My Family Left Me - WAN Show August 7, 2026

Summary

The WAN Show – “My Family Left Me”

Podcast: Linus Tech Tips

Hosts: Linus Sebastian, Luke Lafreniere (& Dan)

Release: August 8, 2026

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Overview

This episode of The WAN Show is a classic blend of personal anecdotes and cutting-edge tech news. Luke kicks things off by revealing that, for the first time in years, his family is overseas without him, leaving him to suburban bachelor adventures—namely, wrangling chickens, bingeing some questionable TV, and, of course, obsessing over home automation projects and tech toys. Linus, in turn, discusses his week spent quarantining from his sick wife—relatable hijinks ensue. The duo covers a wide swath of topics, including secret billionaire streaming services, massive DRM, Smart TV app security nightmares, bizarre advertising in cars, the coming PS5 digital future, and much more. As always, the conversation is peppered with their signature banter, philosophy on tech warranties, and surprisingly deep dives on everything from game developer layoffs to pet chickens and beekeeping.

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Episode Highlights & Key Segments

[00:30] – Lonely Dads & Suburban Hijinks

• Luke’s family is traveling for his son’s academic competition in China, giving Luke his first solo week in years.
  • “I did something today that I haven’t done in 13 years—came home, got a snack, and fell asleep watching TV … It’s the dad coded thing ever.” (Luke, 05:58)
• Chicken-wrangling tales, cat & chicken dynamics, and the joys (and problems) of animal husbandry.
  • “We have cats that have no interest in going outside … I bundle Brownie up and show him the chickens—he gets airplane ears and that’s it.” (Luke, 08:03)
• Linus has been quarantined from his sick wife Emma, camping on an air mattress in his office to avoid illness: sitcom-level shenanigans ensue.

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[13:59] – Tech Projects at Home

• Luke’s home automation adventures: More Home Assistant setups; using mealworms to train chickens; “innovelli” light switch hacks for late-night lighting comfort.
• Experiments with self-hosted AI and object/person recognition.
  • “I want to do some like, object vehicle person recognition stuff … I have some automations going …” (Luke, 14:02)

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[15:58] – Secret Netflix for Billionaires: Kaleidescape

• Luke describes “Kaleidescape,” an ultra-high-end digital movie platform—targeted at the yacht-owning elite.
  • “I watched Top Gun Maverick on the Kaleidescape Strato K … a $5,000 Android box … you don’t even own movies, can only watch on the box.” (Luke, 17:02)
• Highlights:
  • Highest bitrates available (80–120 Mbps); better than Blu-ray; exclusive studio deals.
  • Permanent watermarking (“pixel tagging”) to track leaks.
  • Movies cost $30–$45 to “own” in some cases. Not subscription—locked to box.
  • Is it worth it? “Oh hell no!” (Luke, 22:55)
  • “Martin Scorsese: ‘Frankly, I don't know what I would do without it.’” (24:32)

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[36:41] – Smart TV Apps as Botnets: Security Nightmare

• Samsung and LG caught with TV store apps turning your TV into residential proxies (routing strangers’ web traffic through your home!).
  • “Mnemonic described their App Store as ‘an utter security nightmare’ … hardcoded API keys, developer certificates, leftover AI agent notes …” (Linus, 42:04)
  • Many apps are just 20 lines of code that load everything dynamically—impossible to vet properly.
• TV manufacturers rush to ban these apps, but the show questions enforceability and the value of “manual review.”
  • “Bright Data … was Luminati Networks, which was Hola VPN, famous for the 2015 botnet scandal …” (Linus, 42:06)
• Bottom line: Don’t trust Smart TVs. “Best way to resolve this: don’t have a smart TV.” (Linus, 48:19)

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[52:07] – Rockstar’s GTA 6 Trailer – Netflix Exclusive (for 6 Hours)

• The extended look at GTA 6 will premiere on Netflix, then elsewhere hours later.
  • “If any media property could have a 6 hour exclusive window people would care about, it’s GTA 6.” (Luke, 52:40)
  • Netflix’s win: anticipated subscriber bump.
• Fan outrage at a paywall for a trailer, but—“Don’t buy a subscription just for this. Six hours later, it’ll be everywhere.” (Luke, 54:07)
• Discussion of hype cycles and marketing FOMO.

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[75:03, 82:14] – Nintendo’s Disaster Response & What Counts as a Warranty?

• Nintendo offers free post-earthquake repairs and a big donation to Red Cross.
  • “Does this change your image of Nintendo?” Not really—still have anti-consumer policies elsewhere.
• Luke’s ‘warranty’ dilemma: Should fundamental design flaws in smart home gear be covered beyond the official window, especially for “infrastructure” expectations like thermostats?
  • “Should a responsible company voluntarily recall gear that fails with future WiFi APs?” (Luke, 82:14)
  • “I don’t expect [thermostats] to stop working.” (Linus, 85:18)

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[90:00+] – Console Exclusives, Emulators & Digital Future

• PS5 emulation is rapidly improving. Would you pirate GTA 6 if PC version is delayed? Ethical conundrums—moral calculus akin to Steam’s 2-hour refund policy.
• Microsoft’s Xbox backwards compatibility push: Working with devs to relist OG/360 games via new emulation; why would devs not participate? Often, IP/license problems.

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[118:26] – PS5 Going All-Digital – Goodbye, Game Disks?

• Starting 2028, all new PlayStation games will be digital-only—even on the disk-drive models.
  • “Decision … is very much not going to change, regardless of how much gamers are upset about it.” (Luke, 117:26)

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[118:42] – Halo Layoffs After Remake Success: The Developer Cycle

• Despite strong reviews and 1.5M in sales for Halo: CE campaign remake, layoffs hit the studio.
  • “For a Halo game, 1.5 million is … different perspectives. That’s life-changing or absolute disaster depending on who you ask.” (Luke, 120:18)
  • Deep discussion: Is the layoff/remake/rehire cycle inevitable in game development? Is it fair? Interesting parallels to construction industry contract cycles.
    • “Why do white-collar devs expect a different standard from blue-collar contractors?” (Luke, 123:01)
    • Multiple perspectives, highlighting differences in team dynamics and continuity.

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[150:15] – RTX Spark & the Hot AI Chip Buzz

• RTX Spark gets clarified—Nvidia’s consumer ARM PC is not the same as its data-center cousin (“Neoverse”).
  • “Actually, it encourages me more than discourages me … if power efficiency’s better, that’s exciting for laptop use.” (Luke, 151:07)

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[158:25] – Google Assistant Dead, Long Live Gemini (Or Not)

• Google Assistant is being killed off in favor of Gemini on Android/Wear OS—users are unhappy.
  • “When I try to use Google Assistant … and Gemini comes up, I get so pissed off because it never does it right. It’s slower. It can’t even do simple crap.” (Linus, 160:16)
  • Major loss of basic features, tone-deaf product transition.
• Similar topic: Reddit moving to LLM-moderation (AI-powered rules-hub) and Old Reddit restricted for non-logged-in users; mods are wary of losing custom AutoMod workflows.

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[167:00+] – All About Data Centers: Power, Chips & IC Shortages

• Texas pauses new data center connections due to surging AI power demands.
• Luke: Will LMG’s new power bank ever ship? A year’s delay due to IC shortages.
  • “We were just quoted 40 [weeks] to get the ICs we need … because all power electronics is going to data centers.” (Luke, 177:08)
  • “Power ICs for everything—even USB cables—are being rationed like GPUs during crypto!” (Linus, 178:00)

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[182:48] – BMW Puts Ads on Car Dashboards

• BMW pushes in-dash Spider-Man movie ads to select car models, reneging on old promises.
  • “Pretty brazenly a pretty crappy thing to do … it’s a bridge too far! But it’s also the 28th bridge too far…” (Linus & Luke, 183:52)
  • Discussion: Is there any good news in auto tech now? “Nope, just makes me appreciate my old car more.”

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[187:09] – Steam Deck OLED: Remote Play, HDR, and AV1 Streaming

• Valve adds major features to Steam Deck OLED (HDR remote play; experimental AV1), improving streamed gaming.
  • “Is streaming from your own PC finally good enough to skip buying a more powerful handheld?” (Luke, 187:24)
  • Luke changes his mind post-Logitech G Cloud: battery life for in-home Streamers could be a real alternative.

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[191:08] – Lenovo Legion Go BIOS Update Bricks Devices

• Users report that a manufacturer BIOS update bricks their Legion Go handhelds; Lenovo’s solution? Out-of-warranty users pay $200+ for a repair.
  • “If your software update bricks my device … I don’t think I care if I’m in warranty or not. That’s gonna piss me off.” (Linus, 193:54)
  • Some users resort to hardware hacking (external BIOS programming) to recover their devices.

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[195:00] – Prediction Gambling: Betting on Wildfires?

• Senators call for regulation after contracts surface allowing bets on wildfire damage/location.
  • “Prediction markets … not by betting, just ‘dynamic odds!’ But someone could start a fire to win …” (Luke, 195:00)
  • LMG still rejects gambling sponsorships as a matter of principle: “It’s basically financial self-harm; don’t want our sponsors to just be what’s legal—I want them to be what’s not actually harmful to our viewers.” (Luke, 199:44)

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[203:10] – Energy Drinks, Sponsorship Ethics & Team Culture

• Deep dive into where LMG's line falls on what sponsors are "acceptable":
  • “I think energy drinks are poison, but we’ve worked with Red Bull—they don’t make us promote consumption, they just drop pallets in the office.” (Luke, 202:09)
  • Banter about vices: some pick and choose—for some, it’s gambling; for others, it’s caffeine/sugar; everyone draws lines differently.

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[230:00+] – Content Creator Fulfillment, Tech Nostalgia & Audience Impact

• Luke and Linus reflect on the changing nature of tech YouTube, the challenge of finding excitement in incremental GPU launches, and the joy of hearing from fans who landed in tech careers thanks to LTT.
  • “That’s our job. We build community. The content is just the surface.” (Luke, 230:39)
• Accidental nostalgia: longing for the “wild west” of PC building, and hope for coming “scrappy” tech projects.

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[Chickens, Beekeeping, and After Dark]

• Multiple asides about urban and suburban animal exploits (cats, chickens, beekeeping as a boomer meme, etc.).
• “Bird dads” unite over shared animal bonding moments and commiseration about being temporarily left alone.
  • “I have to put my chickens away when it gets dark or they get scared – that’s my life now.” (Luke, 179:55)

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Notable Quotes

• Luke (on one-dad living): “Dad-coded thing ever. If I don’t have something to do, time to fall asleep exactly where I am.” (06:30)
• Linus (on Kaleidescape): “You don’t even own movies. The whole thing’s locked down. There’s an identifier baked into the video that’ll get you busted.” (18:40)
• Luke (on TV app security): “This whole thing is so crazy … Who knew that hidden proxy botnets were just one ‘Pac-Man’ download away?” (41:35)
• Linus (on Google killing Assistant): “When I try to use Google Assistant and Gemini comes up, I get so pissed off because it never does it right. It’s slower … can’t even do simple crap.” (160:16)
• Luke (on laying off dev teams): “For a Halo game, 1.5 million in sales is … different perspectives. Life-changing, or disaster, depending on who you are.” (120:18)
• Linus (on gambling sponsors): “I personally think gambling is genuinely a form of financial self-harm.” (199:20)
• Luke (on legacy): “We build community. That’s what’s actually meaningful. Content is just the surface.” (230:39)

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Timestamps for Key Topics

| Time | Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30 | Personal updates: Luke’s solo week, chickens, and “dad coded” behavior | | 13:59 | Luke’s tech-home antics; Home Assistant/AI | | 15:58 | Kaleidescape & secret billionaire Netflix | | 36:41 | Smart TV/IoT security disaster | | 52:07 | GTA 6 Netflix trailer exclusive | | 75:03 | Nintendo’s earthquake response, corporate image | | 82:14 | Warranty philosophy for smart home infrastructure | | 90:00+ | Game emulation, console exclusives, and digital-only futures | | 118:42 | Halo remake sales & layoffs, developer/contractor cycles | | 150:15 | RTX Spark, ARM CPUs hype/disappointment | | 158:25 | Google Assistant axed for Gemini | | 167:00+ | Texas pauses data center grid connections, IC shortage hits LMG products | | 182:48 | BMW puts Spider-Man ads on car dashboards | | 187:09 | Steam Deck OLED adds HDR streaming | | 191:08 | Lenovo Legion Go bricked by update; where warranty ends & fails | | 195:00 | Prediction gambling on wildfires, LMG sponsor policy | | 203:10 | Red Bull, energy drinks, sponsorship ethics, addictions | | 230:00+ | Content creator fulfillment, tech nostalgia, influence on next generation techies |

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Tone & Language

Conversational, irreverent, often self-deprecating, but never shy about going deep (or off-topic). The banter is rich with inside jokes, nerdy analogies (“dad-coded,” “chicken chaser,” “playtesting is part of QA!”), and earnest moments—especially when reflecting on the community and the changing world of tech.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is WAN Show at its best—a rambling, high-signal, high-chaos mix of lifestyle, serious tech, and honest philosophy about where tech is headed (and what it means to be a digital citizen). If you want escapism, practical warnings (don’t trust your TV!), and a shot of genuine community, this is it. And yes, there are chickens. And beekeeping. And nearly 40 minutes riffing on “dad” life.

If you made it this far, you’re practically family.

Transcript

[Linus]

This episode is brought to you by Facebook.

[Luke]

So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind

[Dan]

of funny, and an avid cyclist.

[Luke]

The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer.

[Linus]

Find more on Facebook.

[Luke]

Happy Friday, and welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys today. I have been alone for one week. It's been. Yeah, my family, they. They left me. They are overseas right now without me for the first time since I entered matrimonial bliss. And it's been.

[Linus]

That's the way to describe it.

[Luke]

Yeah, it's been kind of an adventure. I've been taking care of the chickens.

[Linus]

Oh, yeah?

[Luke]

Yep. And working on some tech stuff, playing a lot of badminton. So I'll be talking about a little bit about that. We've also got. Oh, of course. The biggest news of this week. Gonna pause to let them think about what is the biggest news of this week. It is, of course, that Rockstar will be previewing the GTA 6 trailer exclusively on Netflix. Netflix, Right. See, Dan appreciates what a big deal this is.

[Linus]

No, I'm not. I'm just confused. Why?

[Luke]

Well, yeah, that's what's funny about it.

[Linus]

The net did Netflix.

[Luke]

I picked two topics. Pick two topics. It'll be great. You'll love it.

[Linus]

My brain's too fried from that. In continued Xbox conversation, Halo Studios sees layoffs after shipping campaign evolved. And let's see here.

[Luke]

I put so much good news in this week, and that's what you find.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Classic Luke. What a Luke move.

[Linus]

Should I find another bad one? I'm sure I can. And bmd, BMW BMV is on a trailblazer of n vacation. Bad news when. Show's back, baby. Time to be negative.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

The show is brought to you today by Factor Meals, Squarespace, Odoo, and XSplit, alongside our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Razer, and our chair partner, who's also razor. Fun fact, by the way, the chairs. Not sharp.

[Linus]

Laptops. A little bit. Not that much, though.

[Dan]

Not much.

[Luke]

There's a chamfer there. Yeah, they got the chamfer. Anyway, why don't we jump right into our headline topic, which, full admission. Yeah, it's kind of clickbait, but I've been alone for the week. It's been. It's been kind of. It's been kind of fun. I've.

[Linus]

You know, it's weird.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I had a surprisingly similar week. Emma got sick and I was looking at my work schedule and I was like, I literally can't afford to get sick. So popped set up a air mattress in the computer room thing and have been hiding. So I have been, like, holed up. There is no space. I have to deflate the mattress when I wake up so I can walk around. I'm just like, stuck in this little room.

[Luke]

You do know what a strange man you are, right? What a solution. Like that's. That's almost 80s sitcom level of like, well, Mr. Hurley is not gonna let me, you know, get safe. I get sick, I won't be able to pay the rent, so I'm gonna have to quarantine myself. And then they set up a quarantine. And then of course, there's hijinks and people break the quarantine and a dog gets involved somehow. Like, it actually sounds like a sitcom episode.

[Linus]

Yeah. I just can't get sick right now.

[Luke]

Yeah, well, don't get too close to me. I don't know if you.

[Linus]

No, I'm fine.

[Luke]

Good.

[Linus]

Yep.

[Luke]

No, I mean, I'm sick.

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

No.

[Luke]

Come on. Do you not notice me, like, clearing my throat?

[Linus]

I just thought.

[Dan]

Coughing.

[Linus]

I don't know. You said you play a lot of badminton. Who knows?

[Dan]

Maybe.

[Linus]

You're sure been through a lot of causes.

[Luke]

Respiratory issues. Yeah. So. So. Man, I gotta say, I am not ready to be an empty nester.

[Linus]

Oh, yeah. Dude, I could have told you that.

[Luke]

I texted Yvonne this. I texted Yvonne this. So she. She's over in China right now because my son is participating in an academic competition called World Scholars Cup. And round two is in one of, like, a handful of cities. And you have to, like, go there. Your whole team. Your whole team of three has to go there, which is like, crazy. So basically, it's privileged kid Scholars cup, essentially. Right. But they've won such cases. I suspect they won the first round and then they had to go somewhere and they picked Shanghai, of all places. It's apparently super hot. Like, just horribly, horribly hot there. And there's a typhoon incoming, so it's a whole thing. But that's besides the point. The point is that she's overseas right now. And I texted her and I was like, I did something today that I haven't done in the 13 years that Linus Media Group has existed. And she's like, what? You can't lead with something like that and not just immediately tell me what it is. And I was like, I came home after work, I got a snack and I fell asleep watching TV on the couch. I'm in the like, I'm in the like latter half of Solar Opposites where the show gets kind of bad.

[Linus]

I don't even know.

[Luke]

And I was just like, I woke up at like 5 after 8 and I was like, oh my God, I'm supposed to. It was on Tuesday. I'm supposed to be at LMG Badminton five minutes ago. Oh, okay. Go get some clothes on and go. But I passed out for like an hour on the couch.

[Linus]

Like, you know, dad coded thing ever.

[Luke]

Crazy. Yeah, crazy.

[Linus]

I don't have something to do. Time to fall asleep exactly where I currently am.

[Luke]

Oh man. And the chickens have been a trip this week. Okay.

[Linus]

Yeah. So. So, okay.

[Luke]

So we're still working on training them to like go in their coop.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

We still haven't decided whether we're going to do like a run, like a fully enclosed run, or if we're just going to let them kind of like free range in the backyard.

[Linus]

And then you got to round them

[Luke]

up during the day. It's actually not really a problem. Like, most of the chicken predators are going to be things like raccoons, coyotes, that sort of thing. I mean, a bear got into our yard once. I'm sure that would take out a chicken pretty easily.

[Linus]

But it's all more active at night.

[Luke]

This is more nocturnal threats. And we have had some, some kitty cats in our yard. But the chickens are at the point now where honestly my cats are more scared of them than anything else. They were, they were watching them through the window. Yesterday I got this really cute video of them like, like jumping up on a window. And then the chickens would go over here and they'd like hop down, they'd jump up in a different window. They're watching them. And I grab Brownie, I pick him up and I'm like, okay, do you want to see the chickens? And I take him outside. And he was an outdoor cat when he was a kitten and he's been real clear about that. That was good. He's good on outside.

[Linus]

I'm done with that.

[Luke]

Yeah, that's actually the biggest difference we have like, so cat proofed our whole situation and we finally have cats that have no interest whatsoever in going outside. Like, we lost cats to the outdoors before and like, I'm talking skate artist

[Linus]

pulled in everything they could to sneak

[Luke]

out everything they could to get out. They would open door handles to freaking bangles. Like, it was crazy. And these guys don't want to go outside. But I was like, okay, come on. Come on, brownie. Let's go. And so I grab him. I kind of, like, bundle him up, grab his legs. I go and I take him. I show them the chickens, and he's like. And he looks up at me, all airplane ears. Okay. All right, we're going back inside, buddy. Let's go. You're good. You're good. And we had one cat in the yard that was kind of scoping them out, and I kind of watched them, but they're big enough now that four chickens. I don't think a cat's gonna, like, go in there.

[Linus]

A aggressive enough cat find a particularly murderous cat might in most cases, probably not.

[Luke]

But they tend to kind of herd together and all four of them getting all puffy and up in your face. And we think one of them is a rooster, which you're technically not allowed to have in our city, but you can apparently get collars for them that make it so that they can't, like, and, like, do the big crow but are not, like, uncomfortable or anything. I haven't really looked into it. Maybe it's, like, super inhumane and it's better to, like, send them to the chicken sausage factory. I'm actually not sure yet, so don't get too mad at me yet. I haven't looked it up yet. But that is maybe a possibility to keep our roux, which we'd like to do, because they're like. They got so much personality, man. Here, I sent this to actually. Hold on. I'm not sure if I.

[Linus]

Can someone bring up a previous WAN show where Linus mentions, like, why would you have a bird? They're so boring.

[Luke]

I don't think I said birds are boring.

[Linus]

I might be.

[Luke]

Maybe you're just very sensitive.

[Linus]

I might. Yeah, I might be.

[Dan]

So.

[Luke]

I can't. I can't show this one on. I can't show this one on stream, But I took this video and I sent it to. To everyone overseas. I was like, the. The chickens are. They miss you, but basically I'm coming home. And they all come. They all come dashing over to me. How you doing? How you doing? What's up? What's up? What's up? And they come hang around, and I'll go. I'll be around in the yard. They're, like, following me around. It's so cute. So anyway, the chickens have been kind of a bear because I forget if it was Wednesday or Thursday. So they've got the coop, and I'm getting pretty good at, like, rounding them all up and getting them into the coop. And we're going to. I'm going to get some mealworms, which apparently you can use to. It's like a really, really high reward treat. And I'm going to try and train them to, like, get them up on the ramp and then a little closer on the ramp and then inside the coop, when we kind of get to dusk, because they want to be in there, they actually go near it.

[Linus]

Are you pairing it with a noise? I know chickens respond to that really effectively.

[Luke]

I, like, make, you know, animal dad noises at them, but other than that, not yet.

[Linus]

Sure. I know a lot of people do, like, a bell when it's eating time, and they respond really effectively to the bell or whatever. But.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah. Pavlov, I think, was one of the pioneers. Thank you, Dan. Timely.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So.

[Luke]

So they're pretty good about wanting to go into their coop. They like their coop, actually.

[Linus]

Yeah, Birds are.

[Luke]

Yeah, good job. But coming out of their coop in the morning, it's actually been really great so far. They go down their little ramp. They go hang out in the yard. Except one morning, I forget if it was Wednesday or Wednesday, I think it was. I went out. I'm like, jinkies. Where are you guys? Come on. I shake their food container. Oh, I guess I do make that noise. So I shake their food container. I'm like, okay, come on. Come on, chickens. Where are y'?

[Dan]

All? Uh.

[Linus]

Oh.

[Luke]

So I, like, lapped the whole yard. Cause I found them in weird places. Like we were. You called them whippersnippers. But we were using a hedge trim. Or not a hedge trimmer, like a grass trimmer.

[Linus]

You remember that?

[Luke]

I was using a grass trimmer, you know, with the little strings on the end. I forget what they're actually called now. I only know his stupid name for them.

[Linus]

Weed Whacker.

[Luke]

Weed Whacker. Thank you.

[Linus]

Not better than Whippersnipper.

[Dan]

Sure. I like that. I'm calling them from now on.

[Luke]

And they were all, like, hiding in a far corner of the yard that they never go to. So sometimes they go weird places, but I lap the whole place. I'm like, I'm late for work now. Later. And this is ridiculous. Where are they? And I go, okay, they didn't. There's no way they did. And I go, the coop is right next to the fence with our neighbor. And from the ground, they can't get to the fence. But from the ramp to the coop, I bet they could not one, not two, not three, all four of them. I look over the fence and they're right there. They're right under the fence. They've been frantically trying to get to me the whole time. But when they went over, they ended up in a plant bed of some sort of. That has ground cover that's about this deep, and they're too scared of it. So they're in this little track right next to the fence. That's the only place where nothing's growing and they're stuck and they can't get out. And my neighbor apparently has been violating the watering ban right now because when I went into their yard to go get them, everything was soaking wet. So I like, get my pants all wet. I have to go get them one by one. I have to catch them, which, you know, they're chicken and they're panicked, they're scared. I have to go get them. And then I had to make a choice. Either have to hike all the way back around to the other side, or I'm just gonna put them on the fence and hope that they don't hop back down here while I gather all the rest of them. But they're flock animals, so as soon as you separate one, it's like it wants to get to the other ones. Anyway, the point is I managed to get them. I love that chicken chaser. Wasn't that one of the fable nicknames? Or was that chicken? I can't remember. No, that was South Park. Doesn't matter. The point is we got the chicken. No, I'm not gonna toss them over the fence. Where was I going with this? Right, so caring for the chickens, that's been interesting. I found a little more time to do tech stuff.

[Linus]

Caring for the chickens and sleeping on the couch. Okay, tech stuff. Did you finish your.

[Luke]

No.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

I got distracted. So he was going to ask if I've finished setting up my. My local LLM AI stuff. I want to do some like, object vehicle person recognition stuff. I have played around a little bit more with home assistant, so I have some more kind of automations going. Like I can make it so that if Yvonne's at her desk for half an hour, it plays music. I think we talked about that.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

There's a really cool feature of the, like, project Linus switches from.

[Linus]

Oh, right.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Bloody. Bloody hell. It's on the tip of my tongue. Innovelli. There's. There's a really cool feature on the. The. The Innovelli millimeter wave. I think they're the Red series or the ones that I have, the Z wave ones that allows you to handle lights that can go really dim, but only if they start bright. So if you want them. So like say in your bathroom. Your ensuite bathroom. Right. Like if you want to create a rule where late at night it only turns on at like 2%. Right. You can't do that.

[Linus]

Would it have to like flash up and then come down?

[Luke]

Well, okay, so you could do that. Or Innovelli switches have a cool feature where you can tell it give a burst of power for this many milliseconds and then go to this. So you can overcome that inability to start up at a really low dimness or a really low brightness, but go straight to it kind of thing. It's almost like pixel overdrive on a gaming monitor.

