, for sure. And I think that my gut reaction came from. I saw Klarna as on top of credit cards, which is maybe why I saw it as the. The more evil of the two. But I also see your point that if either are being used independently, they are functionally the same thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because with minimum payments.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, I get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The same thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think they probably want us to move on. But there's one more quick thing Ruker says. Come on, Linus. Kids come out of college in six figure debt. So the difference there was I had a really great summer job. I ran paint, a painting business with a similar thing to college Pro. And so I came out of school with no debt. So when I say I have. I have saved up ahead of time for every major purchase in my life, I do mean that. And I've been very. I've been very lucky to be able to do that. I was able to live at home while I was going to school. That made a big difference. I mean, I commuted four and a half hours a day or whatever, so there were definitely, you know, downsides. And I got some help from my parents as well. They paid for half of my first car, if I recall correctly. So that was a couple thousand dollars, actually. It was a cheap car, but it was. It moved from point A to point B, which is what I needed. There was more to the deal. My mom was also going back for another degree. And so, like, I, I drove her as well, as part of, you know, like it was. It was A multifaceted deal. The point is just that. No, that is. That is a. That is. That is. That is a thing. Saving up before you buy something is definitely a thing. And that was one of the reasons that I have, and even continue to shop secondhand, because it's cheaper and because then you, like, don't have to save for as long.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The hunt is also kind of fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

The hunt is fun. Not everybody's into it. Not everybody's into it. Crystal says you also didn't finish college. You also live in a country where that's actually feasible. Not anymore. So that's. That's a thing that's changed. Right. And to be clear, none of what I'm talking about had anything to do with student loan debt. I didn't mention student loan debt. That is something that, depending on the program that you're going into, depending on the return that you might expect from it, could makes sense. Yvonne's education made a lot of sense. And one of the reasons that we were able to pay for her education was that I did drop out and I contributed to her education, even though that probably didn't make sense for where we were at in our relationship at the time. But she seemed like the one, and it seemed like a good idea, and it paid off just fine. So make of that what you will, but it's obviously a discussion that is creating a lot of. Generating a lot of emotions in viewers right now. And we were basically just looking to kind of take your temperature on this whole buy now, pay later. It seems like, in general, people are pretty aligned on what's the difference at this point. So I don't know. I. Maybe we'll talk about it some more. Yeah, Angry Panda. It's been an interesting discussion, more to say, if nothing else. Yeah, maybe there is nothing more to say. I mean, are you just. You just are just like, whatever at this point?

[Dan]

Do a capitalism. Turn it on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't. I don't like.

[Dan]

Consumer choice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's kind of where I'm sitting. I don't like it. But if you want to do it, sure.

[Dan]

Because you don't use credit cards. I use credit cards for everything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I use credit cards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Archivec and Floatplane Chat may have come into the conversation a little bit later and says, you don't have a choice in taking credit cards, and you don't have a choice if someone signs up for one. But you do have a choice in enabling Buy now, pay later. Someone could sign up for a predatory service because you offered it. So you might have missed the part earlier in the conversation where we don't have a choice. PayPal is just pushing it. It will be enabled. That's it. So buy now, pay later will be enabled on our site regardless at this point. And that's the reason that we're even having the conversation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what sparked it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's also like, I don't know if that's a, this whole thing. It comes down to perspectives because like, I understand what you and Dan are saying, but I think there is an archetype type of person who won't see it that way. That's my core argument.

[Dan]

That's the problem. And, and sorry, that's the problem that they don't see it like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, for sure. That's why they end up in horrible cyclical debt forever. This is like not a good thing at all.

[Dan]

And I think these, these micro multi month loan things encourage that more than a credit card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see.

[Dan]

I don't agree.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I sincerely agree. But anyways, we're getting really cyclical about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it doesn't matter because that's fine. It's going to, it's going to be different for different people. And I think that Dan can be right and you can also be right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I think that particular.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'm trying to move on from there. My point is that by having a checkout that shows that it's compatible with certain things. I think it's exactly the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because if you go, I want this thing and then you try to buy it and it's like you can use these things to buy it. I think it's exactly the same. Same as showing a klarnabo button. Because if you're like, oh, I don't have one of these, you can just look it up and have a credit card afterwards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. It's always interesting when we get the drop PayPal suggestion. So many people, literally the second we dropped PayPal from our site, I guarantee you our customer support inbox would just be flooded with people asking why the we don't support PayPal because now they have no way to buy anything from our store for a surprising number of people. I didn't, I didn't realize this PayPal is not a huge part of my life paying for things. I don't really use it other than like corporately, but some regions that they are super reliant on PayPal, they're super into PayPal and that's just the way it is. Not not taking PayPal would not be a good idea, period. It would just, it would literally make customers mad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For.

[Linus Sebastian]

