Luke Lafreniere (2:14)

No, of course not.

Linus Sebastian (2:15)

Yeah. Okay. Nice intro time.

Luke Lafreniere (2:18)

What? What?

Linus Sebastian (2:24)

Oh, no. We have my gamer tank. That was fantastic.

Luke Lafreniere (2:37)

You keep talking over the music. The show is brought to you by msi, Squarespace, Saily and Vessi, of course, alongside our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Get Red Secret Land. Let's go. Now, I do want to say, Noki, that was an incredible, incredible WAN show intro variant. But there is one minor detail that you got unforgivably wrong. What I would never beat Luke at video games.

Linus Sebastian (3:07)

You do.

Luke Lafreniere (3:08)

Yeah, I will win. Like I'll steal a couple rounds from you when we first pick up a new game. And then after that it's basically just like the Luke Shrek Linus show.

Linus Sebastian (3:19)

Think it's that clear? You've always said this. I don't think. Okay, okay. A one off example is not fair enough. What was that? That game? It was like jump around everywhere. Archery, Tower fall, Towerfall. We traded back and forth a lot on Towerfall.

Luke Lafreniere (3:36)

Yeah, because I have like five times as many hours in it as you.

Linus Sebastian (3:40)

Okay. I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (3:44)

Also, my childhood was 2D side scrolling and jumping and yours was Halo.

Linus Sebastian (3:50)

Right. But then you look at games like Halo and you're like, you beat me at those games and it's like, yeah. And then I look at games like those ones and I say, you beat me at those games and be like, yeah, but I grew up with those. Like, it has to be.

Luke Lafreniere (3:59)

Yeah, but I had so many more hours in it too.

Linus Sebastian (4:02)

Yeah, but I also had so many more hours in shooters.

Luke Lafreniere (4:04)

I am trying to pay you a compliment. Just take it.

Linus Sebastian (4:08)

No, not at expense of others.

Luke Lafreniere (4:11)

Oh, that's true. I am better than him at super checks. But that's not a video game. So I will vibe code Super Chex the video game. Then I will win a video game against Luke. He'd find a way to win a video game.

Linus Sebastian (4:28)

I was going to say, I don't know, dude. Yeah, I might figure that out.

Luke Lafreniere (4:34)

Speaking of which, Meta has found a way to figure out how to keep the billions of dollars in revenue that they are making from fraudulent advertisers who are just using ads on Meta's platforms to defraud people. This is based on a Reuters report that shows that internal documents allegedly show that Meta understood that a large portion of its advertising revenue from Chinese partners. And this is not like a little bit large portion, this is like roughly 19% of their advertising revenue. In 2024, over $3 billion came from ads that were tied to and brace yourself, scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other prohibited content. Then seeing all that, Meta went, hmm, well what we could do is we could crack down on this. But, but hear me out, hear me out. Alternate plan. We could not.

Linus Sebastian (5:47)

And make billions of.

Luke Lafreniere (5:48)

Dollars from bogus products in Taiwan to investment scams in the US and Canada. China has become source of scam ads on Meta's platforms globally. A special China focused anti fraud team initially was able to cut this problematic Chinese ad revenue nearly in half. But all of this is allegedly because I do not work for Reuters and I did not do the reporting for this. Allegedly. After a strategy shift influenced by the Zuck himself, the team was apparently disbanded and tougher enforcement measures were shelved. In a big surprise to everyone, especially the Zuck, fraudulent ads and therefore the revenue associated with them rebounded.

Linus Sebastian (6:35)

I wonder when this was. Was this during like his big layoff? When he was like, we need to.

Luke Lafreniere (6:41)

The year of efficiency? No, I think it's more recent than that actually. You know what? No, don't quote me on that. Let's leave it. Go check out the link to Reuters, which Dan will throw in the video chat description. Chat. Throw in the chat. A big part of the reason that this works so well is that Meta's ad ecosystem in China relies on layers of resellers that obscure advertisers identities, making it easier for scammers to place ads. Consultants warned that this setup enables fraud and that Meta's enforcement was weaker than their competitors. And it appears that they just don't care because they'd rather just take the money and go. La la la la la la la. I don't know that fraudulent ads are happening on the platform. La la la la la. I mean I just to me, even with the network of resellers, it doesn't seem that complicated because apparently it's like, I read the article, apparently it's like 11 like main like top level resellers or something like that. So if Meta cared at all, even with the, the whole layers of just pushing the responsibility onto them and going, yeah, I will literally ban you if too much of this crap makes it.

Linus Sebastian (7:55)

Through, you know, you know how like so many things in life are bell curves and there's, there's that whole meme where there's like the person who's just like chill about a thing because they're like ignorant to it or whatever and then the person freaking out about the thing because they're at like a medium level of skill or knowledge. And then on the other end it, it's just someone who's like extremely skilled or extremely knowledgeable and they're just chill. Again, I, I feel like this kind of applies to this situation as well.

Luke Lafreniere (8:24)

Really. This is kind of a wild take. Let's see where he's going with this.

Linus Sebastian (8:27)

Really small company can often get away with just like not caring or paying attention to these types of things.

Luke Lafreniere (8:32)

Oh, I see what you mean.

Linus Sebastian (8:33)

A medium sized company gets like crushed by everyone because you're, you're now big enough you have to care about these things. And then really big companies just get to ignore them again. They get to basically not have customer service. They get police things like ads or anything else on their platforms because they're like, I don't know, we're too big. We can't do that anymore. Of course, that's totally fine. Even though they, like, definitely, definitely have the resources to do so. It's interesting how, like, requirements, policies upholding certain standards and stuff are really, really, really, really pushed for it. Like the, The. The middle size.

Luke Lafreniere (9:13)

This is wild. I saved this. Facebook. I think I talked about this last week how Facebook sent me an invitation to use some feature on my page.

Linus Sebastian (9:23)

Do you need to search for. Oh, never mind.

Luke Lafreniere (9:25)

Yeah, no, no, I got it. They create a fan challenge to keep your audience engaged with your page on Facebook. They sent me the same thing again. In fact, here you can see. In the last week, I have three emails from Facebook. 1, 2, 3, all with the same subject line for the Linus Tech Tips page on Facebook to create this fan challenge. Now, I've gone into the Facebook dashboard, and I'm not an expert on, like, Facebook Page management or profile management or advertising or anything. I log into Facebook as infrequently as I can, and I only really use it for Marketplace at this point. So I'm not going to claim that I have done the world's greatest job of, you know, finding where to turn this off. But what I have done is I've gone into my Facebook dashboard and I've turned off every communication method that I could find because I don't want emails from them unless it's something to do with, like, the taxation for, like, paying out our Facebook video ads, which were a thing for a while, and honestly, now they're not even that much. I don't think we're really making pretty much anything on Facebook anymore. You know, they had that big push into video like six years ago or something like that. Anyway, however long. Yeah, four or five.

Linus Sebastian (10:46)

I don't know. It happened, though.

Luke Lafreniere (10:49)

I'm going to go over here.

Linus Sebastian (10:51)

Yeah, we're both hanging out, so.

Luke Lafreniere (10:55)

So I don't want to miss an important message. So I can't just filter every message from Facebook. So I wanted to turn off specifically this. Now, in Canada, anyway, we have a law called can spam that dictates that you are not allowed to send an email that is unsolicited and you need to have a clear way to unsubscribe. Luke, can you find in this email any, even Attempt to adhere to can spam regulations?

Linus Sebastian (11:29)

Not in the slightest.

Luke Lafreniere (11:30)

There is not only no button to unsubscribe from this email, but there isn't even a link to my dashboard for where to turn it off.

Linus Sebastian (11:40)

I have someone in particular that I might be actually genuinely enforcing to can or reporting to can spam stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (11:50)

Wait, can spam is US Law, Canada is casl. Am I crazy? Can spam? Holy shit.

Linus Sebastian (12:02)

If you look up can spam, it does bring up Canada's anti spam legislation.

Luke Lafreniere (12:07)

Huh. Cool. Okay, then they're violating U.S. law and Canadian law. That's cool.

Linus Sebastian (12:13)

But it is called casl. It's interesting when you Google it that it brings up Canada's.

Luke Lafreniere (12:17)

Yeah, I just, I completely Mandela affected myself.

Linus Sebastian (12:20)

This is a commonly Mandela affected one considering it brings up Canada's anyway. But it is casl. The commentary is correct.

Luke Lafreniere (12:28)

Cool, thank you for that. And also doesn't change the point.

Linus Sebastian (12:32)

It is interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (12:33)

You're right. A really, really small company would probably get away with just like sending out unsolicited. You'd kind of go. Because most people, like, I get it.

Linus Sebastian (12:41)

Yeah. You know, they probably don't even know. And like, enforcing every policy for freaking everywhere is impossible. Impossible. So whatever. And then you get to a certain size and everyone's like, hey, you should really. You need to comply with every single thing everywhere in the entire world, all the time, or else we will delete your entire company. And then you get to that size and it's like, well, you're not going to touch them anyways. And even if you do, they're not going to care about the fines because it's probably worth it to them to just pay the fines that are ultimately like, they'll be like, oh, yeah, by violating this policy, we made $382 million and the fine costs $15 million. So like, cost of doing business, baby. Best cost of doing business I've ever heard of. Sounds good. Pay the fine. Like, it's. You just hit these levels where it just doesn't matter anymore. And it's, it's, it's funky. Yeah. And I'm not surprised that they're shirking like all of this stuff because who cares? People aren't gonna stop using them because that's another thing. You hit like a certain level of critical mass where people can scream about it all they want, but they're not gonna stop using meta services. Maybe a tiny handful, but like, it's not going to significantly impact their actual like, user base.

Luke Lafreniere (13:47)

Lt. Salty says, I've My boss sends out emails using our POS software. We send texts and emails and I've told my boss he needs to have an unsubscribe option. He's just like, nah.

Linus Sebastian (14:04)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (14:04)

Yep. Apparently that's what the Zuck said too. Nah.

Linus Sebastian (14:07)

But yeah, I've got. I've got somebody who sends emails to my. My personal email inbox and I don't even care. That's a dumpster fire. But I have. I have unsubscribed multiple times and blocked them multiple times. But they keep just taking their email list and bringing it over to different email services because I'm. I'm sure they just know this happens. Yeah. And like I've never actually done a report before, but I might actually do it because I have blocked and unsubscribed at least close to 10 times.

Luke Lafreniere (14:39)

I have a. I have a conspiracy theory that the unsubscribe button is actually just to verify that it's a real inbox.

Linus Sebastian (14:47)

I am 100 certain that happens at least sometimes because I know of at.

Luke Lafreniere (14:50)

Least one case and so I just.

Linus Sebastian (14:54)

So they might. They might even actually unsubscribe you to that list, but then sell the information that you're definitely a real person reading their actual.

Luke Lafreniere (15:02)

To their other company.

Linus Sebastian (15:04)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (15:04)

To.

Linus Sebastian (15:07)

Yep. Very cool.

Luke Lafreniere (15:09)

I feel like in medieval times they.

Linus Sebastian (15:10)

Would have just like, oh, Kinjara just said I work for an E Comm company and we have migrated email servers multiple times the last five years for the very reason you mentioned. That's rough. Thanks for letting me know. That is interesting. But also, I think this person is literally like more than one or two times a year. It's very often like. But that is, you know, I'm not surprised by these things. And this is kind of what I'm talking about. Like at a certain, certain scale you just don't care and you work around it and at the bottom scale, other people don't care. And then in the middle you get crushed by both. Realistic, not realistic. You get crushed by both, like governmental regulation stuff and people expectations.

Luke Lafreniere (15:59)

I'm reporting these as spam.

Linus Sebastian (16:01)

It's a great filter.

Luke Lafreniere (16:02)

And Google won't do anything.

Linus Sebastian (16:04)

Nope.

Luke Lafreniere (16:06)

Oh, I just blocked it. Whoops. No, I don't. You know what? Fine. It. I'm just never going to get an email from Facebook again. Apparently. Actually, I really shouldn't do that.

Linus Sebastian (16:22)

If we don't know about taxes, we don't have to pay them. Right? Is that how that works?

Luke Lafreniere (16:26)

No, actually our current issue is that they. They are withholding some taxes from us that they shouldn't be because we're Canadian and Yvonne has like a long chain going back and forth with them. I haven't actually brought that because it's a separate support team for like actual. They have a support team for like money. Right, but just like managing your page and just my account. Like I don't have anything special in there.

Linus Sebastian (16:51)

So no, May Rink, that is not financial advice for me. Yeah, yeah. This is important right now.

Luke Lafreniere (17:04)

Why don't we do our headline topic next? Microsoft is. This is such a, this is such a corporate way to say this. Lowering its growth targets for copilot as it has. And this is a quote. This is amazing. Struggled to find buyers interested in using it.

Linus Sebastian (17:27)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (17:28)

This is according to a story from the Information which has resulted in a 2 1/2% stock price drop on Wednesday. I mean you can never quite attribute like a share move to, you know, one piece of news.

Linus Sebastian (17:43)

Honestly, I would have expected more. Well, not financial advice. I mean based on, based on how like, you know, hyped the market is on AI stuff right now. Them being like, yeah, it's failing. And then the market was like, okay.

Luke Lafreniere (17:58)

Well I mean here's the thing, right? There's, there's a ton of inertia in all of this. Like, it's like I've been. I mean Tesla just hit an all time high. Right. So you gotta, you gotta remember that, right. That this kind of ties back perfectly to that long conversation we had last week about information bubbles. What percentage of people read the information? And I don't mean any information in general, I mean the information dot com. What percentage of people read this? What percentage of people who read it have a subscription so they can read more than just the snippet. Who actually even knows about this? Not to mention that so much of the investment in things like the S and P are just. Are automated. Like people will literally set up their paycheck to just siphon off some of it and just, you know, dump it into their portfolio. These are not decisions that they're making based on an article they read today and they shouldn't. That actually is financial advice. You should not be just like every day moving around things.

Linus Sebastian (19:02)

It's still technically not financial advice.

Luke Lafreniere (19:03)

It is still, but it is financial advice that I've received.

Linus Sebastian (19:08)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (19:08)

That the average person should not be just like micromanaging their stock portfolio from day to day based on individual pieces.

Linus Sebastian (19:17)

Of news is not financial advice that we're giving you.

Luke Lafreniere (19:20)

Correct. But it is financial advice that I'VE received from people who are qualified to give financial advice. So make of that what you will.

Linus Sebastian (19:27)

Yeah, that's fine.

Luke Lafreniere (19:29)

So most people are not doing that. You look at like a pension fund for instance, where they have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that they're managing or billions of dollars that they're managing. You can't just, you can't just sell a 400 million dollar stake in Microsoft just like that. And you can, you might not get the best price for it necessarily. Actually, Microsoft could probably absorb that much. Yeah, Microsoft could probably absorb that much. But depending on the size of the company. Right. For every sale of a share, there has to be a purchase of a share.

Linus Sebastian (20:06)

I take every opportunity to talk about the Toronto Teachers Pension Fund, currently sitting at $269.6 billion in assets. Let's go.

Luke Lafreniere (20:16)

Yep, massive. Right. And so an entity like that isn't going to just read this article and.

Linus Sebastian (20:23)

Be like, yeet, we're completely out of Microsoft.

Luke Lafreniere (20:25)

Sell, sell, sell, sell all the Microsoft immediately. And you have to have, especially a company with the market cap of Microsoft, you would have to have a huge, huge volume of transactions in order for the price to really appreciably nosedive. Which isn't to say it never happens or that it won't happen when the AI bubble really like pop pops. But two and a half percent in a day is a lot. Anywho, what were we talking about again? Right, yeah, two and a half percent stock drop on Wednesday. Copilot currently holds 14% AI market share, apparently with Google's Gemini less than 1% behind.

Linus Sebastian (21:07)

This deeply depends on how you measure market share. Oh yeah, and based on tiny factors could swing massive amounts. Just just to like be super clear.

Luke Lafreniere (21:21)

Apparently a big part of the sales struggles is that AI agents being sold to businesses as labor replacements are failing to complete real world office tasks 70% of the time, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Honestly, I'm surprised they're successful 30% of the time.

Linus Sebastian (21:38)

I suspect that is again how you measure it. And also fub factor, lack of reporting and stuff because it's like for sure higher than that. But yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (21:52)

Cool.