[Linus]

Does it still create a flash?

[Luke]

No, if you tune it. Exactly right. So I've been working on stuff like that, but the big one I've gotten distracted by is actually the script that I was working on. That is the reason the show is on time instead of early today. And that is. Did you know that there's like a secret Netflix for billionaires?

[Linus]

No. Why? Why?

[Luke]

It's been around since 2001, 25 years. This has existed. What it started out as like a bougie sort of semi official way to back up real things, physical media libraries and make them streamable. And then over time they actually did deals with the major studios to not only allow you to access like AAA movies, like I'm talking Star Wars, Disney freaking Universal, 20th Century Fox, you name it, right. Paramount like all this stuff. But these guys managed to completely survive the like streamer fragmentation wars and have just continued to be their own thing. Not only that, but you can actually for many films get the highest quality available version of it exclusively on this platform.

[Linus]

Rest assured in full plane chat said that's where a lot of movie rips on the web come from.

[Luke]

No, it sure isn't.

[Dan]

Huh.

[Luke]

100% isn't. It has never. Their encryption has still not been broken and we would know if it had because there would be like 120 Mbps rips of films and they don't exist. So I watched Top Gun Maverick on the Kaleidoscape Strato K. This is a $5,000 as far as I can tell. Android box that. Oh no, it gets better. Can hold anywhere from seven to ten movies at once.

[Dan]

That's it.

[Luke]

If you want to hold more you get their server box, that is going to cost you anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands more. And then you still don't own any movies because it's less of a streaming platform and more of a like digital movie ownership platform. Except that the only place you can watch it is on their box. And that's a big part of, of why they have been able to maintain their encryption, is that you can only stream it from their server, you can only watch it on their box. The whole thing's locked down. And they even, and they even have like, kind of like, like pixel, pixel tagging or like some kind of like, like image watermark baked into the film that you stream that you can't see that will out you if you are the one who manages to.

[Linus]

Yeah, so an identifier gets like an

[Luke]

HDCP stripper and does like an extremely high quality rip of it, for instance. They will be able to identify you and I can pretty much guarantee you they will prosecute you because this is like a huge part of their business model is having this locked down so that they can deliver the highest fidelity version of the film. I didn't think it would matter at all, going from like, you know, 60ish megabit per second to like 100ish megabit per second.

[Linus]

Noticeable. Very noticeable. Is it more noticeable because you have an enormous TV?

[Luke]

Oh, 100%.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Well, I mean, it's not the kind of thing that you would buy unless you have like a sick projection set up.

[Linus]

If you're, if you can afford this thing, you can probably afford the crazy tv.

[Luke]

You are not streaming it on your, you know, insignia.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke]

Like, that's not what it's for.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And it was one of those things where I kind of had to, I kind of had to like, you know, am I imagining this? You know, because I'm watching Maverick on this and it's not a film that I've actually watched all the way through before. So I was like, maybe it just looks that good on the 4K Blu Ray, but this is like the best looking that I've ever seen a movie ever. And I couldn't really put my finger on why. Like, it was shot on Sony Venice. Great camera, lovely camera, you know, but lots of films are shot on Venice. And obviously, you know, the production values of it are incredible. You know, like actual jets and stuff.

[Linus]

Did you do like input switching?

[Luke]

So at first I didn't. At first I was just like, no, I'm just gonna experience it.

[Linus]

Sure.

[Luke]

And I kept just like seeing things that were like, like blew my mind how good they looked. Like just the sky, like. Or there's a scene really early on in the hangar where they've got this like bright outdoor natural light coming into the hangar. And I couldn't put my finger on why it looked so real, why it looked like looking through a window instead of watching on a screen. And so I did. I grabbed a 4K Blu Ray Remux, like not a re encoded one, and started switching back and forth between the inputs. And the difference is so subtle, but there's a little bit of banding in the 4K Blu Ray. Just a little bit. Not much, just a little bit. But the effect is greater than. Yeah, the difference that I can, that I can pick out because it may. It takes light from looking like an encoded color to looking like window light.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And the other one is film grain. So this is something that I've really struggled with in the transition from analog to digital. Right. In analog, we all agreed that things like CRT scan lines and film grain looked like it was supposed to look and looked natural. But as we've transitioned to watching that analog media on through digital players over digital connections on digital screens, what we've ended up with is that film grain, in my opinion, mostly just contributes to more garbage in to be misinterpreted by my encoder and my decoder as garbage out. But by pushing the bit rate so high, it's kind of like what I first observed when I used the first 5K LCD where I went, oh, I can just run this at a non native resolution now and it actually doesn't really matter. So this is the threshold for me where we're encoding at a high enough fidelity that film grain looks natural again instead of just looking like crappy encoding and decoding. So those are the two big things. Now, now, now, now, now, now. Hold on. Spoiler for the video. So if you want to hear the conclusion when you watch the actual video, then, then do this. Is it worth it? Oh, hell no.

[Linus]

I mean, there's like no way I

[Luke]

wouldn't pay that kind of dude. I found a movie on their service that was 45 f ing dollars to buy.

[Linus]

Nice.

[Luke]

Like how much?

[Linus]

How much?

[Luke]

Aladdin. 1992's Aladdin was $30 US dollars.

[Linus]

You can buy it on YouTube for five bucks.

[Luke]

And that's not even the cinematic 4K format that has the like super high bit rate. Oh, yeah. So for Dead Dan, just so you know, it's 444. Yeah. Right. So that's the difference in like color banding now we're talking about.

[Dan]

You also said to buy so you

[Luke]

can, you can rent some films for as little as like seven bucks, eight bucks.

[Dan]

No, I was, I was more interested that there was the option to even just buy them.

[Luke]

You can.

[Linus]

Me too. It's not just subscription.

[Dan]

I thought it would be like 45 bucks to rent.

[Luke]

However, you know, I think there's a longer conversation to be had around this because it does use a proprietary DRM that when you're buying it, are you do. Are you buying it? Is it forever? And Kaleidoscape's been around a long enough time now that I, you know, I look at their model and I go, okay, well they haven't anybody over yet, so they at least have some credibility there. But I mean, companies don't last forever. Companies that last for 100 years are, are so few and far between that they're a statistical anomaly, you know.

[Linus]

But I just, I thought you were disagreeing with. No, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

[Luke]

I don't think that's a controversial.

[Linus]

I'm poking through their website.

[Luke]

Oh, dude, this testimonial is crazy testimonials.

[Linus]

And there's Martin Scorsese. Yeah, and you keep scrolling.

[Luke]

Oh, no, no, no. Look at this, look at this quote. Frankly, I don't know what I would do without it says Martin Scorsese.

[Linus]

Holy crap. What the heck? The next one is Ben Affleck, who they put as filmmaker. Sure.

[Luke]

I mean he is.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Good Will Hunting. He wrote.

[Linus]

No, I know. It's just that he does everything.

[Dan]

Why is he getting that steady? Okay.

[Luke]

I think he's actually like done actually basically every role.

[Dan]

That's cool.

[Linus]

Yeah, no, as far as my understanding

[Luke]

goes, that's a super multi talented guy. Casual. Josh Gad.

[Linus]

My goodness.

[Luke]

Yep. Pretty incredible. It goes downhill pretty fast from there.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Random cinema enthusiast.

[Linus]

Someone's first name this guy Rich dude. Those first two is wild though.

[Luke]

Crazy. Wait, the first three is pretty wild.

[Dan]

You don't.

[Luke]

Josh Gad is.

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

Oh, that's Olaf from Frozen and also the lead of Book of Mormon when it first hit Broadway if I recall correctly. And just various other things. He's super talented guy. So yeah, I've been, I've been working on just kind of experiencing it. It's a loner. I only have it for I think like three months or something like that. So I'm going to. Gonna, you know, get the most out of it while I got it. The interface is funky wonky. I'll wait to show that in the video. But it reminds me of like Final Fantasy 6. Just to give you some idea. I'm talking bright blue text boxes, big old white text. Whoa. Very, very installer friendly. And it took me a while to realize that. I was like, this does not feel very premium. And then I went, the customer's never supposed to see this. Oh, yeah, yeah, I see.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Luke]

Wiley Giraffe. We're talking about the Strato K, not the E. That's the one for poor people. Wiley Giraffe. The K is the new one. He found the one for three grand.

[Linus]

Oh, yeah. I love as well, when you go to their website under their more they list Marine first.

[Luke]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus]

Home theater.

[Luke]

Oh, yeah, buddy.

[Linus]

My goodness.

[Luke]

Gotta put one on the yacht.

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Luke]

Yeah, buddy. This is classic if you have to ask. You know what I'm saying?

[Linus]

Yep.

[Luke]

It's actually great for marine use though, because you don't stream it, you cache it locally.

[Linus]

Pre downloaded.

[Luke]

Yep. So when you're not gonna have Internet or whatever, especially in the pre Starlink days. This.

[Linus]

How many movies could it store, though?

[Dan]

You said seven to ten.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Dan]

What?

[Luke]

On the. On the box. But remember, you got to get the server. You got to get the server. You got a yacht. You don't have a server on your yacht.

[Linus]

Your yacht has a server.

[Luke]

Yeah. What are you even talking about? Oh, man.

[Linus]

How much does their ultimate 4K system performance meets luxury Terra server thing cost? You can buy the Best Buy or you buy it online at Best Buy.

[Luke]

Yep. Yeah, you can buy stuff on Best Buy. I have a feeling that most people are not. Okay, hold on a second. What is red carpet home cinema? Okay. Oh, my God. Apparently there's another secret. Yeah, there's another secret. Netflix for billionaires.

[Linus]

Hey, look, it's our ad.

[Luke]

Nice. Sure, Whatever. Okay, they. They can rent current run movies. Whoa.

[Linus]

Holy crap.

[Luke]

For 1500 to $3000 a pop. No, but Luke, that. No, no, no. That's current run, though.

[Linus]

No, I stuff that.

[Luke]

I didn't know you could do that.

[Dan]

I can watch up. No, no. The Odyssey on my phone before anybody else.

[Luke]

Crazy. Join now. $15,000 plus. What are we. Oh, wait, hold on. Apparently these guys don't exist anymore. Oh, redcarpethomecinema.com is lagon. So that was just like a referral link. Okay, maybe they're dead. Offers first run. This is why I'm broke. Dot com. Okay, hold on. What? What is this? Rubber band Gatling gun. Mini retro external display tv. Okay, check it out. Yeah. Nope. They're gone. They're gone. Sorry. They're gone. So I guess Kaleidoscape is the only game in town.

[Linus]

Crazy.

[Luke]

Anyway, yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I've really been doing on my week off. Playing lots of badminton.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Played the tournament that I was gonna miss. I was gonna miss my own annual tournament at Smash Champs, but instead I was able to play it so.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Luke]

Yeah. Won the first. First match, then crashed out in the next two.

[Dan]

So. Yeah.

[Linus]

I don't know if you want to talk about it. How did the thing go?

[Luke]

I don't want to talk about it.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Linus]

The thing that other Dan did.

[Luke]

Oh, good.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Luke]

Yeah. Oh, dude. Oh, man. Okay. That's one of the other things I was working on this afternoon that I'm really excited about. So if you're on floatplane, there's a floatplane exclusive that actually ended up being like a certified mega banger. People freakin loved. Was originally supposed to be a mainline video on ltt, but it took so long to come out. Yeah. That it just didn't make sense to release it publicly. But we did still release it on floatplane. It was me.

[Linus]

I think the non floatplane audience genuinely would have been very confused.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

But the flow plane audience is going to be a little bit more dialed in, so it's okay.

[Luke]

Yep. So it was me. Vibe coding. Basically, if you're. If you're into pickleball, it's pretty much the. Oh, what is this? I think it's called Duper. Yeah, it's pretty much the duper system for pickleball, which is pretty much the ELO system that is used in chess. So basically you've got a rating and they've kind of adapted it to a narrower band of number values.

[Linus]

I swear, every player rating system ever can ultimately be boiled down to eloquence with extra steps.

[Luke]

Yeah. Starcraft Freaking.

[Linus]

It's all just chest rating with extra steps.

[Luke]

It's all just elo. It's all the ELO system.

[Dan]

So.

[Luke]

So anyway it's. It's basically I vibe coded just to see what it would be like. And an ELO rating system and like tournament management dashboard that ended up the simplest way to do it was just to use Google sheets and then a bunch of scripting and automations and formulas in order to have like a check in sheet and manage events. Print out little like match cards that people could report their scores on. Create like a dashboard for entering the Scores and then it was able to track people's. People's ELO scores as part of that video. There was like a challenge component where a real developer, in this case, sorry, does he use his name publicly?

[Linus]

Not his last one.

[Luke]

Cool. So different Dan. Not that Dan. Totally different Dan who works for the company would get the same ish number of hours to make something actually good. Like a developer would make it and then we would compare my solution to his. The real reason we did any of this was because it's really hard for me to get dev time from this guy unless it's content. Yeah. So it didn't even end up being content, except it's on floatplane. The ME vibe coding at Saga, including doing some review of my finished product

[Linus]

and stuff to explain the reason why it didn't end up launching is basically that this whole like, you know, Claude code, running it locally looping type thing started happening in like the middle of that. So this was purely an LLM and it was purely before pre agentic era.

[Luke]

Pretty much.

[Linus]

Yeah. And pre. Pre cloud cloud and all that kind of stuff. So it's like by the time the video would have launched, every single freaking comment would have been what the heck is this? Why didn't you use this other thing? Yeah, so it was like, why didn't

[Luke]

you use the good one? Because we recorded it a while ago. Deal with it. So anyway, Dan's been working on that and we got a new version of it that he actually came out to see working in person last night, which was pretty great. And we found some bugs in like queuing for who goes on court. But compared to my system which was only able to do like open doubles with fixed groups of four and you just play your six matches and we record the scores and that's it. He's expanded it to be able to do ELO ratings for open doubles, women's doubles, mixed doubles, singles. In addition to like a really nice dashboard for tracking your progress over time. Way better setups for different formats so we don't have to do just like a POD based system, he calls it, where you play with the same people all night. We'll also be able to do just like a ranked night, so over time during the evening you can actually be like re rated more like you would in like online matchmaking. He's working on an interface where we'll be able to have tablets beside every court so people can just like boop their wristbands and then start a match, which is so freaking cool. Trying to think of like what else he's done? Basically just the admin and maintenance of it is gonna be so much better. And then I've, without speaking with you, also hinted to him that if this thing is good enough, I see no reason why other clubs couldn't potentially use it.

[Linus]

There's a. There's a few different things we've made that we should probably have conversations about.

[Luke]

Like, should we just productize them?

[Linus]

Yeah. The problem is that the rigor that has to go into it once you do that, I know, is very high. There's also a lot of ways that something that might. Might be built that doesn't like, it's not portable, it works with the systems that we have, that's not necessarily a system that everybody's going to have, etc. Etc. Etc. But Scrappy also asked who gets to be support. It's like, yeah, there's like. There's a lot more conversation that starts to come up. I would like to see first.

[Luke]

I can tell you there's a lot of money in like, do you have things for clothes?

[Linus]

Is. Would be what I would look for. And who's gonna sell it? Linus?

[Luke]

Not me.

[Linus]

Who's gonna.

[Luke]

Sure as heck not me. We've seen that from Floatplane,

[Linus]

but yeah, maybe there's a couple. I mean there's things that other Dan has built that I think there should be some pretty serious conversations about that around. There's things from the lab that I think could have a discussion there, but we need people to sell it. We need to figure out what the potential customer base would be because it would take upfront investment to move those things to something that could be a product instead of an internal tool.

[Luke]

Ongoing support and maintenance, budgeting, which

[Dan]

makes

[Linus]

sense if you have customers.

[Luke]

A much bigger commitment than just here's a tool we built. It works good enough for us. Like, okay, I remember showing you the internal systems that we used at ncix, right? Do you remember seeing that interface? It was like hairy, sweaty, like sloppy ass. It was so bad. But man, I could do my job. I could. I could fly through that thing. But if I ever had to show anybody else how to use it like it, it would. The onboarding curve for like, like a product manager, like category manager type of position was crazy. Like I was years into my role and I would still have to go to someone like, you know, William the, the NCIX backend whisperer if I wanted to figure out how to do something. Or I'd have to create like weird kludgy workarounds. Where it actually mattered, like, exactly what order you did all your stuff in. And we were only able to achieve this stuff through trial and error. Like, it was. There was no documentation for basically any of it. And so I would. Sometimes you'd have people. You'd see, like, a feature request, and it would make its way all the way to, like, even the verge of being developed. And literally nobody remembered that we already had a feature that did the same thing, but it was just called something else, and there was no documentation for it anywhere. Like, it was kind of crazy. Like, in some ways, I get it, because, you know, you want to be agile and you want to execute on an idea, so you, like, make a feature or whatever. But the flip side of that is, okay, if you don't keep track of this stuff, then at some point you're gonna have to pay the piper, and the piper wants your tech debt dollars. So it was. It was a big challenge. Kirkland Signature and Floatplane Chat says the airline internal systems are crazy. I believe that because, like, they've been running since the mid 19th century, and in many cases like that, if you. If it ain't broke.

[Linus]

Yeah, some of them are ancient. Yeah, Some of those things are very, very old.

[Luke]

Yeah. I've never. I've never, like, looked over an attendant's shoulder to, you know, see what it looks like, because that would be a weird, creepy thing to do. But I don't know, maybe I should just to kind of scope it out. I don't even know what topic we're on.

[Linus]

We're on what you did this week.

[Luke]

Oh, okay.

[Linus]

Badminton was one of them, which is why we're on that topic.

[Luke]

That's cool.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

We could talk about something else now.

[Linus]

Sure.

[Luke]

That's all I have to say about that.

[Linus]

Should we talk about the. The main topic of Samsung ban smart TV apps or what was the first. What is the. Yeah, the title was based around that. So should we talk about the Samsung thing?

[Luke]

Sure. Anything you like.

[Linus]

The move comes after. Okay. Samsung bans TV apps that share users Internet connections with others, which sounds like

[Luke]

the kind of thing that just wouldn't be allowed in the first place, but do go on.

[Linus]

The move comes after Norwegian cybersecurity company Mnemonic discovered that at least one app featured as Editor's Choice contained code that secretly allows the TV to be used as a residential proxy, I.e. strangers Internet traffic to be routed through the TV, making it appear to come from the user's network, which could be really bad depending on what those people want to use it for. Which is probably really bad things. Residential proxies are extremely valuable. The web scrapers and other bots. Yeah. And malicious actors in general, as it can make network traffic appear to come from residential IPs rather than a known data center or VPN address, which can cause servers to let their guard down and allow traffic that they would normally try to block. This is one of the reasons why if you try to do basically anything on a vpn, every single website is like, oh my God, are you a bottle? Because they're seeing the same IP do a ton of different things. So it's. You're avoiding that type of a problem for your home.

[Luke]

Personal connection.

[Linus]

Yeah. A number of well known games and IPs ported by developer Playworks who reports installations in over 400 million homes include an SDK from a firm named Bright Data who specialize in online data collection. Impacted titles include Pac Man, Tetris and Space Invaders. The those are on wild. I don't spend any time on tv. By default the SDK code is dormant. But on launch, the games reach out to a remote server for configuration, which can include enabling the code, which in this case offer the users ad free gaming in exchange for using your device's free resources and IP address to download public data from the Internet.

[Luke]

This is like, whoa, dude, this whole thing is crazy.

[Dan]

What?

[Luke]

I know. This blew my mind when I was reading about it.

[Linus]

I thought it was gonna be like ad free cause you bought the thing or paid a subscription or did whatever.

[Luke]

No, these exit nodes are extremely valuable.

[Linus]

What the hell?

[Luke]

And that's like developing a stupid Pac man clone costs practically nothing. You don't even have to pay the hosting because the tv, the TV vendor store is going to host it for you. So you're just like, oh, okay, here's some absolute slop. Like you know, random coded by rando developers or realistically these days, AI slop developed game. In exchange, I get to download anything I like through your Internet connection and then upload it to wherever I want.

[Linus]

That's.

[Luke]

This whole thing is so crazy.

[Linus]

Yeah. Okay, so Bright Data specializes in online data collection and offers customers nearly 800 different curated data sets. Things like LinkedIn data, product pricing and stock info, product reviews, et cetera. Bright Data is estimated to have more than 9 million of these residential proxies around the world. Bright Data was founded by Luminati Networks.

[Luke]

Founded as.

[Linus]

Founded as Luminati Networks. Very close to a different word.

[Luke]

What a name.

[Linus]

As a division of Hola vpn. Oh yeah, Hola vpn. Which you may recall made the news for turning client devices into a massive botnet back in 2015. Yeah, I remember that. Um, I think they offered free vpn, which is why so many people used it. And then, yeah, they just jacked people's devices like crazy. Mnemonic also called the Samsung App Store an utter security nightmare and reported finding hard coded API keys, developer certificates and leftover AI coding agent notes in many apps. That should surprise no one. Earlier this summer, Spur US reported that nearly half of LG smart TV apps had hidden proxies built in. What's happening? Oh my God. Shortly after, LG responded by banning residential proxies from their app store. The way games like this are shipped to app stores presents a significant challenge to security.

[Luke]

Okay, this one blew my mind because everything we've said so far makes it sound like complete and utter negligence on the part of Samsung and lg. And it is, but this changes the framing a little bit.

[Linus]

Yeah, someone. I think someone thought I misquoted. No, this is lg. This part is lg. We started talking about Samsung. The last line that we're talking about was lg, not Samsung. Yeah, the reason why I gave the like thumbs up thing is because of what we're going to say next, actually, because I knew this was coming like cool. You banned it. Yeah, sounds good. The Play Dot works Or is that a thing on my screen? Play Dot Works Pac man game is presented to the store in just 20 lines of HTML that create an empty frame with game logic and assets are loaded on the fly from a Play Work server, meaning it can be completely changed at any time. Is it also very common for apps to just load a base thing from the store and then really download most of the data from some other server? Because while the store will host your stuff, unlike, I think Steam Dan might know more about this. You get charged for your data flow, so they actually want it to come from some cheaper source. You also get. If your app is like huge, you might get downranked in the store. So you generally want to hide the size of your app, especially if it's like a big game or big assets in the game. So you'll often have the initial download be small so it doesn't get flagged.

[Luke]

I actually didn't know this. I thought that they would just cover the hosting costs like many other marketplaces, but I guess they're just too cheap for them.

[Linus]

That's old information. It's possible it's changed. Ours is not big enough because most of the big data for Floatplane is the videos themselves.

[Luke]

Right.

[Linus]

Not the actual initial app itself. But I know some games that have really big. Like there was a game that was popular for a while, which was the Pokemon trading card game on mobile. And the asset sizes for each card was like super high because you could like zoom in and do all whatever. And they had hundreds and hundreds of cards. So the game was massive. But it would update to be massive. Got the initial download was not crazy high. And when they'd add different packs to the game and stuff, the download was enormous.

[Luke]

Got it.

[Linus]

And this is, this is like quite common, especially in the gaming side of app development. And I'm sure it'd be the same on tv, which is why I did the whole thumbs up thing, because it's like they're probably gonna get data in some other way. Either this frame thing where it's streamed in or an update after the fact that isn't necessarily coming from your servers or whatever. And then like, are you really. Do I really think the like Samsung or LG app security teams are gonna be like super thoroughly going through every single thing and every update and every

[Luke]

update and watching everything that's streaming in.

[Linus]

I mean, I mean we see this on. I have firsthand witnessed the amazing levels of security checking that happens on like iOS and Android.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And those are going to be way more advanced than whatever's going on in TV land.

[Luke]

Probably orders of magnitude.

[Linus]

Yeah. So anyways, we'll keep going and sorry,

[Luke]

the, the part that maybe was missed because we kind of glossed over it is if none of that network sharing code is actually in the download that is coming off of Samsung or LG's store, then it's not immediately obvious that it's there.

[Linus]

They might have manual reviews or whatever where someone actually does do the full download of the app.

[Luke]

So optimistic of you. I love it.

[Linus]

It happens on Android and iOS.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I just mean you have to give them long enough. But again, we come back to the TV thing. Do I actually expect that to happen? It's like not really. After TechCrunch Crunch contacted Samsung, we're back to Samsung again with a request for comment about the research. The electronics giant said in an emailed statement that it was banning apps that share their users Internet connections and will remove apps that contain the functionality. It's the follow through. Yeah, it's the follow through that I'm,

[Luke]

I'm like, can they actually stop it? How much faith do we have given that they didn't stop it in the first place? And there's a millions strong bot army

[Linus]

and tons of money behind making these things happen. This is the whole problem with all of this stuff like anti cheat in video games.

[Luke]

There's way more money behind exploiting it than there is behind stopping.

[Linus]

It is very difficult to measure the amount of money that there is behind stopping. Is very easy to measure the vast amounts of money that there is around making the thing. I don't know if it's in the dock, but there was. I'm scrolling, I don't know if I see it. There was a data breach at Framework. Did you see that? These types of things happen all the time. Yeah, I'm not blaming Framework here.

[Luke]

I didn't, I didn't. Haven't actually read the statement. I don't know the details.

[Linus]

I know none of the details behind it. We should probably look that up now

[Luke]

that I'm looking it up now.

[Linus]

But it's just like, oh man, you do what you can and then things are gonna break out from there, like how much? And I can understand the like super pro consumer move is gonna be like, oh, it should just. You should. There should just be no problems. It's like, okay, sure, but damn. The best way to resolve this is just not have a smart tv. That's pretty sick.

[Luke]

Oh, that is extremely inconvenient. We're seeing like the names, email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses due to an incident at a company that provides business intelligence. Oh, come on. No payment information. So that's. Physical addresses is really saving grace. But all of that other stuff is not good. Bottom line, not good.

[Linus]

Did they say who?

[Luke]

All I have done is read this TechCrunch article.

[Linus]

I don't mean what users, I mean what business were they partnered with?

[Luke]

Doesn't say.

[Linus]

That blows. MTA base. Katos said MTA base.

[Luke]

I don't know what that is. All your MTA base are belong to us.

[Linus]

Open source AI analytics. You can verify.