What would we accomplish? PayPal is functionally a monopoly in their space. It's. That would be like me refusing to engage with Ticketmaster. You know what, I'll just never go to a concert again because Ticketmaster. And honestly, that would be, that would be a pretty based take at this point. Like if that was somebody's stance, I wouldn't be like, I disagree. I'd be like, that's pretty cool. But also I like to go to concerts and stage plays and stuff, so I'm probably gonna have to buy from Ticketmaster. Yeah, speaking of how money makes the world go around, the show is brought to you by Squarespace. Is your website looking like it's from the 90s? Kind of like this VR experience I was having. Man, that thing was wild. You should try it sometimes. Step into the modern age with the help of Squarespace, you can get started right away thanks to their professionally curated templates. Then you can tinker, tinker, tinker to your heart's desire with their Fluid Engine Editor, a code free drag and drop approach to customization. And if you can't quite realize your vision just yet, their AI tools can help fill in the gaps with just a few prompts. Finally, you can use powerful marketing tools like email campaigns to help spread the word and get folks clicking in. So don't wait. Get started [e-mail] wan where you can even get 10% off your first purchase. Finally, the show is brought to you by XSplit. If you've got an itch to stream your favorite game but you don't know where to start, don't get sad. Get Xsplit. Xsplit makes it easy to set up and stream to Twitch, YouTube and just about any platform, all without worrying about plugins and all that other stuff. Keep your audience engaged with slick transitions, visually captivating layouts and custom images for that personal touch. You'll also get neat features like multi camera and instant support from the get go. And as an added bonus, you can even use Broadcaster on services like Zoom and teams. Just set it as the input source and get access to its powerful features in all of your calls. And if you ever need help, they have a whole bunch of support articles alongside real actual humans that you can talk to. So don't wait. Get started streaming the right way by heading to LMG GG XSplit Wan and use code WANSHOW30 to get 30% off your first purchase. Or subscription. You looked really mad at one point during that. Do you need to talk about it or. Oh, what is this? What is a one time card and how does it work? Use Klarna payment options at any Visa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A one time card service enables you to use Klarna payment options at any Visa card accepting online store in the U.S. oh, okay. You can just generate credit cards with Klarna.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it literally just is a credit card if you use it that way?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it means you can use it anywhere. It means you can use Klarna anywhere.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I see. I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Doesn't matter if they accept it or not. They both don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I. I don't want to talk to you guys about this anymore. And I don't think Chat wants to hear you talk about it anymore either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I agree.

[Linus Sebastian]

So why don't we. Oh God. I scrolled over the OpenAI one. Minimize that. Let's not talk about that. Why don't we? Look at this. Cool. An LTTV made a backpack commercial.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is something good. Wait, go back. Go back to one.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is so cool. Just. I don't know. I made this about a year ago. Says mean AD9378. It's just been sitting on my house. Lick was that transition? Sorry. It's just been sitting on my laptop ever since. Thought I'd share it with y'. All. It's no masterpiece, but thought it'd be better if it was seen by someone rather than sitting on my hard drive forever. Let me know what you think. If it sucks, tell me it sucks. It was just a project to keep me busy at the time, so no hard feelings. So cool. That's all I have to say about that. Just thought we'd, you know, change the tone a little bit here. What else we got? Ah, yes, ASUS is rolling out fixes for Rog Laptops. Users have been complaining about stuttering issues on ASUS Laptops, and Rog has released a beta Bios update on September 26th to remedy these issues. Currently it is a beta, but there are plans for a finalized release in hopefully early October. And our discussion question here from Mr. Adam Sondergaard is how does this response from ASUS compare to their responses to customer complaints in the past? Surprisingly quick, all things considered. I mean, it was two weeks ago that. Oh man, sorry I forget the name, but developer. Developer buddy sort of highlighted what. What he thought were the problems with their. With their firmware. So what? I just press. Oh, I press this one. Whatever. No big deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seems I don't remember his name either.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm not too worried about it at the moment, but why don't we do. Oh, this is cool. PC games hardware.detested188. I don't know, I don't read German, So whatever. Tested 180. Oh, oh, okay. Well, apparently that was the Wrongong one. Cool. Tested 180 games across four benchmarks. Just in case you were curious how an RTX 4090.

[Luke Lafreniere]

150 cards, not games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. 180 GPUs. Did I say games? I'm sorry. 180 GPUs across four benchmarks. In case you wanted to know how an RTX 5090 compares to, say, a Radeon HD 5750. This is super cool. You guys should go check it out. One of the top upvoted comments on this was this is the sort of work that labs should be doing with one of the top upvoted replies to that being, no, they shouldn't. This is stupid. I agree with the top comment. This is exactly the sort of thing that I would love for labs to be able to do once we've got our testing automation really nailed down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is going to be a hot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Minute, which we don't yet. And it's going to take some time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Quite a bit of time.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I am more than willing to keep shoveling that time on money into the furnace. The money furnace. And that's what we use to heat our buildings in the winter. And. And I want to make this happen. I want to make it interactive with some of the cool features that the lab's website has been working on or the labs web team has been working on over the last little while. We had a topic called there's so much happening at Labs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. We weren't showing any new features. We'll get to that in a second. There's technically a feature, but with all the comparison stuff with our ideas for bringing your own price so that you can compare, like used.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That works. We just need more GPUs on the site. But those are coming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, let's go. So, yeah, no, I want to do it, but we're going to have to have a test farm in order to test at that kind of scale. And I'm here for it. I'm excited.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's going to be a while, but it's coming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it time? Do I talk about the articles? Okay, sure. Yeah. There's been a lot of articles on the lab site recently and some people have actually noticed We've gotten a bunch of views specifically on this one From Lucas, the iPhone 17 series test results, which is a companion article and I do want to show off that feature. So if I'm on the say main page and I see these latest articles on the side, I can check out the different tags that they have. So the iPhone 17 series has short circuit companion. So if I click on that. Well, there's one. The beta site has more than one. That's a teaser, I guess, but I'm used to that being more than one. I can go to investigative and see that we have all these articles that are tagged with investigative. And as we keep going, we're going to try to keep on having more. You can kind of sort through things nicely. But the iPhone 17 series test results is great if you want to dive further into the iPhone then than the video did in regards to performance and results and whatnot. This one was really fun. There was a quote from Linus where he said this graphics processing Unit has functionally zero support for graphics processing. No Vulkan, no DirectX and no OpenGL to speak of. And that sparked Nick and Jesse to work on the why are these called graphic cards Article, which I thought was a brilliant idea for something to write. And it's long and very interesting and I think you should check it out if that sparks your interest. And then there's. Is there a question at the bottom here? Yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the LCD forum. There's a little thread there, so maybe check it out. Thread there on the H200 to be clear. And then there is the newest one. This came out six hours ago. And this is the Intel Arc Pro B50. Your workstation deserves nice things too. And this dives over the B50 card. There are some stats in here in the table for like the B60, but we don't have a B60. We are interested in Intel's battle matrix thing because this looks sick. And that would be B 60s. But maybe another day, maybe another time. This article is kind of fun. There's me. It's cool, check it out. But yeah, we are. We have been pumping some articles on the lab site and they are pretty neat, pretty cool. So consider checking Those out. The iPhone 17 article got a lot of traffic from like suggestions and Google and external sources, not just people going to it which was neat. Our highest click through lately. That isn't just Google Search has been. Not the YouTube channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I told you about this already. Maybe not in those terms.