Linus Sebastian (21:52)

Or there's companies that are like accepting a certain amount of like it's okay, doesn't seem like it's actually replacing the person, but we can maybe accelerate some people this way so we're not going to report it as a failure anyways. Like stuff like that. Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (22:07)

Microsoft defended Copilot claiming that the information story inaccurately combines the concepts of growth and sales quotas. And they said that aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered before.

Linus Sebastian (22:19)

You keep going. Another thing I would say about that 70% figure is I bet you there are cases where they are happy that they're not working as well. I could see. I was just talking earlier about how like in the pre show someone brought up oh my, like username that I changed didn't reflect the change in full plane chat for some reason. And I was like, okay, cool, send in a report, a support ticket. We're not one of those companies that try to like obfuscate it or make it harder to do by like making you ready FAQ articles and stuff. Yeah, they might like that. Their support chat bots are bad. Interesting idea. I've never really thought about this before, but I wonder if it's genuine because there's like a ton of dark patterns at various companies that get put in place to stop you from actually properly sending in support tickets.

Luke Lafreniere (23:05)

Oh yeah, 100%. Because every support ticket costs money and every serving you a website web page.

Linus Sebastian (23:13)

You get a refund or a new product or something. Yeah, like they, they don't actually want those to go through in a lot of cases, right? Not definitely. Not all right, obviously. But like there are definitely some. So if it's like bad and it just results in people not being willing to go through the process and they just give up, and that shows up in some reporting dashboard as like, oh, we set up this AI bot and our expenditure on refunds and replacements is lower, they'll see that as a success. I. I have no idea. This is a lot of like, I'm.

Luke Lafreniere (23:52)

Gonna choose to believe conspiracy theory that it's not that bad at most cases.

Linus Sebastian (23:56)

Garbage time.

Luke Lafreniere (23:57)

I'm gonna choose to believe it's not that bad in most cases. Just for now, just for my own sanity, I'm gonna choose.

Linus Sebastian (24:01)

I have no idea. This is based on nothing.

Luke Lafreniere (24:05)

And so and, and my position is based on not being able to handle the emotional burden of you being correct about this.

Linus Sebastian (24:12)

Who knows?

Luke Lafreniere (24:14)

One of the ways that Microsoft is growing their AI business still though, is by forcing LG TV users to have a shortcut to copilot installed on their smart TV home screen. They have apparently since allowed users to delete the shortcut, but there was a period where it was not possible to delete and the backlash was swift and secure. Our discussion question is, why would you want copilot on your TV?

Linus Sebastian (24:42)

Yeah, I don't extremely cold take, but man, smart TVs suck. Cool.

Luke Lafreniere (24:53)

Yeah, that was. That Was pretty. That was pretty good actually. Oh, this is actually, this is a good. This is a good discussion question. David Gochie heard this topic is a bad TV UX enough to persuade you to buy a different brand? And. And follow up question for let's assume an equal viewing experience. How much more would you spend?

Riley Murdock (25:20)

Ooh.

Dan (25:23)

Ooh.

Linus Sebastian (25:24)

I do think a bad UX could push me away from buying a certain tv. But the last TV upgrade that was done for my dad, we looked for one that on purpose was like as dumb as possible. The how much is enough is a tough one. I don't know. I really don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (25:55)

While you think metal, Maxine had one idea. Hey, copilot, is this the episode I watched last week or is it just another scene of Abby and McGee hacking? I guess if you wanted to ask it questions about content. But it's like, I don't know. See, I have the same issue with this that I have with like a wearable AI companion and, you know, an AI ring and an AI glasses and an AI. I already have a phone in my pocket. I literally already have it.

Linus Sebastian (26:30)

It's also going to be wrong often. We did the full point exclusive that is out now, the Last one from LukeWeek, which is a gaming video. And when I was looking over some of the like B roll footage I was sending to Sammy.

Luke Lafreniere (26:42)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (26:43)

Gemini just did a summary without me asking of some of the footage that I had put in Google Drive. And it like summarized a bunch of gameplay footage that I had. And it had like my mic and the person I was playing with mic in the recording. So it tried to summarize like the things that happened and what we said about it. And it was like 70% correct and 30% of it was just totally made up. And that's gonna happen here. Like it was just. I was reading different parts. I was like, wow, that never happened. Neat. Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (27:20)

Dyslexic stoner asks, what if my AI on my TV could put swear words back in instead of bleeps? I would give away all my info for that. No, now you're just, you're just imagining too useful of a function for AI. Okay. Oh, oh, this was such a great example.

Linus Sebastian (27:40)

But with real swears, all of this.

Luke Lafreniere (27:42)

Stuff is just still. And I just. How many years ago was it that Google did that demo where your AI assistant. And this is pre, like the generative AI LLM thing where your AI assistant was supposed to phone your hairdresser and make an appointment for you? So long ago that was like A billion years ago.

Linus Sebastian (28:01)

I think at least like seven.

Luke Lafreniere (28:03)

Yeah, I think, I think it was something. I think. I think you're probably right. I think it was like six to eight years ago or something like that. And I basically was like, cap. Because, like, it's just obviously six to seven. Very funny. Because it, because it's just, it's. It's obviously the kind of thing that would work, but would work so poorly that it's actually more work than just calling your hairdresser and making an appointment and looking at the calendar yourself. Right. I had another prime. Wow, you nailed it. May 2018, apparently, says Andy in the UK.

Linus Sebastian (28:43)

Boom.

Luke Lafreniere (28:44)

Nice. I had yet another one of those moments because I looked at that and I went. My assistant can barely figure out, like, if I mean a local address or I mean one in New Brunswick. When I asked to navigate somewhere, like, you gotta be kidding me.

Linus Sebastian (29:01)

My assistant is purely for setting alarms.

Luke Lafreniere (29:03)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (29:04)

Or right. Shazam.

Luke Lafreniere (29:07)

Like my assistant. My assistant at that time, you still couldn't set an alarm using Google Assistant. That was more than 24 hours in the future, like, you couldn't. Do you remember that you couldn't set an alarm for like two days from now? And that's a big problem for me because a calendar event is not enough for me. Like, that's not enough for something I actually need to do. I need it to ring when it's time for me to do something. How is that still. How is that still not a function?

Linus Sebastian (29:32)

Don't break it.

Luke Lafreniere (29:33)

How's that still?

Linus Sebastian (29:34)

I'm not a function? Because it's super annoying needing to just go do both. And you should really be able to make a calendar event set off an alarm.

Luke Lafreniere (29:42)

Yeah, you really should. Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway. Maybe there's a third party app which would be super cool and if anyone knows one, feel free to pop it in the chat.

Linus Sebastian (29:49)

If you're in the Google ecosystem, which kind of blows in a lot of ways right now, but you should make it so that it sets off an alarm. Unless you're like in the thing. So if you're in like a Google Meet, that is in the calendar event. If you're in the thing, just don't bother set the alarm off.

Luke Lafreniere (30:03)

That'd be cool.

Linus Sebastian (30:03)

But if you're not, then it should, like, get your attention until you get in the Google Meet. That would be sick.

Luke Lafreniere (30:08)

Cosmic Wolf says Siri is still limited to 24 hours. Yeah, so I was about to talk about Siri. So Yvonne never got around to switching back to her Android phone just yet. Although iOS26 has. Actually.

Linus Sebastian (30:18)

Might make her.

Luke Lafreniere (30:19)

Might make her put. Might make her go back. I have a video coming soon on my experience with. With iOS 26, but as far as I can tell, it's like the biggest pile that Apple has released and that I'm aware of, that I. That I remember ever using. Anyway, she went to use Siri last night, and she's like, hey, Siri. And I actually really like this, the way that Siri's just like. Instead of being like, yeah. Yes, hello, what can I do for you? Shut up. And I'm the one who talks. I am the human, you are the clanker. You know?

Linus Sebastian (30:51)

Anyway, I kind of like it, too.

Luke Lafreniere (30:52)

She goes. She goes, hey. She goes, hey, Siri, set a couple of reminders for me. I want it like, Sorry, I can't do that. Why not? I thought that's the whole point of natural language interaction. Why do I have to. Hey, Siri, set a reminder. I need to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Blah, blah. No, shut up. Shut up. Hey, Siri. Hmm? Set a reminder. I need to. No, just let me do both of them. And until. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm setting off people's phones. My bad. Stop saying the S word. Yeah, I screwed up. I'm sorry. The point. Yeah, sorry. I can't show you that while driving. It's like, bro, I'm not driving. I'm in the passenger seat and I'm plugged into the carplay.

Linus Sebastian (31:42)

That's something is so annoying.

Luke Lafreniere (31:44)

So just. Thank you, nanny, but off. I'm not interested in having you take care of me and what I'm allowed to do while I'm doing things.

Linus Sebastian (31:53)

You know, a game that. I'm surprised doesn't exist.

Luke Lafreniere (31:55)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (31:56)

You know, when we were growing up and, like, everyone just universally played the, like, raindrop game, where, like, the. You know, when condensation is, like, gathering on your window and you, like, track how it goes.

Luke Lafreniere (32:07)

Yeah. Or did you play the variant where you find a spot on the windshield.

Linus Sebastian (32:10)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (32:10)

And you move around your head to dodge everything.

Linus Sebastian (32:12)

That was my favorite one. Yeah, but everyone talks with the Raindrop game. I thought that one was way more cool. Oh, yeah. But anyways, we all used to do this. I'm surprised those don't exist as, like, basically games.

Luke Lafreniere (32:23)

Oh, yeah. There's. There'd be no reason you couldn't do it with, like, head tracking.

Linus Sebastian (32:26)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (32:27)

It's got to be a thing. It's got to be, like, a genre maybe.

Linus Sebastian (32:31)

I just don't know about it. It seems like it would actually be like pretty fun. Oh, dude, you could do it in VR. Like super easy, I think.

Luke Lafreniere (32:39)

Yeah. I mean, would you even. You wouldn't even need VR.

Linus Sebastian (32:41)

No, no. But like, I'm just saying to skip a lot of the like steps. It should be not that hard, I think. But I don't know much about game development, so.

Luke Lafreniere (32:50)

William Komartin says I used to try to name the make and model based on the headlight shape at night. That's pretty cool. That's tough. Yeah, that's pretty tough.

Linus Sebastian (32:59)

It's a lot more knowledge than I would have had.

Luke Lafreniere (33:02)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (33:04)

There with my eyes. I'm not. I'm not making out headlight shape, dude. I'm just getting.

Luke Lafreniere (33:10)

Web dude says for reminders and alarms on Android there's an app, a calendar which can handle about five alarms, slash reminders with noise or email.

Linus Sebastian (33:19)

Why is it five?

Luke Lafreniere (33:20)

I don't know. Maybe it's just. Maybe. Maybe it's just not quite explained properly. Anyway. Yeah, we maybe can explore that another time. I just switched over to the fold seven. Unfortunately, this is not the new tri fold and it took a grand total of one day to not fold completely flat.

Linus Sebastian (33:37)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (33:39)

So I need to add that to my notes. I want. You know what? Overall, I still am really, really loving it a lot so far. Took one day to need to be over urban, to be flat. It's. It's like, dude, I haven't daily driven a fold in years now. And it's like. It's like going back into the warm embrace of an old friend, honestly.

Linus Sebastian (34:08)

Really?

Luke Lafreniere (34:09)

Yeah. I had a teams meeting today.

Linus Sebastian (34:11)

Whoa.

Luke Lafreniere (34:11)

That they were screen sharing on. So I had a giant thing that I could read text on. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. I remember why. This was way better than literally anything else.

Linus Sebastian (34:23)

Huh.

Luke Lafreniere (34:24)

And it's not for everybody. Right. Like, the battery life is going to be a bit of a downer for some people. Although that said, I'm sitting at 97% today. But I did plug in on my way into work, so make of that what you will. But if your use case. If your use case benefits from the fold, there's just. There's no question. I've already run into a weird thing. Plex the interface. If you tap your like your user icon at the top in Candy bar mode, it's supposed to do something. I forget. But in like the more tablet mode, it slides in a thing from the left and it accidentally did the tablet thing when I was in Candy Bar, so my screen was Just going dark because I couldn't see that it was sliding a thing from off screen.

Linus Sebastian (35:14)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (35:15)

So just, you know, that's annoying. It's still not perfect.

Linus Sebastian (35:19)

I was gonna say, I wonder if that's more on the phone. I feel like it should be reporting.

Luke Lafreniere (35:24)

It's the phone size, it's the phone, it's Android, it's apps. It's just the poor integration between all of them. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (35:33)

It'S a plex problem. It's just a shitty app.

Luke Lafreniere (35:35)

Yeah, sure. But that doesn't. And this is a take that I have gone to war for a lot of times and I will continue to go to war for. It doesn't matter.

Linus Sebastian (35:48)

Yeah, it's true.

Luke Lafreniere (35:49)

When at the end of the day, right when people choose a device, whether they're choosing a candy bar, Android folding, Android, an iPhone, Windows Phone, I don't care. Whatever it is that people are choosing, just keep going. What matters is the user experience. And so back when I was on some of the early folds and I couldn't use YouTube stories, I didn't care if that was Samsung's fault or Google's fault or Father Christmas's fault. It just didn't matter. What mattered was that device was not suitable for my use case. That's all that matters.

Linus Sebastian (36:29)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (36:29)

And so that's. And everyone else, I am the user. I am the one giving the money to have this experience and everyone else needs to accommodate what I need to get done on my device. So like, you know, let's look at. Elijah's actually working on a video about his switch to iPhone, which was made actually for predominantly contact sharing using Airdrop, because he went and was doing some networking at an event and missed out on some really good contacts because they were just like, oh, I have to type something.

Linus Sebastian (37:01)

You're a lesser being.

Luke Lafreniere (37:03)

You know, oh, that's way too much work. I only tap my phone with people.

Linus Sebastian (37:07)

I only interface with highborns.

Luke Lafreniere (37:08)

Whatever. The point is he missed out on some, some contacts and so he was like, okay, I'm just going to have to do it. But over time he's found there's, there's other benefits as well. And one of them is that for creative oriented apps, sometimes they'll get cool new features before they're rolled out to other platforms. And at the end of the day, is that the fault of the app creator? Is that the fault of the, the phone maker? Is that the fault of the operating system owner? In this case, you know, Google doesn't.

Linus Sebastian (37:43)

Matter why Elijah, he says iPhone is so Much better for creators. It's kind of scary. Why? What makes a difference?

Luke Lafreniere (37:49)

The thing I was talking about that you weren't listening to because you were reading Chat.

Linus Sebastian (37:52)

Nice. Cool. I wasn't. Really.

Luke Lafreniere (37:54)

And he's going to do a full video about it, so, you know, he'll be talking through a lot of this.

Linus Sebastian (37:59)

Contact sharing.

Luke Lafreniere (38:00)

No, not the contact sharing. You missed it. You missed a whole other thing that I was talking about just now. All.

Linus Sebastian (38:07)

Yes, we do need to do that.

Luke Lafreniere (38:11)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, Larian topic. So apparently we all. Oh, hey, now that's an early Christmas present.

Riley Murdock (38:21)

I have lots of things to say. I love video games, but this isn't even for me. Last time I did this. Am I stepping on a mic?

Luke Lafreniere (38:30)

Riley, you're not on them. You don't have a mic yet. Hold on.

Riley Murdock (38:32)

There's supposed to be one here and promised.

Luke Lafreniere (38:35)

I know, but. I know, but you don't have it yet. You can't talk yet.

Riley Murdock (38:38)

I have to wear the.

Luke Lafreniere (38:40)

Wait, do we have a place for him to sit?

Riley Murdock (38:41)

What do you mean?

Linus Sebastian (38:43)

He's just squatting.

Riley Murdock (38:45)

The world is my oyster. I can't hear myself through the mic, but.

Luke Lafreniere (38:50)

Oh, my God.

Linus Sebastian (38:50)

I don't.

Riley Murdock (38:51)

Guess what?

Linus Sebastian (38:51)

It's working.

Riley Murdock (38:52)

Guess why I'm here, though. Linus.

Dan (38:54)

I can literally see it. I can see him talking. Why can't we hear it?

Luke Lafreniere (38:58)

They can hear him. They can hear. They're good. If they're good, I'm good. You're here to talk about the Larian thing.

Riley Murdock (39:02)

Can they hear? Okay, like, is it coming from this mic or is it coming from something?

Dan (39:05)

Yeah, yeah, guys, I got it.

Riley Murdock (39:06)

Oh, there it is. Hey, I'm here to talk about Luke. Yeah, because you haven't let him talk about AI enough. Except today you guys talked about AI a ton, so, like, what the heck?