[Luke]

Oh, metabase. Oh, okay. Oh, okay, okay. That's less scary than what that sounded like initially.

[Linus]

You thought it was Facebook.

[Luke]

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, sorry, hold on, let me go back. Like just a. What was that?

[Linus]

No free clout. They. They leaked everyone's stuff. It's like the opposite of cloud. So someone in chat said, oh, no, free cloud. I'm like, what? We're not spe. This is like the reverse of an advertisement anyways.

[Luke]

A company that provides business intelligence. Oh, sounded really, really spooky.

[Linus]

That's why I wanted to figure out, yeah, analytics platform. They just jammed AI into It. For marketing. Yeah, of course they did. Yeah. I mean, I even noticed that Kaleidoscope thing we were talking about earlier. But yes, Kaleidoscape thing.

[Luke]

Kaleidoscope's a totally different.

[Linus]

No, yeah, for sure.

[Dan]

They.

[Linus]

They had.

[Dan]

They had.

[Linus]

They have some AI thing now. AI Movie recommendations. Yeah, sure, why not?

[Luke]

Nice.

[Linus]

Because if the answer is going to be wrong, it might as well be confident. Yeah. So that blows. I don't even know really why I thought to bring that up, but just like security is rough, security tends to get funded to a certain degree, but it's hard to just keep pouring more and more money into it. And I mean, this is a side topic, to be clear.

[Luke]

We're not saying just stop locking your doors because someone will break into it anyway.

[Linus]

Yeah, no, not at all.

[Luke]

But also, there is a degree to which the investment just doesn't make sense to keep going.

[Linus]

And that problem happens at basically every company. So we are going to constantly see these breaches. This one seems pretty brutal. Physical addresses is rough. Being able to tie names to physical addresses is not cool. But just do what you can. You know, separate password on all the different websites. Etc. Etc.

[Luke]

Parallelogram says I leave my door unlocked so Santa can get in easier.

[Linus]

That clearly would not have saved you in this case. But. But do what you can.

[Luke]

But leaving your door open for Santa wouldn't have saved you.

[Linus]

No. Separate password. Yeah, it wouldn't have made a difference.

[Luke]

No. All right, let's talk about Rockstar.

[Linus]

Yeah. What?

[Luke]

Grand Theft Auto 6, an extended look will stream exclusively on Netflix on August 27th before being released. And this is the kicker, on Rockstar's YouTube channel and website six hours later. There are so many layers to unpack here. Luke.

[Linus]

I understand less now than before you started talking about it.

[Luke]

Okay?

[Linus]

I thought it was gonna be exclusive at first and I was like, ah,

[Luke]

maybe for six hours. I have no idea what money, if any, changed hands, but what I can tell you is that if there was any media property that existed in the entire world ever that could have a 6 hour exclusive window that would generate real meaningful FOMO. I cannot miss this right now. Immediately traffic. It would be GTA 6. I think that Netflix is gonna be a huge winner for this.

[Linus]

So many ads had to load that it like lagged the whole website out. But I am now down at the comments. People are definitely upset about this.

[Luke]

I have to wait six hours to do a bunch of.

[Linus]

Which to me is kind of funny because it is six hours. Six hours a trailer.

[Luke]

Okay. The presentation is Expected to offer a closer look at GTA 6 than fans have seen so far, Rockstar Netflix 8 will dive deeper into the game's world, characters, and story ahead of its November 19 launch. Naturally, GTA fans have criticized the decision to debut the extended look.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Seems dumb behind a Netflix subscription. It seems wicked smart. People will buy Netflix subscriptions in order to see this.

[Linus]

Well, not only that insane. You probably have more people talking about the fact that a trailer is coming than ever before.

[Luke]

Can I. Can I get out? Can I. Can I for a moment? Can I talk to you guys for a second? Are you a GTA fan? Do you love gta? Okay, don't fucking buy a Netflix subscription just to watch this, please. You can speak with your wallet here. You can just wait, realistically, six minutes because that's how long it's gonna take for this to be on every piracy site on the entire earth. They're like, don't. Don't do anything crazy here. Just appreciate talented player playing the game and don't participate in the game. Just be like, you know what good move you got. They got us to talk about their stupid trailer. So, you know, game appreciate game. Don't give them any money for it. You don't have to. Okay. And you don't even have to like the game. Okay? You can hate the game. And I don't mean the game, gta. I mean them playing this marketing game. You can hate that. Either way, just don't give them any money for it. It's fine. Give them no money, give them no attention, and just watch it six hours later. Okay? That's it.

[Linus]

Yeah, I just. I love this. This is great. Rocks. After announcing announcement for an announcement, and then it just does the money printer thing. Oh, so good. So good. So good.

[Luke]

Love it.

[Linus]

Yeah, I. Wow. Honestly, I probably won't even watch this on the day that it comes out. And that's fine because who cares?

[Luke]

Who cares?

[Linus]

I don't know that I'll watch it at all just in case it might have some spoiler, because I actually like the. The GTA storylines are usually pretty fun. I'm also not gonna play the game when it comes out.

[Luke]

Are you a not read the back of the book guy?

[Linus]

I'm not against it, but I usually just don't, like. I don't actually care too much about spoilers, but I also don't feel a need to go out of my way to find them, if that makes sense.

[Luke]

Yeah, okay.

[Linus]

Like, if I see a trailer, I'm like, okay, cool. If I don't see a trailer. It's also totally fine.

[Luke]

I care, like, irrationally about spoilers. Like, in the movie theater, I will put on my AirPods, crank music, and close my eyes until the previous trailers. Yeah, I won't watch a trailer for a film that I want to see. If it's just, like, some crap slop thing that I don't care about and I'm not going to watch, then I'll. I'll watch the trailer, because realistically, it's probably got all the best parts in it anyway, and then I really don't have to see it. But if it's something that I know I want to watch, there's no way.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had stuff spoiled for me, and I just didn't really care. I think usually it's not so much

[Luke]

that I've had stuff spoiled for me and I've cared so, so, so much as that I've had experiences where nothing was spoiled, and it ended up being so much more magical because of it. So the best example I have is Ragnarok. I didn't know that Bruce Banner, the Hulk, was in the film because I hadn't even seen a poster.

[Linus]

Was it? Was it. Was he in the posters and stuff?

[Luke]

Yeah, but I hadn't seen one.

[Linus]

Nice. That's cool.

[Luke]

So I managed to make it all the way to the Colosseum scene.

[Linus]

That seems.

[Luke]

Who's gonna come out? Who's gonna come out? Who's gonna come out?

[Linus]

That seems like it might be a cool moment.

[Luke]

And the film works you up to it for, like, minutes, which feels so stupid if you knew who it was gonna be, because if I had even seen a poster, I would have known. Known. But instead, I had no idea.

[Linus]

That's pretty sweet.

[Luke]

And Hulk comes out of there, and I'm like, no way is amazing.

[Linus]

Tordur said my former spouse spoiled endgame for me. And I. I love that he included former.

[Luke]

What did she tell you? The good guys win.

[Linus]

I like to imagine that's part of the reason why, I think. I think the only time I can really think of where a spoiler, like, actually kind of pissed me off was Hedwig dies. Do you remember that whole thing? And I did hear about it before I read it, and I was like, bro, what?

[Luke]

That just sucks. It's so unnecessary because that's not even, like, Dumbledore dies. Like, like, kind of, you know, we knew it was coming.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Like, the old guard had to. Had to go so that Harry could complete his arc. Yeah. That was just like people yelling spoilers in chat. Like, you know, the beloved bird which is gonna hit this man so hard a ton of bricks.

[Linus]

I didn't have birds yet.

[Luke]

He doesn't give a. That the twins die. That doesn't matter to him.

[Linus]

Only one does.

[Dan]

Oh, one.

[Luke]

Whatever. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is, it's a meaningless human. We're talking about a bird.

[Linus]

Animals in general. Yeah.

[Luke]

A beautiful white bird. An owl. Bird. The purest of creatures.

[Linus]

What are we talking about?

[Luke]

Birds that die and avoiding them. Fantastic birds and where to not kill them.

[Dan]

Fantastic birds and where to bury them.

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Luke]

Hopefully all my chickens are alive right now.

[Linus]

Spoiling movies while complaining about spoilers. First of all, book.

[Luke]

Second of all, that movie came out 10 years ago.

[Linus]

More than that, I think the.

[Luke]

The one where Hedwig dies. No, that might have been 10 years ago. When? Oh, my God, how long?

[Linus]

I'm pretty sure it was a lot more than 10 years ago.

[Luke]

Was the first one 2001?

[Linus]

I think we're a lot closer to 20 years ago. Dude, not 10 years ago.

[Dan]

No, it was 10 years ago. Move on next time. No, it wasn't. Move on. When did.

[Luke]

Don't Google it. Which movie does hedwig die in?

[Linus]

7th. Deathly Hallows Part 1.

[Luke]

Okay. When did Deathly Hallows Part 1 come out? You on it?

[Linus]

Yep.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus]

2010.

[Luke]

Me.

[Linus]

A lot closer. Not a lot closer, but closer.

[Luke]

I'm closer. Without going over Price is Right rules. I win.

[Dan]

Wait.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

But that's Price is Right Rules, which is dumb.

[Luke]

Them's fighting words. I think you've upset a lot of people. Just.

[Linus]

I think those people are fine to have been upset.

[Luke]

I. I don't think I. I. I think they're justified. I think they're justified.

[Linus]

You didn't define the rules ahead of time. Which is why it's dumb.

[Luke]

It's always prices.

[Dan]

Right.

[Linus]

Rules. Nope.

[Luke]

Dan, back me up on this.

[Dan]

Linus is right.

[Linus]

No, no.

[Luke]

I'm the closest. Without going over.

[Dan]

You're the one that said the rules are dumb.

[Luke]

It rounds up.

[Dan]

I'm gonna. I'm gonna leave, man.

[Linus]

I'll die.

[Dan]

You can't round up 16 years. I told you not to Google it. You didn't listen to me, so you're

[Linus]

just upset about that.

[Dan]

So now everyone's upset. Way to go, dude.

[Luke]

Wow, this has really divided the community.

[Dan]

Hedwig's dead and Lin Friday's ruined.

[Luke]

All right, I think it's time for us to explain comms, guys. If you are new to the WAN Show. Welcome. Hey, thanks for watching the WAN show. Yeah, here on the WAN show, we don't do like super chats or twitch bits or any of the kind of imma throw my money at the screen and then I'm gonna wait eagerly to see if senpai will notice me. We believe instead that if you're gonna throw money at your screen, you should get high quality merchandise in return. So we created what we call comms or checkout messages. All you got to do to send one is head on over to lttstore.com oh look at that. We're doing a notification list for the Nuclear LTD ratcheting screwdriver. It's a cool new colorway UV reactive. Anyway, the point is, all you got to do is head over to lttstore.com, find one of our wonderful products like the percussive maintenance technician T shirt, head on over to your cart and when we're live, you will see the checkout message interface. You can be anonymous or you can show your name and last initial and you can leave a little message. Ba da ba ba da ba ba ba ba. And go ahead and place your order. It will go to producer Dan, who will either just pop it up like that, a little something like that, or there it is. Or who will reply to it himself. Or he might curate your message for me and Luke to respond to. Dan, do you want to show the folks what curated messages look like or no, wait, no. I'm going to do the CW announcements first so they know what kind of cool things they're supposed to be ordering. This. Oh yeah, look, we have one. Right here is our limited edition nuclear LTT ratcheting screwdriver. Look at it go. This is celebrating a pretty big milestone for us. Our newly approved US patent.

[Linus]

Heck yeah. What?

[Dan]

That's exciting.

[Linus]

Sorry, no, there's a weird problem with my computer, but I solved it, so. Yeah, that's cool.

[Luke]

Yeah, we. We co own the patent for this ratchet with Megapro.

[Linus]

Oh cool.

[Luke]

Which is finally formal acknowledgement that no, we did not in fact rebrand Megapro's product. We worked with them, including on very real patentable engineering to make a better freaking ratchet that people, hundreds of thousands of people are enjoying right now. It's a pretty freaking awesome product. And now it glows under UV light. UV light not included. Insider tip, by the way, if you sign up at LMG GG nuclear signup, that is nuclear, not nuclear, you can get 10% off instantly. Or you can save your discount for when the nuclear screwdriver launches, you'll also be the first to know when it drops. And if you're looking for a deal right now and you don't necessarily need the new nuclear Colorway, the mystery screwdriver is $20 off this weekend only. So right now is a great time to grab a mystery screwdriver. On the US store, that's US$49.99, and on the global store, that is $69.99. Nice Canadian dollars, which is actually a pretty, pretty good deal. This is perfect if you've been wanting an LTT screwdriver and you don't mind a little bit of mystery in exchange for a great deal. The pricing ends Monday at 9am I assume that's Pacific time. Oh, oh, look at that. And order any ratcheting screwdriver and get free screwdriver grip tape when both are added to the cart. So those are great when you're using gloves.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

So we've gotten a lot of feedback from technicians who use gloves, especially like aircraft folks, automotive folks, that they can find the smooth outer body a little

[Linus]

bit smooth with gloves and especially if you get some oils going on and

[Luke]

like a canvas glove. So the grip tape is like. It's like a skateboard grip tape. It's very grippy. And it's now included free with your order of a mystery screwdriver. So great. Time to go check that out. Dan, do you want to show us a couple of comms that you curated?

[Dan]

Yeah, I've got a few here. Howdy. Dll. With the RAM Cartel staying for a while, forever, do you think Framework or Valve plus other OEMs should form a co op or buyer consortium or invest in Fabless memory and open CXL LPCA? MM2 question mark. Saving for socks.

[Luke]

They're welcome to try.

[Linus]

I don't. Yeah, I don't think it's.

[Luke]

It's no amount of. So, okay, it's all about leverage. Okay, let's talk about leverage. If Framework and Valve, and let's say a real player like Dell, okay, all got together and went, we're not gonna buy your Memory Micron unless you give us a better price. Do you know what Micron would say? That's nice. Go F yourself. I'll sell it to someone else. Because right now those companies have absolutely

[Linus]

way too many buyers.

[Luke]

No leverage. They have zero leverage against, quite literally, all of the DRAM players who have all of the leverage. Making matters even more complicated, in a situation where there is limited supply, an alliance, like the aforementioned idea with Framework Valve And Dell and, you know, whoever, wouldn't last very long because the second that Micron came back and said, hey, hey, Dell, you're not really that good friends with these guys, are you? I mean, these framework guys, they're trying to make you look bad. They're making their laptops all upgradable and sh t. You don't want any part of that. You want people to buy a whole new XPS every time they get a new laptop. Tell you what, you just drop your friendship with them. You unfriend them on Facebook. Make me your new friend, and I have all the leverage. So you're just going to pay the normal price, but I'll give you some supply. That way you'll have some laptops to sell this quarter. Your shareholders like that, right? When you have laptops to sell. Cool, cool, cool. That's how it works. And you can not like it. You can be mad about it. Super legit be mad about it, but it's not going to change anything. So, you know, I like the. I always like the idea of, like, little guys banding together. In fact, our prime minister likes the idea of, you know, middle powers banding together for more leverage. But it only works in situations where those middle powers can increase each other's strength by working together and trading with each other. In a case like this, where we're suggesting that competitors, like direct competitors, band together to gain leverage against a much more powerful entity, which can happen and does happen. Isn't gonna happen right now.

[Linus]

Not gonna happen right now. Not in this arena.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

But. But is absolutely a thing, because there are. There are people that will not join that group which are gonna buy way dramatically more memory than the people that you just mentioned.

[Luke]

And right now it's. It's less even about the price you're paying for it, and it's more about having product to sell at all. Like, that's why. That's why the contract prices are getting bid up. Because if you're Dell, it is not an option to get on your quarterly investor call and say, well, there was no memory, so I guess we didn't sell any laptops. Imagine it. So they just have to buy it. All right. Yeah. Do you have a. Do you have a better news one, Dan?

[Dan]

Yes.

[Luke]

Nice. Solid.

[Dan]

Well, that one isn't. But this one. Hello, Lanu. Danu. I'm loving my socks and I'm happy to be picking up more. I do construction, and they've been excellent. Any plans for similar products like wrist warmers or fingerless gloves?

[Luke]

Wrist Warmers.

[Linus]

I've never heard of wrist warmers.

[Luke]

I have never heard of wrist warmers.

[Linus]

It's a wrist warmer.

[Dan]

We do shell sell jackets.

[Linus]

That warms too many things.

[Dan]

Yeah. We could cut the arms off.

[Linus]

Is it just like a sweatband?

[Dan]

I think so.

[Luke]

What's is that? I mean, we did do those once.

[Linus]

We did. I still have at least one of them.

[Luke]

I got a bunch of them.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Wrist warmers. Okay, I'm looking this up. I'm looking this up. What are wrist warmers?

[Dan]

Oh.

[Luke]

Or are we talking like. Like pain relief?

[Linus]

They look like.

[Luke]

Okay, what are we talking? We talking this?

[Linus]

Oh, I always just thought of those as emo kid sleeves.

[Dan]

Right. Yeah. I love the knitted ones. Those are sick.

[Linus]

Those actually. Those look nice.

[Dan]

Okay,

[Luke]

Got it.

[Linus]

Is it? Yeah.

[Luke]

Merino wool wrist warmers.

[Linus]

Interesting.

[Luke]

This seems like a really neat thing that probably is not gonna be on our roadmap anytime soon.

[Linus]

I wonder if you really market it as a way to avoid the, like, wrist rub point that gamers have.

[Luke]

Mmm, yeah. I don't know if I would believe that that's the best solution for that, though.

[Linus]

No, it's probably a.

[Luke]

We could do a wrist warmer with a PTFE bottom so that it doesn't affect your mousing friction. Okay, we'll look into it.

[Dan]

Pair them with the programmer socks.

[Luke]

Interesting.

[Linus]

Do a bundle deal.

[Dan]

Do a bundle deal with the programming, you said. Please, for the love of God. Everyone wants them.

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

I mean, Elijah also mentioned them unprompted. Just. Just say this. Market full, plain do on programmer socks.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't need to ask them. We already know the answer. Thank you, Dan.

[Dan]

Okay, fine.

[Linus]

Do you want. Do you want little. Do you want your waist warmers to go along with your pole glamour socks?

[Dan]

It will match.

[Luke]

It will be so cute. Oh, my goodness. All right, we're not doing a pole float plane. Calm down, crop top. We already know the answer.

[Dan]

That's all I got. That's next. More topics, please. All right,

[Linus]

multiple people in chat. Just start yelling, firefox.

[Dan]

Firefox programming socks with wrist warmers and matching crop top. Oh, my God. Linus, you. You like money, right?

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Luke]

I mean, I don't mind it. Hold on. I've got to. I've got to check something because I. I don't think you've actually seen this,

[Linus]

but we're working see a lot of the product stuff until it, like, lands on set for wan show.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

I get questions all the time about, like, are you guys ever gonna make this. Are you guys currently making this thing? And I'm like, dude, I don't know. You'll know probably within an hour of me knowing.

[Dan]

That's why I have to curate so many of these. Because I don't know.

[Linus]

Yeah, who knows?

[Dan]

I know some of them, but very few.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Okay. I'm gonna see if I can get you a picture of a thing. It's borderline. I think Ashley might still be on today, technically. But if she's not, then we're not gonna. We're not gonna get this. But we might be working on a plushie that our audience might find extremely cute. That's all I'll say for now.

[Linus]

Is it a shark?

[Luke]

I'm not gonna. I just told you. That's all I'm gonna say. You're like, my kids, they're like, where's Mom? I don't know. Is she upstairs? I. I don't fucking know. What part of I don't know was not clear? Why would you ask me further clarifying questions? That's one of those things I get just irrationally triggered by. It's like, ask me something. I say I don't know, you ask me a follow up question that is more specific but the same damn thing that I just said.

[Linus]

I don't know if you tend to give all the context you have or not. And if you don't and you just say that you don't know, you might know that she's not upstairs because you might have recently come from upstairs. So they could use that to narrow their search.

[Luke]

No, I tend to be an over communicator, so there ain't no way that applies to me. Nope, nope. I reject it. Consider it rejected.

[Linus]

Speaking of something that might get rejected, should we go to the next topic?

[Luke]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Linus]

Is Nintendo a good company?

[Luke]

I mean, they're good at making money, so yes.

[Linus]

Nintendo is offering free repairs on their consoles and accessories damaged in the 2026 Kumamoto earthquake. For people in. That makes more sense. Kumamoto earthquake for people in eligible areas.

[Luke]

Hakuma Momoto.

[Linus]

That. No, look, we're wrong now, okay? The company is also donating 50 million yen, roughly around 340,000 USD, to the Japanese Red Cross to help with their relief efforts. The discussion question is Nintendo takes a ton of guff. So how does this story change your image of them, if at all?

[Luke]

I don't think it changes my image at all.

[Linus]

It does not. Because like they've always done, I'm happy they're doing it.

[Luke]

They've always done good guy being a good company at making lots of money stuff.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And like corporate sort of stewardship of your community is part of that.

[Linus]

I do think this is very cool

[Luke]

and, and that's a good thing. But I've never not thought that Nintendo is like that. Where, where I really run into issues with them is around, you know, IP enforcement rigidity and just sort of anti consumer behavior. Like to their, to their credit they didn't lock multiplayer behind paywalls until many, many years after their competitors did. But I will, I will die on this hill. Locking my ability to back up a save game behind a monthly subscription is evil.

[Linus]

Is it still like that?

[Luke]

As far as I know, yes. You still have to have a Nintendo online subscription in order to back up your save game. And when I say backup, I don't mean migrate. You can migrate it from one switch to another that is currently supported without an online subscription, but you cannot back it up. Even though their last two consoles again to their credit, have supported industry standard Micro SD or SD Express media formats, which is a good thing. There is no way to put your save games on them. Wild Deep Blue says, well having to pay for online backup seems reasonable. Yeah, that's not the problem. I should be able to do a local backup. But you can not Wild, because like you can invest hundreds of hours in a save file. Like if you told some completionist on you know, Tears of the Kingdom or something like that, where they wanted like they want to complete, complete the game that oh yeah, someone stole your switch. Guess what? No save file. You should have had a Nintendo online subscriptions. Like bro, I only play this game. It's a single player game. Why do I need that? You shouldn't. You should not need that.

[Linus]

Yeah, I agree.

[Luke]

Boo there. But helping people impacted by earthquake, Good, cool. I had something that was only sort of related. Oh, okay. Oh man. Whenever my notes thing does not make its way into the dock, I get very confused. I had an interesting thought on sort of customer support and like what should or shouldn't be covered by a warranty. So I reached out to ecobee recently with an issue that I've got with some of my smart thermostats that are spontaneously disconnecting from my wifi. And I've tried basically everything under the sun. I've tried reducing the number of 2.4 gigahertz transmitting APs that I have, which did help a little bit but didn't make it go away completely. Ubiquiti has some friendly like low power IoT device, specific modes that you can enable and some kind of features that you can activate. To make it a little simpler, I've tried binding specific thermostats to specific APs that I know are close to them to make sure that they won't accidentally roam to one that's too far away and then lose the connection completely. I've tried. Oh, sorry. I'm gonna digress my digression here really quick. Does anybody know how to lock a device through the unifi interface to a specific AP that it is not already connected to? I have been beating my head against my phone trying to figure that out. I haven't actually looked at the desktop interface, but on the mobile interface, the only way that the. The only way I've seen to do it is you can select lock to ap, but it will lock to whatever it's connected to. Which I would say nine times out of 10, when I'm going to try to lock something to a specific ap, I'm doing that because it is roamed to the wrong one. So I would think that that would be something that I could do. Anyone? I have an Iot only ap, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I tried that. I even tried having a separate ruckus. One that was my IoT only AP.

[Linus]

Some people saying it might be desktop, Apple.

[Luke]

Okay, yes, VLAN groups. No, I'm not setting up VLAN groups for that. That's crazy. They already have a feature to lock a device to.

[Linus]

A person who said that you can do it. There's other people that say you might be able to do it on desktop. Yeah, you can do it on desktop.

[Luke]

You can do it on desktop.

[Linus]

There's a variety of people saying you do a desktop app.

[Luke]

Okay, all right, hopefully that's good. Now, someone else suggested using.

[Linus]

There's apparently a selector. There's a selector for the AP using the desktop ui. Cool.

[Luke]

Okay. Yeah, all right, I'll look into that. Anyway, what was I talking about? Right? So. So these. So these ecobee lights that I installed at my house ages ago. And so I reached out to ecobee about it finally, because I was like, I'm at. I'm at the end of my rope. And they're like, okay, yeah, that's a known issue. And I was like, okay, so what do we do? And they're basically like, okay, well, we'll send you all new APs or not APs. Excuse me, thermostats. And you can have like our new equivalent of the Ecobee 3 light or whatever the one that I have is. And I'm like, okay, but my first question in a situation like that is what if I wasn't me? And they said that under warranty, which is a three year period, they would support the same swap for anyone. But I guess my question is what is a warranty? Which is a dangerous topic of conversation on this show. Calm down. Because to me a warranty means is this a warranty, like free of premature failure? That to me is warranty. If it's a fundamental design flaw that is in the very nature of the WI FI chip that is integrated into a product and hasn't been fixed, should that be covered for anyone outside of the three years? If it was like broken from day one and will be broken, maybe not forever. Because one of the.

[Linus]

One of the things case like. Okay, let's.

[Luke]

Let's get to fundamentally flawed.

[Linus]

Let's be self inflating here.

[Luke]

Self inflating.

[Linus]

And look at the backpack. There was the zipper problem.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And you guys basically allowed anyone to claim their zippers, right?

[Luke]

Well, I mean that was. We issued a voluntary recall of the carabiner zipper pulls.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Is what we did. We could have.

[Linus]

Would you have wanted them to do a voluntary recall of their thing that you bought? Thermostat.

[Luke]

So from my understanding, it's not an issue with every ap, like with every wireless access point, but it is an issue with mine. So is that flawed enough to merit a recall? I actually don't know. I don't know if that's the right answer.

[Linus]

That's interesting.