[Linus Sebastian]

You Told me the click through was good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, but it's. It's Hacker News. We've had more clicks from Hacker News than the Linus Tech Tips or Short Circuit YouTube channels. Even both of those combined. As far as my understanding goes, it's been a lot more from Hacker News, which has been pretty sick. So that's cool. I don't know necessarily what Hacker News wants to know about things, but considering they're driving a decent run of our traffic at this point. If you're a frequenter of Hacker News, maybe ask us some questions or something. I don't know. We'll keep. We'll keep working on stuff. At this point, the goal for Labs in regards to articles is that if we think something is interesting or we ask a question, or if we see someone else ask an interesting question, we just want to do it. And if that ends up becoming a video, sweet. And if it doesn't, cool, we have an article on it. Because one of the big goals is to just expand the knowledge base within Labs and make it so that reading Labs articles is like a fun, interesting, you know, keeping up with what's happening in tech thing for you to do and not keeping up with what's happening in tech in regards to just like news and announcements, but knowledge and learning and those, those fun things. So yeah, keep, keep checking those out. We like writing those. We like your feedback. We don't have comments on the site yet, but we generally use the forum as a feedback vector. So do that. Yeah, that's basically that whole topic. I just wanted to show those articles.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool, man. How did we start out with I don't think we have enough for the show today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then it's every time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh man, this is wild. So Red Dot is an app that crowdsources and allows users to. Wait. Oh yeah. Crowdsources and allows users to report sightings of ICE officials in the U.S. google made a statement to 404 Media claiming that it remains removed apps sharing the location of ICE officials because they are a vulnerable group. ICE Block was the first one to be removed from the App Store. Apple made the move after receiving pressure from the U.S. department of justice following an attack that was made on an ICE facility injuring detainees. Google gave a statement to Engadget that they never had ICE Block on their platform, but removed similar apps anyway for violations of their policies. Besides the recent attack, Google clarified that these apps didn't appropriately moderate user generated content. Red Dot claimed that their app aggregates reports from multiple trusted sources alongside user generated content to determine which locations should be marked with activity. However, the app developers asserted they do not track any individual person's movements and they reject harassment, interference or harm towards ICE agents or anyone else. It remains to be seen whether any of the removed apps will be allowed back on either platform. It's been very interesting to watch the discourse around this and how it has changed now that it is ICE agents rather than Chinese authorities in Hong Kong. I will leave it there. No, I won't quite leave it there. There was a lot of discussion around how Apple bending the knee to China by removing apps that allowed protesters to figure out where Chinese authority crackdowns were happening, was anti free speech, anti American. All that. And for some reason it's an extremely different conversation here. I'm not saying I don't think I'll take a position on whether these apps should. That allow tracking of, you know, law enforcement in near real time should exist on either platform. That's not really. That's not really my role right now. Or here. All I really ask for is some consistency. If you're going to take a principled stand on something, then you should take a principled stand equally if it's in some other country or if it's in your own. That's all. Oh, no more AI stuff. Do we have to?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a lot of stuff in the dock.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can we just not. Yeah, let's just not. Oh, God. Meta's gonna use your AI chat history to serve you even more targeted. I mean, that's kind of a given. You know what? I'm just gonna take it. I'm gonna get rid of it. Yep. Okay, it's gone now. Now I don't have to know.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did we do the UK demands backdoor access to Apple cloud storage again?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, sure, go for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ars Technica. Rob reports a new order from the UK Home office has demanded a backdoor to Apple's encrypted cloud storage, but just for UK citizens this time. This follows a January order that sought global access to encrypted user data and caused diplomatic issues with the us. It was announced in August that the UK had agreed to drop the demand in regards to American citizens. But the logic appeared to be that any backdoor would weaken protections for US citizens Apple repeated last week. We have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our discussion question is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how surveillance state do you consider the UK? I don't live there, so I am. I don't keep up with UK news nearly as closely as I do with with Canadian news and our nearest neighbor news. So I. I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna begin to wade into that one, other than to say that a lot of what we've seen doesn't look great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. We did the testing. GPUs, AI stuff. AI brain robot thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think us free Western democracies need to really take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how different we are from, what the heck, some of the authoritarian states that we for so long turned up our noses at there. I'll say that much too. All right, what do you want to talk about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's only really one topic left if we want to do it, and it's another AI one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm over it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's the body agnostic AI brain robot thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. It's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To demo their body agnostic AI brain. Company demos is the name. Demos. Robots. Oh, company demos. Robots relearning how to walk after being dismembered by a chainsaw.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

They're just like people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Instead of training one model for One robot, skilled AI created a universe with 100,000 robots and used the same model to train them all for a simulated millennia worth of time. Cool. Now when the brain is popped into a new body, it can adapt to whatever that body might be. A major benefit they showcase in the video is that it could adapt to modifications to whatever body it inhabits, even on robots that it had not previously been trained on.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is pretty neat. I don't think they needed to use a chainsaw.

