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Linus Sebastian
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Luke Lafreniere
Hey, what's up, everybody? And welcome to the WAN show. I'm legitimately sorry that it's late, but you guys will understand soon why. And you'll be. You'll be. You'll be as excited as I am. That's all I can say about it. I can't say anything else. Actually, I can say lots of other things. I can tell you guys we've got a great show lined up for you today. The most epic tech bro breakup of all time has been unfolding in real time this week. It has been a sight to behold regardless of whose side you're on. So we're going to get you guys some of the play by play as well as just. We'll laugh together. We'll laugh together. It's going to be grand. Also, in other news, the Switch 2 is here. And spoiler, I might have bought one.
Linus Sebastian
He brought it with him, too. Are we buying here?
Luke Lafreniere
Well, yeah, I brought it with me. No, no, no, no, no, no. I brought. I brought this one with me from home.
Linus Sebastian
Nice.
Luke Lafreniere
What else we got this week, Luke?
Linus Sebastian
AMD is pulling an Nvidia with the 9060 XT8 gig and YouTube was fighting Jeff Geerling and yeah, they really were. That was whack. And we'll talk about it. There we go. Squarespace, Thorum, and AMD with our rap partner, dBrand, laptop partner, Dell and chair partner, Secret lab.
Luke Lafreniere
I am 100% not on a Secret Lab chair this week. I wish I was.
Linus Sebastian
This is actually horrible. I'm on two, so how about that?
Luke Lafreniere
And my crappy chair is the best part of my setup. My webcam's on a garbage bin just to get the height right and to make sure that when I'm typing, it's not wibble wobbling all over the place. So we' this is going to be a heck of a show, folks. Why don't we jump right into what is, of course, enthralling the entire Internet, the big, beautiful breakup. This week, the future of the ev, solar and space industries is in question. After the very public collapse of the bromance between, what do you call himself? Techno King, Even Elon Musk and U.S. president Donald Trump. On June 3, Elon called the congressional spending bill known as the Big Beautiful Bill an abomination, if you didn't know. By the way, the Big Beautiful Bill is not really a nickname. It's actually called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. On June 5, Trump said a good way to save money could be canceling Elon's government contracts. Elon fired back, tweeting that he could just decommission the Space X Dragon crew. In fact, he didn't say he could, he said he would, which would lead to the US having to ask Russia for rides to the iss. Okay, let's pause for a second here. What can you just. Is it possible that we are learning what the negative outcomes can be from having thin skinned billionaires control massive parts of like national security critical infrastructure? Is. Are we learning that now?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, legitimately. My first, most immediate and strongest feeling that I had when seeing this happening was oh, this might actually be a really good thing for NASA. Their budgets are probably still getting slashed regardless, which kind of sucks, but we'll see. But hopefully this was kind of a learning moment of like, oh, wow, we probably shouldn't have something so critical almost entirely lean on one very specific external company. Because Boeing and Blue Origin really ain't it right now.
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, in fairness, the idea was to have multiple options. That's where Boeing was supposed to come in.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I don't know, it would be great if there was multiple options. But I also don't think that in, in my opinion, I don't think we should be at a state where NASA is incapable of doing the thing. We should just be at a state where it makes more economic sense for a, you know what, ngo, whatever, a corporation to do the thing instead.
Luke Lafreniere
Hey, look, I'm, I'm pro competition, right? And sometimes competition can take place between private and public entities and there are.
Linus Sebastian
Kind of competition that, that SpaceX has done, which is great. So if they're winning like the majority of the contracts, that's fine. But we want competition to be in the space. We don't want there to be a situation where it is actually the US asking Russia for rides to the ISS again because there's a spat between a corporate, a corporate entity and the President. That's crazy. We don't want this to be a thing. And it doesn't matter if it's Elon, it doesn't matter if it's Trump. That's irrelevant. To be completely honest. I don't want this to be anything ever.
Luke Lafreniere
No, the crazy part, Luke, is that we're not even talking about a spat between a corporate entity and the President.
Linus Sebastian
Really.
Luke Lafreniere
It's a, we are talking about a spat between an individual who holds this unbelievable, I would say, unprecedented amount of control over the United States ability to do space.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. And this is a super like nation level political issue right now because you're, you're, there's like sort of a Cold War space race type thing going on between the US And China right now. There's this like, get back onto the moon thing that's going on and it's, it's, it's interesting how that's going to be playing out. There's, there's the drawback of, there's the potential drawback of Artemis, which, you know, I'm really hoping it's not going to happen. Yeah. Like Drac Ryu in floatplane chat said, we still have the Artemis rockets. And it's like, yeah, but they're trying to pull that program back. This is my whole point. I think we should recognize this issue that is showing its face right now even though a lot of people kind of knew it existed already and go, oh, maybe we shouldn't be crushing the NASA budgets. If anything, maybe they should pump up a little bit. I do support the idea of looking at efficiencies there and making sure they're actually being properly efficient because there is some question marks like, why the heck can't we get back to the moon right now? That's awkward. But yeah, I think it's, it's dangerous to put all of your chips in one corporation. And that's effectively how it is right now. And that's not good. Yeah. I'm hoping that we continue. Will result in, in very good things. Yeah, let's keep going.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Later on June 5, some random account told Elon to cool it. He listens and walks back. The Dragon decommissioning. Because obviously that was never happening anyway.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, he was going to do this. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Anyway, that was insane. Tesla's stock took a dive from the kerfuffle, partially because the big beautiful bill will make a number of things worse for EV makers and EV owners, including removing government incentives for EVs and solar and, and requiring new yearly payments from EV owners.