[Luke]

But then if someone upgrades their AP to a new Wi Fi 8 AP or something in the future and it does have that issue and they contact ecobee, should that be covered? I don't have a firm. Because stuff can't be covered forever. Right. And it was free of material defects and worked throughout the support period. But if it only worked because someone got lucky and their other stuff happened to be compatible with it. To be clear, I'm not giving ECOPI a hard time here necessarily. And I think my hope, because I also just asked, hey, it's actually kind of a hassle. I actually don't want new thermostats. What I want is for my thermostats to work so that I don't have to have a Saturday chore of going around and replacing all my thermostats. Like maybe that's a privileged thing or whatever to not want new thermostats.

[Linus]

I have too many thermostats.

[Luke]

But I actually don't. I Don't want another chore to do. I just want my thermostats to work. And so what I asked them, I was like, look, the solution is actually really simple. I just have to pop it off the wall and put it back on. But when I'm doing that for like half of my stupid thermostats every like week, then it becomes a bit of a hassle. It's, it's not something I.

[Linus]

That's your, that's your individual. It's having a problem. Diagnosis step is.

[Luke]

And then it starts working within a minute. So I asked them, I was like, could you just push a software update that has it like Restart, restart at 2:00am Every day?

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Because I'd be okay with that.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And they're like, we're working on a fix, but we don't have a date for it. So here's new thermostats. And I'm like, okay, I really don't want to go run around my house popping off and putting thermostats back on more often than I have to. So that's where I'm at. But I don't know, it just raised this interesting question for me. How defective is defective? And at what point does something like, like a design flaw reach the point where it's just like, yeah, we're aware of that, but like, you're out of warranty anyway. You should have said something about it sooner. Like, what's your answer for this?

[Linus]

I don't know the right answer. Because there's also certain products that are like, my thermostats are too juicy.

[Luke]

Okay, stop.

[Linus]

There's also some products that by design are very like, you know, cutting edge and not necessarily super reliable. And you like know that when you're buying it. But a thermostat, I don't know. As a person who has genuinely never replaced a thermostat in my entire life in any context, I don't expect them to stop working.

[Luke]

Yeah. Like I was, I was pretty annoyed when my nest thermostat at my. That is now at my in laws house because they're living in our old house. Like got like an end of life notice. And I was like, what are you talking about?

[Linus]

It's a thermostat not happen.

[Luke]

That's insane.

[Linus]

House infrastructure. Stuff like that to me should just basically just work.

[Luke]

So like the ones that I replaced them with literally had a, had a little glass container full of mercury.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And the way that they worked was like according to where it tipped, the mercury would flow and bridge A contact. And it would turn on or turn off that zone like it was. It would have worked for another 150 years if I had not replaced it with these stupid ones that disconnect.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

So.

[Linus]

So, like, I have. I have a personal expectation that that thing keeps working, and I would expect that company to replace that thing beyond three years, personally. But I also don't know that that applies to everything. To something that is.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Like. Like I said, when I look at. I don't know what you want to call it, house infrastructure things, I expect them to just kind of keep working unless there is a known situation where it's like, I can't even necessarily think of one. I don't know. Hot water tanks. You're expected to replace them every.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Fixed amount of time.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Appliances, usually that type of stuff. Even appliances. Like, my God. The rate at which we're expected to replace appliances these days is actually not okay. I'm not down with that, and that's insane and a very modern thing. But most things in your house like that are like, house infrastructure, like something like a hot water heater. You have an expected replacement date. You're not expecting it to fail before that date. You're expecting to replace it before it is going to do so. And this is like a normal thing for homeowners. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke]

The. The. The repair tech for our laundry, like, our washing machine basically was like, never replace this.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Because it's like some old 90s just gonna work forever.

[Linus]

Take through everything.

[Luke]

Will work and is very repairable and stuff. He was just like. Because I guess I asked, I was like, okay, that's a pretty expensive repair bill. Like, should I just get a new one? He's like, duly noted, sir. Thank you.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Thank you for your service. Yeah, have a good one. All right.

[Dan]

I.

[Linus]

Sorry. I feel like I'm obligated to say this. Amaria and Flow Plane Chat said all homeowners should be cat owners. It's right there in the name. Home. Home owner. But capitalize the meow in the middle. Home meowder.

[Luke]

I could get behind that. I'm something of a cat enthusiast myself.

[Linus]

It's pretty good.

[Luke]

Pussy lover.

[Linus]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

What? I'm not dinging it because it's not a joke.

[Linus]

He's been alone. He's been alone for a week. Cats out of the bag.

[Luke]

I saw a hilarious tweet. It was just like, men who do not enjoy satisfying a woman are objectively gay. And I was like. Because there's like a manosphere thing where it's like, yeah, it's all about me. I don't enjoy really helping her. And this was like a response to it. I was like, honestly can get behind that?

[Linus]

Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that was a thing. I. Yeah, I was sitting here being like, yeah, I think that makes sense. I didn't realize there was like a counter at all. Anyway, moving on, moving on. Speaking about progressing too fast, PS5 emulation is progressing faster than expected. With the upcoming console only release of GTA 6, programmers have been working overtime to make PS5 games playable on PC and we're seeing big breakthroughs in the two biggest emulators. Kaidi PS5 I think is how that's supposed to be said. And Sharp Emu. Emu, whatever. With multiple fairly primitive games finally being playable on Windows. Although we're a long way from ripping around in Vice City on PC. Discussion Question. Do you think you would run an emulator to play GTA 6 on launch? Yes, but I would not run out and buy a console for it. And I honestly play gta. No. Yeah, I don't think I'd want to play a console for it at all because I'm pretty sure I've always done GTA stuff with hybrid keyboard, mouse and controller.

[Dan]

Right.

[Luke]

Wait, what? Yeah, so you, what, you switch to a controller like when you're driving, like in a car? Yeah.

[Linus]

And like plane or helicopter or whatever. Okay, so I literally have both plugged in because most modern games, the second you do any form of input on either one, it will switch to that input device. So the second I press the button to get into the car, I just pick up the controller and go and it's perfectly fine.

[Luke]

Man, that's. Dude, I don't think I've ever taken a moment to appreciate the fact that modern games will change their on screen prompts according to which control method you are currently using like immediately these days. Do you remember back when you had to care what controller scheme the game was designed for natively? Because you'd get like PlayStation prompts while you're playing with a keyboard and mouse you'd be like, it'd be like press whatever to perform a quick dive. I have no idea what fucking button I'm supposed to press and I'm dead.

[Dan]

Do you know how many glyphs Steam has currently? It's over 500.

[Luke]

No way. Oh, I guess that makes sense because you'd have to have every possible language of possible keyboard and there's Xbox Pro controller, you could bind anything to anything.

[Dan]

Switch. Joy Cons Steam controller.

[Linus]

Is there like, would you ever. Would one glyph be a combo key?

[Dan]

No, it's one button or action swiping up on the touchpad of a PS5 controller. Has to go onto screen somewhere because you could rebind it to something else.

[Linus]

Oh man.

[Dan]

That's. Why not. Probably not. A lot of games allow you to do rebinds as well. 500. There's too many controllers. Stop making them.

[Linus]

That is wicked though. But yeah, I would absolutely emulate GTA 6. That would be wicked considering it's gonna take freaking forever. It's probably be 2027. Oh, it will definitely be 2027 because it's coming out in November. Right?

[Luke]

Tell me this.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Okay. I'm gonna try to present as many angles of both sides of the argument as I can here.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke]

So knowing that it took countless developer and artist hours to create it, but knowing that Rockstar and Take two have enough money to buy the earth and all the heavens, knowing that a decision was made to make it console exclusive, but knowing that, you know, it's something that we still have the option to buy a perpetual license for at all, which is something that should be encouraged. If you emulated it before the PC launch, would you also buy a disc or jewel case to put on a shelf such that you compensated whatever entity for that?

[Linus]

At this point in time in my life, at this point in time, my income. Yes, I would absolutely. And that would be like if GTA

[Luke]

over 100 Canadian dollars.

[Linus]

Yeah, if I liked the game enough. Yeah.

[Luke]

So you wouldn't do it ahead of time?

[Linus]

No, I would probably.

[Luke]

So you're a rent for free. I would probably buy it later if I feel like.

[Linus]

Steam's terms.

[Luke]

Steam's terms. Oh, okay.

[Linus]

So I would play for like two hours.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke]

All right.

[Linus]

And then if I'm like, this isn't working worth me buying, I'd probably stop because honestly, that's a good indication that I should not waste my time with this anyways. And if I'm like, this is awesome, I really want to keep playing, I would happily put a hundred dollars in the hundred dollar machine so I could play the game more. Then I'd be like, okay, cool. And then I would buy it when it came out on PC.

[Luke]

Okay, interesting take. That was all I really needed.

[Linus]

I had that so ready to go. Because this scenario has more or less happened before.

[Luke]

What was the most recent?

[Linus]

I don't even remember. I knew you're gonna ask. I don't remember specifically, but I know I've done that thing where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hold myself to Steam's terms on this, which is I'll give myself two hours.

[Luke]

Right.

[Linus]

I've done that before, but I don't remember the scenario. I don't remember the game. It hasn't been a long time. Because usually the thing is just on Steam.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

I wish it was just gonna be on Steam.

[Linus]

Yeah, that'd be a lot easier.

[Luke]

Then we wouldn't have to have these conversations.

[Linus]

We could just buy it on Steam also. Probably not gonna be emulatable on launch anyways.

[Luke]

I don't know, man. The.

[Linus]

The community is a little voracious for this one and that.

[Luke]

And the community's a little bit mad at Sony right now.

[Linus]

Yeah, that's true. When we went over your thing about how it's gonna be on Netflix, I looked on the trailer.

[Dan]

You mean the.

[Linus]

Yes. I looked at the tweeters and almost all the comments were about, oh, there's no physical editions, you guys suck, blah, blah, blah. People seem genuinely very angry.

[Luke]

However, we've seen people be pretty genuinely angry about things before, and quite literally, nothing changed. Think back to the outrage over horse armor.

[Dan]

The.

[Luke]

The first mainstream PC microtransaction. Most people don't even remember this, but it was a cosmetic armor for your horse that you could buy in oblivion for. I think it wasn't even that much. Was it five bucks?

[Linus]

It was pretty low. It was ten bucks less than ten dollars.

[Luke]

Something like that.

[Linus]

Which at the time was also laughed at for being so high.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus]

I would like to point that out. These days, that is. That is like decently low for a skin in a video game.

[Luke]

$2.50.

[Linus]

Back then, people were like, how the hell heck could you pay $2.50 for a stupid skin for your stupid horse?

[Luke]

And it doesn't even make your horse less likely to die. This is outrageous.

[Linus]

It's just cosmetic.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Scrappy DP says we made fun of that so much.

[Linus]

We did. And then so many people bought it.

[Luke]

They did.

[Linus]

So many people.

[Luke]

There's so much horse armor. Yeah, piles of horse armor.

[Linus]

Tons and tons and tons of horse

[Luke]

Exodonut says, looks cool as heck, though.

[Linus]

I don't even think it did you looking it up?

[Luke]

I am trying to find a picture, but I hate it when this happens. So here's a link to R Games on Reddit and I click it and where is that picture that it previewed? Where's my darn picture? I want this Picture.

[Dan]

There you go.

[Luke]

Killing me. Okay, well, there's your Morrison.

[Linus]

So you've got the gold and the silver.

[Luke]

Yeah, buddy.

[Linus]

Here's the silver. Kind of. That's an artistic rendition. Here's the gold. Ridiculous.

[Luke]

Does look pretty cool.

[Linus]

Does it?

[Luke]

I wouldn't pay a dollar for it.

[Linus]

But you wouldn't pay anything for it.

[Luke]

I'd get. I'd want it for free.

[Linus]

I would do a quest for these.

[Luke]

I do a quest for it. Yeah, 100%.

[Linus]

And then I'd use the silver one

[Luke]

because the gold ones, which, ironically, I would be contributing so much more of my time than $2.50, but I. But I'd get the sense of accomplishment. I don't get a sense of accomplishment from. I found a. I found a toonie on the ground and I used it to buy this Pixels.

[Linus]

Do you get a sense of pride from completing quests? Yeah, it's the lion armor pride in

[Luke]

it, so I don't think so.

[Linus]

It's the sense of pride and accomplishment quote from ea.

[Luke]

Oh, for what? For buying a microtransaction.

[Dan]

What?

[Linus]

Yeah. Wait, hold on.

[Luke]

I haven't seen. I don't know what you're talking about.

[Linus]

What? No, you have to.

[Luke]

I.

[Linus]

You have to.

[Luke]

Actually, don't.

[Linus]

Once I bring it up, you'll recognize it. I guarantee it.

[Luke]

Don't you have phones? I mean, this one I know, not ea. Hey, isn't EA by, like, the Saudi investment fund now? Did that close this week?

[Linus]

Something like that, yeah.

[Luke]

Neat. I remember when EA used to be, like, kind of Canadian or something. Oh, yeah, look at that. Saudi Arabia's public investment fund alongside Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's affinity partners.

[Linus]

Ah, Jared Kushner.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Luke]

$55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts.

[Linus]

You know this.

[Luke]

The intent is to provide players with a sense of Pride and accomplishment. Minus 667,000 votes. That's crazy. I actually don't. I don't know if I remember this. Oh, is this FIFA?

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

What is this?

[Linus]

Battlefront? I think Star Wars.

[Dan]

I think it took like, Star wars battlefront, 400 hours of in game grinding to afford something that you could buy for a microtransaction.

[Luke]

Okay, I didn't remember the exact quote. I do remember the Battlefront Vader Unlocked thing where it was like, literally impossible or something like that.

[Dan]

Yeah, 100.

[Linus]

It wasn't impossible, but it was absurd. Yeah, it was very absurd.

[Dan]

And I think that's the most downvoted comment on Reddit in history.

[Linus]

There was a bunch of stuff around that Era. I remember I was a huge fan of the Shadow of Mordor games. I don't know if they're done making those or not, but I really like those.

[Luke]

Monolith doesn't exist anymore. So we go with yes.

[Linus]

Did the IP go somewhere basically because they, they owned some form of like patent or whatever for the Nemesis System. Nemesis system. That was so sick. Bring back something that has that. An Assassin's Creed game with the Nemesis system would be freaking wicked. Anyways, the last one, the last Shadow of Mordor, the last like, I'm guessing quarter of the game, I think basically no one played because the campaign officially effectively wraps up and you've been collecting these like premium currencies the entire time. And remember I streamed my whole playthrough and I refused to spend any of the premium currencies because I knew this endgame thing was coming when I knew a lot of the premium currencies would be used.

[Luke]

Oh.

[Linus]

So I was like, I want to see if you wholeheartedly and like thoroughly play the game and never spend any of them. If you can do it, like play the whole game. And the answer was like effectively no. So you wrap up the campaign and then you go into this like post campaign thing and they just wreck you.

[Luke]

I can milk him.

[Linus]

Yeah. Like, hey, go made it this far. Let's go for it. And it was horrible. I remember it was a great game up until that point. And you can tell, you can tell when the polish drops. That's one of my favorite things. Because the developers didn't care and they didn't want to do it. So you could tell like the game ends and then they like really make it feel like the game ends. And then there's this whole other thing and it's like quality just poof. Oh man. Yeah, dude, that's another. Oh man. Do I talk about Black Flag for the third time in a row?

[Luke]

Nope.

[Linus]

Okay, fine.

[Luke]

Let's talk about Xbox doubling down on backward compatibility. According to a leaked memo, Microsoft is working with developers to relist Original Xbox and 360 games to reach the upcoming Helix, Xbox PCs and Xbox handhelds through a Microsoft built emulator that will run locally. Cool. Microsoft will manage all engineering the bespoke emulator, title by title, certification and testing, storefront merchandising and player support, while developers will keep rights, pricing and brand control.

[Linus]

Sick.

[Luke]

According to reports, this will work similarly to the current implementation of backwards compatibility on the Xbox One and Series consoles, where users will either buy a new digital copy or put in the disk to verify the license and allow them to download and run the digital version of the game.

[Linus]

Wicked.

[Luke]

Discussion Question why would a developer not opt into this program?

[Linus]

They might not be able to sell the game anymore.

[Luke]

Yeah. They might have music in the game that is too much work to replace and that they no longer own a license for. That's one I could think of. Or other IP licensing. Speaking of Lord of the Rings and the Mordor games and Warner Brothers.

[Linus]

Other than that, they might have got the right to distribute it on like a certain console. Like they might have gotten the right to distribute it on the original Xbox, but they might not have the right to distribute it on this emulator thingy. Majiggy.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke]

Very cool though.

[Linus]

Which OG Xbox and 360 games do you want to see on PC? And then Mr. Gauthier said, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon are my picks.

[Luke]

I have never owned an Xbox, so my, my play time on Xbox exclusives includes like a couple hours of Dead rising on the 360

[Dan]

and

[Luke]

like a little bit of Halo, like at a place where there happened to be an Xbox at one point. I haven't. I've. This is crazy. Especially with the, the new one coming out soon. I've never actually played a Gears title.

[Linus]

Really.

[Luke]

I have played a grand total of like four minutes of Gears of War.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Any Gears of War. Remember, Xbox basically existed inside the. The period where I like had a bunch of kids and was doing adulting things and starting a company and all of that. So I didn't have consoles at my, my mom's house. Like there were no consoles. Consoles were not a thing. And then I was a very busy adult, so I just never really Xboxed Super Nintendo kid.

[Linus]

I remember playing Bulletstorm.

[Luke]

Oh yeah, we talked about that a little while ago, I think.

[Linus]

Did we?

[Luke]

It came up at some point.

[Linus]

I didn't realize this was on Steam, to be honest. I thought this was console only. I think I would have played this on console. I don't remember what console this was for. Maybe I played it on Steam. But this game was sweet.

[Luke]

Oh, cool.

[Linus]

You can't be. Yeah, it was wicked. But it says it's on Steam, so I don't know. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly. The main thing that I would say it was console only originally. Okay. Yeah. Now that it's on Steam, I don't care about it being brought to emulation. But I guess I would have originally said Fusion Frenzy, which they're already doing. So.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Cool.

[Luke]

How did I play Halo? No, that came out for PC?

[Linus]

It did.

[Luke]

Or did I say Halo? Sorry, Fable. Oh, yeah, I. I think that. How did I. Yeah. How did I play Fable? Was it on a PC? The Fable was Fable for PC. It's gotta be eventually. Eventually. Okay. I played it eventually, then.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Yeah, just like I'll eventually play GTA 6.

[Luke]

Nice. Cool.

[Linus]

Nice.

[Luke]

Solid. All right.

[Linus]

Speaking of consoles.

[Luke]

Oh, sponsors. Real quick here.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Oh, Float plane. First early access for this week's Floatplane is my favorite videos of all time. Linus didn't say it, but I'm convinced he will once he sees which videos they are. What are you talking about?

[Linus]

Classic Sammy. Things nobody knows.

[Dan]

Words put in order.

[Luke]

This will be a fun video, though. I. My. My daughter's phone died, so her options were to have a broken phone or fix it herself.

[Linus]

Awesome.

[Luke]

So we ended up getting into it, and she. She does all the work, which is pretty cool.

[Linus]

That's sweet.

[Luke]

I helped her with a little bit of adhesive removal, but I made her do all the surgery to do a. To do a battery replacement. And I, like, showed her things. But no, she. She does the work. It was actually a lot of fun. We basically just kind of hung out and repaired a phone together. And you guys can come along for the ride. We also discovered that that's the look you're seeing on my face here, that her phone was broken in more ways than one. Oh, there was. There was a flexible PCB that was severed inside it, which is not the problem we thought we had. It wasn't charging. It needed a new battery because it's like Note 10. How old is the Note 10? How old is Note 10? There you go. Ah, yes. Seven years old. So it was time for a new battery. But, yeah, there was a. There was a broken, like, essentially board in it, and so I had to order a new one. I don't know how it was working. I don't know what that board did.

[Linus]

Break it when you were opening it up?

[Luke]

Nope. Huh. Yeah. You guys will. I mean, you guys will be able to see it in the video.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's. What's your. Yeah, what's. What's the favorite video?

[Luke]

I don't. I don't know. I don't understand Sammy's notes, but that happens. And then what? Look at these notes, you guys. How am I supposed to work with this? That's only one of two. Linus says in his head. The second one is probably just as good. To make it my favorite video. F. V. What does he. He says without.

[Linus]

He says without the typos. So he never fixes the typos. He just added. He says without the typos.

[Luke]

The second video is the definitive ranking of every Windows version ever. Ah, yes. This is out on floatplane. Let's go. Oh, okay. So I can set that to public.

[Linus]

Change thumbnail so you can watch this early.

[Luke]

Sorry. What?

[Linus]

You kept mousing over.

[Luke]

No, it was a big blue button. How am I supposed to not want to look at the big blue button? Luke, come on, man.

[Linus]

Whenever we do any UI UX things, we need to have someone with ADHD in the room.

[Luke]

Yeah, you should click bright color.

[Dan]

Right color.

[Luke]

Right color.

[Dan]

Click.

[Luke]

I mean, it's right there. It's a big bright button. I don't make the rules button.

[Dan]

Do thing. I want to do thing. I came to do things.

[Luke]

Did I make it public?

[Dan]

I made it.

[Luke]

I think I made it public.

[Linus]

Oh, it just takes a sec.

[Luke]

Oh, okay.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

Do better.

[Dan]

Terrible us.

[Luke]

No, do better. No, do better.

[Linus]

You know what else takes a sec?

[Dan]

Mm.

[Linus]

YouTube. Relax.

[Luke]

That is true. He's not wrong.

[Dan]

This is a lot better than YouTube.

[Linus]

Just friggin there.

[Luke]

There are going to be some controversial choices in this tier list, I pretty much promise you.

[Linus]

We gonna skip through to see how pissed I need to be.

[Luke]

Okay, that is not how to watch it. You have to watch all of them.

[Linus]

Where is it? Oh no you don't. You can't show me scrubbing it.

[Dan]

Windows XP better be on there.

[Linus]

Do you want to. You want to show everyone?

[Luke]

I don't want to show everyone the answer. All right. Exodon. It says we only care about one thing.

[Linus]

I am looking for digital.

[Luke]

Digital Matrix IO says. I know. Linus and I are both fans of Vista. Yeah, Jordan and I, we didn't get to the point of like almost throwing hands, but we definitely didn't agree about some. Windows is. And Vista was one of them. So there.

[Dan]

I will fight you in his stead.

[Luke]

If you like Vista, there's. Dude, I don't like Vista. I love Vista. Deal with it. He just ran into his mic.

[Linus]

He didn't even make it around the corner. Yeah, just wanted to disappear off camera. Oh man, this

[Luke]

mroma nailed it. Vista was fine. Lol. People's PCs sucked 100%.

[Dan]

So true.

[Luke]

If you had cutting edge hardware, Vista was the bomb. It was actually super stable and performed great. Aero was amazing. Game changer.

[Linus]

There's only.

[Luke]

I would use Arrow today if I could.

[Linus]

I think there's only two changes I would make here.

[Luke]

Really?

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

That's actually pretty surprising because I Think Jordan and I disagreed about more than just two.

[Linus]

I would only up things. I would up this personally to here, and I would up that to there. Because I think this one's problem, as everybody is saying, was having worked at Best Buy at the time, everyone was buying 512 meg RAM laptops. Obviously, we're never gonna be able to run it.

[Luke]

I had to fight to get that elevated from, like, a C. Yeah. So we, Jordan and I, we compromised. We compromised. We worked together.

[Linus]

I agree with most of this, though.

[Dan]

I'm happy with that, too.

[Linus]

The two at the top was the two things that I was coming in worried about because if they weren't there, I was actually gonna be very upset. Oh, yeah, they're both there. So I'm okay.

[Dan]

I'll give you Vista, but you can have those. I'm happy.

[Linus]

I. I was gonna be not okay if those weren't there.

[Dan]

Good job.

[Linus]

So.

[Dan]

All right.

[Linus]

I am now. Fine. I can sleep properly.

[Luke]

All right.

[Dan]

Your face will remain un punched.

[Luke]

It's funny how much we care about other people agreeing with us.

[Linus]

Oh, I don't. It's. You'd just be wrong. That's the problem.

[Luke]

But you could. You're so angry about it.

[Dan]

I'd go to prison.

[Luke]

We're such pack creatures. It's so funny. Like, we just. It would actually.

[Linus]

I think. I think the reason is because it would. It would feel like you were making fun of my friend. Yeah, I can make fun of those.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I don't like it when other people make fun of them.

[Dan]

That's your tribe. It's tribal mentality.

[Luke]

I think that's why Mac people hate it so much when I criticize what Apple does, probably without, like, realizing that I am an Apple user. I am an Apple customer and objectively

[Dan]

correct about how crap their products are.

[Linus]

What's. I'm so bad with this stuff. What's your watch? Is that. That's not an Apple watch. Okay.

[Luke]

No, I was holding up my AirPods.

[Dan]

No, I know.

[Linus]

I was wondering if you had even more stuff.

[Luke]

I'm trying to think, is there any other Apple in my life right now? I really liked the MacBook Neo, but I have just had to move on so that I can, like, review other products and.

[Linus]

Pretty wicked.

[Luke]

Yeah. I can't think of anything else Apple in my life. Their monitors are just so far behind, like, just utterly irrelevant, which is kind

[Linus]

of funky because they really weren't. Yeah, they really set, like, the bar for quite a while.

[Luke]

Their desktops are, like, really great for certain use cases that are not super relevant to me right now. Like if you're an AI guy, Mac Studio is well at least was the bomb before they yoled the top RAM configuration and adjusted their pricing dramatically and then like the Mac mini is one of the best values in tech even at the higher pricing. But I have like a really nice desktop. I don't really need the best value little tiny desktop. I know there's a lot of really good things. Just mostly, mostly doesn't really work for me that much. What else am I supposed to be doing? Oh my God, there's more. I personally. Wait, what? I personally love the bloatware and inane UI decisions on Windows 11. Hashtag add. This isn't my notes. What am I supposed to do with this?

[Linus]

I think he means insane.