[Dan]

Well now.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it's.

[Dan]

It's so they're vulnerable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I get it. It got clicks for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good job, marketing team.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hopefully for your sake, they don't kill you first.

[Dan]

I'll be first.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thanks, Luke. One of these days we're gonna do the all positive news WAN show. But it is not that day. I'm scared I'm in danger.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you know you don't like that. You could like, shoot it. It's like. It's like a zombie at that point. Point it doesn't have to stop.

[Dan]

Yeah. I thought that. That they sort of. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, dude, it's like lore accurate video game though. There's one where.

[Dan]

Where they were going. They shoot the. The red thing. They're going to learn.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics remaster. Oh, I'm enjoying it. It's actually really good timing for it to come out because I have to start getting some time in with the Xbox Lax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You had issues with the Final Fantasy 6 remaster?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that was just, like, the. Okay, relatively minor ones, but very different things. No, Final Fantasy is Pixel Remaster. It's functionally the same game, but, like, how do I put this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're saying Tactics is functionally the same?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, okay, so Final Fantasy 6 pixel remaster was like a coat of paint and a newer translation. I don't prefer. Prefer. Both of which are also true of the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster. But with Final Fantasy 6, there were, like, game balance issues. Like, it felt like the. Like the tick rate wasn't right or something on certain abilities and like, I don't know, there were things that didn't seem quite right. Overall, it was really good. But if I was to play through it again, again, again, I would probably just play the SNES card. As for Tactics, so far it's looking pretty good. I'm playing the new Remastered one. Are you looking this up? I'm playing the new Remastered one, but it comes with the original as well. And the. The director for the remaster is actually the director of the original game. So even some new content that was added in the advance port of it, the Game Boy advance port of it has been removed because it was, like, not part of the original game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it the ivalice Chronicles?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I. I originally played the game with no voice acting. So, yeah, I don't actually. The voice acting is really cool. I don't really use it because I like to skip quickly through things. So what I generally do with JRPGs is like, this is my new. My new technique is I switch the language over to Japanese, which I don't speak. And so that way I can hear the intonation for as long as it goes, and then I can cut it off mid sentence, and I'll never know the difference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so you said it comes packaged with the original. Is this like, in the Pixel Remastered, when I could press a button and it would switch graphic styles between. Or is it two launchers?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's two. Two games in the launcher.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I see.

[Linus Sebastian]

It just has a lot of little creature comforts. I don't love some aspects of the interface. There's a little bit more delay. Like, if you want to rip through menus, you can't. There's a bit of delay on them. And, like, the. The menu for learning new job abilities and assigning them those are in two completely different places for reasons that I'm not quite sure that I fully understand. So hopefully these are things that they can continue to fine tune over time. But little creature comforts like being able to press the right button to quickly navigate through cutscenes is like a lifesaver because some of them are really long in this game, and I don't think the original had any way to fast forward or skip them. There's. I would say, better camera controls. Graphics look a little nicer. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

An oddly big. Maybe not that odd. An oddly big thing for me with remasters is, are the controls more modern?

[Linus Sebastian]

Definitely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because some of these. The old controls for things are brutal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, tactics was for PS1. I mean, analog sticks were not a good given.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. So being able to use a stick for the camera control, compared to. I believe it was left and right. R1. R2 to rotate the camera on. On the PS1 version. Yeah. It's an improvement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's. There's no official announcement as far as my understanding goes, but there's, like, very extensive, reputable leaks that there's going to be a Assassin's Creed Black Flag remaster.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'd play it. You'd play the heck out of that. I don't think you'd 100% it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I never. 100. The first one.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was one Assassin's Creed you did. Hold on, hold on. Don't tell me two.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was three that I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, all right. Did you 100 Assassin's Creed two.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, then I got it. At least one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you're still kind of actually entirely right because it was two. Two brotherhood and two essential.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. I've got my Luke lore, like, mostly down. That's pretty deep lore, too. I don't think we've talked About Assassin's Creed 2 since we were sitting on the couch at the Langley house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That honestly sounds accurate.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's time for After Dark. Should we do this thing? Remember when After Dark was like a cheeky name for when the WAN show ran really late and it had gotten dark outside? Now it's a given. And it's always dark outside at the end of Land Show. How did this happen? What did you do, Dan? I don't know.

[Dan]

I don't know. I'm. I'm solely. I'm solely responsible for your scheduling day in and day out, as well as.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our.

[Dan]

Keeping you on topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Way to be. All right. After Dark hit me with a merge message.

[Dan]

I gotta push another button.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In dance events. Question mark. We didn't get to start the show today until rather late.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I was doing something very important. I'm going to be traveling next week and I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you away for when?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm just going down to Vidsummit. So I was away next. I'm going to be away next week and so I wasn't going to have a chance to shoot a video that was like. It was a quick one for me to write. It took me like a couple hours, but I still needed a couple hours to write it. And it's something that we need to address, I feel, quite urgently and I didn't want to wait another week to be able to film it. Once I'm back, it's addressing the issue around YouTube members only videos on our channel, and I think they gotta go. And so I. Rather than us just yoinking them with no communication, I wanted us to have a very clear statement. So I wrote something up and then I did like a quick, quick, like, peer review for the script with James and then Jordan also had a look at it. And then I quickly shot it before when. But it did take me a little bit of time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you have a way to export the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whoa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this even okay? I'll figure out if it's okay after. Do you have a way to export the email list of all your members?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Heavens no. I mean, YouTube, that's the whole point of them controlling every aspect of the platform.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna say we could offer them like a free month on floatplate or something just to get them started.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I don't think we'd really have a way of doing that. Do we have the ability to offer a free month or would that be, like, manual?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can do that if we have, like a, you know, Excel sheet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I see. Okay. All right, never mind.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'd want all their. We need all their emails.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I thought we, like, had free trials as a mechanism now, but no. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

[Dan]

Merch messages.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, hit me.