Linus Sebastian
I know the yearly payments part. What?
Luke Lafreniere
I am extremely confused by a lot of this. It's been sort of mind blowing to watch this bromance develop when you have people whose agendas are so completely opposed to each other and to. To watch the way that they have publicly pretended to be aligned. Like that whole thing where they did. They shot a Tesla commercial on the dude.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
In front of the White House.
Linus Sebastian
I think it was weird.
Luke Lafreniere
I think it was cnn. So I got a picture of Trump's Tesla. It's just like, still parked there.
Linus Sebastian
I mean, he wouldn't be driving it anyways.
Luke Lafreniere
Like, he apparently actually bought it and it's just still there. I don't know that he actually paid for it. I would have no way of knowing whether that actual transaction took place or not. But apparently the car is just still sitting there, which is hilarious. Anyway, in the past, Elon has actually supported removing all government incentives for EV and solar, but also for oil and gas. But the big beautiful bill keeps oil and gas incentives in place, which Elon sees as unfair. But, I mean, I think the question here is twofold. I think I've made my position very clear on, you know, whether. Whether I think, whether I think Elon has shown who he is at this point or not. He's shown who he is to me. And when people show you who they are, you should believe them. I believe him.
Linus Sebastian
He showed you.
Luke Lafreniere
But this much is. This much I think makes very clear how opportunistic this whole. This whole relationship was. How obviously driven by an agenda of deregulation for his own companies. The whole thing was. The second that that kind of fell apart, obviously two egos the size of these guys were gonna result in this kind of a blow up. It's actually, it happened faster and more explosively than I could have possibly anticipated. And I think the, the icing on the cake for me is not actually in our notes. But Elon posted the reason that the administration won't release the Epstein files is because Trump is in them. Have a nice day, djt. Something along those lines. And it's like, so.
Linus Sebastian
So you're cool with them this whole time?
Luke Lafreniere
So you think you're the good guy because you literally spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get this guy elected. And then after the fact, you're like, yeah. And like, I knew that he was in the Epstein logs also. I thought everyone knew that for, like ages.
Linus Sebastian
Like, I think we've all we know.
Luke Lafreniere
Haven't we known that forever?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Like, what do you.
Linus Sebastian
I guess maybe he's saying that he's in parts that we haven't seen. I don't know.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, I mean, I, I mean, they're.
Linus Sebastian
Like, I have no Idea.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I, I'm not, I'm gonna get the details wrong, but when the whole thing was going down with Jeffrey Epstein and Max, Max, Maxine Maxwell, whatever her name was, just Zane Maxwell. When that whole thing was going down, like Trump didn't even denounce Epstein right out of the gate like there. The whole thing's been so obvious and ridiculous. Anyway, silver lining, Tesla's offering 0% financing on Cybertrucks if you buy it with full self driving, which amounts to about, I think a $2,000 discount because you have to spend money on full self driving, which Lord only knows if Tesla is ever going to deliver at this point. It was really interesting watching Silver lining. No, Riley's just memeing, I think. Okay. I think Riley did this topic.
Linus Sebastian
All right.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it's been interesting watching Elon slowly admit the things that I've been saying for years. At this point, the current hardware is not going to work. They're going to have to upgrade millions of cars. If people ultimately demand to have the thing that they were promised, that is if they can ever deliver it with all cameras, which I personally do not think they will. Good luck everybody. And this goes to show why having a bunch of, having a bunch of like rich dudes running everything is probably not the way I feel. I feel for my American friends though, I gotta be honest with you.
Linus Sebastian
Panda Shoot said Tesla is already using Autopilot to deliver cars to buyers in Texas. That's neat. That's yeah, cool, but it's not everything super cool.