Luke Lafreniere (39:19)

Well, I'll tell you what. While you talk about Luke, I'm gonna go get you a stool.

Riley Murdock (39:23)

What?

Luke Lafreniere (39:23)

No.

Linus Sebastian (39:24)

No, no, no.

Luke Lafreniere (39:25)

He specifically said no.

Riley Murdock (39:28)

I'm a non stool user. I'm like. You know how AI Doomers are like, no AI ever. That's me with stools.

Linus Sebastian (39:35)

He believes in no stool ever.

Riley Murdock (39:37)

I think stools are. We're trained on other people's work and our copyright infringement.

Luke Lafreniere (39:42)

How about basically just a chair? Stools are just chairs, but worse.

Riley Murdock (39:46)

Why would you ever.

Linus Sebastian (39:47)

He's giving you an apple box.

Riley Murdock (39:49)

I. I asked. Okay, now I'm. You're going to make me ruin the meme. I asked Dan to remove the apple box. This is so much worse. Oh, but I do like, if I sit back here, then I kind of look like I'm.

Linus Sebastian (40:04)

You have dramatic lighting.

Riley Murdock (40:06)

I'm lit by two. Hold on.

Dan (40:08)

It's okay.

Riley Murdock (40:08)

I'm lit, too. I'm lit by both sides, and it's like I'm the duality of man, a neutral party.

Luke Lafreniere (40:15)

Okay, so should I not.

Linus Sebastian (40:20)

AI generated laughs.

Luke Lafreniere (40:22)

Should I talk through this and then you guys can have your conversation? Or how do we. How does this work?

Riley Murdock (40:27)

You can go.

Linus Sebastian (40:27)

Sure, sure.

Luke Lafreniere (40:28)

All right. Certain corners of the Internet lost their flipping minds earlier this week when Larian Studios CEO Swin Vink told Bloomberg. Yeah, of course. That's what it's got to be. Zinky told Bloomberg that the Baldur's Gate 3 studio uses AI tools to help explore ideas and speed things along early in the development process. I hate how much of my life is reading text and then trying to say it out loud and then having.

Riley Murdock (40:54)

An AI train on it.

Luke Lafreniere (40:55)

It's Vincke, right?

Riley Murdock (40:56)

I have no idea.

Luke Lafreniere (40:57)

Thanks. In the same interview, Vincke made it clear. I like it. It sounds more like a pet name.

Riley Murdock (41:03)

It's gotta be Sven Vincky. This can't be Sven Vink.

Luke Lafreniere (41:06)

I don't know. I don't speak Swedish.

Linus Sebastian (41:08)

I don't know if I've heard it said out loud.

Riley Murdock (41:10)

Vink sounds like a woodland creature.

Linus Sebastian (41:14)

Google it, and then you'll get one.

Luke Lafreniere (41:15)

Of the pronunciation things Vincke sounds like. Also a woodland. Way cuter and fluffier.

Riley Murdock (41:20)

Vinky. Yeah, maybe from, like, a fantasy world.

Luke Lafreniere (41:23)

Okay, it doesn't matter. The point is that Vinci made it clear there will not be any AI generated content in Larian's upcoming installment in the Divinity series, saying that everything is human actors. We're writing everything ourselves. Jordan, who prepped this topic for us, said. But that was toward the end of the article. So the odds that anyone read that far. Yeah, pretty low.

Linus Sebastian (41:45)

Nobody has time for that.

Luke Lafreniere (41:47)

After the inevitable backlash for saying anything even vaguely positive about AI, Vincke took to Twitter to try to clarify. Ahem. This is a quote. Holy, guys. We are not pushing hard for or replacing concept artists with AI. The post notes that Larian employs 72 artists, 23 of whom are concept artists, and that they're in the process of hiring more.

Riley Murdock (42:14)

Yeah, the concept art is really where what this centers around.

Luke Lafreniere (42:18)

Vincke also linked a GameSpot article from April of this year detailing Larian's use of machine learning for tasks that he said, and this is a quote, nobody wants to do. This uproar has apparently reminded people that Game of the Year winner Clare Obscure Expedition 33 was accidentally released with AI placeholder art, which was quickly patched out of the game back in April, adding an additional target for the rage of the anti AI camp, Daniel Vaevra. Vavra. Whatever.

Riley Murdock (42:49)

Vulva, I think.

Luke Lafreniere (42:51)

Did you just say vulva?

Riley Murdock (42:54)

It's. What?

Luke Lafreniere (42:55)

That's not a.

Riley Murdock (42:56)

It's a.

Luke Lafreniere (42:57)

But it's a biological term. Important landmark if you're trying to find certain things.

Riley Murdock (43:07)

We're not gonna get demonetized for that.

Luke Lafreniere (43:10)

The point is, the co founder of Kingdom Come to L Deliverance to developer Warhorse, also waded into the mess to defend Larion's honor, saying, this AI hysteria is the same as when people were smashing steam engines in the 19th century. Vincke said Larian was doing something that absolutely everyone else is doing, and they got into this insanely crazy shit storm.

Riley Murdock (43:34)

Everyone else is doing it.

Luke Lafreniere (43:35)

Vulva ads. Hold on. I'm not quite done. Vulva adds, I'm no fan of AI generated art, but anyway, it's time to face reality. AI is here to stay with us. As frightening as it may be, that's the way it is. Now I'm gonna kick you guys off by throwing back to something that Luke and I were actually talking about earlier in this show. Larian sits at the apex of the curve. They're big enough that they're an attractive target for the hate, but not so big that they'll just be like, deal with it. You gonna do about it? Yeah.

Riley Murdock (44:14)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (44:14)

All right, go.

Linus Sebastian (44:16)

Yeah. One thing I was gonna throw in just right off the bat is another game that won awards. Because right now we're talking about Larion, who took a ton of Game of the Year awards and many other awards. And then we're talking about Expedition 33, which won everything, as far as I can tell. Another game that won awards, the multiplayer award of the year, Arc Raiders, also has a ton of AI stuff going on. All of the movement of the AI enemies in the game is all machine learning.

Riley Murdock (44:42)

Really?

Linus Sebastian (44:43)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (44:44)

And you can hear more about that? We forgot to. Did we even say that?

Linus Sebastian (44:49)

That part's not in the video. But.

Riley Murdock (44:54)

Learn about something.

Linus Sebastian (44:55)

But you can't learn about something. Yeah. Yeah.

Riley Murdock (44:59)

Are you supposed to say that?

Linus Sebastian (44:59)

Luke Week on Floatplane. There's three episodes. One's a Q and A. One's a gaming video, which is like a follow up to the last gaming video I did on the first Luke week. And then the other video is something.

Riley Murdock (45:15)

Of course, which is why I'm here. And I felt bad that I didn't I was like, we're here for Luke. But then I didn't. Like, we didn't even do the call out. Just wanted to get that clear. It's Luke week on Flow plane.

Linus Sebastian (45:25)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (45:26)

But anyway. Machine learning. Arc raiders.

Linus Sebastian (45:28)

Yes. So it's kind of. It's in a lot of places. And if you want to be mad at something for AI stuff, as far as I can tell, the, like, biggest use of it is largely in our graders.

Riley Murdock (45:42)

Interesting. That's what.

Linus Sebastian (45:44)

See, they have a lot going on.

Riley Murdock (45:46)

Machine learning.

Linus Sebastian (45:47)

They also defend their stances because of things like that. But one of the problems is that everyone's throwing everything under the same banner, and then it's kind of difficult because where's the line?

Riley Murdock (45:58)

Well, this is an interesting. Because with Sven Vincke, he on his tweet where he's like, guys, seriously, like, you know, we're the good guys. He linked to a GameSpot article where he talks about how they use machine learning for, like, the kind of rote menial tasks that no one wants to do. But the debate isn't really around, like, okay, you used AI to, like, smooth out your. Your mesh or what? I don't. I'm not a developer. I understand. But stuff that isn't like, ooh, the artistry involved in that, it's just kind of like, okay, you have to reduce the amount of polygons or whatever.

Linus Sebastian (46:32)

And it's annoying in a way. His argument is that it's actually accomplishing what a lot of people wanted out of it, which is that it's allowing for people to focus more on the artistic stuff that they want to do instead of the, like, menial, annoying tasks that they don't want to do, which is like.

Riley Murdock (46:47)

But. But that's why the backlash isn't about the machine learning. The more traditional. It's about AI back then, sort of. It's about the concept art.

Linus Sebastian (46:57)

The problem with arc raiders is people don't know where the line is. There's a lot of questions for, like, that thing looks like it might be AI generated. Like, generative AI generated because there's little, like. What do you call it? Greebles. What's the term for when there's just, like, random stuff added to things to make.

Riley Murdock (47:13)

I call them grubels.

Linus Sebastian (47:14)

Grubels. This is Star wars is really well known for this. Oh, they just, like. They'll put, like, vents and pipes on things.

Luke Lafreniere (47:20)

Yeah. I know what it's called in the context of a garment, like an embellishment. But that's not what they're called.

Riley Murdock (47:25)

I think it's Babu Frick.

Luke Lafreniere (47:26)

There's a. There's a.

Linus Sebastian (47:27)

So there's a lot of Baboo fricks.

Luke Lafreniere (47:28)

Greeblies.

Linus Sebastian (47:29)

Greeblies, yeah. I don't know.

Riley Murdock (47:31)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (47:31)

Oh, okay. Greebling. Yeah. It's like a term. I don't remember what it is. Baboo fricks, though. I'm down with that. So there's tons of baboo fricks in Arc Raiders, where there's just. There's just like a tube that'll go from one place to another place that makes no sense at all. And people are wondering, like, was this someone just adding a tube because it looks cool, which totally might be a thing sometimes.

Riley Murdock (47:50)

You like tubes or is this just.

Linus Sebastian (47:53)

Generative AI just doing stuff? And it's. It's. It's. Where is the line? What's going on?

Riley Murdock (47:58)

The most interesting aspect of the debate here for me was basically whether we are going to preserve the practice of, like, concept art. I think people are scared that if you. Because the most concerning part was him saying, oh, for the early concepting phase. Only in the early phase, we kind of are throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. So, like, we're like, hmm, would it be funny to have a frog with it wearing a top hat or something? And then you, like, find an image of a frog or whatever, and you tell, hey, I put a top hat on him. And then they do it and they're like, it's not so funny. Maybe we won't go with that.

Linus Sebastian (48:33)

You know, it is funky.

Riley Murdock (48:35)

And the alternative to that would have been, hey, a concept artist. Can you draw a frog wearing a top hat? Now, I feel like in that situation, I can easily see a concept artist kind of taking that idea and making a top hat on a frog look funny and look interesting in a way that AI wouldn't be able to.

Luke Lafreniere (48:53)

But couldn't a concept artist also put that prompt in and go, yeah, yeah, it's funny, but I think I could do it better and draw something.

Riley Murdock (49:04)

Well, the counterpoint to that is that you're basically, like, starting from. If you. If you. If you prompt AI and you get a result back and you're like, okay, I'm gonna do that, but better, or I'm gonna, like, iterate on that.

Luke Lafreniere (49:17)

You're okay.

Riley Murdock (49:18)

You're starting with a thought process.

Dan (49:19)

And.

Riley Murdock (49:20)

And that's. That's part of the human, you know, creativity engine. But this is a studied phenomenon. People are more creative and they think better through problems. If they do it themselves from scratch or if they learn how to do it themselves from scratch and like this might be a solution. This is the whole problem with AI. It's a solution to do something faster, but you're probably going to get a worse output at the end of it.

Luke Lafreniere (49:47)

And maybe even if so, if you have a super experienced concept artist today, they could use, potentially they could use AI to accelerate a quality job. But if you are losing out on the development of your ability to think through these problems because you've always had this crutch. But then, I mean, oh man. See, now we're going back to the calculator argument. You won't have a calculator in your pocket, so you need to be able to start things from scratch.

Riley Murdock (50:18)

But yes, if a calculator had the result of like the cumulative output of human knowledge being reduced, like in mathematics, if our ability to do advanced mathematics at the highest levels was reduced because of calculators, maybe it has been.

Linus Sebastian (50:33)

I think there's also a problem where you have the like the movie adaptation to a book problem where like once you've seen the movie adaptation to the book, when you read the book, your brain is kind of filling in like, oh, this is what this person looks like. This is what this place looks like, whatever. Where if you're just reading the book, have never seen any of those references, you kind of make it up yourself. I mean, if I've seen a frog.

Luke Lafreniere (50:55)

With a top hat, there are definitely people who are not susceptible to that. I mean, I don't. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to read the Hobbit and then create such a sh. T Movie. Yeah, they clearly completely reimagined that. Not for the better.

Riley Murdock (51:11)

Yeah, I think there's a whole nother set of incentives and problems there. Have you seen they recast Aragorn in the new Gollum movie? You guys haven't heard?

Linus Sebastian (51:20)

He's younger.

Riley Murdock (51:21)

Yeah, but Gandalf's in it. Like Ian McKellen is Gandalf in it?

Linus Sebastian (51:25)

Wait, what?

Riley Murdock (51:25)

But, but Vigo's too old anyway.

Linus Sebastian (51:29)

They should have just done it anyways. They should just use Vigo. I mean, I'm pretty annoyed about that, but I mean that is what it is. It is.

Luke Lafreniere (51:36)

I mean the movie's going to suck anyway, so does it really matter? Did you watch the War of the Rohir I? Yeah, but so bad I couldn't make it through it. I really wanted.

Riley Murdock (51:45)

It's funny cuz it's like, oh, Peter Jackson's returning for The Hunt for the Golem movie. So it's like. But that doesn't mean anything cuz he did the Hobbit movies and they're horrible.

Linus Sebastian (51:52)

Didn't he come in.

Luke Lafreniere (51:53)

But wait, it's not.

Linus Sebastian (51:58)

Didn't he come in late on the Hobbit movies?

Luke Lafreniere (52:00)

Did he?

Linus Sebastian (52:01)

I thought he came in to like try to save them.

Riley Murdock (52:02)

I have to admit that I don't. I know hardly anything about the Hobbit movies because I went to see the first one in theater and I was like this is horrendous. I saw it also in 48fps and I was like this is horrendous. And I just didn't watch the next.

Linus Sebastian (52:14)

I did the same thing.

Luke Lafreniere (52:15)

You did the right thing. I watched the next two because I'm a completionist and masochist like that, I guess.

Linus Sebastian (52:20)

But I don't think I saw.

Luke Lafreniere (52:21)

They didn't get better.

Linus Sebastian (52:22)

Maybe I did, but I don't think I did.

Luke Lafreniere (52:23)

They didn't get better. Yeah, I would watch the heck out of like a fan cut, which probably exists. I think there is just one movie.

Linus Sebastian (52:30)

Because I complained about this on WAN show a while ago and someone mentioned that I think is one.

Luke Lafreniere (52:34)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (52:34)

Okay. I don't want to take us too.

Linus Sebastian (52:35)

Far off the rails back to AI stuff in video games. Yeah. I mean like it's, it's, it's also a tough line because we're at a spot and I think, I think this has been addressed actually by potentially Larry. And I'm not, I'm not sure, but we're at a weird spot where like a lot of people are demanding stances of different tools and technologies that people, companies really will not use. And they're looking for people to make permanent statements on those things. And none of us have any idea what's going to happen to the landscape moving forward. And that could put companies that are actually going to bother potentially responding to any of this and having open dialogues with people like Lariat at potentially extremely disadvantageous positions in a field that is incredibly mind blowingly cutthroat and competitive. And you have companies that are, are not laying people off, that are actively hiring, that are making games that people like and those companies are the ones that are getting critically looked at when there's companies that are laying people off and are in some cases known for using even more AI stuff and those companies are being ignored in this case. And it's just like I think we need better targets for this energy.

Riley Murdock (53:47)

I saw a really good tweet because I can't be here very long. I saw a really good tweet where someone's like, gamers are like, they don't want games to be delayed. They don't want studios to force the developers to crunch either. They don't want people to use AI, but they also want the games to come out and play them. And like, it's like, they can't have all of these. They want everything.

Linus Sebastian (54:11)

Gamers are a difficult bunch.

Riley Murdock (54:13)

Yeah. I take the opinion that, like, look, if you want to use AI for small parts, that isn't like. And like, according to your principle, you talk about no output, don't use the unaltered output, you know, never.

Linus Sebastian (54:29)

Which is what Larry is saying.