[Dan]

Linus. Is Yvonne into the braces also? Any tips for someone switching to graphene os?

[Linus Sebastian]

Heavens no. She, like, didn't want to kiss me for a while because she was afraid I'd to, like, like, you know, rip her lip off.

[Dan]

Yeah, any excuse, I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ouch. Damn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who are you kissing, Dan?

[Dan]

I guess the unemployment line after that, I should say same amount of people as you. There you go. Give me a second. Give me a second.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Late.

[Dan]

I'm slow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jira Soul says Linus too mean.

[Dan]

I started it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. Pondcracker says Yvonne likes to pick the food out. No, she definitely doesn't. Definitely not.

[Dan]

Does that happen? Is that a problem?

[Linus Sebastian]

I can. No, no. I would, I would definitely not go anywhere near her mouth with these unless they were clean. I believe in, I believe in personal hygiene.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you mean like, does food get lodged?

[Dan]

Yeah. Like are they difficult to like keep clean?

[Linus Sebastian]

I could probably get like a 1 inch like section of noodle stuck in them. Like it's, it's horrible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Because I was gonna say when I had braces I was absolutely a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. As for graphene os, I'd say, I'd say graphene os. So we have, I actually shot that video today too. The, the switch dude. It has like the funniest intro I think we've shot in probably at least a month, maybe like six months. It's so funny. It start. I'm, I'm just like talking about graphene OS and I like notice someone coming after me and then I go and I like try, I'm about to like try to steal a motorcycle and then like I get arrested and then I'm like taking my mug shot because the, the title of the video is going to be I tried the criminals choice, the criminal's phone of choice for a month. But everything that I'm saying is just totally straight faced like about grapheneos. And, and we almost immediately addressed that there's lots of reasons to be into graphene OS outside of if you're you know, a ne do well. But yeah, it ends up Jordan wrote this hilarious thing. It's like, you know, whether you're just really into privacy or you're an E.R. do well or you stub your toe running from the police or something like that. So I like stub my toe and like wipe out and I'm like like Peter Griffin graphene os. Like I don't know, we, we put Jordan in one of those hilarious like British style cop. That was so cute and it like, it was adorable. It was like 40 the size it needs to be. His head so tiny. And then we have him like pushing me down into the cop car. I like hit my head and you know like, I don't know, it's, it's really funny. Should be good. Anyway, my tip would be do it at a time when you're gonna be off. If you're not super technical, like super, super technical. You don't adb all the things, things I would say do it at a time when you're going to be off for like a Couple days on a long weekend or something so that you have a bit of time for your side quests. Because there's going to be some side quests. You're not going to just immediately start smoothly daily driving it and everything works exactly the way that you expect it to. That doesn't mean that it's bad in any way. Super cool and for a lot of people, not for everyone. But just give yourself a bit of extra time to get it set up up. That's what I would say.

[Dan]

Hello, Linus, the tech and the tips. Winky face. I was recently watching an older LTD video and I was reminded that Linus hates monitor light bars. What are some other objectively wrong opinions you hold?

[Linus Sebastian]

You're asking me to determine which things I believe are wrong? That's tough. Luke, maybe you could tell me something that I am objectively wrong about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think you're objectively wrong about monitor bars, so that's gonna be tough. We agree on a lot of stuff. Yeah, I'm sure there's something that's actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

A really fun one. How often I see people talk about what an idiot I am and someone sensible like Luke could hang around with me for so long.

[Dan]

I think that means that Luke is also not sensible then by proxy. Oh, no, wait, hold on. The Internet always says that Luke is right about everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It is really interesting to watch how often Luke is right when actually we're pretty aligned on like a lot of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The most annoying thing for me is when like we will battle about something and people are like, oh yeah, stick it to the. And then a month later I agree with you on something and they're like, what a. He won't stand up for himself and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus obviously holds so much maybe financial sway over him that he can't disagree.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe I thought it was fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they're. Maybe they're professional body language analysts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I don't know, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they can use little snippets from WAN show to determine. And your inner, innermost thoughts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are you objectively wrong about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Objectively wrong about? I gotta be. I mean, I'm sure I'm wrong about lots of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just can't think of.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's just so. It's so hard to think of something that you believe is right that is objectively wrong. Because obviously if I thought it was objectively wrong, I would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is a controversial take that you have?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. We could go with like ad Block piracy then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I agree with that. I also agree with the core reference of it, which is like, you can just be okay with that and that's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I think this is just hamburgers versus hot dogs.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's also been a really. There's. I mean, there's been a really interesting new development in that whole. That whole take when we had the. The viewpocalypse a few weeks back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where disproportionately.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a development.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tech channels with. No, but it's a way that we can objectively say. Okay, yeah, there is a clear impact here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tech channels with tech savvy audiences were disproportionately impacted by view count changes that allegedly were caused by something to do with ad blocking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought it was interesting because, like, this is obvious, but I just, like, never really thought about it. It's always been Talked about how CPMs and tech are really low.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. During that period, considering how affluent and the ages, the demographics of the audience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And how they're often kind of based around shopping. It's reviews of products you might buy, but CPMs and tech are really low. And then suddenly that happens. And CPMs and tech are not low anymore because revenue stayed the same, but the views went down. So your CPM reflective of only the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Viewers that had no ad blocking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

CPMs went way, way up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So if. If nobody was running ad block tech, CPMs would be really good. Well, I don't know if I want to say really good. There's some sectors on YouTube that are crazy, like finance and whatever else, but they'd be much healthier. I'd say that.