Luke Lafreniere
But what it isn't is level four or five autonomy. It isn't that it's cool, but it isn't level four or five autonomy. And what we've known about Tesla's culture for many, many years now is that they are a culture of opacity. They are not a culture of transparency. They redact the all the details of the incidents that autopilot and full self driving vehicles are involved in. They don't respond to inquir from media, they don't respect others. Right. To have knowledge and information about the beta testing that they're performing on public roads, putting people's lives at risk. These are things that we've known for a very, very, very long time. And when somebody breaks my trust, I don't trust them anymore. Like, you can't just keep breaking my trust over and over again and saying, yeah, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna show you. I'm not gonna show you. But it's like it's working. Really good. But I'm not gonna show you how it's working. Really good. But trust me, it's really good. It's gonna be ready. It's gonna be ready next year this time. Like, how? Literally. Right? That's what. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on. If somebody shows you who they are, believe them. All right, so, yeah, anyway, sorry. What I was going to say is I feel for my American friends because I don't feel like they had a lot of great options this last election. And I really am rooting for you guys. I saw Walmart increase the price of bananas corresponding to the tariffs. And, like, there's this. There's this hilarious exchange where. Oh, yeah, was challenging Litkey or whatever on, like, hey, yeah, tariffs are affecting pricing. And he's like, yeah, but, you know, like, if things are made in America, then it's fine. And they're like, yo, you can't grow bananas in America.
Linus Sebastian
I think the best part was he said, you should build it in America. And they were like, you can't build bananas in America. Yeah, just the wording was great.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, man. I. Yeah. Nicolas Cage says, we don't choose our candidates. Yeah. 100%. And look, I'm not going to get into, you know, the whole thing that happened with Kamala. Right. Because that whole thing was just such an epic failure on the Democratic Party's side. Just the way. The whole. The way it played out. I don't think anyone got a chance to figure out if she was a decent candidate or not. She campaigned for, like, six weeks. So. Yeah, man, we feel for you guys, for what it's worth. Yeah. Decent. You says tech, please. Didn't come here for politics. You're 100% right. It's just that, man, are they ever affecting tech a lot right now?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Like, I had a really interesting conversation with someone today. Can't say who it is, because I'm. I'm on a bit of a trip right now. That's a bit of a secret, but I had a really interesting conversation with someone today, and they were talking about a product that was unrelated to what I'm doing. So, you know, just, you know, and totally unrelated to what I'm doing. Totally unrelated. Everything. But I was just chatting with somebody about a product that they were working on. You know, development was done. They were ready to deliver it to market. It was going to come in at a really aggressive price point. And then they looked at it. They did all the math for what it was going to look like with Import tariffs and basically it completely killed it for the US So we can say all day, like, oh, yeah, we don't want to talk about politics. We don't want to care about politics right now. But they are having a huge impact on the affordability of technology, which I think not. I think. Which I believe is the biggest problem that we have in tech right now. We have cool tech. It's just. It's getting out of reach.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
And none of this stuff is helping.
Linus Sebastian
I think this is a good transition to said Switch two because I. I bought one, I got it. I'm. It's very weird that I got it.
Luke Lafreniere
Because I was gonna say I thought you weren't buying one.
Linus Sebastian
No, I wasn't buying one until I got it from Willow. But it's weird that I got it from Willow already because I didn't contact them very early about a pre order and I technically only actually reserved Mario Kart World. I didn't actually reserve the Switch because when I called them they were like, we don't know when we're getting the consoles. So they called me about my, okay, we have Mario Kart World. And I was like, cool, I'm actually going to wait until you guys also have a console. And they were like, cool, yeah, we'll let you know. And then like a couple hours later, they were like, somebody just canceled. We have a console for you. Meaning there was no line.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And I understand this could be seen as a success because, you know, they actually made enough, which is great.
Luke Lafreniere
But I talked to Nintendo, said they would. They said that's what they were going to do. They were like, we are, we are. We are pumping these. We are making some consoles here, ladies.
Linus Sebastian
And gentlemen, which is awesome, except that's.
Luke Lafreniere
Our anti scalping strategy.
Linus Sebastian
Except I talked to the owner of Willow while I was there picking it up and I asked them. I was like, what has demand been like? And she was like, yeah, a lot lower than we expected. Like, a lot lower. And she was talking about it's for everything. Like, not a ton of the games are flying off the shelf either. The accessory sales are a little bit lower than expected. So, like someone might come in and buy the, like, cheaper because you want a game Mario Kart Switch bundle thing. But then they're not buying a pro controller with it or the, the wheel add on thingy for the new pro controllers or whatever else. And it's just, it's really expensive. The economy is in complete shambles right now, just worldwide. So, like, people are. Not only are they they don't necessarily have a lot of money. But there's also an incredible amount of economic uncertainty. So you might not want to buy.
Luke Lafreniere
I was going to say the shambles is not even the entire story of the problem right now. Yeah. It's the uncertainty. Like, you were, you were chatting with. You were chatting with a guy who runs some factories. Let's not get any more specific than that.
Linus Sebastian
Sure.