[Luke]

If you want more vibes, what about some board games with team Boomer Rhys and Riley vs Team Zoomers Peter and Ashley where they play Wavelengths. Watch the early access first at LMG GG Fox.

[Linus]

That's fun.

[Luke]

All right, good stuff. Now let's talk about some sponsors. The show is brought to you today by Factor Meals. Throughout history, things like a blue screen or a red ring have struck fear into the hearts of gamers. But nothing scares everyone quite like the dreaded question what are we having for dinner? Well, our sponsor Factory Meals is gonna make meal time a lot less intimidating. They make chef crafted ready to eat meals with the help of dietitians to ensure you're giving something healthy to eat. They've even internally banned over 175 ingredients that they deem not beneficial to a balanced diet. So you're out every week. You'll have over 100 nutrient dense options to choose from. Things like salmon burgers, truffle butter, chicken and mushroom risotto. Plus they have add ons that can help when you have that sweet tooth. But you don't want a whole mountain of sugar like pumpkin flavored cheesecake and protein shakes. Factor Meals are ready in two minutes and require no prep and no cleanup. 97% of users agree that Factor Meals have helped them free up time and even change to a healthier diet. You don't have to rely on drive thrus or delivery. Let's eat real. Head to FactorMeals.com wan50off and use code WAN50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until October. 10-31-2026. That's code when 50 off at Factor Meals.com when 50 off at Factor Meals dot com how many times. Is that okay? Seriously, guys, once again, this is actually. This is actually in the notes. It's in there that many times. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. Whether it's a business, a band, or a hobby. If you have something to show off, you. Can I help you, Dan? Oh, what is. Is it?

[Dan]

That's not.

[Luke]

That's not Squarespace.

[Linus]

He's cooking. Get it?

[Luke]

Ah, nice.

[Linus]

Get it.

[Luke]

This.

[Dan]

Oh, no, my notes are wrong. Whether it's a business or a band. Is that what you're reading? Yeah.

[Luke]

Is that okay?

[Dan]

And that's queer space.

[Linus]

This could make sense.

[Luke]

Is it.

[Linus]

It's a news article about meta using, which is users three.

[Dan]

Okay, good. I'm good.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

It could make sense.

[Luke]

Whether it's a business, a band. Is there gonna be a band here or.

[Linus]

Okay, this makes sense. This makes sense.

[Luke]

Or a hobby. If you have something to show off, you need a place to send people to check out your work. And relying solely on social media sites comes with its own consistency concerns. Well, Squarespace is the all in one website platform that helps you create a personalized site to help your business promote what it needs to succeed. There are tons of templates to choose from, or you can get something that's even more aligned with your brand thanks to their design, intelligence and blueprint tools. It's as simple as answering a few basic questions about your industry, your business goals, what type of personality you wish to convey. And from there, it really is as easy as dragging and dropping, dropping text and images. They'll even help you grow your business with SEO tools, payment processing and sales analytics. There's millions of URLs out there for grabs too. And Squarespace can help you search for something that's easy to remember to make sure that people can find your site. So start building your website today and receive 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com wan, which we'll have at this QR code right over here. See this QR code? Oh, and it's gone.

[Linus]

If you're interested in advertising with the WAN show, just know that that we have industry leading professionalism in our ad reads and we'll shut up.

[Dan]

This never happened to me before. The assets and the scripts are in the right order, but the doc is not.

[Luke]

Let's blame Sammy.

[Linus]

Yeah, yeah, it's probably Sammy.

[Luke]

Yeah, let's go with that. This is fun. PlayStation 5 boxes now include a notice about games going digital after January 2028. Behind TGames posted a picture of the notice over on Twitter. Here's the text important notice from January 2028, newly released games on PlayStation will be available for purchase on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only. Discs for games released before January 2028 can continue to be played on this console. A similar notice appears on the PlayStation 5 disk drive and disc models of the PS5 from Sony's online store. So it seems like this decision is very much not going to change, regardless of how much gamers are upset about it. And probably it will not affect Sony's business at all other than some snarky tweets.

[Linus]

Speaking of things that have affected businesses.

[Luke]

Yeah, hit me.

[Linus]

Halo Studios sees layoffs after shipping campaign evolved. Numerous employees that had been on the project have started posting on LinkedIn that they've been laid off. Reviews of the game have been genuinely favorable, with Polygon calling it one of the best remakes of all time.

[Luke]

That's like, that's like, that's like it being a Monday night and me telling Yvonne these are some of the best reheated leftovers of all time. Like, I just. That is such a. That is such a backhanded compliment also just like, yeah.

[Linus]

Struggle to agree with that, to be completely honest.

[Luke]

Sure. I mean, either way, I just know for sure. Can you imagine, can you imagine how easy it would be to make out all five of her finger marks on my face if I were to say something like that? Because I've talked before about how Yvonne and I have like a very honest relationship. Like, like if something. If she makes food or if I do a job around the house and it is not up to standard, we will tell each other. We'll just be like, yeah, it could be. It's a little too salty. Because without honest feedback, how do you improve? How do you do better for each other? But that is such a fucking passive aggressive bull thing to say that I

[Linus]

just don't even think it's.

[Luke]

Ain't no way, man.

[Linus]

Sales have been somewhat mediocre, with numbers at just 1.5 million copies sold. 900,000 on Xbox, 425,000 on PS5, 212,000 on Steam. The fact that it's on PS5 is really the interesting part of this because it's a Halo game that's on PlayStation that I think didn't get talked about enough. Those numbers seem really high and I think 1.5 million games sold for a remake, you didn't even have to.

[Luke]

Yeah. But for a Halo game, no, it's for sure. There's definitely different perspectives on that number. That's either.

[Linus]

Like I'm not looking at it in the context of a Halo game.

[Luke]

Depending on who you are, a million and a half copies is like completely life changing or absolute complete disaster. Close up shop.

[Linus]

I'm looking at a million and a half copies sold for something where you didn't have to come up with a story, you didn't have to think of different mechanics. It was all kind of there and honestly it was missing a lot of things from the original game. Which is one of the reasons why I have honestly a kind of a rough time accepting the. One of the best remakes of all time.

[Luke]

Of all time. I mean look, if the standards are like Warcraft 3 Reforged, like what are we, what are we talking about here?

[Linus]

It's. But that's not one of them.

[Luke]

Fixed that. By the way. I haven't. I haven't tried it.

[Linus]

Interesting.

[Luke]

Yeah, apparently it's better now.

[Linus]

I'd be interested in someone actually trying to rank the best remakes because I have a hard time. I have. I don't think it's one of the worst at all, but I have a hard time saying that it would be one of the best remakes. That seems unlikely. Anyways. Xbox sales numbers include Xbox Game Pass members who bought the Premium Edition upgrade.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

And we do have to remember that there would be people who just had the game pass and did not buy the upgrade. So the numbers are actually a lot higher.

[Luke]

Right.

[Linus]

But not in actual sales because. Hahaha, you made the whole thing. Anyways, Games Beat reports that an Xbox source told them that no layoffs have occurred at Halo studios and there are often external contractor shifts that happen after a game shifts. This is what people are noticing.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke]

Games Beat also stated this was not an official comment from Microsoft.

[Linus]

That does make sense though.

[Luke]

So okay.

[Linus]

A lot of contractors also do call it a layoff when their contract ends, even though it's not accurate.

[Luke]

I am. I'm going to present a thing I read. I'm not taking a position on it, but I felt it was a very interesting thing that I read and I just want to talk about it. Basically I came across a post, I think it was on Reddit, but it was from someone who allegedly claimed to be like a blue collar worker in the construction industry and had been their whole life and their perspective on the way that Game Studios will release an acclaimed money making game and then lay off a bunch of the people who worked on it was Ya Doi. When me and my bros build a bridge, most of us don't hang around to maintain the bridge. And sometimes there's another bridge to work on immediately and sometimes there ain't. And that's just the nature of the business. Why do these white collar workers expect a different standard than we get? And I didn't have an immediate gotcha response to that.

[Linus]

I kind of do.

[Luke]

Yeah, I want to hear it.

[Linus]

So my, my counter to that would be that you. There might be a lot of ignorance in my statement. I feel like if you're building a bridge, you're hiring a bunch of trades.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

A lot of those trades will be people who are like, it's, it's contractors and subcontractors and things like that. These are people in the industry. I know how. It's a bridge. This doesn't directly apply, but you're hiring a journeyman plumber who knows how to do his thing. If you're applying him in a certain way, it's. You're following the job, you're building to spec. When you're making a game, the things that you're going to be doing is weirder. And how that team works really well together is going to change. I know I was watching the rebuilding of the Trade center in New York. They had squads that were working on that, that were like guys that did go job to job, but they stayed together as a unit.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And they had, they had like the, the iron workers at the top. It was really, actually really fantastic to watch. It was really cool watching these guys work and seeing how like well executed the build was and the trials and tribulations that they went through and stuff. But this was a group of people that like these two dudes had been working together like basically their entire professional lives. Yeah. They went from job to job to job.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

But they were as a unit as they went through. And I think there's a lot of that in the, in the construction space where you'll have people who, who kind of float around together. In the software development space, that doesn't necessarily happen at all. And if you have a team that you know can execute, especially at these bigger studios, there should be something else that they can go work on. If you're looking at Microsoft, they own so many IPs that if you know that you have a team that works well and executes well, why aren't you just floating them off to some other project?

[Luke]

I don't know. Literally, I don't know. It was an interesting perspective and I do see a lot of differences and I think you've highlighted some of the ones that occurred to me. But I also see some more similarities. Like just like in game development, where you'll have your. You'll have your parent company that owns multiple studios that each manage multiple teams and that are working on different IPs in much the same way like you could again in the construction industry. You talk about how your, like, your subcontractors might actually be groups of people that work really well as a cohesive team, but in much the same way that a group of developers who are working on a particular project or IP at a studio that is under like a major IP holder, like a Microsoft or whoever, just like those guys might be scattered to the high winds if they run out of stuff that they're assigned to. The exact same thing can happen in trades as well, where people will regularly get laid off, like sometimes even seasonally, like on a cyclical basis from the company and the people that they work with very regularly. And then the next season comes around and buddy who runs the company is like, hey, I know we laid you off in September for the winter, but guess what? The snows are falling. I mean, we're getting back to work. Are you coming?

[Linus]

It's pretty common that you even know that contract is coming up because he'll be like, well, come back next summer or whatever.

[Luke]

Yeah, next spring or don't and we'll figure it out kind of thing.

[Linus]

Yeah, I think they're just very different. I think, like, if you, if you look at how a pool of programmers might work the different game engines and stuff, whatnot. Usually if, if you're in like Canada, you're going to have building code for Canada. If I'm building a game, if I worked on Battlefield and then I want to go work on Doom. Yeah, it's different. They're both shooter games.

[Luke]

Yeah. But it's not the same.

[Linus]

It's so different.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

So, like, I don't know. I do find it kind of weird.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

I don't know, I just. It was, it was an. It was an interesting perspective.

[Linus]

It is. It is an interesting perspective that made

[Luke]

me think about it in a potentially slightly different way because, you know, to me it was always very black and white. Right. You may. You're making so much money on this project. It was so successful and it was so good how it felt like punishing the people who contributed to the success. But also there are parallels in other industries where it isn't seen that way.

[Linus]

Okay. But here's.

[Luke]

And I just wanted to wrap my brain around why we see it that way here and we don't think it's that way. Here we do, here we don't.

[Dan]

There.

[Linus]

I genuinely do think it's actually a really good point to bring up. One of the big reasons why I don't think it applies is if the game does super well, make another one. Idiot is like the thing that I would say and if you're going to make another one,

[Luke]

I would say the same thing applies to bridges. No, I mean the, the amount of economic activity that they can contribute to

[Linus]

places that invest in infrastructure, make bridges. So now are you shipping around this like multi hundred person team and they can never have permanently rooted homes. Like I think a lot of times you're hiring local workers when you're building a massive bridge. Sometimes you are, sometimes you bring people from the outside, sometimes you're not.

[Luke]

The guys, the guys who did our flooring at Smash Champs, they came in from the interior. They actually were staying in Airbnbs while they worked on the project, which was very surprising to me. And it's not super far away but

[Linus]

like my, isn't that a super specialized thing?

[Luke]

So my brother in law is another example where they did like highly specialized bridge painting. Actually not bridge building but like bridge paint treatments and they were all over the place.

[Linus]

I would guess if you were building a bridge that you would have a specialized team who has gone around and built a bunch of bridges, which is the smaller core team and then you would hire a bunch of local trades to support things.

[Luke]

It would almost certainly be a combination because especially on the design side, like I would imagine there's like, you could probably count the firms who are qualified to design gigantic large band bridges in the world on like your digits.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

But then in terms of like you know, who actually, you know, like I noticed this. Wow, that was horrible.

[Linus]

Sorry, sorry. I know. I was in Japan and then for

[Luke]

those just listening, Luke cracked his neck without even like using his hands. He just like odd job. It like oh my God. Anyway, sorry, carry on.

[Linus]

I was in Japan and then immediately went to Taiwan afterwards and I noticed that the train systems feel oddly similar.

[Luke]

Oh yeah. Okay.

[Linus]

Not exactly the same. Yeah, but they're very similar to the point where I was like, man, I bet you the same they, they share some amount of expertise here. Maybe some people, maybe it wasn't the same company, but maybe some people who worked on one went and also worked on the other. There's clearly, they're clearly sharing some of the same ideas. But I bet you like someone mentioned welders union is a thing I don't remember who that was there. I can pretty much guarantee that they're working with local expertise as well to flush it out.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And you could compare that to the video game thing.

[Luke]

Yeah. And I mean, again, we're not talking about that. Every single person who worked on the project that is successful just immediately gets laid off. In some cases it does happen where like the studio just gets closed and you look at you just kind of. What was that?

[Linus]

Microsoft is pretty well known for that,

[Luke]

but in many cases it's not actually like that. It is more like, yes, some people we don't need anymore because the project is done are now gone. And should that just, should that be something that is expected? That when the project is complete, like QA testers are one that come up a lot, it's like, okay, the project's done and they immediately laid off all the QA testers. What the f are the QA testers going to do for the next two years while the next project is in

[Linus]

the early stage at like Microsoft?

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I would kind of expect you to have a QA testing team that jumps from project to project.

[Luke]

Would you though?

[Linus]

Why? Why not?

[Luke]

Because I don't necessarily want the same QA testers for a first person shooter that I do for a strategy game.

[Linus]

I think you could.

[Luke]

You could. But I don't necessarily want that.

[Linus]

What if I don't even think it's a bad idea? Why wouldn't you want that?

[Luke]

Because I might want someone who's more specialized in and more experienced in QA testing a different type of. Of gain. I don't think that's crazy.

[Linus]

I don't think that's needed.

[Luke]

It may not be needed, but it also isn't crazy. I think it could be either way.

[Linus]

I think you could drop off some people, but I think that's a way to lose. I think those are not as specialized, different. Like I don't think those are as different specialties as you might think they are.

[Luke]

It's not a matter of how much I do or don't think they are. If there is literally any optimization, if they are 10% different.

[Linus]

So this is my argument is I don't think it's optimization. And my reason for that is that I think you're losing a lot in the process of rehiring these groups. And that's why I said maybe you drop some. But I think losing your core team can be really brutal. I think this happens on the development side. I'm sure it happens on the QA side. I think it's basically all over the place. The thing that's most surprising to me is that if you had a team that, you know, can execute, maybe the window's too big, maybe the windows years or whatever.

[Luke]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Linus]

But if you have a team that, you know, can execute the gamble of them not doing that next time, which we have seen multiple times, and the gamble of. Not the gamble, but the expense of need to go through hiring processes to re rebuild this whole team, I think is sometimes not paid enough attention to. Oh, takes a long time to build the team. Takes a long time to get that team working cohesively together. You're going to have a lot of duds. I think people look at the software development industry right now and go, oh my God, there's been so many layoffs, there's so many people looking for jobs and go, wow, it must be extremely easy to hire really good people right now. Not actually really how that works.

[Luke]

Yes. Just because there are good people looking for work doesn't mean that they're the right fit for a thousand reasons. They might not be in the right region, they might not have. I'm sorry, I'm going to stand behind that. I don't necessarily want the same people doing QA on a strategy game and a shooter game just full stop. They might not have the right specialties. And if I'm hiring someone, I'm going to hire the most qualified candidate. And if someone has many years of experience working on the same genre that I actually want them testing, I'll take that one over the other one.

[Linus]

I don't think that's usually how division and testers works. I think you might not, and I don't either. I think you might know less about how QA testing for games works than I do. And I don't know a ton. Usually it's not based on. I don't, I don't think it's generally based on genre.

[Luke]

I mean, it depends on what you're doing. I'm talking specifically about playtesting. And there, there are people whose job is to like go around and try to find invisible walls and stuff that they can, that they can go through. And they have to be very methodical. They have to document everything. So there's definitely going to be aspects of the skill set that are going to be common across all of them. But if it's, if it's a puzzle game and someone's never done QA for a puzzle game before, yeah, I'd rather have someone who has. Sorry, Okay, I said qa. Playtesting is part of qa and that's specifically the part that I had in my brain, which I never communicated. Okay, so that's a really good point. And I'm glad we bridged that gap.

[Linus]

I no longer care. Yeah, because there's a big difference.

[Luke]

Yes, I'm glad we bridged that gap.

[Linus]

Qa, it. I don't give a if someone's played basketball games before or not. I care that they have experience with the engine.

[Luke]

Sure, sure.

[Linus]

Communicate appropriately with development team, stuff like that.

[Luke]

Sorry, I specifically meant the play testing aspect of QA playtesting.

[Linus]

You're gonna want a range. You're gonna want people that are super familiar. You're gonna want people that have never played this type of game before. You're gonna want a bunch of different stuff.

[Luke]

So Crystal brings up, think about your own company. You wouldn't lay off your editors after a video comes out. And it's like, that's true, but also completely irrelevant because our, our business model is built on a continuous pipeline that has many projects that are in various stages. So that the second that a project is completed, a new project has progressed through the pipeline and is ready for that person to work on, which has its own issues because there can be burnout from that because there's always something to work on. There's always a queue of things that need to be worked on. So there's problems both ways. Whereas like the we work on this for many years and then we have like a big launch, it's finally done. Is just such a completely different business model that I don't think you can compare them.

[Linus]

Here's a question for you. Yeah, I was trying to think like, how could we draw a parallel to here? And I was thinking, okay, if you did like a document documentary or something like a one off documentary, and you'd had to staff up for the documentary when the documentary was done, you might not be planning on doing another one. So you might necessarily let these people go. I also thought in that case you'd probably just contract them.

[Luke]

We'd be upfront about it. Contracting is complicated though. It is, as you know.

[Linus]

But I think the construction industry does a lot more of that, I think.

[Luke]

Well, they do because it's. A lot of it is about hiring a company to do something versus hiring a person to do something. So when you hire a company to do something, you maintain a level of liability and HR and legal distance from it and PR distance from it. As far as I can tell, this is a Huge part of the reason that a multinational like, like a Samsung or an lg, like we're talking like huge companies, although ignore the specific names. But most of the huge companies that I've worked with, instead of just having all of their internal PR and marketing strategy handled by name badges, right, they will hire external agencies. Because what that does is it makes it so that if something goes wrong, oh my God, they're not like an employee with all of the red tape and all of the hassle that goes along with that, we can just terminate our contract with the company that those people do work for. And then if ultimately they have to perform layoffs, well, that's not our problem. And if this marketing campaign, you know, works with like a known PDF file or something like that or whatever, we can basically go, oh, we didn't know that was our third party digital agency and we, we terminated our relationship with them. Like it, it creates that firewall which

[Linus]

is often intended to be used in the, in the way that you just described. Like they're planning that way ahead of time and they want to point that finger.

[Luke]

In much the same way a major construction project hires a company whose job it is to provide benefits and gainful long term employment for all the people who work for it. And they go, yeah, this is our entire commitment to you. You do this, we give you this money. That's it.

[Linus]

It's interesting, I've wondered before because I've noticed that there seems to be a pattern. I don't think it happened this time, but I. Or maybe they partnered with some. I don't remember how the Halo one went, but I've noticed there seems to be a pattern that remakes are often made by outside studios. Like I'm pretty sure Warcraft 3 Reforged wasn't even Blizzard.

[Luke]

No, I don't think it was.

[Linus]

And this is like super common. And I wonder if part of that reason is because of what you're talking about. If you're making a remake, you're probably not planning on making another one right afterwards.

[Luke]

No, we're forced. Was primarily Blizzard Entertainment. You got to be kidding me.

[Linus]

I thought it was an outside thing.

[Luke]

According to AI hold on, hold on. No developers. Blizzard Entertainment, Lemon Sky Studios. Hold on. There was more than one? What the devil's a Lemon Sky Studios?

[Linus]

No idea.

[Luke]

Okay, well, according to Wikipedia, which I trust more than AI There were multiple developers Blizzard intended along with the desire for them to develop StarCraft. Remasters are generally pure remake. In contrast, this was intended to be less pure. Oh, okay. So it was like bad by design. Apparently Lemon Sky Studios did most of the remastered 3D art assets. So that's. No, no, this is. This one's on Blizzard. Sorry.

[Dan]

Yep.

[Linus]

Wild.

[Luke]

No free pass.

[Linus]

Well, I had the wrong memory of that, but cool. I think this is a pattern I've seen before. Maybe I'm just incorrectly remembering. Yes.

[Luke]

Rando third party. Totally.

[Linus]

But that's probably a one off thing. You don't necessarily want to train your staff up to learn how to port a game that you're going to do once real quick and then move on. Yeah, I don't know. It's. It's an interesting problem. I can definitely understand a team reduction if you're not doing a Call of Duty or what they used to do with Assassin's Creed or whatever else. It's basically like every year Assassin's Creed for a long time was every year Call of Duty still, I'm pretty sure is every year.

[Luke]

I think so.

[Linus]

I know they rotate studios. So two years but still that's a pretty quick.

[Luke]

I think it was up to three at one point.

[Linus]

Was it really?

[Luke]

I think so. Don't quote me on that.

[Linus]

I have no idea. Yeah, so like unless you have a model like that where like I don't. I remember hearing I'm going to get the, the, the years completely wrong. So just insert any number here. But I think it was like four or five years ahead of time. They were planning the next Assassin's Creed for a little bit there. I'm sure they're doing similar things with Call of Duty where they have teams working on things like starting to cook ideas, designing, planning, store pipeline full and then once they're done that type of stuff, then developers can start chewing on the problem and it's this like big cyclical machine. Unless you have something like that, if you're launching a game, you have no plans for a second one. The game goes super hard and then you're like, oh man, we should do a second one. The time gap between you can actually. Between when you can actually really start development might be really big, might also be really short. It depends on what type of game

[Luke]

you're making and what teams are needed at every stage. With that said, I mean Nintendo manages to make the model work where they just keep super talented people forever. With that said, I mean part of that just seems to be the very different culture around workplace loyalty both ways in Japan compared to in the west or really anywhere else.

[Linus]

I mean you've got, you've got Japan.

[Luke]

Katos keeps Bringing up Valve. Yeah, I really. Valve is such a.

[Linus]

That's not a fair comparison.

[Dan]

Weird.

[Luke]

Else outlier. Like they just don't hire in the first place. So who is that infinite?

[Linus]

They don't hire. They barely even make games anymore.

[Luke]

Yeah. What are we even talking about? People work on self assigned projects. Like. It's just they're. They're not a real company in. In that sense. Like they don't have a corporate structure that would make sense or work almost literally anywhere else. It's. Yeah, they're. They're the exception that proves any other rule. Pretty much. Carry on. Sorry.

[Linus]

Sorry. D. Hollinger. Which I often read as Dr. Hollinger. I'll reiterate. Fine. But giving the corporate CEO money bonus for the success of a product they barely worked on while letting go of. We're not sitting here saying that it's a good thing.

[Luke]

No, not at all.

[Linus]

We're having a conversation why it happens and what the mechanisms behind it might be.

[Luke]

And I also think that while there are corporate leaders who do jack at all, assuming that a CEO doesn't do anything or that their work did not contribute in any way to the game's success, I don't think is entirely fair either. With that said, I think that. I think that they were. Yeah, I saw their original comment earlier and I think they were specifically talking about something. So that particular example he took like

[Linus]

a mass 30 million. Yeah.

[Luke]

I can't get behind that.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

But I wouldn't make a blanket statement here. As someone who has been a CEO at some point and who has hired a CEO. There could be a situation where we executed a major project. There were redundancies at the end of it. And that was the plan the whole time. And then the company made a butt ton of money. And the leadership who guided that project through to completion could be deserving of a bonus. Yes, I actually could see something like that in that particular case that you brought up. It didn't. The optics weren't great at the very.

[Linus]

I really think so. The Andrew Wilson Battlefield thing. Apparently his bonus was $8 million more. Largely because of the success of Battlefield 6. It was a $38.7 million bonus in general. Oh my God. That's a lot of money for me. If I'm looking at that. I want to apply the. I know it's six and Battlefield's been coming out since I was a wee lad, so it's not coming out exactly as fast as Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, but I'm looking at this thinking, are you not going to do a Battlefield 7? If you're going to do a Battlefield 7 and it did super well, I would really want to keep on a lot of the people and no, maybe not every single person can directly contribute towards the release of a game right now. But you can have people working on improving systems, ideating things. Oh, your art teams, you don't have specific things for them to draw yet. Just have them try to come up with cool ideas. Like there are things that you can do to try to help people brain reset anyways and just kind of get prepared for a Battlefield seven. And I don't think you have to drop everyone off. I think there are a lot of unnecessary layoffs in the gaming industry. I also think it is way more cutthroat of an industry than people that even think it's a cutthroat industry even realize.

[Luke]

Oh, it's brutal.

[Linus]

It's insane.

[Luke]

Well, it's a passion industry.

[Linus]

Yeah. Like just tough.

[Luke]

Whenever there's an unlimited pipeline of new young recruits who want to get into it, you're. That's what you're competing against. And you don't, you know, necessarily want to see it that way or you might wish it wasn't that way or you know, however it is that you kind of feel about that won't change that. There's a finite number of jobs at these companies and everyone who wants it is a potential candidate for them.