[Dan]

Up next.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Chat's not giving you much work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought chat was gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you guys were gonna hit me with this, like, bring it on. But we're not. Making a Linus town is not objectively wrong. That is not inevitable. And I am not wrong for not making a new Christmas album. It was awful. It was so awful. It was just. Oh, God, it was awful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we should. I think we should make a new Christmas album.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can't say I'm objectively wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I think that's objective.

[Linus Sebastian]

And sell it on the forum. Again, that's objectively wrong.

[Dan]

Objectively, I think it wraps you around to be better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should just move on. We should move on. I guarantee you there are things I think. Think this of. I just can't think of it right now.

[Dan]

Should post on Lab's website, have a look at the wrong blog. As experienced YouTube creators often many channels have the same sponsor. In which I am interested, though. Whose link should I buy? Through whose link should I buy? What supports creators more? Which channels get paid more?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What supports creators more?

[Linus Sebastian]

So, okay, affiliate links, right? Basically, you choose. Oh, man. This is a personal choice. Although I think there's different ways you could go about it. So basically, the question is, you watch a bunch of different creators, they all have referral links for the same product or service that you're planning to buy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you're gonna buy a laptop.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd say you could do it a number of different ways. You could do it based on just who you like the best. You could do it based on who you've gotten the most value out of over the years. But personally, I lean away from those two. I lean more towards who had the best pitch. Who had the most interesting pitch that you felt conveyed the value of the product really well but didn't mislead or overhype it? And I think I would take a what have you done for me lately? Sort of approach and go with, yeah, who had the best pitch? Who put a bit of extra work into. Into doing the read. I think that would be a pretty okay way to do it. But also, the other two are perfectly reasonable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a pretty good answer. I don't really understand the, like, what makes more money or what crater makes more money thing. Oh, I see. That wasn't an additional question. That was a factor of the first. Okay, I get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, great. Nate finally got one. Obviously, my name being Linus is objectively wrong because Linus Torvalds pronounces it away cooler.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My first name is English. My last name is French.

[Linus Sebastian]

So your name is objectively wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Two objectively wrongs make a right.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. But three lefts do.

[Dan]

Two Ls do make a W.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's pretty good.

[Dan]

And your name has too. I could do shape recognition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where does the two L's make a W thing come from? Because I know I've done it. But did that. Does that have an origin? Probably. Do I get any. Do I get credit for that? I'm not sure. Is that a thing?

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure it was a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's got to be a thing, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. You're objectively wrong for thinking that you get credit for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It maybe. Hey, deal. I saw you. I saw you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wasn't looking.

[Linus Sebastian]

I saw the flash on the stream.

[Dan]

It was on there. For a while, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

What you did, I saw you do it again.

[Dan]

Cuz it's a push button.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know.

[Dan]

I could just hold it and then when you release, it appears. Hey, D. Watching from Japan, question four.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, Scabard War season four.

[Linus Sebastian]

What about it?

[Dan]

It from Japan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yours was worse. Painting a silver case. Silver is lame. You're objectively wrong.

[Dan]

You painted a silver case Silver.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mine was on fire, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mine was on fire.

[Dan]

Literally or figuratively at Scrapyard Wars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Literally.

[Dan]

Oh, that's way better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I three sources of fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

I painted actually. I think Bob painted. But someone on my team painted that case silver because it was in what.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Color did it start as a different.

[Linus Sebastian]

Silver that was in extremely poor condition.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very creative.

[Linus Sebastian]

Extremely poor condition.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Creative of you.

[Linus Sebastian]

There were budgetary constraints which you well know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's part of Scrappy wars purchased silver paint.

[Linus Sebastian]

I believe so actually. Maybe it was all we had. I, I, you know, that was a very long time ago. I'm amazed you're. Maybe it's because you haven't won lately that you're so hung up on old.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Scrapbook then I was way ahead.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that is that makes me feel. Is it just because you don't have any recent victories to rub in my face? I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's just because your build sucked and it like it sucks that judging can can be so biased when you pay them.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know for a fact that internally and in the audience, nobody roots for me just because I run the company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it must have. I think it must have that season because there is no way I will never let this die. That was. There has been ones that I was kind of surprised by. Didn't necessarily agree with. Whatever. Maybe some cheating involved. This one?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, just bull spit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just trash. This one was trash.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bull spit it. Did I win? Did I win that one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You won season four.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't even remember. I've won so many, especially recently, that I can hardly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It makes no sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can hardly recall anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like tied with me now and you're talking so much smack.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm only doing it because I know it bothers you so much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so trash.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's actually so upset. I'm trying to find both modern. How much is is I'm working. I got it already.

[Dan]

How much is his leg bouncing right now?

[Linus Sebastian]

I got it already shaking.

[Dan]

Oh yeah, he's angry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so here's our judges. Hold on. Where's. Okay, so where's my machine? So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, look, a silver computer versus one that's on fire in the background with pistons on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you. You. Doesn't seem very practical. You put the off in pistons.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did. Ridiculous.

[Dan]

I'm not gonna ding that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on. Yeah, okay. Man, we never freaking scrapyard wars, man. We like systems. What do the systems look like?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hold on, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's amazing that we're video production company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It didn't have to be on fire.

[Dan]

How long does it burn for?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it had fuel a long time. Yeah, it was like a tiki thing. It was stupid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You didn't have to have it on fire. It was able to be not on fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

How did we go from this to the finale without ever actually seeing the damn system?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It just ends.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. You know how it ends here? Hold on. I think I can see how it ends here. Oh, what was this? Wait, you guys won? What are you even talking about? What are you even mad about? I don't think so. We won. Wow. By 0.8. No wonder you're mad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Garbage. And on your home turf too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, my parents.