Luke Lafreniere
Who basically was like, yeah, I have multi million, like many millions dollars investments that I was making, you know, in the lead up to Covid, around Covid, after Covid, and then, you know, during the first administrative, know, big red tie administration and afterward. And. And you know, I've. And right now I'm just holding pattern, no investment, no plan, no idea. Because when things change on a weekly basis, you can't make a plan. You, you, you don't, you don't build a factory in a span of, of weeks or months. It takes years. And so when you're planning that far out and things are changing so fast, it's devastating to your ability to execute, to get anything done. And to your point about the sort of the economy being really terrifying right now. Dude, I sent this to the executive chat, so I know you've already seen it, but Coachella apparently failed to sell out for the second year in a row, which. Okay, you know, whatever. Right. Like, sometimes a concert doesn't sell out. I get it. I mean, I've never been to Coachella. I don't really. It's not really my jam. I don't really care. So I'm not saying, like, everyone should go to Coachella or anything like that. It's not my pitch. What I'm saying is that that is an unusual occurrence. And the kicker, this is the part that really blew my mind. Of the people that went, apparently half of them, about half of them financed their tickets, which there's a lot to unpack there. Right. So one, people, like, need to finance concert tickets or something. And two, people are making the financial decision to finance concert tickets.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, because people need it. Coachella tickets are like, I've never got either, but I've heard they're incredibly expensive. And even if it's not Coachella, like, concerts around here can be really expensive. Like, I can understand someone needing to finance it if they must buy it, but I think traditionally, usually people just don't make. They don't do that. They don't make that decision. So I feel like the big shift is that people are doing it now. I think a lot of people have given up on just being completely underwater debt wise because there doesn't feel like there's another route out. As far as my understanding goes, people have, people are looking at future prospects. And this is why stuff like, okay, also regulation on stuff like advertising and whatnot has dramatically changed. But you see a massive, massive increase in betting, not just in standard betting, but you've got like crypto coin betting and you've got, I did press the thing. I know you can't hear. You've got, you've got that, you've got sports betting, you've got all this stuff that's taking off right now.
Luke Lafreniere
Even though, like forget about gaming gaming, going pure gambling.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, true. Logically you should be able to look at gambling and be like, yeah, this is obviously for so many reasons, just kind of dumb. But then people are doing it because while it might not be the most intelligent, there is technically a chance and if you can make your money go boom, it's the only shot you got. So people are taking that and thinking that it's like a logical decision. I will, I will bet my entire future on this thing. Because if I don't, I fail anyways.
Luke Lafreniere
What future is there anyway?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, and like, oh my God, we don't, we don't want that society. We do, we do not want to be in that situation. That is so bad.
Luke Lafreniere
I. Anyways, you know what, I just want to say we're going to promote the store today. You know, like we're going to promote our new items or our promos or you know, whatever. But we have made the very conscious decision to not have buy now pay later functionality on our shop.
Linus Sebastian
It would increase sales.
Luke Lafreniere
And while we, while we absolutely do obviously support credit cards through our store, I would implore you that if you're in a position where you're not buying with a credit card just because you like getting points and you're going to pay it off right away, that's fine. But if you're buying with a credit card because you can't afford that LTT store purchase, then I would really prefer that you simply not make the purchase right now. You know, get above water, get things together, keep your head up and you know, find, find, find little things that you can enjoy. You know, find, find a free to play game to play. Find, find something else to, you know, get that hit right, man. It's like, it's stressful, right? Because obviously, like I'm, I'm saying this coming from a position of things have been a little soft on the Store like we are seeing it and it's not just the, you know, the, the tariff impact right. From the pricing being different because a lot of our prices, we've actually managed to bring pretty close to what they were pre adjustment and pre, the split between the global and the US Store. So, so we're like, we're seeing firsthand. It's, it's really interesting running a media company that also has these other, these other branches, you know.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, people are bringing up that. I didn't even know you could do this, but apparently you can buy now Pay later through PayPal. Seriously, I didn't even know that was a thing.
Luke Lafreniere
I actually didn't know that was a thing either. I've never, I've Never really used PayPal heavily here in, here in North America. And I know this is like a really foreign concept to some of our overseas community, but here in North America, the play is generally to use credit cards that have very generous rewards programs and then pay them off right away. That's like, that's like the hack. And so other than forgetting a couple of times in my life since I was 16 and I got my first credit card, I have always only spent what I have in my bank balance and then I have paid it off right away. And with that I've been able to get cash back, travel rewards, extended warranties on a electronics that I've purchased. Like, there's all kinds of really cool benefits that you can get, but it takes strict discipline and I totally understand why a lot of people make the choice to not use a credit card and so to use, you know, something like PayPal instead. But I had no idea that PayPal actually supported buy now pay later. That. Yeah, PayPal pushes pay in four to six months, no interest on purchases over a hundred dollars.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'm looking at it right now.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I'm just, I'm checking out the.
Linus Sebastian
Chat and apparently like someone said, I think Apple Pay also does it or something. I lost a message. But I wouldn't be surprised if Apple and Google Pay do it. This is rough too, because if we kill PayPal, people will be pissed.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh no, there's no way.