Riley Murdock (54:30)

If they want to do that as part of the pipeline, you know, go for it. I don't think we should jump down their throats for that, given how AI is here already. However, I will have way more respect for a company if they do everything without AI and take a frigging long time. It's just like, is that possible? Do the economics work? Sorry, what would you.

Luke Lafreniere (54:52)

I was just going to say that AI is. I don't know if anybody noticed this, but AI in. For a person who runs a company that has been, to a fault, transparent and taken stances on a lot of things, AI is one of the ones that, if you've been listening very carefully, I have never made any kind of commitments for. For Linus Media Group for gainst.

Linus Sebastian (55:19)

I think we barely use it internally.

Riley Murdock (55:22)

Even when Microsoft came in here and offered to replace all of the employees.

Linus Sebastian (55:26)

For free, Every single one of them.

Riley Murdock (55:27)

Yeah. You were like, you know what? Not today.

Luke Lafreniere (55:30)

I'm trying to have a serious conversation and you guys are completely taking it off the rails, which is fine because I wasn't going to give an answer anyway.

Riley Murdock (55:38)

Honestly, this conversation was way more on the rails than it should have been for me coming in here. And I don't think I even have time to be part of the Mozilla one because I feel like I wanted to combine those two with the Larian and the Mozilla because they're both just being.

Luke Lafreniere (55:52)

We can talk Mozilla, but first I want to do something fun. So I had. I.

Linus Sebastian (55:57)

He doesn't have time.

Luke Lafreniere (55:58)

Well, no, you guys.

Riley Murdock (56:00)

You guys can talk about Mozilla.

Luke Lafreniere (56:01)

So there was a little comment here in Floatplane from Velocity that I had highlighted. I wanted to talk about. Yeah. Biggest problem here is that for a vocal minority, it's binary. There's no nuance to this conversation. And. And that's One of the reasons that I haven't taken a stance, because people are going to expect me to take like a hardline stance when even if I did, it wouldn't be something that I could fully control anyway.

Linus Sebastian (56:25)

I don't know if I even want to say this, but hot take.

Riley Murdock (56:29)

I'm AI.

Linus Sebastian (56:30)

There's. There's companies like I am AI. There's companies like, I don't remember the name of the company behind it, but they made Silksong. They're like three people. Team Cherry. Team Cherry has like three people. Maybe they can control for this at bigger companies like Larian has hundreds and. And they're not even seen as like a big studio. All of those games. If it's a binary that you're looking at, this set will be made with AI. I think I can pretty confidently say that statement. And I don't. Even if the. Even if the head of the company is like, like, don't use it, it's still going to happen. Do you remember employees are going to try to take shortcuts.

Luke Lafreniere (57:09)

Do you remember when we had a minor controversy when one of our. I had taken.

Riley Murdock (57:19)

Remember that one time?

Linus Sebastian (57:28)

No, sorry, I don't. I have no. Have no memories.

Luke Lafreniere (57:31)

You legitimately might not remember this one.

Riley Murdock (57:34)

Not ringing a bell.

Luke Lafreniere (57:36)

So we had a minor controversy a while back where I had on wan show said that I didn't feel that in our industry working the way that we do and relying on ads the way that we do that we should use adblock. And I had made it a policy at our company that we don't install it on our computers.

Linus Sebastian (57:53)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (57:54)

And I got called out like a couple weeks later or something for using AdBlock because I screen shared on something and I was using a laptop that someone else had set up, someone else had configured. That is a perfect example of what you just said. How in a company of more than one person, or even in a company of one person, someone can forget a thing that they said at some point and do something. But especially in a company of more than one person, you can have a stance on something, you can have an opinion, you can even have a policy. But at the end of the day, not everyone is going to follow it. So you could say, no, AI will make it into anything that we do all you want. I had to read a sponsor spot that was clearly AI generated not that long ago because it was in the form of rhyming couplets with all the sponsor talking points. And I'm like, okay, two things. One doesn't seem Right. One, if you used AI for this, bad. And two, if you did this without AI, double bad. Because what a waste of time.

Riley Murdock (59:01)

It was, like, passable but not good.

Luke Lafreniere (59:04)

Yeah, it was AI.

Linus Sebastian (59:06)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (59:06)

Okay. There's one other thing.

Linus Sebastian (59:08)

Some concept artist is gonna have a bad week and be really frustrated and have a deadline for frog with top hat. Like, oh, my God, I just. I can't get the pose right for some reason. Generate. Okay, cool. Yeah, I can make that work.

Luke Lafreniere (59:22)

Whatever the artist equivalent of writer's block is.

Linus Sebastian (59:25)

They're gonna use a tool, brush block.

Luke Lafreniere (59:29)

Sure. Okay. The other thing I wanted was you guys were talking about greeblies or whatever, and I was like, oh, I wonder what an AI response to the right number of pieces of flare is. Like, will it. Will it get the office reference or will it. Will it come up with something? So I typed, how many pieces of flare is the right amount? And it literally is like, new. Try AI mode. Search whatever's on your mind and get AI powered responses. You literally gave me the AI response. Well, whether I consented to it or not.

Riley Murdock (59:59)

Okay, well, I can.

Linus Sebastian (60:00)

If you click not interested.

Riley Murdock (60:01)

What the way. The way.

Luke Lafreniere (60:03)

It's a different thing. The way, like, what the heck?

Riley Murdock (60:05)

The way they're branding all this stuff is so insane annoying to me, especially as, like, covering tech news. And like, it's like, Google updated this and they have a new mode, and I'm just like.

Luke Lafreniere (60:17)

And I have to read through and be like, okay, so this is like the other.

Riley Murdock (60:20)

This is like the four other things that they call, like, because they have Gemini, they have Google regular search, they have Google AI overviews, they have AI mode, which is basically just using Gemini, but, like, it's more. More searchy.

Luke Lafreniere (60:33)

It's like, all right, so let's find out what this does. Sure.

Riley Murdock (60:38)

It's like, yeah.

Linus Sebastian (60:39)

Oh, okay.

Riley Murdock (60:39)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (60:40)

So now it just comes up in a different interface.

Riley Murdock (60:42)

It's basically Gemini, except it's like, what we're doing here is searching the web for stuff.

Linus Sebastian (60:48)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (60:48)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (60:49)

So it's just Gemini, but focused on search, I guess. What?

Luke Lafreniere (60:52)

This is such a stupid. It was doing really well. The running joke, blah, blah, 15 pieces of flair, blah, blah, etc. Office space outside the film. There is no set right amount of flare. The term has come to refer to other things, including Flair Airlines, baggage allowances. No. Hey, hey, haven't you ever taken a shot? You know, just like, it took a.

Riley Murdock (61:16)

Swing and it missed that time? Yes, it did. It's got chutzpah.

Luke Lafreniere (61:21)

Good lord.

Riley Murdock (61:22)

I wanted to Say. Well, I already said it.

Luke Lafreniere (61:24)

Okay, well, you wanted to talk about the Mozilla thing, right?

Linus Sebastian (61:28)

Do you have time?

Riley Murdock (61:30)

Okay, I really need to go. But basically, my main. I wrote this.

Luke Lafreniere (61:36)

I wrote the tackling story.

Riley Murdock (61:38)

Nath, somebody, a probationary employee, wrote notes. Notes. They're almost done wrote notes for it. And then I kind of edited the notes again. But basically the gist is that Mozilla got attacked because they have a new CEO. Firefox is going to evolve into a modern AI browser is what he said. But he also really emphasized trust and user agency and stuff. And people, like, jump down their throats for adding AI. There were so many articles and tweets and stuff, or like, like, Firefox is adding AI now. I'm out, guys. Firefox has had AI features for a long time. All the things that I listed, and.

Linus Sebastian (62:22)

People have been talking about this for a while.

Luke Lafreniere (62:24)

Text generation for accessibility, translation, automatic tab grouping, link previews with summaries, chatbots in the sidebar, an AI window that's currently in beta that you can open. Like a private slash incognito window.

Linus Sebastian (62:39)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (62:39)

And I noted that most Firefox users haven't, like, may not have noticed these because they're all optional features and you can turn them off and this is, like, something that they're going to continue doing. I feel like I'm coming out here and being like, guys, don't be mad at AI. Like, you can be mad at AI. I don't like AI, Just, like, on a. On a. As. On a principle. But I understand that, like, what Firefox is saying here as well is that it's out of the bag. It's out there and there. If they don't add some kind of features in a thoughtful way.

Luke Lafreniere (63:14)

They'Ll be left behind.

Riley Murdock (63:15)

And they are being left behind.

Luke Lafreniere (63:17)

I mean, Vivaldi had that mic drop where they were like, here's our press conference. There's no AI. And then they, like, walk out of frame and it's like, yeah, that's nice.

Linus Sebastian (63:26)

But you're like, there's barely a Vivaldi.

Luke Lafreniere (63:29)

Yeah. What's Vivaldi's market share? You're looking at. Yeah, ask AI.

Riley Murdock (63:33)

I think it's like 1%, but. But Firefox has gone from 30% around 2010 to, like, I think it's 4% or so on desktop and across all platforms, it's like 2%. It's crazy. Yeah. Vivaldi is like. But, like, I also want to say overview, though.

Linus Sebastian (63:50)

I don't know, maybe you Know, I.

Riley Murdock (63:52)

I feel like there totally could be a future where Vivaldi or whoever is like, hey, all these browsers over, like they've been overtaken by AI slop. We're the browser that doesn't have any AI. We're the human browser and like it. You know, people go for that because of that. Like, that's their marketing angle, you know, and then if that becomes popular, cool. I just feel like I, I don't like the jumping. I, I didn't like the thinking that Firefox is adding AI for the first time when like you guys say that you're Firefox users but you don't even know what the browser is. And B, like, you know, this is, this is where we're at now. I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (64:31)

And I think it's important to understand like all of our various perspectives as we come into this. Like, you know, I'm both a business owner as well as a creative. Like, I don't use AI for writing. Not because necessarily it's out of principle. I can recognize how it could be useful for some people. I just don't need it. And I don't feel that it's it. I don't feel that it makes, even if it makes something that I'm writing better. What it can't do is make it more me. At least not at this time. You know, if we could train an internal LLM on every script I've ever written or edited, maybe it could, maybe it could literally like perform some manner of like editing for me. But a big part of how my brain works is just like being kind of ADD and going in a different direction. Direction all the time. You know, Luke's coming at it from. He manages a team of developers where AI assisted tools have been just like a thing.

Linus Sebastian (65:29)

Everybody been doing it for a while.

Riley Murdock (65:31)

For a long time.

Luke Lafreniere (65:32)

This is old, you know, Riley's coming at this from a very like creative minded headspace as well. So we're all gonna have.

Riley Murdock (65:40)

Wow.

Luke Lafreniere (65:41)

What? I think I'm creative. I think you're very creative, Riley.

Riley Murdock (65:45)

Go on.

Luke Lafreniere (65:46)

And anyone who's watched your creative sponsor reads, which are literally called that csp Creative Sponsor K placements.

Riley Murdock (65:54)

I was just doing a bit. We don't have to.

Luke Lafreniere (65:57)

But yes.

Linus Sebastian (65:57)

I don't know what the P is. I was wondering what this Creative sponsor.

Riley Murdock (66:00)

Production.

Linus Sebastian (66:01)

Production.

Riley Murdock (66:02)

All right.

Luke Lafreniere (66:02)

Anyway, the point is, like, this is our perspective and you don't have to share our perspective, but what you're going to have to kind of come to terms with is that everybody is going to have a different perspective that is motivated by their own personal interests and the people around them. And what all of those things are going to need to mesh with is that it's here, it's happening. The steam engine is not coming back. You know, the ice box, harvesting the ice from a cave or whatever. Refrigeration happened. And we're not going to do that anymore.

Linus Sebastian (66:37)

Technically, people still do that.

Luke Lafreniere (66:38)

Oh, yeah, People still ride horses too.

Linus Sebastian (66:40)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (66:41)

But it's a thing that people are very passionate about and they very much do, but it's not.

Linus Sebastian (66:46)

And you're gonna get tiny, you know, one, two, three bit studios that just like the process and want to do it and they do it and that's fine.

Luke Lafreniere (66:55)

I just want to jump in. I don't think Luke meant like two bit studios. Like crappy.

Linus Sebastian (67:00)

No, I mean amount of people.

Luke Lafreniere (67:02)

Cool.

Linus Sebastian (67:03)

Yeah. Yeah. So thanks for the clarification because, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (67:06)

Two bit has kind of like a negative connotation.

Linus Sebastian (67:08)

Oh, yeah, No, I. I meant in a actually very positive connotation. I'm thinking again of Team Cherry.

Luke Lafreniere (67:14)

I get it.

Linus Sebastian (67:14)

I got three people. Amazing game.

Riley Murdock (67:17)

I feel like that usually goes the other way.

Luke Lafreniere (67:18)

That was interesting. I'm just saving us here.

Linus Sebastian (67:20)

I don't. Yeah, I don't know that one.

Riley Murdock (67:21)

He saved you from something.

Linus Sebastian (67:22)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (67:23)

You were about to be canceled right away.

Linus Sebastian (67:26)

Expressly.

Luke Lafreniere (67:27)

Probably not as major as the hard R incident, but I. Yeah, I feel.

Riley Murdock (67:34)

Compelled to point out before I leave. I'm going to leave now. I feel compelled to point out that, like, in my attempt to be. To straddle the line between both the blue and the red here, you know, to be the one, the only one who walks in both worlds, like Ghost Rider played by Nicolas Cage. I feel like I come off as like too pro AI and I feel like I am very much in the middle. The way I see this is like alcohol legalization, like, or legalization of most prohibition won't work. I'm gonna work like, it has to be legal so that it can be regulated regular. We aren't regulating well and it won't be. But I just feel like you can't put the cat back in the bag. But we also don't have to yell at the cat for being out of the bag. You know, every time it shows its face, we have to be like, okay, the cat is here. I don't like cats, but I'm not.

Linus Sebastian (68:28)

Going to the right thing. I don't think either of us are particularly like, pro AI usage, to be clear. Just I don't think any of us are that way.

Luke Lafreniere (68:36)

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I.

Riley Murdock (68:37)

Brought up Perfect Centrist.

Luke Lafreniere (68:39)

I think I brought up my OpenAI account on stream a little while ago and I had like three or four chat windows with it. Like. Yes. I don't use it. But I also, you know, it's in the same way that. Okay. We did an AMD ultimate tech upgrade where one of the first things that we did was make a joke about how Colton's brother in law has kind of serial killer vibes. And then we went down to his garage to find a shovel so that we could do a take of me talking about. Because he works for our customer service. And I was saying, you know, when you contact us, he'll make sure you get taken care of. And so we went to find a shovel so he could be like patting the earth behind me as I did the line. And in his garage we found a tool that had a handle kind of like a hammer. And then on the one side it had a hatchet blade that was sharp on the end and on the bottom. So it's like a two sided like hatchet blade. And then on the other side was a meat tenderizer. And so I found that tool processing game. Couldn't tell you.

Linus Sebastian (69:48)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (69:49)

And what I realized was it's for murder. That's a really interesting. That could maybe be useful to someone. It has the potential for great misuse and it's not very useful to me. And that's how I feel about AI.

Riley Murdock (70:04)

You could use it for ice carving.

Luke Lafreniere (70:06)

It's like a. It's like a hatchet meat tenderizer.

Linus Sebastian (70:09)

Mmm, sure.

Riley Murdock (70:10)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (70:11)

Yeah.

Riley Murdock (70:11)

Yeah. And you know, hey, power to the hatchet meat tenderizer users.

Luke Lafreniere (70:16)

If anyone knows what that tool. By the way, I'm like super interested to know.

Riley Murdock (70:21)

I have to go.

Luke Lafreniere (70:21)

Okay. Thanks. Riley. Thanks for joining us.

Riley Murdock (70:23)

This was a much less chaotic experience than the last time I crashed, you guys.

Luke Lafreniere (70:29)

Yeah. So have we grown up or have you.

Riley Murdock (70:33)

What's that?

Linus Sebastian (70:33)

Is that good or disappointing?

Riley Murdock (70:35)

I. It's both. I feel like I like discussions, but I also just like disrupting you. Okay, well, Godspeed.

Dan (70:44)

Bye.

Luke Lafreniere (70:47)

Was not the best for the audio, I mean.

Linus Sebastian (70:50)

Okay. Fantastic.