[Linus]

I genuinely think this is why a lot of the quality of Triple A games seems to be kind of going down is because they keep cycling these teams. To be honest. I genuinely think it's a big part of the reason why. Because this was not as common in the, the past as far as I can tell. Obviously I don't work in this industry

[Luke]

but in the past didn't have these like mega, mega, mega Concord sized projects.

[Linus]

That's true. Mega projects back in the day were way smaller. But you see like one of the things I've talked about in the, in the like floating exclusive gaming industry videos that I've made for Luke Weeks is that a lot of the really sick games that are coming out are teams that are splintering off from these companies but staying together.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

Like edition 33, perfect example and Arc Raiders.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

One of the biggest FPS games right

[Luke]

now is a split off from casually pretty successful game.

[Linus]

Yeah. And it's these companies that are, that are these groups of people that are kind of probably seeing the writing on the wall of all these layoffs and going well, we can split off and do our own thing and stick together. And like, the Arc Raiders guys, they released the finals, didn't do a big layoff, and then released Arc Raiders. And the finals did pretty darn good. And then Arc Raiders smashed. And it's. Yeah, I think the. Like, the. What would you call it? Thesis statement, I guess, of those two videos that I did combined together is that we've seen this exchange in the past. We saw it with Atari as Atari was kind of going under. Splinter teams from Atari formed Activision. And now it's kind of Activision's time where that age of company is getting to the point where people are splintering off and forming their own things and it's going well. And it's. It kind of sucks because of, you know, the IPs that we grew up with are now in the hands of companies that are. That are floundering in a lot of ways, which is unfortunate. But this is the time of the expedition 33 threes, the Baldur's Gates, the Arc Raiders, the. All these other team. All these other games that are coming from. Not the super big names they might be now, but before they released, those games that I just named were not super big names. If I talked about Larian before Baldur's Gate 3 came out.

[Luke]

No, no, you're talking about.

[Linus]

Nobody knows.

[Luke]

So here's a question. Is it inevitable, the fact that the cycle has repeated so many times? Is it just. Is it the nature of larger companies to become bloated and become bureaucratic and for quality to take a hit and for people to ultimately become human resources and for them to eventually split off? Like, is it just. Is it the nature of the beast?

[Linus]

I think somewhat. I also do wonder if it has to be, because if I try to look around for cases where that doesn't seem to have necessarily happened, they're always

[Luke]

weird outliers and not North American.

[Linus]

I mean, Valve, again, Valve doesn't count. Sorry. When's the last portal that released Alex,

[Luke]

I think, was the last game from Valve.

[Linus]

Well, they have that new Deadlock thing.

[Luke]

Oh, that's right. Deadlock. Sorry, I forgot about Deadlock. Yeah, yeah. There's some people here on. On the team who are like, super into Deadlock. I think Reese is like, hardcore into Deadlock.

[Linus]

Yeah, I've got a buddy that plays all the time.

[Luke]

There you go.

[Linus]

But no, I think it comes back to one of your other examples, which is Nintendo.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

But they're also not doing this layoff wave thing. They're. They're almost Unfair in a Valve way. I don't think they're quite as unfair as Valve is, but they are almost unfair in a Valve way where people will just buy Nintendo stuff. They have like basically guaranteed money.

[Luke]

Speaking of just buying stuff, the Nvidia RTX Spark. So those laptops and the desktops. Yeah, the cpu. Remember I was all excited about the cpu. So somehow in all of the news about this thing, I missed that. Even though Nvidia is using the exact same nomenclature, like the exact same code names for their CPUs, the ones in the data center product are not the same cores at all. Somehow I missed this. RTX Spark is based on Cortex X925s, which are like used in some high end smartphones. Which isn't to say they're bad. There's very fast cores in smartphones, they're

[Linus]

just not what you thought.

[Luke]

But they are not the same Neoverse cores like in the server processors. And I missed that. Also their smt, so their hyper threading is not expected to be on the same level as intel or amd. So our discussion question is, does this dramatically change what you think of the SOC and what it could be capable of? Actually, it encourages me more than discourages me. If that's, if that doesn't sound totally crazy. Because it's still going to have 10 x 925 cores, which are very fast cores. And I was mostly worried about the power efficiency of RTX 5.

[Linus]

Oh, so this addresses that.

[Luke]

So this addresses that in a very big way because I just could not find a way to marry what I knew.

[Linus]

So far you're thinking about it in laptop format mostly. Probably.

[Luke]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that interested in it as a compact desktop. I'm more interested in it as a laptop. Right now. Right now. Although that may change. So remains to be seen how RTX Spark turns out. What I can say, I can't say much right now, but what I can say is that the buzz seems to be pretty good.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

Like the behind the scenes sort of manufacturer buzz. It seems like, it seems like they think they're going to sell a lot of these things, which they usually know a lot more than we do at this stage in the game. Like that's, that's one of my hacky questions, you know, because no one's going to tell you like, like a Gigabyte or Asus or MSI or whatever some tier one manufacturer is not going to tell you in the lead up to a new Radeon launch or GeForce launch. You know how many FPS it's going to get in cyberpunk? Like that's not going to happen. Nobody breaks an NDA that overtly. But what you might be able to ask is like how excited is the sales team? You know?

[Linus]

Right. Yeah.

[Luke]

How. How many SKUs are you anticipating having of each of each stratum? Is that the. Is that the. The singular of. I don't know, strata, whatever. At each, at each layer?

[Linus]

I think stratum is correct, but I'm not sure.

[Luke]

Whatever. Yeah. Each, each. Each GPU model. How many SKUs are you going to have? Because if the plan is one or two, that basically tells you it's a giant boatload of crap that wasn't worth devving multiple boards and coolers because there's. That's an investment that they have to make. Unless they're going to move volume of this thing, it's not going to be worth it. So there's certain questions you can kind of poke and prod at. And what I'm gathering for RTX Spark so far looks like people are bullish, but I don't know if they're just bullish because of all the AI messaging and the fact that everyone is super hard on AMD right now. AMD on AI right now. So remains to be seen.

[Linus]

It might just be the latter, but yeah, we'll see. You want to get in my opinion, sad for a second, but that might even be contradictory. Controversial.

[Luke]

Nope. I want happy.

[Linus]

Okay. Let me dig for it. Those two both suck.

[Luke]

We talk about Valve?

[Linus]

Sure. Let's talk about.

[Luke]

We could talk about the Steam frame. You want to talk about the Steam frame?

[Linus]

Yeah, let's talk about the Steam frame.

[Luke]

People love it when we talk about the Steam frame.

[Linus]

You gotta go like that real quick. Give yourself little red marks. Yeah, there you go.

[Luke]

Hold on, hold on. Let me get ready. Okay, just gotta. Okay, take it. Ah, it didn't really work. All right. Valve has quietly published Lepton and FEX on Steam, the two pieces of software that make the ARM based Steam frame headset possible. They're not games or anything that you would browse to on purpose. Lepton's store link literally bounces you back to the Steam front page because it's a background component. Lepton is what lets Android games run on Linux and then Fex translates regular x86 PC games so they can run on ARM chips. If you add Proton on top of that for Windows games, you've got the frame's whole compatibility story there. The launch signs, the other launch signs are also stacking up. The frame got FCC certification on July 29th. Valve has been assigning great on frame ratings to games, and a Steam Frame compatibility list showed up as its own Steam app. The headset runs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on SteamOS, and it was delayed earlier this year over the memory shortage. Valve still hasn't given a date beyond sometime this year, but releasing these publicly instead of hiding them in the headset's firmware means that developers and tinkerers can start testing ARM compatibility right now, which is the same open approach that made Proton the backbone of the Steam Deck and made it so successful. So I'm still able to talk about this because I still don't know anything, but the signs are piling up to suggest that soon I will know more than I will be able to say. And I'm I am. I am very excited for the Steam

[Linus]

frame using cover up makeup to cover up the the red marks on his face. You notice he didn't rub them, he just pressed in which wouldn't really remove remove the makeup.

[Luke]

Oh lordy.

[Linus]

The his. His. He might have needed help from Yvonne to do that. Oh dang.

[Luke]

Needed help.

[Linus]

Ah yeah, he might have needed help from Yvonne to do all the COVID up makeup, but she's not here right now. Her being away is actually just a cover up because you guys might have might have figured that out. So she's actually, she's still here. She didn't go on that trip 100%. Yeah.

[Luke]

Thank you for that Luke. Some good conspiracy theorying. Dan wants us to do the other sponsors. Man, you still have a lot of topics though. Good lord.

[Dan]

Fine.

[Luke]

Dan, I don't even understand what we've talked about so far. The show is brought to you by Odoo. If your business is growing in size, you may find yourself constantly having new needs. So you end up subscribing to a dozen different services and it can start to feel like a too many quick situation. Odoo is business management software that keeps all the important aspects of running a company in one place. They can help with things like project management with their CRM app, which lets you see where a job is in the pipeline or use it for things like scheduling calls and meetings. Their invoicing app takes some of the headache out of the financial side of your business, thanks to automated creating and sending of invoices and following up with clients regarding due dates. And they even have a tool for inventory replenishment. Simply set your min max rules and Odoo will propose and trigger purchase orders based on your guidelines. It has a customizable interface so you can keep everything in an easy to find spot and if you only need one app, Odoo will give you access to that one app for free. Use our link for a free 15 day trial with no credit card required or book a demo with one of their expert specialists to learn how Odoo can help your business. The show is also brought to you by Expert xsplit if you've ever wanted to get into streaming or recording game footage for personal projects but you didn't know where to start, why not check out XSplit? They offer a bunch of streaming and video production tools that are easy enough to use even without much experience, plus they're set up to work right away with platforms like YouTube or Twitch. It is simple to create something personal and custom to go with your stream or presentation thanks to different templates and layouts as well as transitions to keep your audience and friends engaged. It has a drag and drop interface allowing you to make small tweaks to the size of your gameplay or camera, and their premium tools include things like watermark removal, multi platform streaming and better resolutions. It's a great place to learn the basics of video editing as well with the built in editing and audio mixing tools. So go to LMG GG XSplit Wan. We're gonna have that linked right here and down below or use our link in the Description to get 30% off your first purchase or subscription with code WANSHOW30 all right, you want to pick one? Luke?

[Linus]

Sure. Oh man, oh man, oh man. Yeah, this one Google Assistant is shutting down on Android and wear OS in September. Google emailed users this week confirming that Google Assistant is being discontinued on mobile with removal starting September 1st. Forth once it's gone from your device, there's no switching back and Gemini becomes the only Assistant option. The shutdown covers Android phones, tablets wear os, watches, headphones and Android Auto when it's projected from your phone cars with Google built in, keep Assistant for now and Home Google Home speakers and Google TV aren't part of the timeline yet. The transition was originally supposed to happen by the end of 2025, but it got pushed back because Gemini wasn't ready yet. It handled questions and conversations fine, but struggled with the basic stuff Assistant nailed like device controls and simple commands. Assistant launched back in May of 2016, so this closes out a 10 year run, which is pretty good for Google so far.

[Luke]

The community response seems to be universally terrible.

[Linus]

Good, because I hate this. I was wondering what other People's take on this is going to be.

[Luke]

Carpentractor says, I think we may have witnessed one of the worst consumer facing product transitions of all time. Still, says Annie, I feel Google Assistant is superior in many things. It is just a few days back I was trying to play a particular song and it couldn't.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Peter says Gemini was and continues to be a bad joke. Like, I actually cannot find anyone who wants to use gemini under the 9to5Google article.

[Linus]

When I try to use Google Assistant on my phone and Gemini comes up, I get so pissed off because it never does it right.

[Luke]

It's slower.

[Linus]

It's way slower. It can't even do simple crap like set alarms. I asked it to set an alarm. It set a timer.

[Luke]

Oh. I've actually had pretty okay success with it for alarms.

[Linus]

Usually it does the alarm okay. I've had it set timers though, which is never correct.

[Luke]

I have had it do that. And somehow I think I've talked to you about this before, but somehow they still haven't resolved the natural interaction problem.

[Linus]

I was off camera. No one got to see that. So close. It was a very nice catch as well. His laptop almost biffed off the table. He caught it with his forearm, was able to recover. It was good.

[Luke]

Okay, here it is. Here it is. Okay. So I'm hanging out with my sister on the weekend. So I set. I actually set three different alarms for one of the days this weekend to make sure that I get up early because I got to go meet her, because we're gonna go somewhere and then we're gonna go get lunch together. Okay. So I back to back to back. I did this the exact same way I talked to Gemini all three times. The exact same way. One of my alarms says, go see my sister's name. The other one says, go see my sister's name. The last one says to go see my sister's name. This has driven me crazy for years. And it's one of my, like, litmus tests for when they figured out natural language interaction. Because the way that I said it was set an alarm for this time on this day to go see my sister. Why did one of them include the two? Yeah, obviously that's not how I wanted it to be. Obviously.

[Linus]

It's also like, I. So I am cheesed that literally the two things that I ever ask it to do, it is worse at in both cases.

[Luke]

And slow.

[Linus]

The biggest probably problem is that it's so, so, so slow.

[Luke]

How is it that we aren't just moving to like, I Thought the whole point of having all these NPUs on our devices was that when we just want to do something simple like set a fucking alarm, change happen immediately.

[Linus]

It's the only two things I ever ask it is to change the song or set an alarm. That's all I ever want.

[Dan]

I'm hearing that it doesn't do automations well. Like I've got my morning alarm that runs a whole bunch of Google Automations and I always say like I'm getting into bed and then it does a whole bunch of stuff and I'm not entirely sure it'll still do that.

[Luke]

Look how sad he looks.

[Dan]

I'm gonna get an iPhone. He's adorable when he's actually, I'm going to the forest, I'm just gonna run away.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Dan]

Because I can't make my lights with my phone.

[Linus]

Yeah, I guess you can't. I'm might as well. If you can't do that, you might as well just live in the forest.

[Dan]

Walk to the ocean.

[Luke]

Unique username says @linus. Google demoed this @IO years ago. Which means it will never happen. No, come on, it can't be that complicated. It can, but it's. I. I feel like if it was made a priority to have quick on device processing of the most basic. Because you gotta imagine, Luke, that like the vast majority of Google Assistant interactions are tell me about some, Tell me about the weather or some basic thing my kid asked me about. Black bears. I don't know anything about them. Tell me about black bears. So just that setting alarms, you know.

[Linus]

Yeah, that's an interesting thing. Assistant should just offload to Gemini when it makes sense in the same way that Assistant used to offload to Google search when it made sense.

[Luke]

That's the way Siri works.

[Dan]

How about just something like, I don't know what you mean. Do you want me to try Gemini for you? Sure, yeah. Just ask and I can say yes and then it turns into Gemini.

[Linus]

I would have been happy about that.

[Dan]

I would enable that yesterday.

[Linus]

Yeah, me too. Why not?

[Luke]

In other AI news, I can just say no. Reddit is introducing a new moderator AI. Reddit announced Rules Hub on August 5, an AI powered moderation suite that uses LLMs to judge whether posts and comments violate the intent of a subreddit's rules, rather than just matching keywords like the 13 year old automod does. Reddit's pitch here is that an LLM can tell the difference between an insult and a movie quote, and mods choose which rules will get auto enforced and what happens when they're triggered? They can flag it for review, filter or remove it outright. There's a sandbox to test rules against old posts, plus logs showing why the AI acted. It's been tested in over 700 communities, opens to all new subreddits now, and rolls out to everyone later this year. Reddit has said Rules Hub and its newer systems can eventually. Okay, see, this is the funny part. This is. It's always funny with AI, right? Because that actually sounds pretty good. Okay, here comes the other shoe. Reddit has said Rules Hub and its newer systems can eventually replace many of the enforcement workflows that Automod handles. And that's what has veteran mods pushing back, since many have spent years building elaborate automod setups that they don't want swapped out from under them. Reddit also says better abuse prevention could let communities rely less on karma and account age gates, making it easier for genuine new users to actually post. Yeah, but also I'd be very suspect of new users, quite frankly. And the better the LLMs get, especially local, like cheap to run ones, the more suspicious I would be of brand new users. And actually the more I would rely on account age in karma. Buried in the same announcement, Old Reddit is now restricted to logged in users, which Reddit frames as an anti scraping protection.

[Linus]

Cool.

[Luke]

Yeah, initially it sounded kind of neat though.

[Linus]

Well, because I. The vibe that I got from the

[Luke]

initial logging and everything and the sandbox,

[Linus]

I thought it could run alongside or be an option. Yeah, if I can choose between this or auto mod. As someone who's running a subreddit, I feel like that's fine.

[Luke]

That'd be cool.

[Linus]

Yeah, maybe I run both, but I run the. This new thing, whatever they're calling it, Rules Hub. Maybe I run that in a way that it doesn't actually take any action so I can see how it acts. And I do that while I'm running auto mod. And if I like it, I run it. If I don't like it, I don't run it. And it is fine. Yeah, I don't know, maybe don't just keep ripping out all these things that definitely work and putting in stuff that probably doesn't.

[Luke]

Hey, but here's something speaking of not putting in stuff that maybe doesn't work. Texas has paused new data center grid connections and ordered audits as AI driven power demand surges. Texas is dealing with a huge wave of new AI data centers and the demand for electricity is skyrocketing. Regulators are looking at hundreds of gigawatts of proposed power needs mostly from these data centers, which is way more than the grid currently handles at its busiest times.

[Linus]

It's fine. Texas's grid is like rock solid. Never has any problems.

[Luke]

It apparently has been a little bit better lately, thanks to the boogeyman known as renewable energy. But hey, don't talk about that. This is way more than the grid currently handles at its busiest times, raising concerns about power reliability, water use and the impact on local communities. Our discussion question here. Oh man, I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole. Hold on. Another one. Oh, interesting. Okay, I like this one. If an AI company offered you a lifetime supply of free AI in exchange for building a data center right next to your house, would you be willing to accept that deal?

[Linus]

No.

[Luke]

What would you ask? What more would you ask?

[Linus]

To leave.

[Luke]

So just straight up Nimby, okay.

[Linus]

No. 1 of the problems is that I want to make that decision for everyone else that lives near.

[Luke]

Let's say it's just you. Let's say this is a rural area. For whatever reason, you can't move. This is your family's homestead. Has been since the dawn of time. Whatever, whatever, Whatever. Your house is here. The data center is going to go right there. Just you. I'm still saying no, but reason. Yeah, no, no, I want to, I want to hear that. I want to have a conversation though.

[Dan]

I.

[Linus]

My reason, My reason is because that would make general day to day life a lot worse and I don't want to use theirs anyways.

[Luke]

What if it was the best one? What if. What if it was? Okay, yeah, there's. Yeah, I'm not going to win this one. I'm just, I'm trying to come up with a hypothetical situation.

[Linus]

No, it's totally fair. It's just where you'd consider it. I am still going to want to run local. I find running local stuff to be very interesting. Very engaging. Lots of opportunity there.

[Luke]

Oh, how's your build going?

[Linus]

I have CPU GPU and I'm. Oh, I have CPU motherboard. Gpu. I'm working on ram.

[Luke]

Oh, that's tough.

[Linus]

Yep. And I'm working on the GPU thing. Do we want to talk about that?

[Luke]

Knowing you, let's, let's start with CPU motherboard. Because knowing you, you got a deal.

[Linus]

Yeah, I got a pretty wicked deal.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

It took me over three months of shopping.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

Because, you know, prices have been going up and stuff, but I have.

[Luke]

And waiting doesn't seem like the play when prices are going like this.

[Linus]

But, but I was Trying to basically figure out if there even is a used market for like Threadripper pros in Canada at all. And it just seems like no.

[Luke]

Got it.

[Linus]

Is the answer. Unfortunately you can get them from the States, you can get them from China a little bit in Europe. A lot in China.

[Luke]

China.

[Linus]

There's a medium amount in the States. There's a ton in China.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

China seems to ship them chip in board.

[Luke]

That actually makes a lot of sense.

[Linus]

It totally does.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Because you might be concerned about them

[Luke]

being locked or whatever and also just damage in those sockets.

[Linus]

Some for reference. Yes, completely for reference on why I said locked. Some of the. I don't know exactly what delineates the SKUs. I don't know if it's all threadrippers. I don't know if it's just thread ripper pros, whatever.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

But some of them are actually locked to a vendor of motherboard. Yeah, I know. I don't remember which ones. But some of them released early just with some companies.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And those are locked to those boards

[Luke]

and the fuse actually blows. And it will only work with that one and stuff.

[Linus]

Yeah, it's like actually super bad. So ideally they send it to you. They send it to you. Chip in board known working and then that can help get away from the pin issues and all sorts of good stuff. Anyway, I went for a super reputable seller. There was a crazy price like literally over a grand off of everywhere else. More than that. Even on a 59.95WX.

[Luke]

That's a nice chip.

[Linus]

Yeah. I did some diving into it and decided 64

[Luke]

cor.

[Linus]

Yeah, I did some diving into it. Not only was there pretty much no chance that I was going to use it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

But the additional complications of heat and the channel DDR4. Sorry, I believe. I believe it's. Someone pointed out DDR4. Yeah. I wanted DDR4. I'm going for 5000 series because I wanted DDR4.

[Luke]

That makes sense.

[Linus]

But there's just some complications that came with that chip where I was like, okay, no, this is an insane deal. I could literally flip it and probably make money.

[Luke]

But.

[Linus]

But I don't really want to deal with it.

[Luke]

You don't need all those CPU cores necessarily.

[Linus]

I don't need all the CPU cores. I don't want to deal with the heat. There's a. There's a few other things going on there that I just didn't want to do.

[Luke]

Right. The wife approval factor of this build is going to be a thing.

[Linus]

It matters.

[Luke]

Okay, carry on.

[Linus]

Yep. So I kept watching. And I kept watching that store on ebay.

[Luke]

Oh, okay.

[Linus]

Because of really high reputation.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And they let this 1.59.95 rip. And I also, I technically bought it and then had immediate buyer's remorse and spent the next three hours researching and then was like, no, I don't want it. And I put in a cancel request. And they were immediately like, yep, no problem.

[Luke]

That's cool.

[Linus]

So I was like, okay. They seem kind of cool.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

They have a really good reputation. And they posted one way cheap. I'm just gonna watch. The one that I really want is a 5975. Yeah, they don't have any up. I'm just gonna watch. I'm just gonna sit and watch. Sit and watch.

[Dan]

Right.

[Linus]

And they didn't have any for a super, super long time. And then they posted a 5975WX and a Sage 2 for the same price that I was finding Sage 2's and I was like, oh, okay. I'm pretty sure I bought it in like 40 minutes from posting. And I have it now, and it's all good.

[Luke]

Okay, have you tested it with just some. Some random ram?

[Linus]

No, no. Real load. Yeah, but I've turned it on and it works.

[Luke]

Hatho says, bad advice, but buying a gun is actually cheaper than buying ram.

[Linus]

I see where they're going with that. Technically, if you're getting like high points or something, buying a gun is cheaper than a lot of things.

[Luke]

This is not an endorsement of that strategy.

[Linus]

Yeah, especially that particular thing. It might blow up in your hand. But anyways. Yeah, so I have some parts of it.

[Dan]

Now.

[Linus]

Do you want me to talk about the GPU plan or do I hold that?

[Luke]

Let's hold that.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Because it's going to be a thing.

[Linus]

There's a plan with the gpu.

[Luke]

Yeah, but tbd.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Oh, man.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Luke]

Okay, let's go into talking about the IC shortage. So you know how during COVID it wasn't just GPUs that were in short supply. It was like any integrated circuit in general.

[Linus]

Dude, I remember USB cables being a

[Luke]

problem because the demand for. For. For anything that needed a wafer got so high because all of it was being allocated to very lucrative things. Well, guess what? I had a conversation with the creator warehouse team because. Oh, actually.

[Linus]

Ooh, I haven't seen this version.

[Luke]

Our power bank is. That's a. That's a dev connector. There you go. That's a dev connector. Ignore that. But our power bank is in a very Very close to mostly completed physically and actually very close to completed firmware state. Nate told me that I'm allowed to. That's for simple disassembly and swapping of battery mags.

[Linus]

So it's like one screw kind of deal.

[Luke]

Or better believe it. Other thing, it's very close.

[Linus]

What's. Is this venting?

[Luke]

That is. Oh, here. Can hold that up. That is. That's what we're calling the HAT interface internally for now. We'll come up with branding for it. But it's a. It's a clip on interface that will allow people to mount accessories to the top of it. And we're going to open up the mechanical files for that. So anything that would accept a USB PD could be adapted to live semi permanently on one of these power cells. Which I thought would be like a pretty cool use case because we've implemented some kind of optional aspects of USB PD that are not necessarily, necessarily that common, but could be very helpful for enthusiasts and hobbyists.

[Linus]

I have a question for you.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I see battery banks in basically two general formats. There's like the wide and flat.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

And there's the. Basically that.

[Luke]

Yep.

[Linus]

Why.

[Luke]

Why this one?

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

This one is because we wanted the flexibility type of cells or.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

Yeah. So we wanted the flexibility flexibility to support multiple cell types in the future. And 1-8650 is the one where we're most likely to get future development of cells.

[Linus]

Got it.

[Luke]

And this made the power routing back when we were actually, this decision was made back when we were hoping to allow cells to be replaced. But we were not able to find a battery partner that was willing to sign off on that. At least not at this stage. It made the routing of the power easier. So it's a single board design. Everything's up here. And it's a whole. It's a whole thing.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Okay.

[Linus]

Do you want to talk about some of the hats? I guess this isn't really a product showcase of.

[Luke]

No, what I want to talk about is the fact that this isn't coming out for at least a year.

[Linus]

Oh.

[Luke]

In spite of the fact that you guys can see it. Watch. Okay, watch this. I'm gonna do this. This is how. This is how working it is. I'm gonna plug in an LTT True Spec cable. I'm gonna plug it into my phone.

[Linus]

Boink.

[Luke]

And my phone is now charging. That's how working it is. It will not come out for at least a year because we were just quoted 40 to get the ICs that we need to go to mass production. Holy. That's if we place the order today. Well, okay, so remember how like we had a GPU why price thing during the second great crypto winter. And like cars got more expensive.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

But what it's happening.