Linus Sebastian
Not even because of the pay in for a monthly thing. It's because like you said, in some countries it's like not only in some countries, for some people, it's just the only way they pay for stuff. Yeah. And I don't mean the financing part of it, I mean the rest of it. So you can't even fully get away from it. Yikes.
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, we could take a principled stance and we could, you know, remove it from our store or whatever, but the reality of it is that we'd be hurting ourselves a lot more than we'd be hurting PayPal. And I just.
Linus Sebastian
And we'd be hurting specifically customers that were using PayPal without that.
Luke Lafreniere
Yes. So I just. I don't think that is. I don't think that's a realistic. I don't think that's a realistic outcome here.
Linus Sebastian
Someone said Walmart's physical checkout has Klarna micro loans built in. I know some delivery food apps have it, apparently.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I saw some of the memes about how, like, when you can. When you can pay for a taco with financing, that's how we know we've reached the end times.
Linus Sebastian
It's over, man. Like, that's also like.
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, hilariously.
Linus Sebastian
Don't do that.
Luke Lafreniere
Just to give you some idea of how destructive it could be to the customer experience to nuke PayPal, you know, there were some high profile YouTubers who publicly, you know, threatened legal action against PayPal that in spite of that, very much still accepted PayPal for their, like, merch store. So, like, it's just. It's not really. It's not really viable because the customer demands it. And not just demands it, but in many cases relies on it.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
So. Oh, that is such a great reference, Drac Ryu. I wish I could. Dude, how cool would it be if we had, like, the ability to give people points in floatplane chat? They could, like, use it for, like a discount on their next thing or something. Like on their next store purchase or something. I don't know. That's a cool feature idea, but we don't do line of sled development anymore. Anyway. Drac Ryu says, I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a cheeseburger today. That is. What a reference. What a reference, man. I love it.
Linus Sebastian
That's pretty good.
Luke Lafreniere
I would. I would love to give you a point or something. I don't even think we have gifted subs yet. Maybe someday. No, maybe someday. Anyway, let's talk about the switch too.
Linus Sebastian
So.
Luke Lafreniere
Yes, Luke, you. You were gonna say something in the pre show and I was like, ah, content. But I don't remember what you said.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, I. I was saying when. When the announcement first happened, we were talking about. On. When I talked about how I thought it was, like, kind of boring.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And I still feel that way. I haven't even opened the box yet.
Luke Lafreniere
Dude.
Linus Sebastian
Clear.
Luke Lafreniere
I don't even. I don't Even agree at all.
Linus Sebastian
Like, I. Boring. I look at the history of Nintendo consoles, man, it's boring.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. Everybody back up. Everybody back up for a second. What it is, though, is what it tries to be. It's. It's what it is.
Linus Sebastian
It's really good at being boring.
Luke Lafreniere
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, by that logic, by that logic, let's say. Let's say that Nvidia released a GPU tomorrow that instead of costing $300, cost $450 and had 4x5x the performance. Would that be boring?
Linus Sebastian
But that's not what we're talking about. It's been a decade.
Luke Lafreniere
But it doesn't matter. The point is that what we had. Well, hold on. What we had was this. What we have now is this times four.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Which is what other consoles do. Which is boring. It's not what Nintendo has historically largely done with almost every generation for a Nintendo console. This is boring. It's cool. I bought one. I'm excited about it. I'm happy to go home and take it out of the box. I'm happy about the product. I still think it's boring.
Luke Lafreniere
But you're coming at this from the perspective of someone who hasn't even turned it on yet.
Linus Sebastian
I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who has historically looked at Nintendo consoles as almost every single launch as a really exciting experience to see what interesting, curious, driven engineers have brought to the table in terms of changing how gaming is done. And what I'm seeing is a console that's faster, a dock that is better, and cartridges that don't even have the damn games on them.
Luke Lafreniere
And that's all fair, but let me tell you, I spent the 15 Canadian dollars on the enhanced version of Breath in the Wild, and I bought the Wild.
Linus Sebastian
I'm stoked.
Luke Lafreniere
And. And in terms of. Because, look, look, I mean, I don't think I expect gaming hardware to excite me anymore. What I expect to excite me is gaming. And maybe, maybe what I'm doing is I'm channeling a little bit of, you know, what David and Plouffe were talking about from the art challenge, where they were like, okay, you know, does it, like, do I with them? They were talking about, like, pixel peeping, you know, like, do I actually need better performance? And in this case, the better performance is not just about, you know, pixel peeping a little bit and having, like, slightly smoother frame rate or whatever. It's about changing the way that I Can experience the game. And for something like Breath of the Wild, we're aiming. When you're dropping down into frame rates in the low 20s, sometimes where you're getting these like these stutters where your display is, I mean, on the oled, it's beautiful. I would personally take the OLED display over the HDR non OLED display on the Switch too. But especially, I mean I played through Breath of the Wild on the original switch. And if you had told me at that time that I could have a new switch, that's just basically everything that was good about the switch and innovative about the Switch, but fixed it just like fixed all my problems that would change the gameplay experience enough for me to be really excited.