Luke Lafreniere (70:53)

It didn't look like this quite. But this is sort of the. This is sort of the idea, I.

Linus Sebastian (70:59)

Think the tenderizing axe.

Luke Lafreniere (71:02)

The tenderizing ax. That's.

Linus Sebastian (71:04)

Wow, man.

Luke Lafreniere (71:05)

That sounds like a super weird.

Dan (71:07)

Like it's a good band name.

Luke Lafreniere (71:10)

Yeah, actually Tenderizing Axe. I like that Clown metal. Anyway, we should do sponsors maybe.

Dan (71:20)

Let's do Our CW announcements.

Luke Lafreniere (71:21)

Oh, we have CW announcements.

Dan (71:23)

Sponsors after that.

Luke Lafreniere (71:25)

It's the magicalest time of the year.

Linus Sebastian (71:29)

Hooray.

Luke Lafreniere (71:30)

Where the calendar is almost empty, and somehow we're still doing deals. From now until December 25th, when you buy a commuter backpack, you will get a bonus $50 gift card. You will get a gift card that is redeemable in the new year. After January 1, 2026, you can spend your $50 gift card. Also, and this is crazy. Our original black Shaft screwdrivers are back. For a very short time.

Dan (72:07)

We.

Luke Lafreniere (72:08)

We found, like, a thousand of them in the warehouse. They were sitting there all this time.

Linus Sebastian (72:13)

How does this.

Luke Lafreniere (72:15)

I don't know.

Linus Sebastian (72:16)

How do you just find incredible amounts of things?

Luke Lafreniere (72:23)

It is a significant source of consternation for me. This is.

Linus Sebastian (72:27)

This is ignorance. I've never done something like that, but I just. I just don't. Like, I might find something in the back of some closet I haven't gone into in a long time. Or, like, you know that. That box of, like.

Luke Lafreniere (72:41)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (72:41)

Keepsakes from high school.

Luke Lafreniere (72:42)

But theoretically, we digitally track our assets, but.

Riley Murdock (72:46)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (72:47)

How do you lose a thousand screwdrivers?

Luke Lafreniere (72:49)

Oh, it was more than a thousand. I just said a thousand.

Linus Sebastian (72:52)

Is it more than 2000?

Luke Lafreniere (72:53)

Worse? I don't think so.

Linus Sebastian (72:54)

So it's. So just for argument, I'm rounding. Let's say 1200.

Luke Lafreniere (73:01)

Sure. Let's say that.

Linus Sebastian (73:02)

That's a lot of dollars of things.

Luke Lafreniere (73:04)

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I wasn't, like, stoked to hear about it, but I was stoked to have, you know, a cool little drop for people for the end of the year. So do you want to fire up the site? We can show people where to find it. Just to be clear, guys, this is the same coating that we had before, so it will have the same chipping issues that the original coding had. If you do not like things to patina, then don't buy it. Please, please don't buy it. But if you. If you do like that, then. Then that's great. I would, you know, love for you to love it. I'm just trying to find. I hate the way that Chrome on Android, it just opens up a news feed instead of just taking me to the last tab that I was using and you have to, like, click continue to this tab. I gotta find that setting and turn it off. Assuming that it is a setting. Oh, wait, is it. Is it on the site?

Linus Sebastian (74:03)

I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (74:06)

Oh, did. Did anyone check?

Linus Sebastian (74:08)

I don't see it.

Luke Lafreniere (74:11)

Oh, it's, like, on the home page.

Linus Sebastian (74:16)

Okay. No one put it in the screwdriver category.

Luke Lafreniere (74:19)

Okay, well, we could maybe fix that.

Linus Sebastian (74:23)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (74:23)

Yep. Cool.

Linus Sebastian (74:24)

All right. Sounds good.

Luke Lafreniere (74:26)

Oh, is it only on the global site?

Linus Sebastian (74:29)

I mean, that would make sense. I checked on both. It is for sure on the front page though, so that. Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (74:37)

Okay, cool. Well, apparently we still have stock and you will also receive a $10 gift card with this, which will be emailed to you on January 1, 2026 or thereabouts.

Linus Sebastian (74:48)

Oh, it's also on the US site. How is it on the US site if we just found it in the warehouse?

Luke Lafreniere (74:52)

Because we probably shipped some down. Yeah. What a wild what a time to be what a time to be Alive Commuter Backpack 50. This is like one of our best reviewed products ever. People flipping love the commuter backpack. Absolutely. Great product. Go check it out. You get a $50 gift card with your order usable in the new year, and we will have plenty of cool stuff for people to check out next year. Since we're on the subject of screwdrivers, this is probably a good time to remind you guys that the Prismagic transparent screwdriver series is one week away. I'm just going to pull up the signup sheet here so you guys can see all the colors. Just go to Prismagic sign up.

Linus Sebastian (75:34)

Oh, that's so exciting.

Luke Lafreniere (75:35)

Do we have a. Do we have a vanity URL for this? Yes. LMG GG SignupprisMagic. Okay, that is not.

Linus Sebastian (75:43)

Oh, that's tough.

Luke Lafreniere (75:46)

Oh, man. Is there an easier way to navigate to that?

Linus Sebastian (75:48)

Okay, look, there is there two P's in it.

Luke Lafreniere (75:51)

We're pretty new. We're pretty new to being a retailer. Okay, Dan's gonna link it in the chat. The point is, what is it?

Linus Sebastian (76:01)

Sign up.

Dan (76:02)

Sig Nup.

Luke Lafreniere (76:03)

Double P. Stop.

Dan (76:04)

Rizz Magic.

Luke Lafreniere (76:06)

You're really not helping. You are the Rizz Magic.

Dan (76:10)

I'm putting it in chat.

Linus Sebastian (76:11)

Riz Magic actually sounds like a. A sick, like, DJ game.

Luke Lafreniere (76:17)

DJ Rhysmanic. Back it again with a background house. Okay. It'll be available in plasma, people all the time. Carbon Black, Molten Orange, and Cryo Teal.

Dan (76:31)

Those are my new singles.

Luke Lafreniere (76:33)

Get them on Spotify.

Dan (76:34)

Here's my SoundCloud.

Luke Lafreniere (76:36)

And I can't spell my name, though. And there may be a special surprise when they launch. Special surprise?

Linus Sebastian (76:46)

What does that mean?

Luke Lafreniere (76:47)

They're launching on December 26th. So that's on Boxing Day, which for our American and global viewers is like Commonwealth Black Friday. Before we just also adopted Black Friday and now we just have both.

Linus Sebastian (77:03)

I have to. This is extremely unimportant but I just really enjoy that when you refresh this page it feels like the the space where you're supposed to put your email in just like screams into existence.

Luke Lafreniere (77:17)

Thank you Luke. That's very helpful.

Linus Sebastian (77:20)

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Anyways, moving forward, more topics.

Luke Lafreniere (77:28)

Oh yeah.

Linus Sebastian (77:29)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (77:29)

Yeah Sponsors the show is brought to you today by msi. This script was supposed to have something about how the sky is clearing up and I was supposed to tie it into MSI's new MEG272 QPX50 monitor, but the weather has been so unpredictable that this line was rewritten three times. What is predictable though is the stunning image quality that you're gonna get thanks to. Wait, what? No, I'm just wondering what gen QD OLED panel it is. 3rd gen okay. Thanks to its 3rd gen QD OLED panel and display HDR true black 500 games will not only look great, but feel great too. Thanks to 0.03 millisecond gray to gray response times and a clear Mr. 21,000 certification. Oh yeah, and it's got a 500 Hz refresh rate. 500 Hz. I'm just gonna take a moment to let that sink in. 500 Hz plus if you're worried about the longevity of this bad boy, it comes with MSI's OLED Care 2.0 to drastically reduce the chance of that happening. And it's also covered by a three year burn in warranty. So get your game on today and pick up an MSI Mag 272 QP QD OLED X50 monitor using our link in the video description. The show is also brought to you by Square as a basa. Whoa, whoa. What? Launching a business doesn't need to feel like rocket science. Okay? This has to be AI. Is this AI generated? Oh okay, cool. Launching a business doesn't need to feel like rocket science. Thankfully, Squarespace can help you get your business off the ground. It's an all in one platform that is straightforward and new user friendly. Squarespace's design intelligence uses AI to empower anyone to build a beautiful personalized website that perfectly fits their mission. And if you need to monetize your business, they have built in payment tools to that work with direct debit, Klarna, Apple Pay and more. Once everything's taken off. Squarespace comes with a full suite of analytics tools so that you can keep track of the state of your business. There are millions of URLs for you to choose for your business and all of them come with privacy and security features. Glizzyroller central.com and it's sold. We've even used Squarespace for our website Linus media group.com so so don't wait. Start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com wan we'll have that link down below. Dan I do want to do a couple topics before we do more sponsored spots. I also want to double check what generation of OLED panel that Monitor is using, so maybe Luke could pick a topic while I just check something.

Linus Sebastian (80:30)

Sure, I'm good. Thank you very much. The RAM Apocalypse Continues as RAM continues to rise as RAM prices continue to rise, Dell, Lenovo and Framework have all announced price increases and other changes due to DRAM shortage. Framework Investment disclosure for Mr. Linus Sebastian says their DDR5 memory configs for their DIY edition laptops are going to go up by 50% with possible plans to increase by even more later on. Dell sent an email to internal employees informing of price changes including their Dell Pro and Pro Max notebooks going up between 520 and $765 for the 128 gig version or 130 to $230 for the 32 gig models, with Trend Force even predicting that Dell and Lenovo may be going backwards and limiting devices to only have 8 gigs of RAM and smaller storage Community Discussion Question Good luck everybody. How do you stay excited about tech? It seems like it's bad news after bad news. Whether it's hardware pricing shifting, subscription based models, or even frustrating video game news. What keeps you motivated to make tech content? Well, that's the world I think. I think it's bad news after bad news whether it's pricing of things, everything in the world, switching to subscription based models, or just frustrating news about the things that we like.

Luke Lafreniere (82:08)

I'm gonna, I'm gonna come in here with a hot take that may actually end up being a full video on the channel because this is gonna, this is gonna ruffle some feathers.

Linus Sebastian (82:18)

Oh boy.

Luke Lafreniere (82:19)

But I think that we in as tech enjoyers might just need a bit of a perspective adjustment, huh? In the grand scheme of things. And maybe this is again, I'm coming at it from my perspective right As a ninet, a gaming computer was like started at thousands of 90s dollars and today, today in $2025, thousands of dollars will get you a sick gaming computer. Even in the midst of a rampocalypse, there are other challenges that are putting pressure on disposable income. I mean, you can say it sucks, but like if you compare it to.

Linus Sebastian (83:06)

I don't think saying we need a perspective adjustment makes sense though. When people's incomes are lower relative to costs, when things that are required for living like health insurance, housing, food, all those types of things, those costs are going way up, relative money to spend on things is significantly lower. So we don't have the luxury of spending that much on a for fun computing device as we may have had in the past.

Luke Lafreniere (83:31)

Let me expand on my point.

Linus Sebastian (83:33)

Sure, sure.

Luke Lafreniere (83:34)

Here's another big difference compared to when I was a kid. When I was a kid, if you were using a computer from 10 years prior it was literal garbage.

Linus Sebastian (83:44)

But now you can play relatively modern games. Like I have told the story a few times, I forget which game it was. It might have been Arc Raiders, but I've been telling the story a few times about the son of a buddy of mine who's playing on a 2500K and playing some modern game. I don't remember which one it was.

Luke Lafreniere (84:03)

So. So here's the so so. So that's, that's the thing. Is a kit of RAM way too expensive right now? Am I paying so here, hold on.

Linus Sebastian (84:13)

Let me making that video because I've been refraining talking about the thing you're making that not the one you just mentioned but the the one I messaged.

Luke Lafreniere (84:21)

You about the marketplace one possibly. It turns out it might be stale already. DDR4 prices are skyrocketing and more importantly like AM4x3D chips are skyrocketing. Apparently 5800x3 are going for figuring this.

Linus Sebastian (84:37)

Out 700800 was hoping we'd make the video before then, but.

Luke Lafreniere (84:40)

So right now a 16 gig kit of RAM is around US$200. What that means to the budget for like the $550 gaming PC that we built a little while ago that we did a video about with an ARC GPU and a reasonably priced CPU kind of value power supply is that you'd probably be adding about 100 to $140 to that budget. So today in the midst of the rampocalypse, you can still build like a high end 1080pmid tier 1440p gaming PC for like $700, which is a lot of money and stuff. But compared to just about any other hobby, tech and gaming have been more inflation proof. Like name one, name anything.

Linus Sebastian (85:34)

This was, this was a really interesting conversation around. Yeah, the price of video games going up.

Luke Lafreniere (85:38)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (85:39)

Because it's like it's really, it's just. I don't know. I can fully understand people still being frustrated. You're right. I think what you're saying is fair, but people's ability to buy it is still non existent so it like doesn't really matter.

Luke Lafreniere (85:51)

Well, hold on.

Linus Sebastian (85:52)

Like it can be as reasonable as it wants. If I don't have the money to buy it, it's still annoying.

Luke Lafreniere (85:57)

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Because like. Yeah, but you also don't need to buy something brand new, which is something that we have talked about so much on this channel.

Linus Sebastian (86:05)

So that's where then you're saying price increases for those things are happening as well?

Luke Lafreniere (86:10)

Yes, if you go after like the hottest items. So if you want to buy like a 5800x3D, sure.

Linus Sebastian (86:16)

But if you know what to look for.

Luke Lafreniere (86:17)

But if you know what to look for, which is what we're here for. Right.

Linus Sebastian (86:20)

I feel like DDR4 RAM though you're not really looking for something specific parts. Everybody's just going to search DDR4.

Luke Lafreniere (86:27)

I don't know. It's that it's the RAM that's as bad as the way that the platform components are also going up. So I need to, I need to look into it some more. This is, this is one of those ones that we've like, we've kind of scrummed what we basically want to talk about, but we haven't sort of nailed down what the exact concept is for the script. I mean I can tell you this much. A secondhand kit of DDR4 is definitely going to cost you as much as like 60 to $70 less than a brand new kit of DDR5 which is a significant savings.

Linus Sebastian (86:57)

That is a meaningful like Right.

Luke Lafreniere (86:58)

Savings.

Linus Sebastian (86:59)

Right. I don't know if it was right win but like relatively short after the announcements of these like RAM issues, if you went on like stuff like Facebook, Marketplace, whatever, you could get a lot of DDR4 for not a lot of money. So many chat talking about DDR3, you're starting to get, get pretty old.

Luke Lafreniere (87:18)

I wouldn't go back to DDR3. Yeah, I don't, I also don't think it's necessary to go back to DDR3.

Linus Sebastian (87:25)

It depends where you're at and stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (87:27)

Fire Panda. Sasquatch asks, where are you pulling that from? I'm looking at ebay right now. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's, I think it's one of those, I think it's one of those things where we can look at what's going on where we've got the COVID crypto winter, you know, so we had the crypto winter which was exacerbated by the COVID silicon shortage. And then we had basically a multi year sort of recovery from that. That as soon as it happened, literally I think it was three weeks, two or three weeks after we recorded the MSRP PC video. But we were like, holy crap. For the first time in years you can buy a PC where every component is at msrp. The RAM shortage hit, right? And so we can look at this and we can go, oh, well, building computers totally sucks and we should never do it again.

Linus Sebastian (88:28)

Yeah, I know.

Luke Lafreniere (88:29)

Or hear me out just a second here. If we actually track. Compared to quite literally anything else, right? Like, look at what a board game cost.

Linus Sebastian (88:45)

I think I just, I don't even disagree with you, but I would be remiss to not point out that it doesn't mean it doesn't suck. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't suck. It's not going to push things out of acceptable ranges for people.

Luke Lafreniere (88:59)

Of course it doesn't suck. Or of course it. Of course it sucks. It totally sucks.

Linus Sebastian (89:04)

I just, I think your opening of like people need a. Whatever it was. Reality check or whatever it was. So it's just not.

Luke Lafreniere (89:10)

It's more that I. I wish people were a little bit more appreciative of the work that goes into keeping these things as affordable as they are. We did that recent tour of Kioxia, their fab.

Linus Sebastian (89:25)

Anytime you see a Fab at all, it's just like, dude, how the hell do I buy one of these things for the amount of dollars that I get it for? It's crazy.