[Linus]

So those.

[Luke]

Because we're using a similar enough. I think it's the buck booster that we're using or something. We're using a similar enough process node on that particular chip that. Because every power I see on the face of the bloody f ing earth is being allocated to data center stuff. There's no fab time. So see you in a year.

[Linus]

Damn, bro.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Did you guys put the order in?

[Luke]

I don't know if we've actually placed the order yet because we're still working. Because the worst thing that could happen,

[Linus]

you place that or you change something

[Luke]

about it would be if we knew we were working on say, for example, a gaming mouse and we were to order thousands upon thousands of mouse processors

[Linus]

for people that don't understand. Understand that happened. Yeah, they did.

[Luke]

During the second great crypto winter. If anyone wants to buy some mouse processors. By the way, we actually did a video where we get into the specific ones. It was like the products I couldn't release or products that failed or something like that on ltt and we talk about it. I wasn't joking. If you want to buy those processors, they're brand new in box. I'd be happy to sell them to you. I'll give you a great price. Although maybe I should hold them. Yeah. Because things are gonna get pretty rough. Oh, yeah. Mouse processor. Cat toy. Oh, that's my alarm to. Oh, I can't go super late today. I have to put my chickens away. They get scared when it's dark.

[Dan]

I love this Linus. This is my favorite Linus.

[Linus]

Now we're both bird dads, dude.

[Luke]

I know it's crazy.

[Dan]

I'm so glad. It's just.

[Linus]

Wait till you. You know they hide when they're sick, right? Chickens do that too. Basically every bird does.

[Luke]

Terrible.

[Dan]

And they cuddle you.

[Luke]

Terrible.

[Dan]

They're so cute. Do you. Have you experienced the pecking order yet? Do you have enough for a pecking order?

[Luke]

We definitely have bully ones and less bully one. There's someone who's at the bottom. I can tell you which one the

[Dan]

bottom of the group changes every day.

[Luke]

Normally there's one that's significantly smaller than the rest. So she gets bullied pretty bad.

[Dan]

I had a silky that was like that. But there was like a couple days a year where she Was top bird.

[Luke]

Really?

[Dan]

It was really funny. Yeah, it like changes around if the more you have, the more it shifts around. But.

[Luke]

So one thing we did notice. I loaded up a bunch of like chicken coop building videos before a flight on my phone and I watched a bunch of them and they. There was one in particular that suggested only having one perch in your coop and just having it be wide enough that everyone goes on it so that they're not allowed to like establish dominance by sitting up higher than the other ones. So we made ours removable. Right now we have two. They all sit on the top one together. But if that changes, then we can actually remove one of them and then they'll just have to deal with that. But apparently it causes less fighting if they only have one perch. Charged nuclei says no one wants to be shit on. So you would never put them directly above.

[Linus]

Yeah, you stay.

[Luke]

Because the ergonomics of that would be terrible. How would they get from this one to that one? They're flightless birds. You would put them like this. Anyway, pooping order BMW is question.

[Linus]

How can someone buy. Are you piecing out them? The mouse processors? Do they all have to be bought at once?

[Luke]

Oh, I thought you meant the chickens. Yeah, you could buy just a wing, I guess. We're not eating them.

[Linus]

That'd be so sad. Poor chicken.

[Luke]

Sorry, what was your question? Oh, the processors.

[Linus]

Someone wants to buy two.

[Luke]

No, we're not gonna sell two processors. Are you high?

[Linus]

So do they have to buy the whole thing?

[Luke]

Well, that I don't know, but like, I'd say like at least 100. I don't know what they're worth.

[Linus]

How much is 100?

[Luke]

I don't know.

[Linus]

I'll take the lot. Do I look like a makerspace with a decent electronics lab? How much for the lot and how do I get in touch?

[Luke]

Info @linus media group.com is like our general purpose inbox. Don't waste their time. But if you have a real genuine inquiry, then that would be the. That would be the place to go. But they are legitimately probably a pretty good thing for someone to pick up right now because 44 weeks, baby.

[Linus]

Some genius needs to redesign the power bank controller to use most processors.

[Luke]

Yeah, I'll talk to Nate about it.

[Linus]

Blue Mark said that it's pretty good. Anyways.

[Dan]

All right.

[Luke]

BMW is a trailblazer of ins. Vacation.

[Linus]

They sure are, man.

[Luke]

From July 27 to August 10, BMW owners of select models were shown Spider man banner ads that could be tapped to display a full screen commercial with audio Obviously there has been a huge backlash because one, this is pretty brazenly a pretty crappy thing to do. And two, a BMW executive in 2023, we're not talking 10, 20, 50 years ago when they couldn't have known what the world will be like. Three years ago publicly rejected the idea of selling ads on dashboard displays. BMW responded by saying the ad was intended to celebrate the film which also features BMW vehicles and is a one time promotion. And probably also. Relax, buddy. Come on, guy.

[Linus]

I don't think there's been a topic on wan show about cars in years that has not made me appreciate my car even more. You would think a show that covers like the news and cool stuff in tech and is really trying to lean towards good news. You would talk about vehicles every once in a while that would include like, oh, that's really cool.

[Luke]

Comma AI. Cool open source hardware that can be bolted onto your old car to help with with better lane keep assist.

[Linus]

That just makes me appreciate my car even more really. Because I could just use it on my old car.

[Luke]

No, yours isn't new enough. It's too old. So comma AI. It doesn't necessarily work on the newest stuff because why is that? It requires development.

[Linus]

It needs.

[Luke]

You need to have some lane keep assist already because it's got to have the motors.

[Linus]

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah. My car would not do it.

[Luke]

It has to have the motors and the sensors. So. So I. That was something that I thought was pretty cool.

[Linus]

That gives me a little bit. Not enough to care. But that is. That is fair though.

[Luke]

That's one now. You asked me to come up with one. I was trying to.

[Linus]

When did that launch?

[Luke]

1,000 years ago. They have new hardware though. I want to try it out. But first I'm actually finally doing a hardware for Tesla long term tryout. I'm going to buy a subscription. Colton and I are car swapping for a month.

[Linus]

You're going to buy a subscription to what?

[Luke]

Full self driving? Oh yeah. So Colton has a hardware for Tesla. I think It's a Model 3.

[Linus]

That dude. 11 years ago, by the way.

[Luke]

And then I'm trading with him.

[Linus]

Comma AI was 11 years ago.

[Luke]

It wasn't good for a lot of that. 11 years though.

[Linus]

I think it's good more recently.

[Luke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What bet did you lose? Says Wiley Giraffe. It's not so much a bet that I lost and more that I think

[Linus]

it's a good thing for you to try.

[Luke]

Yeah. In the video on the car I've wanted to try it forever. I just wasn't gonna, like, buy a fucking car to do it.

[Linus]

Yeah, screw that, right?

[Luke]

Like, so I'm. So. I'm actually genuinely pretty excited to try it because.

[Linus]

So, wait, what car? I might have missed this. What. What car is Colton gonna drive my car? Your Porsche?

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

I don't know. He's a good driver.

[Dan]

Any.

[Linus]

Nah, it's probably.

[Luke]

I don't know.

[Linus]

I don't know if I've ever.

[Luke]

He asked me if it'll fit car seats in it. I was like, yeah, yeah, no problem.

[Linus]

Sweet.

[Luke]

Yeah, it should be fine.

[Linus]

That's pretty cool.

[Luke]

Yeah, he told me he's, like, scared to drive it. I'm like, what are you scared of? It's just this pedal make it go forward. This pedal make it not go forward so fast. It should be fine. Not that worried about it. Because I think we just have to do something with our insurance just to make sure that, like, we're covered and everything.

[Linus]

You just add the person as a driver.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Yeah, it should be fine.

[Linus]

Should be fine.

[Luke]

Anyway, our discussion questions. Is this a bridge too far? The.

[Dan]

The.

[Luke]

The.

[Dan]

The.

[Luke]

The.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Dash.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

Yeah, but it's like, you know, the 28th bridge in a row. That is too far.

[Luke]

Virtual Sedai says you'll buy a fire truck, but not a cybertruck. Seems sus. Okay. My fire truck cost way less than a Cybertruck, though. And we made money on it.

[Linus]

Less glue, too.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

Fewer panels glued on.

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Luke]

Oh, this is cool. How do we skip this when we were looking for cool stuff to talk about? The Steam Deck OLED gains HDR streaming and experimental AV1 support. Dude, Valve is still making the Steam Deck better all this time later.

[Linus]

Very cool.

[Luke]

The latest beta client, released July 29. Add HDR streaming to remote play on the Steam Deck OLED so games streamed from your PC can finally use the display's full dynamic range instead of being stuck in sdr. The update also improves video color range across the board, which should fix some of the washed out look that people have complained about. LCD deck owners are out of luck on the HDR side though, since the screen doesn't support it. But that's. That's a hardware thing. You can't blame valve for that. AV1 streaming is in there too, but it's experimental on two levels. Levels it requires the beta client plus the experimental Steam RT3 build on top. AV1 delivers the same or better image quality than HeVC and H264 at lower bandwidth, which is exactly what you want for streaming over WI Fi. Users have been asking Valve for AV1 in remote play since at least 2022. Our discussion question here is, is streaming from your own PC finally good enough to skip buying a more powerful handheld? And this is a question that I would have reflexively said no. And also, you're stupid at some point in the past. But I think you probably remember this. My time with the Logitech G cloud changed my perspective. It doesn't happen that often. I'm pretty experienced reviewing tech. I usually have a pretty good idea of what I'm gonna really like, what I'm gonna not like, and what I'm gonna be pretty tepid on. But that was one where I got it completely, completely wrong. And it was a way better experience to use than I expected. It ended up being a commercial failure, which is sort of a bummer, it looks like. Well, I don't know that for sure, but I know that Logitech just said they're not going to make another one, so make of that what you will. But it really validated the idea of a lightweight, super long battery life handheld that is mega focused on streaming in a way that I didn't think was going to happen. It made me way more open to the PS Portal, which has been a success. But as for a Steam Deck OLED with the intention of predominantly using it for remote play, that's a bulkier, that's a heavier device. Although the battery life will be really good if you're just streaming. It's going to be very personal. If you mostly game around the house, which actually is most of what I do.

[Linus]

It's also personal. Probably most of what most Steam Deck users.

[Luke]

The Steam Deck OLED is still pretty compelling, although not nearly as much as it used to be. What's the price right now and are there even any in stock? How bad is it? Yeah, yeah, 1129 Canadian. Also here we're gonna do the 512 because I'm streaming, right? Oh, okay. They're in stock. Okay. So. Oh man. That price though, remember when they were like somewhat attainable? Like half of that I remember not for the oled, because remember this is Canadian.

[Linus]

I didn't notice you looked oled.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

You want to talk about some.

[Luke]

Wait, there was one more discussion question. Does HDR actually matter on a seven inch screen? Yes, yes, definitely. HDR looks fantastic even on a small screen. It's not like, like resolution where just. Yeah, you don't know how. Yeah, I just, I don't know.

[Linus]

Question Fair enough question. But okay. So the thing that I did. Yeah. BIOS upgrading. Your Legion BIOS upgrading. I'm just so pissed, I can't even talk. BIOS upgrade Bricking Legion Go handhelds. Lenovo quoting over $250 to fix it outside of warranty.

[Luke]

Oh, this was the one that I meant to discuss the Ecobee one on. It's in there. All right. Great job. Blanch overdoc prep team. You guys did put it where it was supposed to be. That's. That's my bad. Okay. Carry on.

[Linus]

Owners of Lenovo Legion Go handhelds are reporting a recent BIOS update is bricking their handhelds. The BIOS update in question is version something for the Legion Go 8 APU1. It's the original Legion Go Go Z1 models running Ryzen 1Z extreme.

[Luke]

You doing okay? Ryzen Z1 extreme APUs.

[Linus]

There we go.

[Luke]

The reading is very challenging.

[Linus]

Yeah. This BIOS update is not automatic. Most aren't.

[Luke]

Some are, actually. A lot of pre builts these days.

[Linus]

A lot of pre builts do.

[Luke]

Yep. Yeah. A lot of laptops will just, like, apply it through their, like, control.

[Linus]

Lenovo thing does.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

It's applied manually via an EXE install file downloaded from Lenovo's technical support site. A Redditor claims that when they tried to reach out to Lenovo directly, the company allegedly quoted them a little over.

[Dan]

What?

[Linus]

Quoted them a little over. Quoted them a little over. Woof. 237 pounds. About 200 Euros. About 237 US dollars 73 cents. Holy crap. To repair their Lenovo Legion Go. I almost said region.

[Luke]

You did say region.

[Linus]

Hell yeah, I fixed it. The Redditor's device in question is out of warranty. Lenovo is otherwise still repairing or replacing handhelds free of charge.

[Luke]

Thank God you didn't also say renovo.

[Linus]

Another Redditor wrote, had the same issue. Just paid around €120 to reactivate. To reactivate the warranty. I want them to repair it. Not at my cost. This is insane. Yeah. Anyways, there's just more cases of this happening over and over again. Since the story broke on August 4, 2026, Lenovo has completely removed any trace of the problematic update from their technical support page.

[Luke]

I should hope so. One Redditor did manage to recover their bricked Legion Go by soldering directly to the SPI flash chip reading and then writing a 1.8 volt BIOS ROM and modifying the image while preserving DMI data. That's based Pitstop Computers also reported on attempts to find A fix. They too went the route of external BIOS programming to recover the device. That really shouldn't be required. And you know, the funny thing about it is that Gigabyte's been doing this for many, many years with their dual BIOS concept. It actually doesn't cost that much to throw a second BIOS chip on there that you can recover from in the event that a BIOS update does go wrong. It just costs a little bit. And like so many things, at a scale of selling a million units, saving a dollar is a million dollars,

[Linus]

it's pretty good.

[Luke]

And that's the way. That's the way the wind blows.

[Linus]

It's probably even cheaper than a dollar. But that's the math. Still, math is pretty hard. That's nuts. If your software update bricks my device, I don't think I care if I'm in warranty or not. That's gonna piss me off.

[Luke]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is when I had wanted to have that conversation about like, what is a warranty? Yeah, you know, at a certain. At a certain point does it. But then it is through some action of my own. And almost every BIOS update file includes like a doing this may brick your device. But that disclaimer really.

[Linus]

Hey, we got a mouse again.

[Luke]

What?

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Luke]

Like a. Like, like. Like. Like a rodent.

[Linus]

I don't see him. I saw something just. And there was one time we had two of them on set.

[Luke]

Hey, I want them. I want them for cat tv. Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

No, you want them for the chickens.

[Luke]

No, I don't want them for the chickens.

[Linus]

What the.

[Luke]

What the devil would a chicken do with a mouse?

[Dan]

Horrible thing.

[Linus]

Yeah, horrible things.

[Luke]

What?

[Dan]

Really?

[Linus]

They'll peck it.

[Luke]

Oh, really?

[Linus]

Yeah, probably.

[Luke]

Oh, gross.

[Linus]

They don't want little invaders.

[Luke]

Okay, this is only sort of tech, but I just wanted to talk about it because I know Luke and I are both pretty passionate about gambling. Several senators have contacted the cftc, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, asking about the agency's goals or plans to take on prediction markets specifically around the contracts for individuals to bet on wildfires. Yeah, I knew this was going to make your brain break. Some of these contracts currently include areas wildfires will spread, total size of wildfires, new wildfire locations, and more. Prediction markets, if you're not familiar, work not by betting. And for those of you who are listening, not watching, I'm doing the gigantic finger quotes that you ever did see and making a really stupid face. Not by betting, but rather by having dynamic odds that can adjust to certain criteria. For example, will LA Lakers Win the NBA championships. The chance of it being a yes could change based on how well they are playing that season. Ah, yes, totally not betting. These have had multiple side effects. Like one story of somebody betting on the temperature of an airport sensor, then driving over there to hold a heat gun or it was like a hairdryer or something next to it. And then there was another example of Donald Trump's teleprompter operator betting on what he was going to say during a speech.

[Linus]

Oh, wow. Yeah, I know. There was somebody who took like listening devices of some kind, I don't know what exactly, to stadiums where the World cup was being played to figure out the like halftime show performances. Because they would show up during rehearsal times. I don't remember they, they said how they figured out when rehearsals were and they would bet on like the order that things would happen, but they would know from the rehearsal. There's some surprisingly clever stuff.

[Luke]

So these senators and many others have started to express concerns, particularly around wildfires. Because if someone wanted to make a prediction on a wildfire and then have it match, pun intended, a real wildfire, they could just go start fires, which, you know, I don't know if you guys have seen the air quality in general this year in like North America,

[Linus]

maybe a lot of people were predicting on northern Canada.

[Luke]

Yeah, it'd be, it'd be great if there was no financial incentive whatsoever for anyone to be doing anything to do with wildfires other than do their very best to prevent them. Our discussion question here. With gambling ingrained in our society, can you explain in further detail why LMG has decided against using them for sponsorships years ago? I don't think we've ever taken a gambling sponsorship. Did you and I talk about it at the time?

[Dan]

I don't remember.

[Linus]

We probably did on wan. We talk about a lot of things on wan, but I don't think, I don't think we've ever taken a gambling sponsor.

[Luke]

I don't know. I just think. I think it's pretty shit, pretty much. I don't really have too much to say about it other than this alignment

[Linus]

that you could see shifting. Like we've seen, we've seen the very dramatic change in just the last 10 years. It's the last two years, honestly, probably that's like.

[Luke]

It seems to be accelerating.

[Linus]

So let's say if it keeps going

[Luke]

this path and it's just the mainstreamist

[Linus]

thing in 10, 20 years and I'm just genuinely. No one cares other than okay, Grandpa?

[Luke]

No, I don't, I don't think so because I think you could make a really similar argument around like cannaboids because that's, that's a generation earlier. Ooh, taboo. No big deal. Like I think our generation in general, I don't consume but I don't judge people who do. I don't really give a shit. If you know, you think it's cool or whatever, that's fine. And so my, my stance on it is because it basically just comes down to that. I don't want our sponsorships to be guided by what is legal. I want our sponsorships and our involvement in industries through our content to be guided by what is not harmful for our viewers.

[Linus]

Yeah, I personally think gambling is like genuinely a form of financial self harm and I don't know. I, we, we both know that the like one person in at least my life that gambles actively that I think does it in a healthy way. Yeah, one person.

[Luke]

Cannabinoids. Apparently I pronounced it wrong. I really don't give a about not important.

[Linus]

There's one person I know of and have ever known of and have ever heard of that deals with it in like a healthy way that I think is genuinely fine and it's one. And they're an extreme outlier of a

[Luke]

person in so many ways. Love that guy.

[Linus]

So like it's. This is not normal. I, I've told this story a bunch of times on wan but I used to work at the bread factory and dudes at the bread factory would regularly get their paycheck, go to the casino, miss out on rent and not have a place to stay for the next month. This was like a normal thing that would happen all the time.

[Luke]

I've got some folks kind of mad at me, including crystal. Cannabis isn't harmful. It's like yeah, you can like actually scan people's brains. It definitely changes your brain. As for, you know, whether you consider that to be harmful or not, we, there could be some subjectivity there. But in terms of like does it have a very measurable impact on the human body? It's like yes, once again, like our junk food conversation last week. It's not really like debatable.

[Linus]

There's also like I have, I have a person that's quite close to me that had cancer six times.

[Luke]

There's people for whom the benefits can outweigh the harm.

[Linus]

So yeah, in this case it's not even close. Like any medicine, sleep properly without pain or for more than. I think it was like two hours at a time for years and then they tried it and they were able to actually sleep, which was like an obvious massive benefit.

[Luke]

Yeah. So, you know. Yeah, it's just, it's one of those things where, with that said, I mean, there are areas where I've been a little grayer, personally. I think energy drinks are terrible. I think they're poison. We've worked with Red Bull. That's something that is so mainstream. Caffeine, it's something that I choose not to consume.

[Linus]

It's like with every conversation we seem to have on WAN show where you pick your own line for them. Their line on cannabinoids, hopefully I said it right. Is more on the okay and yours is not. And for someone else I know there's the, the drink water movement, which is not okay with, which we're both doing, but is not okay with the energy drinks thing. And you're like, yeah, whatever. I don't know. You don't like gambling. Everyone's gonna have their mix of what's okay and what isn't.

[Luke]

The one with Red Bull. The thing with Red Bull for me is actually how much the team loves it. Red Bull regularly sends us like a pallet of drinks.

[Linus]

Oh, they're gone immediately.

[Luke]

No, dude, no. Over at labs, there's regularly like half pallets of Red Bull sitting there. They put them in the fridges and stuff.

[Linus]

No, no, What I'm saying is people consume them.

[Luke]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus]

Like I'm agreeing with you.

[Luke]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they'll restock. They'll chug them and they'll restock us.

[Linus]

Red Bull restocks it often.

[Luke]

And it is, it is, it is a meaningfully contributing to the happiness of the team thing that happens. And I can sit and I can be appreciative of that. Red Bull, Red Bull does that. In spite of me multiple times publicly saying that I don't consume energy drinks. I wouldn't consume energy drinks. I don't think they're good for us. I, I, I, I personal. It's my personal choice that I believe they are poison and they do it anyway. And I'm just like, you know what? I gotta kinda respect that. The fact that they're just like. Yeah, that's your opinion.

[Linus]

We've talked about the same thing with other companies before where we should be able to be critical about a product and you should still work with us.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And so the fact that they can deal with that and they will just still send us all the Red Bull that our staff can drink and they'll even work with us to do. And again, like, it comes down to what we're doing. Like when we did those builds for Alphonso Davies and disguised toast, right? Red Bull didn't ask me to drink the drink. They didn't ask me to talk about how much I love Red Bull. So huggy muggy much? They just, they kept the drink out of it. And I was like, okay, you know what? I can do this. I can build a PC for some cool people that you also sponsor. And that's. I'm willing to do it.

[Linus]

I don't know what it is. Detest the taste of beer. For whatever reason, I really like the taste of energy drinks. Almost so many people think they taste like junk. I. I love them. I really like Red Bull. I really like a variety of other ones.

[Luke]

Can't do it. It overpowers any other flavor in a drink. For me.

[Linus]

I didn't even know there are artificial sweeteners.

[Luke]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Which one do they use?

[Linus]

I have no idea. What about wine? Hate it, hate it, hate it so much.

[Luke]

It's fermented. I've. I've never been able to really get over that. Although I will sit and I will eat a jar of pickles this big in one sitting. I can't.

[Linus]

I don't know if that's it. I love kimchi. I love pickles. I. I'm pretty sure sauerkraut is fermented. I really like that. I don't know if that's true.

[Luke]

Apparently original Red Bull uses real sugars. It's the sugar free and zero calorie ones that use sucralose and acetisulfamine. Acetisulfame, potassium.

[Linus]

But yeah, I don't drink them too often because, I mean, I'm trying to lose weight right now. I'm focusing on, I'm on, I'm on the water game. But if there's like, I would rather have a Red Bull than like most pops. Not all give me good Orange Crush or any Harito.

[Dan]

You guys don't. You guys don't Red Bull. But I'm always surprised that people are like, oh, I don't like the taste of this. Or it's got the sugar. Like, it's not a. It's an energy drink. You're drinking it for the drugs that are in.

[Linus]

Oh, it doesn't do anything for me.

[Dan]

I call them, I call them drug water because, like, that's what it is. And you know, it's not a. You're consuming it as a. I mean,

[Linus]

coffee's just hot drug water.

[Dan]

Coffee Is also drug water. You know,

[Luke]

some people seem to really like the flavor. I can't say that I quite understand.

[Linus]

I like it. I'm not like obsessed with or anything like it.

[Luke]

I try to fancy. I try to fancy espresso when I was at Robert AMD Upgrade and yeah, I basically what I think what I said ended up being like one like a highly quotable moment in the comments when I was like, I'm so glad you like it.

[Linus]

Yeah, I like. I like cold drug water and I don't like hot drug.

[Luke]

The funny thing about that one is I love coffee flavored ice cream.

[Linus]

Oh, interesting.

[Luke]

I know.

[Linus]

What the heck?

[Dan]

Do you drink coffee with a bunch of milk?

[Luke]

Yeah, well, I don't drink coffee at all.

[Linus]

Do you just need sweeteners in your coffee?

[Luke]

Yeah, maybe I would because kind of

[Dan]

what I explained to Luke ages ago is that most people drink milk that has coffee in it.

[Luke]

I see.

[Dan]

Espresso is pretty damn hardcore. That's like most people don't drink espresso. They can't handle that. You're not alone in that.

[Luke]

Got it.

[Dan]

Yeah, but it tastes like taste nice.

[Luke]

Okay, we should probably move to after dark. I do have to put my chickens away pretty relatively soonish.

[Dan]

It's actually a concern.

[Linus]

Go home to tend to his.

[Dan]

So adorable. We've got four.

[Linus]

I did bleep that.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus]

Just for you guys context.

[Dan]

Yes, sure. So many things that I have to do.

[Luke]

That one and that one.

[Dan]

There we go. Okie dokie. After dark.

[Linus]

Hell yeah.

[Dan]

Hey, burb owners and Dan, in light of BMW car ads, do you think aio screens will eventually have ad placement? If they had different plans, for example ads or without ads, Would you do it? Took me a minute to figure out what they meant. But like CPU screens. Why aren't I getting ads for like Cheerios on those? They're perfect.

[Luke]

Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

[Dan]

I hate you, Philip.

[Luke]

If I was getting a good deal on it, then that would be fine. But everything's like skimplation, shrinkflation, insurance, vacation. So I'm gonna end up paying the same. But you're just gonna put ads on it? Like if I like that tv, Remember that TV that had like the device to make sure you were actually watching the ads and everything but the TV was free. Like fine, if I'm gonna be the product, I shouldn't be paying for it too. It's got to be one or the other. Either I'm the customer or the product. It can't be both.

[Dan]

There dll Getting another screwdriver to happen.

[Luke]

Sorry, maybe someone else would say something.

[Linus]

No, I just completely agree.

[Luke]

All right.