Linus Sebastian
I feel like old Nintendo, I enjoy playing on it. I would have called this a pro or something. Or you feel like who would have old Nintendo? Like if you look at some of the DS versions they had where it was like 3DS plus new colorful edition, whatever. I feel like they would have iterated because like it's. I just, I don't see a ton of like, even with the GameCube, it's like, okay, it was small and they put a handle on it. Like they tried something, they tried something and with this one it's just like. I don't know, it's. They did the thing with the dock that they like obviously should have done the first time.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, make it higher performance, you mean?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, put a fan on it. Like just come on. It really, really wouldn't have taken a lot.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, but tell me this, okay. A couple of the recent times, relatively recent, okay, I'm old. A couple times that Nintendo has taken big risks and done something really different. Okay, so your GameCube example, the Wii U, they were. They got pounded into the dirt commercially for doing that. Would I blame them at all?
Linus Sebastian
I don't think.
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, that's not your argument. Your argument is not that it's not smart. Your argument is that it's not exciting.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I think it's decently smart.
Luke Lafreniere
I find this kickstand pretty exciting. This is going to change the usability of this device for me. You know what? I'm excited by the fact that they included Micro SD Express. I saw someone commenting on my unboxing video, like, why would Linus think it's positive for Nintendo to include this standard that like no one really supports? Because they're forward thinking. Yeah, that doesn't help. You don't need the Micro SD card today. You need it when it's time to expand the storage and Micro SD Express is going to be sick. And by taking it mainstream. Dude. Dude. Looking at what happened to the pricing of high capacity Micro SD cards once the. Once the Switch supported them, it was awesome. Because it went mainstream, we hit volume production. It was great. So Nintendo helping to drive industry standard memory card form factors like Micro SD Express. I love it. Yeah, I'm excited for it. I'm not going to apologize for that. This is great.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I wonder at the same time, I think, and I don't even know if this is true and I don't want to, you know, I can needlessly pump the boys, but like, does the. Does the Kill Switch just have that kickstand?
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, the original Kill Switch passes through.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, it just passes through.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it just passes this kickstand through because this kickstand is really nice.
Linus Sebastian
What kickstand did the original Kill Switch have?
Luke Lafreniere
The original Kill Switch or the original Switch?
Linus Sebastian
Kill Switch. I know what the original Switch is.
Luke Lafreniere
I can't remember. I think it did have a. Oh, it had that weird magnetic.
Linus Sebastian
It had its own kickstand and then.
Luke Lafreniere
It became a clip or something. Remember there was like an engineering issue with it and they, they had to change how it worked on the back. Someone in chat will. Someone in chat will probably. Probably let us know.
Linus Sebastian
I see a thing. It has its own kickstand. So like that was. I do agree with you that it's. It's better. I really like the new kickstand. But yeah, it's not that you couldn't solve that previously.
Luke Lafreniere
To be clear.
Linus Sebastian
I do think. I understand Wii U was rough. I think the actual Wii U was great. Genuinely. I think that was purely a marketing failure, in my opinion.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh yeah.
Linus Sebastian
So it's. That's. That's a tough one.
Luke Lafreniere
And to be clear, there are things that I'm really not happy about. You know, I am, I. I am not stoked that, you know, voice chat is going to be like. I'm not stoked at the way that Nintendo is paywalling more and more and more of the functionality of their console behind Nintendo Online. I've talked in the past about how on principle, I refuse to subscribe to Nintendo Online because they don't allow you to back up your save games to the Micro SD card. That is obvious functionality that is just obviously Nintendo holding hostage your ability to keep your games safe, which on a portable device is particularly offensive. And so I'm frustrated because even though obviously I want to acknowledge my privilege here for a second I can afford Nintendo online for sure, no problem, maybe a couple of them, but I shouldn't have to to have basic functionality like that, so I won't. And the more and more that they lock behind it, the more degraded and like a second class citizen I'm going to feel like with this thing I paid US$450 for.
Linus Sebastian
So yeah, it's expensive.
Luke Lafreniere
So I'm not happy about that. Apparently the Joy Con teardown was not good and they are. It looks like we don't know for sure because we have no way of knowing for sure until it actually happens. But it looks like stick drift is just going to continue to be a problem. And I think I have either 4 or 6 joy cons in my house. I forget. I think we had six at one point. I think we're down to four now. Of, of the Joy. I think it's four of the four Joy Cons that I took on my last trip though. So those four, three of them have severe stick drift and one of them has moderate stick drift. And our consoles are not even super heavily used. Like it's like it's bad. It's not a matter of if it'll fail, it's a matter of when it'll fail, which is really frustrating.