Luke Lafreniere (89:33)

It's amazing. And so I'm. So basically what I'm doing is I'm. I'm coming fresh off of. Off of the. The actual, like literal miracle, like the wonder of the world that it is that we can make a microprocessor at all. And then I'm going over into like, I'm so angry that the $500 computer is now $700 when a $500 computer is a miracle in the first place. And so is a $700 computer.

Linus Sebastian (90:09)

That doesn't mean you can't be annoyed about constant extreme collusion and all these other things going on. But it is still. Yeah, it is still neat that our hobby is surprisingly cheap.

Luke Lafreniere (90:20)

And the fact that. The fact that over the last several years we've gotten to the point where you literally do not have to give Microsoft 100 of your dollars on top of all the hardware you bought anymore.

Linus Sebastian (90:30)

Linux.

Luke Lafreniere (90:31)

That's so cool. Like can we just, can we just take a breath for a second?

Linus Sebastian (90:38)

It could be.

Luke Lafreniere (90:38)

And look at the positives.

Linus Sebastian (90:40)

It could be interesting to. Because I think this event, as hot as the used market has gotten at various times, it was mostly just for GPUs. I think this event is going to crank the used market for practically everything doing. I've done some searching since I sent that message. Doing a scrapyard wars right now would just suck I think to be completely honest, but I think it would be interesting. Maybe. I don't know if we get the clicks, but making a video on how to try to validate hardware when buying stuff from a used market. I've done it as you can.

Luke Lafreniere (91:12)

No one cared.

Linus Sebastian (91:13)

No one cares.

Luke Lafreniere (91:13)

I try so hard to bring people to the like, come on, secondhand water here.

Linus Sebastian (91:21)

There's really good water here.

Luke Lafreniere (91:23)

Like I did that.

Linus Sebastian (91:23)

Just got a drink.

Luke Lafreniere (91:24)

I did. I did a video called I solved the GPU price crisis or whatever where basically I just like bought a 3080 secondhand and showed how to like, you know, what to look for to not get scammed and how to, how to test it and how to validate it before you take it home and like, and how to. How to pick one that has like a transferable warranty and like basically yeah, it was like a mini scrapyard wars of like buying a gpu. Absolutely bombed. Video bombed Tank. No one wants to hear it.

Linus Sebastian (91:54)

Dude. I was at Willow yesterday. Willow Video in Langley based used place. And I was showing Emma like somewhat of this phenomena because we were there together. I don't know if I think she's been there before. I'm not sure. But I was pointing out like, look, There's Spider Man 2 for PS5 right there behind the desk, all sealed. Or There's Spider Man 2 for PS5 right here on the other side of the counter unsealed. And there's like a 30 something dollar difference. It's the same game, come on. And people will still walk in there and just buy the new one like.

Luke Lafreniere (92:34)

Damn, I can't, I can't. Yeah, I can't fathom it. It, it doesn't, it doesn't compute for me.

Dan (92:44)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (92:47)

Something that you probably can fathom even though it does also suck. Nvidia reports a planned 30 to 40% cut in GeForce GPU production in early 2026. It's being reported that Nvidia plans to slash that Production. You know, of course it's being assumed that this is because of the run on memory chips. I think it's a lot more than that personally, but okay. The reports come from the Chinese board channels forum and news site Bench Life, whose supply chain Sources claim that Nvidia's production cuts will first hit the RTX 5060 Ti 16 gig and the RTX 5070 Ti.

Luke Lafreniere (93:27)

Oh, the ones that are like.

Riley Murdock (93:29)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (93:30)

Well the 5070 Ti is the one that like kind of makes sense in Nvidia's lineup. Yep.

Linus Sebastian (93:36)

Very cool.

Luke Lafreniere (93:37)

We've used it for two recent build guides.

Linus Sebastian (93:40)

Nvidia could use the GDDR7 from those aforementioned mid range cards to make more of their higher end, more expensive cards and ultimately make more money. That's for sure. Part of it. Discussion Question how might this indicate Nvidia's pulling a reverse AMD by only manufacturing gaming GPUs focused on the top end of the market? It is that future we have to look forward to.

Luke Lafreniere (94:05)

What my ability to can.

Linus Sebastian (94:08)

Oh, I see. Very good. I think they also just man, don't care. I think they, they feel like a requirement to care about GeForce because of, I don't know, pedigree history, old times, the horse that got us here type mentality.

Luke Lafreniere (94:32)

But I think it's a tenth of their revenue now.

Linus Sebastian (94:35)

When is the last time they talked about it in a way that is like we care about this a lot. We care about raster performance in gaming.

Luke Lafreniere (94:44)

Even last CES it was all just like how much AI enhances GeForce.

Linus Sebastian (94:53)

Yeah. So why. And then like look at how. And you know, I'm totally including myself in this, but look at how annoying we are compared to enterprise customers that'll just pay whatever and just want it as soon as they can get it. And if there's like weird problems, they'll just like work with you on.

Luke Lafreniere (95:11)

They'll hire engineers to do that. Fix it.

Linus Sebastian (95:13)

Yeah. Enterprise customers that are getting crazy boku bucks investment dollars aren't going to care.

Luke Lafreniere (95:23)

They'Re spending someone else's money. Yeah, right. A customer who is spending their own money is always going to be an order of magnitude more difficult to deal with than a customer who's spending someone else's money.

Linus Sebastian (95:34)

Yeah, always.

Luke Lafreniere (95:37)

And especially when they're spending someone else's money to make money for themselves.

Linus Sebastian (95:41)

And that is like a default for companies at pretty much any scale because you're an employee at a company, you're just spending your company money. It's not as like you're not going to be as careful with it. But also, especially at this scale where we're talking like, hello, yes, I will take this many, like container fulls of graphics cards, please. Yeah, just remember, you know, just try to remember a little bit on the hopeful other side of this how different companies acted. And then if you care, vote with your wallets.

Luke Lafreniere (96:17)

Zergom asked an interesting question. How much has your badminton inflated compared to PCs over the time that you've been doing it? So since I used to play back at ncix, badminton has gotten substantially more expensive rackets. Actually not too bad. So they have benefited from increased economies of scale and better mass production techniques and more automation. Probably not the birdies, actually. Shuttles are brutal.

Linus Sebastian (96:46)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (96:47)

So badminton shuttles are.

Linus Sebastian (96:49)

This is what I meant.

Luke Lafreniere (96:49)

Oh, I see. Are being impacted by a major worldwide shortage in goose feathers, specifically the ones off the left wing of the goose because the shuttle has to spin a particular way. And if you use the feathers from the right wing, they'll spin the other way. And also court time. So I'm gonna shout out some of my buds who run or work at some courts in the lower mainland. When I got into, when I got into badminton, it was about 20 bucks an hour to rent a court. So ersc, where my buddy Jason Shum works, they are now charging $30. That's weekdays before 5pm that is like, that is like the garbage time, the slow time. So it's $36 an hour. So that's over a span of about. So this would be about the NCIX time. So this is just shy of 20 years. So this is going back to like 2000, 2008 or so.

Linus Sebastian (97:47)

Why does it just say what's up, package?

Luke Lafreniere (97:50)

Oh, oh, yeah. If you buy, if you buy a bunch, then you can get a. It's a slight deal. It's honestly not that much. I'll show it my buddy ringer. How much does. Does a court rental? Where the. Ringo, where the heck is your court rental price?

Linus Sebastian (98:05)

Wasn't that what we were just looking at?

Luke Lafreniere (98:06)

Yeah, it was a different site. Oh, stringing service lesson faq. Where's your. Where's your price, Ringo? Okay, well, trying to. Oh, court. There we go. All right. It's hiding. Wait, I just call. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Yeah. 34 bucks. Going up, up, going up in January. Clear. One shout out, my boy Daryl. Let's see. Yeah, Richmond. Here we go. So, yeah, 20 bucks has gone up to. Oh, sure, why not? Oh, my God.

Dan (98:48)

Here we go.

Luke Lafreniere (98:49)

Court rental. 30 bucks and Daryl's if you can get a court there. Because he's really focused on training at his facility. He actually runs the training programs for us at Smash Champs. I would use Smash Champs as an example, but what's the point of that? That's a facility that I control the pricing of and that doesn't have a long history. But all of these places would have been closer to about 20 bucks an hour back in the day. And a tube of shuttles would have been like 20, 25 bucks. Whereas now a top tier Yonex shuttle is like I think approaching a hundred dollars Canadian retail for like goose feather. So very few people are playing with goose feather. And like the lower end ones are more like 40 plus.

Linus Sebastian (99:37)

You're talking a tube.

Luke Lafreniere (99:38)

Yeah, yeah. 12. 12 shuttles. Yeah. It's been, it's been absolutely brutal. I was chatting with a buddy who runs a bunch of clubs in Taiwan and he's like, yeah, this is gonna. This has the potential to kill our spirit court if it just gets too unaffordable.

Linus Sebastian (99:53)

Would. Would people accept lower quality shuttles?

Luke Lafreniere (99:57)

Yes.

Linus Sebastian (99:58)

Are you talking the court rentals Navy.

Luke Lafreniere (100:02)

Reimar says shouting out a competitor is based. I don't. I. I have always.

Linus Sebastian (100:09)

A different view.

Luke Lafreniere (100:10)

Had a bit of a different view on competition. I think that competition is healthy. I think it is good for the consumer. I think that you can have competition without animosity. I think that you can have friendly rivalry. Do I compete with Ringo and Jason and Daryl? Yes. Can we collaborate? Yes.

Linus Sebastian (100:34)

There's also this idea that like, if you all together make the sport of badminton more popular in the area, you just all win. This is the, the whole Rising Tide thing. It applies to so many different realms and people realize it's.

Dan (100:47)

This is not Smash Champs also isn't in. You didn't open one next door.

Luke Lafreniere (100:52)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (100:53)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (100:53)

And why would I different.

Dan (100:54)

Different market.

Luke Lafreniere (100:55)

Why should I? Yeah, shout out my boy Melissa. Whatever, boy. Don't worry about it. The point is Yumo Pro shop, good shop. We're competing with them hard. We're probably gonna go into e tail and we're gonna. We're gonna compete with them online. That's fine. I can still respect the hell out of Melissa's hustle. And.

Linus Sebastian (101:15)

And ideally you're bringing more people to the space and we can both make.

Luke Lafreniere (101:18)

Each other better and it'll be great. Everyone will be happy. Yeah. And sometimes someone will not be happy and they will get out competed, but I think then they need to. They need to reflect. They need to look in the mirror. I I believe in healthy competition. And if that's me, then what I need to do is I need to look in the mirror and I have to figure out how to do it better. So, yeah, no, I'm. And I walk this walk.

Linus Sebastian (101:39)

In a lot of healthy competition environments, people will help each other compete against each other. Often. Like, it's because it's not about crushing the other party. It's about doing better. And if you're all, like, just killing it, it's very likely that your industry is just gonna grow.

Luke Lafreniere (101:57)

Yes.

Linus Sebastian (101:57)

Because if you're all actually doing that well, it's probably going to be an exciting place to be for. For consumers and everyone else there. And your industry is just going to grow, and it's just gonna be really good.

Luke Lafreniere (102:06)

100%.

Linus Sebastian (102:08)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (102:12)

Okay, what do you want to talk about next?

Linus Sebastian (102:15)

I'm scrolling through.

Luke Lafreniere (102:17)

I can save my story time about Ninebots. Terrible customer service for next week. It's not even terrible customer service. Their customer service was pretty good, but I'm not happy with the resolution.

Linus Sebastian (102:27)

We should talk about that. But maybe. Yeah, let's do that. Ooh, next week's probably also not going to be super long.

Luke Lafreniere (102:32)

Well, we'll see how it goes. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (102:33)

Okay. My whole thing has changed. I can just do it at the normal time. It's fine.

Luke Lafreniere (102:39)

Okay. You do whatever works for you. Oh, what day of the week is it next week? Are we going to be spending Christmas together? No, boxing day.

Dan (102:47)

Yeah, 20. Next year is Christmas Day.

Luke Lafreniere (102:50)

Okay, cool.

Linus Sebastian (102:52)

Actually, that'll still be fine. Okay, there's. I mean, there's the tech house plans. There's a 3D printing farm. Oh, LTT sells fake PTM 7950. Just kidding. Igor's lab published a review of our PTM 7950 titled Linus Tech Tips. PTM 7950 review. Original OEM product or fake? Proud to say that we got Igor's lab badge of approval. It's the genuine article. Thanks for the extensive testing. And also, the writers of this included a quote which I also love, so I'm happy they included this quote. This pad is from the edge of the cake among the PTM7950 products, not intended for industrial showcases, but fully fledged, powerful, and in practice, at least as good as what is otherwise lying perfectly cut in the display. And sometimes, as I knew even as a child, these are the pieces with the best bite. I actually love that tldr. It's all good.

Luke Lafreniere (104:03)

Yeah. I exchanged a handful of emails with Igor about this you know, from my point of view, I, I appreciate, I appreciate his passion for the subject. That is what I can say is, you know, if there was ever a concern that you had that there was nobody out there like obsessively validating thermal compound, you can lay that concern to rest because Igor is obsessively evaluating thermal compound.

Linus Sebastian (104:42)

Sick.

Luke Lafreniere (104:42)

I wouldn't have thought it possible to write a five page review of. Because it's just PTM 7950. Like, we just, we're pretty, I think, as transparent as we can possibly be. I did not develop a thermal compound. No. I do not have the engineering and. Or manufacturing expertise or capital to develop an industry leading thermal compound. I accept that. I accept that about myself and my business acumen and resources. So what I did is I took a thing that exists already that someone told us was good and that we validated. We thought was pretty cool too. And then really smart people have told us is really good. And then we made a box. Really skinny box. It's so skinny.

Linus Sebastian (105:33)

It is a skinny box.

Luke Lafreniere (105:34)

It's a skinny box. Colorful too. It's got orange on it.

Linus Sebastian (105:37)

We made it three colors.

Luke Lafreniere (105:38)

We put it right on there. Yep, we did it. Go Reddit. And so I wouldn't have thought that it was possible to write a five page article about our endeavors to put a box on a product that existed. But he did it. And with flair, as Luke pointed out, maybe even with the minimum 16 pieces of flair.

Linus Sebastian (106:06)

I thought it was pretty great. And honestly, it's a fair enough question because apparently this is like a thing that it's faked often and it's like.

Luke Lafreniere (106:14)

Hard to find, which is why we sourced it in the first place.

Linus Sebastian (106:17)

Difficult to get it from the official company and, and, and all that jazz.

Luke Lafreniere (106:21)

But we didn't. We, we didn't source it from a fake source. So there was, There was no concern in my mind that, you know, we were selling fake PTM7950.

Linus Sebastian (106:33)

Yeah. But if someone's asking the question, I appreciate that Igor answered it.

Luke Lafreniere (106:37)

Yep. Yep. I mean, I. Yeah, that's good.

Linus Sebastian (106:42)

Nice and sick quote. So awesome. It's actually just a great read.

Luke Lafreniere (106:50)

Are we talking about your Wikipedia article in floatplane chat right now?

Linus Sebastian (106:54)

Yeah, I didn't know this was a thing.

Luke Lafreniere (106:55)

Yeah, I, I caught this earlier this week. So someone attempted to create a Wikipedia entry for Mr. Luc Lafreniere, who was declined for not being notable enough. But I actually take. No, hold on a second.

Linus Sebastian (107:13)

I actually wasn't actually. Which one's that? Where's that one?

Luke Lafreniere (107:21)

That's what people said on Reddit. I actually don't see that in the.

Linus Sebastian (107:25)

That's funny though.

Luke Lafreniere (107:26)

Hold on. That is, they do not show significant coverage about the subject in published. Yeah, yeah, basically, yeah, pretty much based. However, however, however, I actually, I think that that might be a self promotion issue for you. So one of the things that makes someone notable is how often they've been covered in third party media. But we've talked about this a fair bit in the past where I will often get like spam to my inbox that's like, hey, we're publishing a list of the top 10 tech influencers or you know, the top most influential people in. In technology and media or social media or whatever.

Riley Murdock (108:12)

Do you.

Luke Lafreniere (108:13)

We'd love to include you. That'll be $500 or whatever. So I actually strongly believe, huh. That with a little bit of effort, you are very influential.

Linus Sebastian (108:28)

With a little bit. You're saying I could, I could.

Luke Lafreniere (108:29)

Very broadly known by influence. I think we just. I think we just need to play the game. I just think we need to play the game a little bit.