[Linus]

I'd rather not be the product. I'd rather buy it. This is the same reason why I think local AI stuff is so important. I think AI is, is super interesting and honestly really fun to play with. I'm pretty not okay with the, the moral issues of it being entirely built on theft and all that kind of stuff stuff. But my way of of doing that is I don't want to share my usage information. I don't want to share all the information that I input input into it etc with companies that did that problem in the first place. I don't want to support them. So I've run it locally. Seems like the same kind of thing of like I would rather it's going to be it. The, the very obvious financial problem with running it locally is looking at any of the costs of the hardware that would be required to run decently advanced models and then comparing that to a monthly subscription of one of these things and just being like what? Like it is currently way more financially efficient. If you need to run or want to run more advanced things to just join a subscription thing. It just. I just, I don't want to. I am in a financial position where I can make that decision so I'm going to do that.

[Luke]

That's crazy. I thought you were poor.

[Linus]

Doing this might make me poor. Nice. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. But yeah.

[Luke]

44 weeks. Sorry, just mad Dan hit me.

[Dan]

Dll getting another screwdriver to have around my building maintenance job for the police department. Any advice for cleaning laminate floor that's been abused for 25 years?

[Luke]

Replace it.

[Dan]

Hopefully it's not blood.

[Luke]

I don't think the floor bleeds also.

[Linus]

You're the person I would ask for that information.

[Luke]

Yeah. Cleaning laminate floor I don't think there's really anything you can do about beat up laminate floor. I think that's like the whole idea behind it is that it's cheaper up front, but then when it's done you just have to throw it away and replace it. There's no refinishing a laminate floor, unfortunately. With that said, MRO Mutt says I think it's an acid they use to clean them. Is that. Is this a thing? Guys, help me out here. Is this a thing? Mind Paradox says if it isn't actively worn out, you can use TSP to clean it. Really? Well yeah, TSP is a cool product, but it's 25 years, guys. It's. And it's in a commercial environment. Like it's got to be.

[Linus]

I expect it's going to be the genuine physical damage.

[Luke]

It's gotta be. Yeah. 25 years, guys. Cuz we're talking. This is laminate floor from 2001. Laminate floor wasn't good yet 25 years ago. Like it's probably the crappy stuff. Hmm. Sodium phosphate. No, not tps. Testicular pain syndrome. What are you talking about that for?

[Linus]

No, what? I tagged a specific person. I was asking him tokens per second.

[Luke]

Oh, I thought you were talking about TPS reports. And then I did the testicular pain syndrome. Office space reference. Never mind.

[Linus]

They were responding to the previous thing that I said. They said an M3 Ultra with 512 gigabytes of unified memory was my best recent personal hardware investment. And then I was asking them some questions about it. What model do you run, how much did it cost, what's your TPS, etc. Because you can fit a massive model on something like that.

[Luke]

Oh yeah.

[Linus]

But your TPS might be pretty slow. It sounds like TPS is 8 to 11, which is pretty slow. But depending on what your use case is, being able to fit that massive model on there might be really freaking cool. Anyways. I think that's pretty sweet.

[Luke]

Arnold Palmer 69 asks. I would love an unfiltered Bad News Wan show. You just go off about whatever you want. Maybe a floatplane exclusive. I think we've eased off on just the good news stuff, but we're just trying to have more of an eye out for if there's anything cool. So trying to be balanced, let that

[Linus]

bubble to the surface a little bit better. Which I think is good.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke]

All right, hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

Hey, Linus and Luke. Have you ever considered doing a video on the performance differences between standard monitor aspect ratios and ultra wide aspect ratios? 16, 9 versus 21:9. There's dozens of us.

[Luke]

I mean that's the kind of thing that if you are someone who has one of those monitors, you can very easily explore for yourself. So we tend to, we tend to want to test tech tips that you can't tip yourself because you don't have the tech. Right. Like all you've got to do is just change your in game resolution to a 16 by 9 aspect ratio resolution and then run the same benchmark. And then da da da da, you've got the answer. So that I lean away from a little bit. It's a cool idea to just kind of like explore resolution Scaling but we tend to focus on 16:9 just because it is so ubiquitous. And if you must know exactly how much of a difference then it's. Yeah, it's something that you can tip yourself.

[Dan]

Go tip yourself. Hello.

[Luke]

I said it way nicer than that.

[Dan]

I did not. Hello, Wendo. Dealo with physical games going out, do you think we'll see a renaissance for PC gaming? What's the point of consoles if they'll cut down PCs? Is Xbox OS, psos a thing we'll see in the future?

[Luke]

I. I would see Xbox and PC merging before I would see like a separate Xbox os. Like what are we going to have like NT kernel and freaking regular kernel again?

[Dan]

Like go back to Windows X. Yeah.

[Luke]

Renaissance for PC gaming. I mean I think the renaissance is happening. Luke has talked about this fairly extensive but it's less to do with because of OS changes and it's more to

[Linus]

do with honestly a lot of really good quite new games out like AA Single A. Yeah.

[Luke]

And it's just down to fragmentation from the major gaming companies that is taking place right now.

[Linus]

The game of the years over the last little bit have been just Wicked Games. 007's really fantastic. That just came out. There's been some really bangers. We were in quite a rough area for a while, but we seem to be out of it. Gaming seems like a pretty good, pretty healthy space right now.

[Luke]

Hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

Oh, if I have to. Hey mommy. Luke and our Dan. What's the staggering quantity of gamers that absolutely despise skill based matched? A word? There's not a lot in here.

[Luke]

What's with.

[Dan]

What's with with the staggering quantity of gamers that absolutely despise skill based matchmaking? Are there any other hobbies where people don't enjoy fair matches? Does this happen in badminton?

[Luke]

I honestly don't get it either. I always love to play the closest possible match.

[Linus]

Oh no, I completely get it.

[Luke]

I would rather lose by 1 than win by 10.

[Linus]

The problem is that's not necessarily what's happening. Skill based matchmaking is often being misused in order to maximize engagement.

[Luke]

Oh, okay.

[Linus]

Skill based matchmaking. The name makes you think that it works in one specific way, but it doesn't work in one specific way. You're thinking, okay, obviously skill based matchmaking, we're going to match people with as close of skilled people as possible, balance the teams as well as we can. So of the game is as even as possible. So people have as many good games as possible instead of washouts. Like not quite. It's often used in a way.

[Luke]

Oh right. Where you'll be like on the verge of being frustrated and wanting to give up and they'll give you like roll a team, they'll give you. Yeah, no, we've talked about this actually.

[Linus]

It's. I forgot so. And you know, not every company's doing that. Different companies do it to different degrees. Etc, etc. Etc and what the people that don't like that that situation is even possible. It's eom, not sbmm. Yeah, cool. Except people call it SBMM anyway, so it doesn't really matter. It's so like you run into this situation where you would rather they just don't have their grubby little fingers in it at all.

[Luke]

Yeah, but random is not what they're

[Linus]

doing behind the scenes.

[Luke]

Random is trash.

[Linus]

I agree. I'm just saying I understand where the argument comes from.

[Dan]

I see.

[Linus]

I think online matchmaking is just a horrific mess right now. In general. I don't think there's an answer for it. There's way too many cheaters. Someone tagged me saying, shoot, where is it? Maybe they didn't tag me, maybe they just said it. But it was something along the lines of like there's. There's so many cheaters that it's not balanced anyways. Yeah.

[Luke]

In badminton I would say, yeah.

[Linus]

Conrad said Dota 2 had has. Yeah. I don't know. There's a Conrad quoting Dota 2 has 50. A forced 50 win rate. Some games are balanced. Sometimes it's completely unwinnable or unlosable. It's just like,

[Luke]

why don't we not even bother playing the game?

[Linus]

Like a moba.

[Luke]

Yeah. Why don't we just. Why don't we just flip a coin and be excited when it lands heads like I. Yeah.

[Linus]

So then, so then that comes back to the like, well, you might as well just throw everybody in the pot and see how it goes. But that's not how it has to be because it could actually just be skill based matchmaking.

[Luke]

Right.

[Linus]

Like a lot of skill based matchmaking systems were or some that still are. Lots probably majority that still are to be honest. But I think in my perspective that's why people don't like it is because they've heard about the fact that these things happen and you can call it other acronyms all you want, but the gaming customer companies will often call it skill based matchmaking, even if that's not really what it is.

[Luke]

As for whether it happens in badminton, I would actually say more often it happens the other way where you'll have people that will prefer to take the worst partner on court so that they can, like, they just play the whole game. Hot dog and. And kind of ball hog against hot dog. Yeah, like hot dogging.

[Linus]

Never heard of this term.

[Luke]

Shut up. Okay, I'm happy I've had this conversation.

[Dan]

I've never heard of that term either.

[Luke]

Yeah, well, you're from Britain. Who cares what you think?

[Dan]

Oh, you mean bangering.

[Luke]

Bangering. This is the second time this week that I've run into something like this. I was at. We were shooting an AMD all ultimate tech upgrade earlier this week for Jordan, and I walk in, I'm like, hey, can I borrow your washroom? And they all start laughing at me. They go, what do you mean, borrow it? You know, was there ever any possibility you weren't gonna give it back? I was like, no, that's a thing. They're like, yeah, see, I'm right about hot dogging too. Look at the chat. People know it's showing off.

[Dan]

Sure.

[Linus]

I'm not against. Yeah. I've just never heard of it.

[Luke]

It's totally a thing.

[Dan]

Never heard that in Canada.

[Luke]

Jay Hirschman says 40s, Midwesterner. Here. I know that term. Yeah. People know what I'm talking about.

[Linus]

Oh, it's cause you're old.

[Luke]

Look, listen, get out of here. You get out of here, too.

[Linus]

Yeah, but you're British, God damn it.

[Luke]

So it's more often that this would happen where people would, like, want to show off like they can. They can. One v2, the other, the other two players versus, like, someone trying to stack a team with the two best players on the court just so that they can crush the other team. However. However, I do run into people occasionally where I'll go and I'll play somewhere that I'm not familiar or like a drop in or something, and I'll say, you know, hey, what's. What's a balanced match here? And someone will intentionally grab a better player, and we'll do that, but it's very rare and highly dishonorable. So it really doesn't happen that often. More often, what will happen is if people aren't sure how to balance the teams, we'll do something. Okay, you can come back. Not you, though. We'll do something called racket spinning. So you hold your racket neck here, and then you spin the handle, and then you stop it. And then the logo on the bottom, if it's up or down, you just point in the direction of your logo. And whoever matches the direction plays together.

[Linus]

Yeah. Cool.

[Luke]

And if you have too many, like if everyone gets up, then you just spin again.

[Linus]

Badminton's the type of game where you might not be able to find a perfect matchup anyways. So you just do what you can.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

And I mean, a lot of the time, really strong players. Like I was playing with my buddy Jaden last night and he's just an absolute God. So he was playing with me against two guys who are very strong, like too good for me to play against normally. So. And then he just like adjusts. It's like, well, I don't have to smash. With my full power, I could do 70%, which is not enough to just. They don't touch it at all. But not enough for them to return comfortably. So that gives Linus an opportunity to like get practice his net kills. Like he's one of those players that

[Linus]

just like I will turn the dial dictates 30%.

[Luke]

Yeah. Unless you're also like a super high level player then and he has to try against you anyway.

[Dan]

Discussion. Question relating to my job. Has it become too complicated? At what point do layers of redundancy, security, virtualization and monitoring create more failure points than they prevent?

[Luke]

I'll be honest with you, I feel the same way sometimes. Like every time we have an issue with our vlans, I'm just like, fuck it, get rid of them. Like, not really, but I. I have

[Linus]

that say we definitely want them.

[Luke]

I understand.

[Linus]

I understand. But we definitely do.

[Luke]

I know we want them, but it's just like they could figure them. Right.

[Linus]

I think this is a. Rest assured. Just said something that I think is a really important point here.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

I said, bruh, I'm getting into infra as code effing kill me. And I think that's probably where your feeling is coming from is I. I think there's tons of benefits from this. Virtualization, monitoring, etc. Is incredible. The stuff that like Jonathan's been up to.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

With. With Kubernetes has been just honestly wild and very interesting and entertaining to watch. Really awesome if you don't have a Jonathan that gets complicated. And I think it's also kind of a little interesting because you're taking very traditional IT people and mashing them into this infra as code thing. And it's not always really mixing super great. And sometimes like one of the ways that we've kind of tried to set up our team is that we have people that are more on the infras code thing and we have people that are less on the infras code thing because you still need both. But if you're like an individual solo IT Person mastering both sides of that is. Yeah, I mean, I can understand. Too complicated. It's basically two jobs, but at certain

[Luke]

size of company, there aren't two salary budgets.

[Linus]

Totally.

[Luke]

So, yeah. Good luck. Yeah.

[Linus]

Is it becoming too complicated? I think it's doing the thing that it should do. I think a lot of the infras code stuff totally makes sense, to be completely honest. Is that difficult and rough on a lot of people? I'm 100% certain.

[Luke]

Papa Pacman says as somebody in the hospital IT environment, VMS can solve and cause a bunch of problems.

[Linus]

Totally.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

There you go.

[Dan]

Yep. All right.

[Luke]

Hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

What's up, boys? Linus, do you find your life to be busier when your kids are in or out of school?

[Luke]

Every year we plan for how our life is going to be gloriously unbusy during the summer because we don't have to deal with school. And every year, we discover a. That it's actually busy.

[Linus]

There's no way.

[Luke]

I mean, our kids are older now, so it's. They're pretty low maintenance. If we don't sign them up for a bajillion summer camps.

[Linus]

Yeah. When you.

[Luke]

When you do World Scholars Cup.

[Linus]

And when are you going to not do that?

[Luke]

I don't know. When we stop wanting to overachieve as parents, I guess. Which, I mean, you've seen my wife. You've met her. You know what she's like.

[Linus]

Yeah. So never. Yeah, I guess even when they're moved

[Luke]

out, I suspect we're still gonna, like, you know, be doing the rounds, you know, dinner delivery and whatnot.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

This is somewhat rhetorical because I don't necessarily want you to give the answer away, but how many years until little man man can drive?

[Luke]

Oh, less than 2 on his own.

[Dan]

That.

[Luke]

I don't know. I'd have to look that up.

[Linus]

I'm not sure what the current rules are, but it's.

[Dan]

It's.

[Luke]

Dude, it's two years crazy.

[Linus]

It's two years old, dude.

[Luke]

I can't. I can't believe how quickly everything's going by. Like, I feel so old. What. What is. What is the new meme like, getting into beekeeping or something? Like I'm reaching beekeeping age now.

[Linus]

Is that. Is that a thing?

[Luke]

Apparently it's a thing. Someone was saying. It's like. It's like a. It's like a midlife crisis thing. Beekeeping trend.

[Linus]

I like that one, actually. That seems pretty good.

[Dan]

That's kind of cool.

[Linus]

I dig that one.

[Dan]

But nobody has enough property to, like, get a beehive.

[Luke]

Urban beekeeping.

[Dan]

Urban beekeeping.

[Linus]

Well, it's. It's also calling you old and rich, I guess, which is what Boomer was. So, like, it wouldn't be now. Yeah, that's fair.

[Dan]

Only they get to own a yard.

[Luke]

Yeah. The wellness trend, which has the social set all abuzz. How beekeeping became the hobby beloved by the A list and royals alike for its meditative qualities. This is from Tatler. I have no idea what a Tatler is, but pictured David Beckham with Romeo Cruz and Harper.

[Dan]

Oh, so it's not beekeeping.

[Linus]

This isn't like it's even beyond Prince

[Luke]

and Princess of Wales just doing beekeeping, you know, royal people and whatnot. James Middleton.

[Linus]

I mean, somebody's got to keep the bees alive.

[Luke]

I suppose. So maybe it'll be the ultra new Netflix series. What is he dinging?

[Linus]

I don't know.

[Luke]

Oh, he's dinging every time we use the word be. Stop. Dork.

[Dan]

Sorry. Thoughts on the Mount Pleasant data Center? Data center, Bad. But maybe it should affect people who use it, not just small communities. Thanks for screwdrivers. This is the third one I've bought. They're great.

[Luke]

Oh, terrific. I'm glad you like it. What's Mount Pleasant?

[Dan]

It is a place.

[Luke]

Where's this? Oh, this is. Oh, this is here. Oh, we're having a Mount Pleasant data center. Oh, it's like, near Science World.

[Linus]

I didn't know we were building.

[Luke]

Yeah, it's by like the Timmy's, just south of Science World.

[Linus]

That seems insane.

[Luke]

I mean, it kind of makes sense. I mean, there's data centers in urban places.

[Linus]

This one doesn't.

[Luke]

I mean, I put it there over East Hastings. If those were the only two options on Earth, I'd go Mount Pleasant. Name is Pleasant.

[Linus]

It might actually be a way better idea to put it at East Hastings.

[Luke]

Really? You go on.

[Linus]

Okay, so you can't keep stores open there. Right Reasons. What if it just wasn't a storefront?

[Luke]

I mean, yeah, any data center is going to have, like, security up the

[Linus]

rectum and probably only one entrance anyways. So instead of a bunch of closed storefronts, they could just have a wall.

[Luke]

You're not really gonna. You're not really gonna promote the idea of just building walls, are you?

[Linus]

Well, no, it's every. Every building has a wall. I don't mean that kind of a wall.

[Dan]

And we'll make literally just the wall of our building.

[Luke]

That's my Only point, who's gonna pay for it? Maybe Mexico. Anyway, we can move on. I didn't know it was happening, so I don't really have any thoughts on.

[Linus]

Me neither. Yeah, I don't know.

[Luke]

I mean, it seems like everyone's getting data centered, so I guess we got data centered.

[Linus]

I'm interested in AI stuff. I'm not interested in the data center side of AI stuff. I'm interested in the running it myself.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

Side of AI stuff.

[Dan]

Loud, lanky and lurking. Considering making robotics or electronics content, they're getting really weird with these. Do you find enough fulfillment in making content versus traditional work? I think about the early days before you were making products and floatplane.

[Luke]

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I think everyone needs occasional reminders, but people go out of their way to do it often enough that I don't really struggle with it. Especially attending open sauce was really cool because more than this, many people were like, yeah, I started watching you when I was this high and now I have this degree or I'm working in this incredible job and I wouldn't have gotten started on it if it wasn't for ltt. And thank you so much. And I'm like, bro, you know stuff better than I do now. Don't thank me. Thank yourself. But they're like, no, really, like, you ignited my passion for this.

[Dan]

And.

[Luke]

And I think it's really awesome. And that kind of stuff really just. It makes my entire week.

[Linus]

Met an engineer at Google who, if I remember correctly, started watching us in elementary school.

[Luke]

Good Lord.

[Linus]

I was like, oh, yeah, I know, right?

[Luke]

But super cool, right?

[Linus]

Because awesome.

[Luke]

That's our job. That's what we do. We don't make content. We build community. If we, if we want to, like, really drill down to what we do, that is actually meaningful. Yeah. Conrad just posted in floatplane chat. He's like, NCIX Tech tips. Got me into tech and now I work for you. Like, it's. It's a thing and, and it's really cool. And so I. I go out of my way once in a while to send it over to hr so they can include it in like the weekly emails or post it on a fridge here and there. Like these emails people send me or messages. And this is why.

[Linus]

And I understand there's. There's lots of reasons why we stopped doing it, like many and good ones. But this is why I mourn the loss of LTX is. I think this was a really interesting thing for a ton of people at the company to Experience. Because I get to experience it when I go to shows. Yeah, you get to experience it all the time. Most people at the company are never going to experience that.

[Dan]

That's true.

[Linus]

And it's just like the. The stuff that we do is actually very, very interesting. I. On my side of things, I do miss content creation a little bit. There were also reasons why I was happy to leave it. I don't know. I think I do not envy the content creation teams at Linus Media Group right now. I don't think some of the guys that work here could even imagine what it was like when you and I first started. Oh, it was crazy when stuff would just show up and it was like, hey, look, great content showed up at the door. I guess we'll make great content out of it. Like, it's such an insanely different game now.

[Luke]

It's hard.

[Linus]

And I started getting kind of frustrated near the end of my tenure of being a writer with like, man, there's all this crap now.

[Luke]

You used to joke that you could just write a GPU review ahead of time with just looking at the price.

[Linus]

Yeah.

[Luke]

So you would just be like, yeah, it'll perform this percent faster than this other card and this percent slower than this other card.

[Linus]

And that was very soul destroying and still possible, by the way. But that was very soul destroying because when I got into computers, it was like. I remember when I like really got into it, into. Into not just being like, wow, computers are cool. I like using Windows. What can I do on Windows? But like actually building stuff. And like the performance aspect was around like the 8000 series, 7000 series Nvidia GPUs. And that was not the case back then. It was a wild landscape of craziness and overclocking and different binning stuff. And I remember you go on forums and there's. There's entire subsections just for people doing binning and firmware unlocks. All this crazy. It was a wild environment to be in. And now it's like, you know, there's

[Luke]

some cool stuff coming.

[Linus]

No, I.

[Luke]

So you know one of them, but you don't know about another. Really cool. That kind of wild Westy thing that I've got in my office. Office right now.

[Dan]

Oh, really?

[Luke]

Yeah, there's some cool stuff still.

[Linus]

It's.

[Luke]

We just gotta dig for it.

[Linus]

It's kind of sparking up right now in a way.

[Luke]

I feel like it is. I'm actually, I'm actually.

[Linus]

The unfortunate part is no one can afford it, but there is a very Very interesting things happening.

[Luke]

The thing in my office is really cool and very affordable.

[Linus]

Okay.

[Luke]

For now.

[Linus]

Sick.

[Luke]

So, yeah, I don't know how it's gonna go after we make our video.

[Linus]

Right.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

That's the LTT effect. Yeah.

[Linus]

But it's. It's. It's. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Maybe last night I have been talking. Maybe there will be stuff again.

[Luke]

I think I. I think there will. And I've got ideas for, you know, what our future content is going to look like that will, I think, help rejuvenate things. I'm actually. I had a chat with the whole writing team, actually, the two. One Friday ago. Two Fridays ago. I forget what it was, but basically I told them, I'm like, I'm more excited about the future of our content right now than I think I've been in years. And I think part of it is just sort of an attitude realignment on my side. And part of it is that things are. There are some exciting things happening right now behind the, you know, RAM and storage price increases.

[Linus]

It's. People are getting scrappy again.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And it's kind of cool.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And like, one of the. I used to say this, and I know Linus hates it, and I understand why he hates it. It's a valid opinion, but I will chirp negatively about computer building by saying that it's just electronic Lego.

[Luke]

Oh, it is not.

[Linus]

I know.

[Luke]

It's so such bullshit.

[Dan]

It's a electronic Duplo.

[Luke]

It is not skill issue.

[Linus]

But one of the reasons why I used to throw that, like, basically insult out was because it was getting boring. Not because it was actually electronic Legos, but because it was getting boring and

[Luke]

you just called them Legos. So anyone that you didn't upset by?

[Linus]

Because it's just Lego, right? Lego's already plural or whatever. Whatever.

[Luke]

Silly geese. Sorry, I meant to say gooses.

[Linus]

Anyway, it's. It's fun for me when I have to mess with stuff.

[Luke]

Yeah.

[Linus]

And we're getting kind of back into that realm.

[Luke]

Yeah. Oh, I agree.

[Linus]

Which is kind of cool. It's just really expensive.

[Luke]

Yeah. All right, get ready to be as triggered as I was. Go ahead, Dan.

[Dan]

Yeah, last one I've got. Hi, Zev. Anyone read Dungeon Crawler Carl yet?

[Luke]

Nope.

[Dan]

Sorry. Tons of fun. Great audiobook narration. Also, what category is water bottle under? I had to search.

[Luke]

All right, let's play loop. Go ahead.

[Dan]

Contentiously.

[Luke]

What would you like to click on? No, no, over here.

[Dan]

Okay. Oh, man.

[Linus]

Is it bags and accessories or home and decor? I'm Gonna go home and decor.

[Luke]

Home and decor.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke]

There you go.

[Linus]

Okay. What's under bags and accessories though? Because bags and accessories has socks still.

[Luke]

Yes.

[Linus]

So I just have no idea then.

[Luke]

So the reason this has socks. I did actually ask that is apparently that is industry standard categorization.

[Linus]

I googled it. Well, you seem to be right. Yeah, it does depend on the type of brand you are.

[Dan]

No, no, I gotta interject. Why. Why can't we just have it multiple places?

[Linus]

I love Goblin Dan,

[Dan]

I have an opinion question. Why can't it be in multiple places? So if something is obvious for one person, then you could just click on it. Because they're both hypertext links that go to the same. Like I do.

[Linus]

I do wonder about that because the. It seems like the standardization of socks being under accessories from my googling, which might be inaccurate to be very clear, but from my googling is more for like fashion brands. High fashion brands mostly. I don't know how many people shopping on LTT store based on our audience demographics, spend a ton of time on like high fashion websites. So maybe they would look under apparel. Yeah, especially because would it be a bottom. I thought the high fashion brands also thought that underwear was an accessory.

[Luke]

Maybe

[Linus]

I am extremely hyper. The wrong person to talk to.

[Luke]

Why don't we establish a committee?

[Dan]

No.

[Luke]

Okay. I'm just. I'm over it right now. Just temporarily. At some point I will be ready for this crusade again. But right now I'm over it.

[Linus]

I don't mind Dan's approach. Just put it in both places.

[Luke]

Why don't we just put them under everything? Why doesn't it, no matter what you hover over, it just has one long list of everything you sell. It will infinitely increase discoverability on our site. In fact, why would you have to hover over anything? Why don't we just have a big, long list of everything on our site? Just on the homepage.

[Linus]

You should just make it like an HTML directory.

[Luke]

Just old school style.

[Dan]

Just like that. Blank.

[Luke]

Just a product.

[Dan]

Product list, white page, blue text. Oh, I would love that. Yeah.

[Luke]

All right. And on that note, water bottle nightly. I gotta go put my chickens away. So we'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Linus]

Play with him a little bit first. Okay, bye.

[Luke]

You told me to play with my.

[Dan]

Yeah, no, no one's home. You're home alone with your four. Oh, and you got. And you got some. I. I don't know if I'm supposed to bleep that or not. Anyway, Good.

[Luke]

Sam.