[Linus Sebastian]

We were in Luke's parents garage and he had to lose there. Oh, that's rough, dude. I feel bad for you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, well, it's a scam. It's just actually a scam.

[Dan]

Don't feel bad. You still paying me off the interest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here we go. Okay, here we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am.

[Dan]

Emotional debt.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like this concept with having to watch the judges look at them and us just being a reaction cam though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do you have a before? That's stupid. You can't show the before of what it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what the before is out. Did we do that?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Dan]

Apparently.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently. I think you were just showing off that you had extra hardware. Maybe if you'd spent all of the money on the hardware you actually presented to the judges, you might have won.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We probably. If we did, we probably got it for free. I think we were pretty scrappy that season.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And I don't think anyone had introduced the meta of selling stuff yet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think so. I think that was the Jane Dimitri.

[Linus Sebastian]

That might be right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's when that started.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so hold on. Oh, look how classy this machine is though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Boring, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

But look how classy it looks like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It came off a shelf.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly. Except it. It didn't. Except it didn't. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Imagine doing all that work to make it look normal.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was so garbage before we got it. And now look how like water cooled. Liquid cooled. That's custom, by the way. That custom Liquid cooling. It was an aio and then we used clear tubing to make it not an aio.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wanted to bake some. Just so bored looking at that boring computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, we can move on.

[Dan]

Hey, DLL watching from Japan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Question for Luke.

[Dan]

I'm a lead at a startup using Floatplane's stack. How strictly do you enforce folder file structure, linting and code consistency versus shipping fast? More so first one than the other.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shipping fast for a long time and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then realizing, yeah, we, we do a lot more now. I. You didn't say tests or test driven development. We don't go that far. Well, we do, we do have some tests, but we don't do test driven development or 100% test coverage or anything like that. Far from it really, but. And I think that's fine. Do you lint? Yes, and we are slowly improving that over time. I know Jaden's doing a ton of work right now trying to get like some of the last bits fully properly linted, which will be nice. It'll be good. And then from there on we should be able to continue with 100% linted code. That's been a many years long project because it's been one of those things where like just we, we never pursued 100% all at once. We would do like, okay, we're going to work on this project that touches this part of the code base, we will lint this part of the code base and then we move along and it just ends up being like a little adder onto feature requests, which allowed us to keep releasing things that would either make, you know, creators or users or developers or whatever happy, but progressing on this goal at the same time. And a lot of that has been driven by Jaden, who's been doing great with it. So that's where we're at with that. Yeah.

[Dan]

What technology do you feel is taken for granted and underrated in 2025?

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, almost all of it. I think it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh hell yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's. As much as it pains me that a top of the line GPU for like consumer grade GPU starts at US$2,000 and goes up to US$3,000. Like if you showed that to someone when I was a kid, like if you. And as much as modern games aren't optimized enough and developers are lazy, like, dude, if you showed up, what was the, what was it? Borderlands 4. That's been under fire lately. If you showed Borderlands 4 to me when I was a kid, I would think you were God, like I, I wouldn't even, and I wouldn't even be able to fully comprehend what I was looking at. I think we've gotten extremely entitled when it comes to the technology that we just, well, take for granted. That was the question. I think we take it for granted. That doesn't mean that as consumers we shouldn't demand better. I mean, I was pretty upset when Apple made the AirPods Pro 3 downgraded from the AirPods Pro 2. In some key ways, that mattered a lot to me. We should definitely, you know, hold trillion dollar companies accountable when they do things that make their products worse or make our lives worse. But broadly speaking, yeah, I think, I think we just kind of take for granted that there's a computer in our pocket and another one on our wrist and another one in our backpack and another one on our desk at home. Like, dude, entire families had one PC. And that was when you were doing really well when I was a kid, you know, so all of it technology is so cool, man. Like freaking. Like you ever just like hold a CPU and go like, oh my God, like there's physical features in this that are built literally on a scale of like actual atoms. Oh my God. How is this attainable at something even remotely approaching a consumer price? How is this not exclusive to world governments? Like, it's, it's amazing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You started going into it, but I was going to specifically say CPUs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or like I, you know, silicon based processors, whatever you want, microprocessors, whatever. It's the manufacturing that goes into them. And then the fact that you can buy them for like a few hundred dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's a few hundred dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what goes into it is billions of dollars. Like the craziest thing humans have done. And then it's like a consumer good. Like that's wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Amazing that it ever achieved such scale to be able to reach the economies we have today at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And with remarkable asml and all these guys, guys, the, the ramp of the process involved is nuts. Like back in the day they dip wafers by hand into chemical baths. And like it was this, it was this like very sciency kind of process. And now you have just these boxes of mystery and amazing science comes out the other end and there isn't even anyone in the room like, whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredible. Ninja Banaway says the, the AirPods Pro 3 reaction caused quite a stir in the audiophile community.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure did.

[Linus Sebastian]

And apparently Krinikle uploaded a video today. Ninja man says, yeah, I saw that video. It was wild. There was no Pushback on Crin for essentially what DMS and Linus said. That's hilarious. I actually, I haven't had a chance to check out Chronicles video yet. I'll have to. I'll have to watch it. Oh well.

[Dan]

The most important question. Did you get Alex's invitation to jam some tape to tape?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that being. That's. That, that's my invitation. We actually, we played for the first time like I think like a week before he left or something like that. And on his last day I was like we should play tape to tape. I have played Alex. I haven't played any tape to tape lately. Mark's been busy. Which I'm sure is relatable.