Linus Sebastian (108:37)

You know, if it's third party sources that they need, which is what I'm seeing here, the only thing that I think they need to include is the handling of the hard harvest. And then you'll have infinite third party sources.

Luke Lafreniere (108:49)

Yeah, well, I mean, you don't want your entire Wikipedia article to just be like, like he saved Linus's company.

Dan (108:55)

Yeah, but that's what, that's what gets.

Luke Lafreniere (108:58)

It through the door.

Dan (108:59)

And then you can add the fun stuff.

Linus Sebastian (109:02)

What is it like? Early life, rise to fame, strife, downfall, notable controversies. Yeah, yeah. Controversy. And then array 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Luke Lafreniere (109:19)

I don't know, I think that with a little bit of effort and I'm gonna throw this, I'm gonna throw this back to the community a little bit.

Linus Sebastian (109:26)

Oh, no.

Luke Lafreniere (109:26)

We could maybe, you know, we could maybe prod some publications or maybe maybe just, you know, get, get Luke some invitations. Get some invitations for interviews. No, no. Like being interviewed by people is important.

Linus Sebastian (109:42)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (109:42)

Like I'm trying to remember. Cause I. My initial. The community tried to get me on there a number of times before they ultimately succeeded. And I don't remember what the threshold was, but it was also I was rejected for not being notable until such time as some arbiter of who's notable on Wikipedia decided I was notable.

Linus Sebastian (110:03)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (110:03)

I mean, here's something that could potentially, that could potentially help.

Linus Sebastian (110:09)

I do understand, like if there's a Wikipedia page for everyone, then it just gets a little bit ridiculous.

Riley Murdock (110:13)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (110:14)

And that's fair enough. Should we. Should we talk about the thing?

Linus Sebastian (110:17)

I don't. I'm not offended by this. Talk about what?

Luke Lafreniere (110:22)

You know, the thing.

Linus Sebastian (110:24)

Oh. 30 minute warning. This might not be the show. I'm not even. I just. I think it's. Maybe not. I think we do it the one after next week.

Luke Lafreniere (110:34)

Maybe Dr. Gizmo says the thing so.

Linus Sebastian (110:36)

That we have more time.

Luke Lafreniere (110:37)

Luca103 says, yes, we haven't done After Dark. Crystal says, thank you.

Linus Sebastian (110:46)

I'm just saying I think there's not time. I think we do it the week after next week. I'm not even. I don't. I don't think I'm. But we have to do after there's merch messages. I'm sure we have to do After Dark. And I suspect that might end up. I suspect that'll either be a very short or very long conversation.

Luke Lafreniere (111:02)

Have people even. Have we even told people how to send merch messages yet?

Linus Sebastian (111:06)

No. Like, this is what I'm talking about. We don't have time, brother.

Luke Lafreniere (111:10)

Did I finish the rest of the sponsors? Good Lord.

Linus Sebastian (111:14)

We do not have time. This is not the show.

Luke Lafreniere (111:17)

Hey, it's that time of year to buy something on lttstore.com. you could pick up some of the new deals that we have right now. Buy a commuter bag today, get $50 to spend, or hey, we've got a limited, very, very, very limited number of black shaft screwdrivers. So you could go ahead and add a commuter bag, add to cart, Boom. Head to the cart, and you'll see. Ah, yes, the interface to send a merch message. It will go to producer Dan, who will probably this week mostly not curate too many of them because I do have a heart out in a little bit. And I mean. Or you guys could hang and do some merch messages after I leave. Either way, he will also maybe like, respond to you or forward it to someone who can help with your messaging. You place your order, and then instead of just throwing money at your screen, you can throw money at amazing merchandise like our quality commuter bag. Or. Or a cool hoodie like the one that I'm wearing. Or a cool shirt. Oh, Luke's wearing the glitch shirt. So you could go into your cart and you could be like, glitch, please. And then you'd get a glitch shirt. That would be quality. Dan, why don't we do one merch message to show people how merch messages work?

Dan (112:24)

Sure. Hey, dlo. When considering the Tech House, were you afraid that having the easiest house would affect your ability to make entertaining and more, quote unquote, universal upgrade videos for others to watch?

Luke Lafreniere (112:34)

No, because there will be. In my mind, the Tech House is just the beginning. In my mind, we.

Riley Murdock (112:46)

We.

Luke Lafreniere (112:47)

We. No, in my mind, tech.

Dan (112:51)

Small city.

Linus Sebastian (112:54)

Interesting RV park.

Luke Lafreniere (112:56)

Oh, in my. In my mind, this is just the first one. So we want. I wanted to. It's just like I said at the beginning of the video, I wanted to have something that is somewhat relatable that people could follow along at home a bit, where we have to solve real world problems. You know, we're going to have to be. We're going to fish, wire up through walls. We're going to. We're going to solve real problems whether we do it intentionally or unintentionally. Because, like, we might.

Linus Sebastian (113:28)

I'm honestly really excited for this.

Luke Lafreniere (113:29)

We might pull a bunch of the drywall off to make it easier to run a lot of the wiring, and then we might realize that, oops, we got to run another one, and we're gonna have to figure that out. We're gonna.

Linus Sebastian (113:38)

What if you find a mold?

Luke Lafreniere (113:39)

Then we're gonna have to solve that. So we're gonna. It's gonna be challenging. I'm not worried. It's not gonna be challenging enough, but I did want one where I kind of had a pretty good vision of, like, what it kind of might look like and how we might tackle these challenges. If this goes well, if it's a huge success, then I could totally see us doing something very similar with a condo. Something very similar with a more challenging house, you know, with a. With a rancher. That's right on a slab where we have to, like, really dig deep and find solutions. No, I'm. I'm super excited about it and I think it's going to be flipping awesome. Pun intended.

Linus Sebastian (114:21)

Have a sponsor.

Luke Lafreniere (114:29)

Oh, sorry. What am I supposed to be doing? Oh, yeah, right. The show is brought to you by Saily. For many folks, the holiday season comes with a lot of travel, often to other countries. And phone companies just love to hit you with fees when you travel. Well, thanks to our sponsor, Saily, you can stay connected for less. When you're away from home, they'll hook you up with an EIM plan that is custom tailored to wherever you're going, no matter how long you'll be there. They have plans in several countries that are starting at just a few bucks, which is way cheaper than getting hit for even one day of roaming. Don't worry about going over your date over your data limit though, because Saily offers unlimited plans so you won't have to miss an episode of the WAN show as they really know who they're talking to here. And if you end up staying at the family's house a little bit longer, Saily makes it super easy to change and add a little bit more time to your plan. So down the Download the Saily app or go to saily.com wan show where you can get 15% off a plan just by using Code WAN show at Checkout. Finally, the show is brought to you by Vessi. Last week we had quite the downpour here in the Vancouver area, which is common this time of year, but it was worse than usual. The point is, quite a few people were doing holiday shopping with squelching socks, I think. And if you don't want to be a wet sock Wendell, then check out our spot sponsor, Vessi. As always, Vessi claims that their shoes are 100% waterproof. And if you're looking for a gift for the favorite puddle jumper in your life, you can check out their Stormburst collection. They have removable soles for all day comfort and a rugged grip that's perfect for winter walks. And you can snag a pair of Vessi's high quality gloves to go with them. As an added bonus, the first five people. The first five. Oh wow, that's really not a lot. The first five people to use the following code will get up to $250 to redeem at checkout. Are you ready? Here it comes. Okay, vip, everyone hates squelching socks, so save some money. Hope everybody got that. Good luck. Way to go, Vessi. You're distracting people from watching our show. It's fine. They probably had it on a second screen anyway. All right, what do we want to talk about next?

Linus Sebastian (116:32)

We are really getting into not a lot of after dark territory.

Luke Lafreniere (116:39)

A school security AI flagged a clarinet as a gun, and apparently it was supposed to do that. A Florida middle school went into lockdown after an AI security system flagged a student's clarinet as a gun, sending police rushing to the campus for what they believed was an active shooter situation. Officers later confirmed there was no threat and the weapon was a band instrument carried by a student in a holiday costume. The AI system, made by Zeroeyes, scans security camera footage for firearms and alerts school officials and police. Despite the false alarm, the company said the system worked as intended, arguing that it is better to act on uncertainty than to risk missing a real threat, a position the school appeared to support. Critics say that incidents like this highlight the risks of AI based school security, pointing to past cases where similar systems have mistaken harmless objects for guns and caused panic. They argue the tools are expensive, unproven, and may increase stress as and police confrontations rather than improve student safety.

Linus Sebastian (117:34)

Sending a bunch of extremely high stress people with firearms into a situation where they think kids are being shot at because of a mistake.

Luke Lafreniere (117:44)

Well, I support this because I just plain hate the clarinet. I'm. I'm kidding. It was just a joke. But we need to move on anyway.

Linus Sebastian (117:52)

Hopefully it was called off before they got there. Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (117:58)

Anyways, a former Amazon oh you know what? Let's do this one next week too.

Linus Sebastian (118:04)

Okay. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of topics.

Luke Lafreniere (118:06)

Yeah, I don't know what happened because.

Linus Sebastian (118:08)

I thought you messaged saying there was like none.

Luke Lafreniere (118:10)

I did and I don't recognize a lot of these.

Dan (118:12)

They weren't every single week.

Luke Lafreniere (118:14)

I do not say that every week. I just say it all every week. That's not true.

Dan (118:19)

Oh, there's no topics.

Luke Lafreniere (118:20)

I have not seen this. Facebook 1 Facebook Facebook has apparently tested limiting users to a maximum of two shared links per month unless they pay for Meta Verified links in only two organic posts per month. If they're not verified, users who hit the two link limit are prompted to subscribe to Meta Verified if they wish to share additional external links.

Linus Sebastian (118:45)

They are in the business of getting scammers to pay the money. We talked about this earlier in the show. Maybe it's just more of that.

Luke Lafreniere (118:52)

The trial currently focuses on a subset of independent creators and pages that are using professional mode. Notably, traditional news publishers are excluded from this specific test for the time being, though it is worth noting that in many countries they can't share news on Facebook due to attribution and compensation laws that Meta doesn't want to deal with anyway. Okay, cool. That was all I had to say about that.

Linus Sebastian (119:11)

Facebook sucks.

Luke Lafreniere (119:14)

Cool. Let's move this one to next week. I'm just going to highlight it doopity doop doop. Next week.

Linus Sebastian (119:22)

This is weird.

Luke Lafreniere (119:24)

Sure, go for it.

Linus Sebastian (119:26)

YouTube is letting creators make playable games with a Gemini 3 tool. YouTube is testing a new feature that lets creators build yeah. The project, called Playables Builder, is launching as an open beta for select creators. The tool works through a web app that lets creators describe a game in plain language with no coding required. YouTube has already been experimenting with small games on its platform since 2023 and added multiplayer support last year. So this is an expansion of that idea with AI doing most of the setup work. YouTube says that the goal is to make quick, bite sized games that viewers can play inside YouTube. Why on desktop or mobile, not full scale releases. Think simple interaction, interactive experiences rather than polished story driven titles or console style games. Critics point out that while AI can help generate basic game mechanics, making a game that's actually fun usually takes iteration, design, skill and human judgment. Because AI can create a game, doesn't mean people want to play it. Okay, okay, so it's like really bad frog game I guess. But you're blew now. Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (120:45)

So it's gaming slop.

Linus Sebastian (120:47)

You are running in dirt. So the name of the game seems.

Luke Lafreniere (120:51)

Oh, that was. I can't tell what are obstacles and what are died. Yeah, okay. Well that was something cool. I. I guess for me the big question is why.

Linus Sebastian (121:16)

Yeah, that's for sure. That's my same question as well. Netflix tried games. I don't think that worked out.

Luke Lafreniere (121:23)

Mm.

Linus Sebastian (121:24)

I don't feel like YouTube needs games.

Luke Lafreniere (121:27)

Study zone. My new task is to finish the WAN show. Like what, what am I do I check it off? Achievement unlocked. First steps.

Linus Sebastian (121:38)

My like biggest concern about YouTube right now is that they seem to be pushing towards shorts quite a bit.

Luke Lafreniere (121:45)

And oh God, it's so it's getting.

Linus Sebastian (121:47)

Shorts are literally called by a lot of people like slop or Brainrot or something else like that. And YouTube was always known as a like wholesome community platform.

Luke Lafreniere (121:59)

That is wholesome is questionable, but definitely.

Linus Sebastian (122:01)

Community in a lot of ways. I think it's seen community and wholesome I think have a lot of paired connotations.

Luke Lafreniere (122:07)

This is my homepage right now. An ad.

Linus Sebastian (122:11)

It is more than half shorts.

Luke Lafreniere (122:13)

Two live streams, five shorts. That's all that's above the full zero VODs. I get three VODs, one of which is an ad so that I can shop. I get this YouTube playable. Garbage stupid. Then I get another live stream. Finally a vod and oh my God, I got Rickrolled. That is the first two. No, no, no, no.

Dan (122:37)

That's a mix. These keep coming up as well.

Luke Lafreniere (122:40)

More shorts.

Linus Sebastian (122:41)

It's a mix.

Dan (122:42)

It's different.

Luke Lafreniere (122:43)

More ad.

Dan (122:44)

The Rick roll is like something different. It's not like a video full wid.

Linus Sebastian (122:51)

Like this sucks. And I'm worried that YouTube is going down a not good path in regards to.

Luke Lafreniere (122:59)

I've raised this.

Linus Sebastian (123:00)

It's. It's like future legitimacy.

Luke Lafreniere (123:03)

I've raised this.

Linus Sebastian (123:04)

I've the ability for outside companies to encroach on its part of the Internet.

Luke Lafreniere (123:11)

I can't raise this any more often than I already raised it.

Linus Sebastian (123:17)

You're dumping mud into your own moat. Like.

Luke Lafreniere (123:24)

How about just let someone else be the brain rot platform and you can you.

Linus Sebastian (123:28)

I think you can have shorts on it. I don't think shorts existing on YouTube is the problem. I think it's the promotion level of them. Trying to make it the primary part of YouTube I think is actually a very, very bad idea. Yeah. To the point where if you really want to do that, I almost think it should be a separate app.

Luke Lafreniere (123:54)

Anyway.

Linus Sebastian (123:55)

You're trying to do too much. You're trying to be a gaming platform, you're trying to be v. Shorts platform. Trying to be a live streaming platform, trying to be a VOD platform, trying to be a post comment thing platform, trying to be tv. And what I mean by that is like old school tv, not the fact that it's on a tv. To be clear. It's, it's rough. I have, within the last like year, I think I've never heard so much negative sentiment about what YouTube is.

Luke Lafreniere (124:27)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (124:28)

And what I mean by that is again attaching to words like brain rot, AI slop, things like that. I've never heard that type of stuff. Generally people are very positive about, about what YouTube is and might be very negative about things that are on it.

Luke Lafreniere (124:41)

Or how aggressively they monetize it.

Linus Sebastian (124:42)

Sure, something like that. But YouTube at its core everyone was always very positive about. And then that is now changing and that's a.

Luke Lafreniere (124:50)

And they resisted the urge, you know, back when vine was a thing, YouTube resisted the urge to just be vine or be Snapchat or be, you know, whatever more digestible rapid fire content was. You know, they didn't have to add, you know, DMing. They didn't have to add, you know, short form vertical videos that you can swipe through. They, they really didn't have to add this game.

Linus Sebastian (125:19)

They really didn't have a lot of, of extreme addiction actually extremely bad for you things. Yes, people would spend way too much time on YouTube, whatever.

Luke Lafreniere (125:28)

And yes, that was their business model and still is for sure.

Linus Sebastian (125:31)

But there are rather extreme levels of manipulation when it comes to short form content which is like actually bad for your brain and like extremely hijacking dopaminergic, blah, blah, blah, things that I don't understand. Go watch someone else talk about it. I don't anything about medical stuff. Please don't hate me. It's, it's. Yeah, there you go. But it's, it's, it's they're not, they're not like good for us. Shorts are highly questionable as a thing.

Luke Lafreniere (125:56)

And algorithmic tuning too, was, was something that I feel like they were more thoughtful about in the past. I remember having a long conversation with them back when you remember that trend when it was just red hot knives cutting through things was like half of the stupid videos and the other half were like, how many, how many M&Ms. Can you flush down a toilet? And I was basically like, I talked to them. I was like, look, I'm not just sitting here whining and moaning because, you know, my more technical actually requires a little bit of cognitive load. Content is like getting fewer views right now. Obviously that's a concern for me. I do wish to be promoted, you know, on the platform.