Linus Sebastian
I this is like breaking so it's fine that it wasn't in the topic to be clear, just in case anyone's reviewing this, but in Full Point chat people are talking and they linked me to a Tom's Hardware article that for you Mr. Linus. I linked in the bottom of the the Nintendo Switch 2 topic. Oh thanks Bob, but I'm going to share my screen now. Hackers discover Nintendo Switch to exploit one day after launch Minor hack allows running custom code on top of O.S.
Dan
No.
Linus Sebastian
That'S crazy man. Apparently they got it to run a like frame buffer check already. I saw that somewhere else. That's probably the Reddit thread that people are linking. I'm gonna not share my screen before I click on the Reddit. The Reddit link that people are posting. Oh no, that was something.
Luke Lafreniere
There's a lot more for us to talk through here either way.
Linus Sebastian
At least partially jail broken already, which is wild. But yeah, keep going.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. In addition to the Joy Cons being potentially Susceptible to failure, iFixit gave it a 3 out of 10 repairability score. The OG was 4 out of 10 in part this is due to a ton of stickers that have to be destroyed to access the screws, the battery being glued in and the USB ports and game Cartridge slot being soldered to the main board. Joy Cons are apparently even harder to fix as well.
Linus Sebastian
How did they get it so early? Dang.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So that was one of our discussion questions is, what is your take on Nintendo opting to not send out review units? Does that communicate that they felt they had something to hide or does it communicate a deep level of confidence in this product? I could see it both ways, man.
Linus Sebastian
I could absolutely see it both ways. I don't think Nintendo much likes the media. I can put it that way.
Luke Lafreniere
I can see why they don't like me much.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's not like they didn't give it to any media. They were just obviously extremely selective about who they gave it to.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, curiously, like, I saw. I saw some choices that were like, non gamers. I'm like, I sure they.
Linus Sebastian
Nintendo wants to be lifestyle even though it's gaming.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, that's always been a weird one to me.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
It's like, here's an alarm clock.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
By the way, this alarm clock will mean nothing to you and you won't care about it at all unless you are 100% a gamer. Yeah, Jeff, JK says quit whinging and y' all will get one. Oh, dude. It has nothing to do with whining and everything to do with A, not many people getting one and Nintendo's choices being baffling and B, to do with the fact that we openly talk about emulation. Like, let's be real here.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, criticize.
Luke Lafreniere
Nintendo's one of those companies that's very much like Apple that the way that they work is they engage with media that align with their vision. And Nintendo surprisingly does engage with us to a limited degree. From time to time they'll, you know, answer an email. I believe we got a review unit of the Switch Lite, actually. In fact, we might have even gotten a review unit of the Switch back in the day. So they. They do engage with us from time to time. They're not just radio silent like Apple, but I suspect that there are folks at Nintendo who would just kind of rather not talk to us or acknowledge us. And I get that. I get that.
Linus Sebastian
I know, I know. I've been harping on how it's boring. I'm just. I'm just sitting here trying to think of like. Like, I know they did. They did kind of the Joy Cons with the Wii and then they expanded upon it with the Wii U and they had the Joy Con plus, or expansion pack or whatever it was called. And then now we have the little Switch Joy Cons and we have the newer switch 2 joy cons or whatever. It would have been kind of cool to see them go back pretty far and go to like a glove or something. Like a haptic glove would have been sick or something. I know they're like, they're again, they want to be lifestyle, they want to get people outside. If they embraced this, you know, Niantic just sold itself to some terrifying company. But I have loved this concept where like, I'll play Pokemon Go for hours and no one will have any idea because I'll be walking around park or something and I've got my little dongle thing in my pocket and it's just buzzing away catching Pokemon and I'm walking hands free, playing a game without looking at a screen. It would be cool if they tried to get people outside or something, but while still playing their games, like, I think there's opportunities that they could have taken and they just went, nah, it's faster.
Luke Lafreniere
We don't know that they won't do stuff though. I mean, I don't think anyone saw the cardboard kits coming with the original Switch.
Linus Sebastian
That's very true. The labo. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting.
Luke Lafreniere
Come on, don't count them out.
Linus Sebastian
That's fair.