[Dan]

Based on your.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yes, I'm down. Okay.

[Dan]

Based on your metrics on YouTube or floatplane. What's the weirdest type of device someone has used to watch ltt?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if we would really have a ton of insight. We see browser but if I remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Correctly, we joked about this a long time ago and then people did a fridge and a DS or something Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

DS is pretty good. I'm taking ds. That's sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that was it. Yeah.

[Dan]

Sorry, I was replying to one here, one second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Crystal. I played a week ago at a land I was playing with local people.

[Dan]

Come on, it doesn't count. Hey Wan. Considering Nvidia's recent buy in of intel, what's your take on the long term prospects of arc? Do you still have hope for ARC as a potential competition for AMD and Nvidia in discrete GPU market?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean I'm hoping for the best man. And my take hasn't really changed on all of this. Back when I said this is not financial advice and it's especially not financial advice today. But I think long intel is a good bet that wouldn't have paid off as well as Nvidia back when I said it. But the reasons that I gave for very, very long intel were many of them still valid today. I said I believed in Pat's vision. Unfortunately that one's not valid. But all the other things that I brought up around the geopolitical importance of intel being functionally the only non Southeast Asian cutting edge semiconductor manufacturer have actually come to be true. I mean literally the US government put billions of dollars into intel to make sure that China can't just take a little rowboat across that tiny little strip of water and completely invalidate any attempts at U.S. sanctions on semiconductor products forevermore. Yeah, every. Yeah, every, every. Everything I said then was still true. Except for I believe in Pat's vision and now I just. Now I just have no idea what the vision is. I'm still hoping that ARK will. Will stick around but I. I can't. Yeah, I can't. I really hope ARC discrete ARC sticks around and I mean with AI being what it is hope. I man do. I hope the bubble lasts for long enough for intel to like maybe make a little bit of money on ARC GPUs for AI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yo, like battle Matrix dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Battle Matrix super cool. I hope so man. I hope that AI gives it a reason for them to keep putting money into it it long enough that the gaming cards can reach a break even point where just if at where at the very least they can just ignore it and it can keep doing its thing in the corner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'll be awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

That. That's my best. That's my.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're gonna have to get off of 0% market share.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they'll have to do that. Okay. Hey, is it time for our weekly ARC watch?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

ARC watch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't stinger for this. The Nvidia investment thing is going to change the path for ARC GPUs. If ARC GPUs no longer become a thing. I don't think it's going to be because of that and I really really really hope that they continue being a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, this is big dumb. This is misleading. This is not $90 off the MSRP of the ARC B580 is $250. But you can buy an Onyx Odyssey ARC B580 for $249.99 and you can pay in four interest free payments of 62.50. I. I am throwing back to an earlier conversation on the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is not a suggestion.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is not not a recommendation. But if you have 200 $150 in your pocket right now and if you need a pretty decent 1440p or really excellent 1080p gaming GPU and if you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Want to be a crazy person and have lossless scaling stuff going on, free 3D mark.

[Linus Sebastian]

Definitely not as good as that Battlefield deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that was a crazy deal.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was a really good deal. What else we got? ASRock has one for 269.99 if you want pretty close. It has 50% more fans for only you know, 8% more dollars. So I guess that's a deal. Oh wow. Those. Those reference cards are not available. First party from Newegg. Remember that one was going during Intel Gamer Deals. They had like, like a thousand of them were in the cart or something like that. Whatever it was, man, I can't believe we're doing this again without me figuring out if we have a. If we have a new egg affiliate. Remember we probably sold like a thousand GPUs that one wan show. And I was like, hey, do we have an affiliate link? And then I was like, I should look that up.

[Dan]

Let's do that every week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. So I got one part of it. I got the part where we just do this every week. I didn't get the part where we make any money. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because you can get an ASRock Challenger B580 for $259.99 and check out game sale. That's not a deal. Don't forget your OS. Get this out of here. The point is ARC $259.99. $249.99. You can buy one right now. I really, really want intel to survive. We need somebody to keep Nvidia honest and AMD is clearly not up to the challenge. Hi.

[Dan]

LLD finally got KG10 copper edition case. That's the fanless one one. Do you have any tips and recommendations for building in it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Have fun, dude.

[Dan]

It's so such a cool case.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's so cool. Take your time, go slow. It's really heavy. Don't be. Go into it fully understanding. Like I would build the whole thing and then I would make the assumption that when I'm done building, I'm gonna want to tear it all down and do it again with everything I learned the first time. Because it really is not a for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Beginners build that open the cable management's gotta be crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, and everything about it is. Is crazy. It's really cool.

[Dan]

And last one I got for you today. Hey, Linus, for kids, do you recommend an Apple watch in Canada? The plan is only about 10 bucks a month and there's no access to the web. But it can still be located and called with texting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, that was a big part of Apple's pitch for the new SE is like for kids and it seems like a pretty compelling price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That seems pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. With that said, you know you could get a lot more functionality with like a cheap secondhand Android phone for that same amount of money. But if what you're after is for them to not have the functionality seems like the goal. Not a ton of other options like the, the, the, the dumb phone market seems to have gone like super upscale over the last few years. You notice that, like they went from being these super affordable non featured devices where the whole point was that they're cheap and cheerful and now they're like bougie. I don't think that's true of all of them, just the ones getting headlines. So, yeah, if you wanted it, if you're into it. The nice thing about the Apple Watch is Apple has done a very good job of supporting them over an extended period of time. So by the time your kids are ready for a smartphone, then they can just pair it to their phone and they can just keep using that same watch probably.

[Dan]

That's all I got.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's all I got for you until next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bye.

[Linus Sebastian]

How long was that show?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

How'd that happen? Sam.