Linus Sebastian (126:34)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (126:35)

But if your bar is gonna be that. Anything that doesn't get the click through.

Linus Sebastian (126:40)

If you are this platform now, gummy.

Luke Lafreniere (126:42)

Bears in a toilet or, or red hot knives cutting through watermelons or, or pieces of feces or, you know, whatever, whatever it is, if I can't achieve that level of clothes click through, then I just like don't get my videos served. Is that going to be good for your platform in the longer term? Is that going to be good for the creator ecosystem that you're trying to build where people can have predictable, stable performance that allows them to hire people and build businesses? Is that what you want? And I feel like they've lost track of that.

Linus Sebastian (127:17)

YouTube felt like it was being built for the forever and right now again, over the very relatively short period of time, maybe a year somewhere around that it really feels like they are. It's been rough, diving extremely hard for the short term, which is not a game they even need to win. They were effectively 100% of the market share of the forever video platform win that you already had every eyeball of everyone on the planet, basically. You know how they, they stopped reporting like user change because it was effectively population change. Yeah, like, dude, you won. Please don't grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. It's not necessary and you can still not do it.

Luke Lafreniere (128:07)

In other news, the ChatGPT App Store is here. OpenAI has opened up app submissions for ChatGPT, letting developers publish apps that run directly inside the chatbot and appear in a new app directory. These apps can extend conversations by taking actions like ordering groceries, building slide decks, or searching for apartments without leaving ChatGPT. Oh, good. Developers can build apps using the Apps SDK in beta and submit them through the OpenAI developer platform. Approved apps will begin rolling out next year and can be discovered through ChatGPT's tools menu or triggered directly in conversations. For now, monetization is limited to linking out to external websites or apps, while OpenAI says that it's exploring future options like digital goods. All apps must follow safety and privacy rules that shouldn't be too hard, with clear data disclosures and easy ways for users to disconnect. Canva, Expedia, Spotify, and TripAdvisor are already available with app integration, although the new store is being launched with an open call for developers to put new apps on the platform. Cool. I really just don't want to talk about that, so why don't we do some merch messages?

Linus Sebastian (129:18)

Yeah, sounds good.

Luke Lafreniere (129:22)

Hamnetics says number one selling app Girlfriend. No way. Is that true?

Dan (129:27)

No, it was a Mrs. Krabappel. Honk. They're calling me a goose.

Linus Sebastian (129:39)

This is.

Dan (129:39)

This is why I have to play on my phone the whole time. Otherwise, it takes too long. Okay. Yeah. I got a couple here for you. Let's see. Hey, Dan. Tell Linus and Luke I say hi. Calder says hi. Technically, you did that yourself. I recently programmed some automation Dockers, and. And without ChatGPT, it would have taken four times as long. Are there any better ways to learn to code, or am I stuck with chatgpt?

Linus Sebastian (130:03)

Luke's face.

Dan (130:09)

I can feel the cringe from here.

Linus Sebastian (130:14)

I mean, man, I really enjoy this person's channel sometimes when they release videos because I think there's big gaps between them. But I might be wrong. I might just not see them that often. But basically homeless. We've talked about him on one show before. I'm certain he had a video out recently that I thought was fantastic, which is this one. I tried switching to Linux for. Yeah, there's some big gas from your videos. Okay. I'm not crazy. I tried switching to Linux for 157 days. Very interesting video. Fun ads. I'm used to YouTube Premium, so whenever I see ads on YouTube, I'm like, what? That's not allowed? But, yeah, great video in general, go watch it.

Riley Murdock (130:53)

But.

Linus Sebastian (130:56)

One of the topics that he brings up is that the accessibility of running Linux is actually kind of a.

Luke Lafreniere (131:03)

Lot higher, thanks to.

Linus Sebastian (131:05)

If you're like, hey, I'm having this problem. And it's like, oh, just copy paste this into command line and you're done. And it's like, oh, cool. Command line's a lot less scary. And, I mean, there's questionable things about letting you know AI run your command line, but a command line is a lot less scary when you're just.

Luke Lafreniere (131:20)

Just.

Linus Sebastian (131:20)

You don't have to learn what every little part of the command means when you're just copy pasting it. It's a very. It's a very interesting video. Go check it out.

Luke Lafreniere (131:31)

And in the same way, this makes it easier for you to do what you're doing, but it's questionable whether you're actually learning language.

Linus Sebastian (131:37)

Are you actually learning or actually learning coding? Yes. And if your goal isn't necessarily to actually learn it. Okay. You can also prompt things in a way where you make it like, you know, don't actually give me the answer.

Luke Lafreniere (131:51)

Yep.

Linus Sebastian (131:51)

Just like. Like you. You can make it. Try to teach you, but it won't.

Luke Lafreniere (131:56)

Do that by default.

Linus Sebastian (131:56)

No. And I think the vast majority of people are not using these things in that way. So, like, if we're being realistic in a lot of ways, it's actually stopping you from learning the thing. And again, that might be okay, depending on your objective. But, yeah, I mean, there's. Who's ringing?

Dan (132:17)

That's me.

Linus Sebastian (132:18)

Sorry, It's. It's. I don't know. There's lots of. There's a. What's that one company? I've heard they're cool. They do like Larian.

Dan (132:29)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (132:30)

No, it's. I don't remember what they're called, but they do. There's like a very gamified way of learning to code.

Luke Lafreniere (132:35)

How pathetic is it that I'm sitting here struggling to think of another cool company? Oh, the ones that have the kind of like friendly Kano. Do they still exist?

Linus Sebastian (132:46)

Maybe that's it. I don't know. Elijah said boot dot dev. I. I don't know much about them. I haven't used their service.

Luke Lafreniere (132:52)

Talking about this one.

Linus Sebastian (132:53)

I've heard they're cool. This is the kid version, I think. I was thinking of Boot dev, but I think this is the kid version.

Luke Lafreniere (132:59)

Okay.

Dan (133:00)

Does Scratch have like a learning thing?

Linus Sebastian (133:02)

I think it does, but that's a little. That is.

Riley Murdock (133:05)

That's a little.

Linus Sebastian (133:06)

For programming, it is very intro. But if you haven't done any learning yet on programming, Scratch is really cool. You can actually do some surprisingly good things to Scratch.

Dan (133:17)

I think it's Turing complete.

Linus Sebastian (133:22)

But. So it's PowerPoint sponsored by Dev before. Okay. I don't know. I don't pay that much attention. That isn't why I brought them up, to be clear. But yeah. Yeah. I think it's kind of a neat idea to make it kind of a game so that it's fun, especially if you're doing this just for fun, I.

Luke Lafreniere (133:42)

Know we've done spots for boot.dev.

Linus Sebastian (133:43)

Yeah, I just didn't remember codingame. Somebody said coding game. I don't know. Yeah, there's like near infinite ways to learn how to code these days. There are so many different services that you can subscribe to that have cool different angles on it. There's tons of, of free information out there. There are YouTube tutorials, more than you could possibly imagine.

Dan (134:08)

There's everything you mentioned that one that was like the 11 hour Godot tutorial.

Linus Sebastian (134:13)

Amazing video.

Dan (134:14)

Incredible unlimited knowledge.

Linus Sebastian (134:16)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (134:17)

All right.

Dan (134:18)

Any long term plans, either partner or partner with or create your own brick and mortar presence for LDD store products. If memory serves, did Micro center have the screwdriver for a while? How about a Best Buy?

Luke Lafreniere (134:31)

Retail partnerships are tough because this may surprise you but retail requires significant margin on the product that otherwise we could take for ourselves. And retail also has a lot of baggage. Retail, especially with a relatively small entity like us, we will demand very challenging purchase terms. So they'll pretty much say yeah, we'll pay you when we feel like it. Any returns, you will simply eat them. We will just destroy them. We will not bother to return them to you. And things could be returned for reasons as trivial as a little dent on the packaging and.

Dan (135:18)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (135:20)

Like it or lump it. And if we had the kind of clout that we could negotiate a better deal than that or if we had really deep margins on our products then we'd be able to absorb that. But there's a reason that the direct to consumer model works. And so we looked at it pretty recently and based on sort of our anticipated. We haven't talked to anyone about the specifics but based on our anticipated expectations for the margins and the. And the oh yeah, loss too, like there's a lot more theft in a retail location than there is in a secure warehouse somewhere and they're not going to eat it. We're probably going to end up eating that too. So that one I don't know for sure but I do know the other ones. The point is just that it's. We did the. We ran sort of some preliminary estimated numbers and we compared that and it would probably cost us less to just subsidize shipping on our key SKUs versus to give up the margin and overhead of having them in retail. There's a reason that Etail is competitive.

Linus Sebastian (136:26)

Yeah.

Dan (136:27)

Hi Linus and Luke. Do you think we will see another in another couple years of game performance stagnation? Because the user base will be running older hardware longer. Like what happened during COVID it I. E. PS4 and PS5.

Linus Sebastian (136:43)

The performance stagnation is an interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (136:46)

For me it's, it's. It more comes down to. Because there's always a cycle right with, with consoles and you're going to see a new console is going to come out that's going to push the boundaries in terms of what game developers can, can build to run on it. And then for a while there will be pretty much no point for any cross platform game targeting anything other than sort of approximately that. But plus or minus some bells and whistles and then you'll get a new console and there'll be like kind of a two to three year leg as games that were actually started development targeting that console start to come out and then you'll see sort of a benefit to having a higher end PC there. So that, that's part of it but the other part of it is that for. I feel like almost kind of two super cycles now we've reached the point where the gating factor is just how much bloody work it is for developers to build bigger and bigger games. You can't just expect a bigger, prettier game every time. Unless the company is Rockstar, where they will spend literally the better part of a decade working on a game. Hundreds of millions of dollars. You know.

Linus Sebastian (137:53)

I don't know if you want to say it's a bigger game, but looking at again Embark Studios for Arc Raiders in the finals, those games run really well actually and like look pretty great. So it's still possible. I think there hasn't been a ton of incentives for companies to focus on that in a long time.

Luke Lafreniere (138:14)

Yeah, that's true.

Linus Sebastian (138:14)

And that might be changing a little bit maybe potentially. I don't know. Ram. I was wondering about the impacts on Chrome. Like does Chrome development change a little bit because of RAM limitations?

Dan (138:27)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (138:27)

Like if your product just isn't competitive because the install base, I would rather.

Linus Sebastian (138:31)

Use some other browser that's less memory hungry. I don't think that's going to be enough to destabilize Chrome just to be clear. But it's just an interesting thought experiment of like we're hearing companies significantly limiting RAM on devices. Like wasn't one of them limiting to eight gigs. Eight gigs in 2026? Bruh. Dang.

Luke Lafreniere (138:52)

Yeah, it's not great.

Linus Sebastian (138:53)

Like that's. I can get Chrome to 8 gigs real fast.

Luke Lafreniere (138:56)

There's also man, another major factor is that the lead times on all this stuff is so long that if I was starting the development of a game today.

Linus Sebastian (139:04)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (139:04)

I wouldn't even be accounting for the RAM shortage.

Linus Sebastian (139:06)

Nope.

Luke Lafreniere (139:06)

By the time I release my game, the RAM shortage will be in the rearview mirror. So. Yeah. And. And then anything that was already started is gonna be.

Linus Sebastian (139:16)

Wasn't accounting for it anyway.

Luke Lafreniere (139:17)

And you can tune, you can optimize. I don't think that it will be a major factor. I also don't think that your. Even your premise is necessarily correct. Nvidia's gaming revenue is up 30%. So this entire premise of that everyone's running older hardware.

Linus Sebastian (139:41)

So you know, they're specifying PS4 and PS4 because games often target console performance. They say older hard.

Luke Lafreniere (139:50)

Like what happened then? No, no, they're saying it's happening now because of prices going up.

Linus Sebastian (139:55)

We'll be running older hardware. Like what happened during COVID I. E. PS4 and PS5.

Luke Lafreniere (139:59)

Yeah. So I don't. People are not buying computers right now. They are. And the thing that I talked about earlier where like I understand why people are angry that RAM is more expensive and that's totally valid. But like buying a computer relative to everything else around us in the world is also more affordable than ever. Just like TVs. TVs and computers have been shockingly inflation proof over the entire span of my lifetime to the point where I feel like we just take it for granted. We can't. So I guess maybe that's what I didn't explain very well earlier is that's.

Linus Sebastian (140:39)

Maybe that's a better.

Luke Lafreniere (140:40)

Maybe that's the perspective adjustment we need is like, do not take this for granted. The fact that things are as good as they are is actually a modern miracle. It could be so much worse.

Linus Sebastian (140:53)

We know it can be and we're looking for it to get back there.

Luke Lafreniere (140:56)

We wish it were better, but it could be so much worse.

Linus Sebastian (140:59)

I think the don't take it for granted thing is probably a stronger angle personally.

Dan (141:04)

All right, last one I got for you today. Hello, Wham dll. I've heard a lot of debates surrounding MSP and whether or not they are effective. What are your opinions on using an MSP instead of doing everything in house?

Luke Lafreniere (141:18)

Medical services plan.

Linus Sebastian (141:21)

Managed service provider I think is what they mean. So like out of house it is, I think what they're referencing. I've heard places that have done it very effectively. I've also heard a lot of stories of places switching to something like this and then being like, oh no, it's really bad. And then trying to Go back to what they had before, but now they fired all their people so they can't get those people back because they've gone other places now and then. Things are just your tribal knowledge. Yeah. I think at large companies, a mix probably makes a decent amount of sense. Okay. Comments in chat. Really on, we have an msp. It effing sucks. Vanoc working for an msp. I want to die. Foxgcon I worked for msp. Nope. Yeah, I think the like, oh, we can just outsource everything, put everything in the cloud and nothing has to be local anymore, ever. Even people. That whole idea didn't turn out as well as people hoped. And there's a pretty big benefit to just having your own IT People that understand your space, understand your environment, know your people. Yep. And can adapt things well and understand the needs of individual people and like people who might be working in different departments, doing specific things, et cetera.

Luke Lafreniere (142:45)

All right. Unfortunately everyone, I have a heart out right now. I've got to go and.

Linus Sebastian (142:53)

And I got work to do.

Luke Lafreniere (142:55)

Nice.

Riley Murdock (142:56)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (142:56)

It's so weird when we do WAN early.

Linus Sebastian (142:58)

It is extremely strange. My brain starts to shut down actually. It's like not good.

Luke Lafreniere (143:02)

Oh, it's like conditioned.

Linus Sebastian (143:03)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (143:04)

Like, we have not missed a Friday when show since like the start of COVID lockdown.

Linus Sebastian (143:09)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (143:09)

Like it's been five years.

Linus Sebastian (143:12)

So on Friday when I say the thing.

Luke Lafreniere (143:14)

Yeah. Which hasn't been said yet.

Linus Sebastian (143:16)

It hasn't been said.

Luke Lafreniere (143:16)

Don't do it.

Linus Sebastian (143:17)

I. I like, I have this like energy letdown that is like relatively extreme actually.

Dan (143:22)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (143:22)

I don't know how to not go lock up the building.

Linus Sebastian (143:25)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (143:25)

And like go home and sleep.

Linus Sebastian (143:26)

It's weird.

Riley Murdock (143:27)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (143:27)

It has happened where I've just like wandered for a second and then been like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll go to my desk.

Luke Lafreniere (143:33)

Yeah. Oh, it's super trippy.

Linus Sebastian (143:35)

Very odd.

Riley Murdock (143:36)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (143:36)

It's probably the same for a lot of them too, actually. Wouldn't be surprised if they're used to the when show at a particular time in their time zone.

Linus Sebastian (143:42)

Just like the ritual.

Luke Lafreniere (143:44)

Yeah. Cuz like, I mean, it's, you know, we're not like the biggest live stream in the world or anything, but there's like probably a solid 10,000 people watching. And I would say out of those, just based on the names that I see a lot of with a lot of regularity.

Linus Sebastian (143:58)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (143:59)

There's a lot of people for whom the WAN show is like part of their Friday routine.

Linus Sebastian (144:02)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (144:03)

It's just like, yeah, we'll try to get back to a more regular schedule. It's just Q4 and the holiday season and all that stuff.

Linus Sebastian (144:10)

Well, things have been a little wild.

Luke Lafreniere (144:11)

Yeah, well, we'll try. We'll try and get things going for you. And we'll see you again next week. Same bad times in that channel.

Linus Sebastian (144:18)

Bye.