Luke Lafreniere
Quirky ideas, like, it's still Nintendo and it's the Switch, but it's like way better. And like, dude, I haven't played much Mario Kart World yet because they made me go shoot other stuff. Okay, I shouldn't say they made me go shoot other stuff when I was doing my short circuit unboxing. Was that yesterday? Good lord. Yeah, yesterday. Yesterday morning I was shooting the unboxing and I got to one level one, one track that has like a wave racer section where you're like on CDs and oh, dude, it's like freaking awesome. So like I haven't gotten to play much because I finished that shoot and then I went straight to one on upgrading the storage of non upgradable Macs. We had a guest come in, really excited for you guys to see that video. I actually got to upgrade the storage on a non upgradable, like soldered motherboard Mac myself with tools that we have in our shop. So I thought that was pretty sick. And then I had to go home and pack and then I've been busy all day, so I haven't. And now I'm doing my show, so I haven't really gotten a chance to play. But the little bit that I've played, dude, the Controls feel so good. The bigger joysticks are more than welcome. The bigger face buttons are great. The big screen. The screen is great. And when you compare the size, the thickness, the weight, the general chunk of this device to PC handhelds that have a similar size of screen or similar class of screen. When I first saw leaked images of the Switch 2, I was like, oh my God, it's too big. It's ridiculous. Forget it. It's basically a handheld PC. They've completely lost track of what it means to build a handheld console like the. The Nintendo of the. Of the DS Lite days would look at this and cry for shame. But now that it's in my hand, I. I really like it. We had some more discussion questions about the Switch. One of them is what is your prediction for lifetime sales of the Switch 2 and related. Related. Will it end up being, to your point, more of a Switch Pro with the OG continuing to sell well alongside its successor? Like, is this going to be a PS2 where Nintendo just can't discontinue that damn first gen Switch? And I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments as well.
Linus Sebastian
I would actually say yes, because the price delta between the two is so enormous that there are going to be many people that just can't afford it and it'll be much more affordable and still a cool experience, despite it being so old to have an original Switch. So it just. It'll be what it is. I don't know.
Luke Lafreniere
Jax raises a really important point around this launch. Not going to give them any of my money if they threaten to brick my property because they somehow happen to learn I emulate or whatever. Stop giving them coverage as my suggestion. So the first bit. Yeah, that's a really good point. Nintendo's change to their terms of service, allowing them to remotely brick property that you paid for. Unacceptable.
Linus Sebastian
Absolutely.
Luke Lafreniere
What we need though is legislation making that illegal because companies are just going to keep pushing the envelope on this and I don't think that Nintendo is unique in that regard. As for your suggestion that I just stop covering things, it's not really an option. There were a lot of suggestions actually on the unboxing of the Switch, like more than just a couple, that we just shouldn't be covering it. And I don't really know. I don't really know how to address.
Linus Sebastian
That because I didn't see Nvidia stuff too.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, because it's my. It's like, what should I cover today then? You know, it's like actually my job anymore. And it's not just my job, right? Like it's all the people who work here. It's our job to cover this stuff and to do the best job that we can and at the same time to highlight the things that are not great about these releases and do our job as members of the media to educate people on what's good about things and what's bad about them. So to me it almost feels like it's like when you ask the, you know, the ethical person that works at a government agency who resigns because they were asked to do something that was not okay. It's like, it's like being happy when they resign, knowing that ultimately they're going to be replaced by someone who just does whatever, who won't fight those problems. Like if I'm sitting here, you know, working with you guys and wanting to hear from you guys, you know, hey, what are the things that are, that are obstacles for you? Like I've been reading the comments on that video extremely thoroughly, making sure that when we do our review on LTT that we are addressing these concerns and helping to make people broadly aware of them. Right? Like that's our job. I think that, you know, giving that kind of feedback to someone who is, to a group, right? Like we're a team over here to a team that is, that is trying to take your feedback that we can take, right? The feedback of, you know, how do we cover this in a way that addresses the community's concerns, right? Giving feedback like you should just not cover it I think is really, it's really self destructive in my opinion.
Linus Sebastian
Oh absolutely. I mean this is the same thing as some members of the audience trying to shout for every single conclusion of every single review from every single creator to be exactly identical. It's like it's not even what you want.
Luke Lafreniere
Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty makes a good point. You say that it's unacceptable, then then you accept it by buying more Nintendo products. You can't influence Nintendo other than with your wallet. And you know what, that's a really good point. That's a super good point and I acknowledge that straight up head on in my first leak summary video of the Switch 2. I don't like a lot of this stuff. I really want to play Nintendo games. I'm human and what I want is better long term solutions because again, I don't think Nintendo is unique in bending customers over and I don't think that anything is going to get any better without legislation. But you're right, you're right to call.
Linus Sebastian
That Out John Deere is completely trashing farmers and we all still buy food.
Luke Lafreniere
I don't think that gaming is comparable to food. But I also don't think that your example is as ridiculous as it may seem on the surface because, well, sort of. Like I. I do think that happiness is essential and I do think that a lot of people derive happiness from gaming. I think the audience that I'm talking to can probably relate to that pretty decently.
Linus Sebastian
You know, I like Nintendo products because of the demographic within my life that I get to play them with.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And that is not necessarily true for like almost any other type of gaming that I do. We've had discussions on me and Nintendo going back, like pretty much the history of WAN show where I've talked about like I, I speak pretty big about most things, but Nintendo is just like, unfortunately this annoying company that I will just keep buying their stuff, which sucks because there's just. Yeah, again, there's that demographic in my life of people that I can play Nintendo games with that don't really want to play anything else. And I'm not giving up on those people in my life because they're important to me.
Luke Lafreniere
So that's a nice hat. Asks someone help me out here. What's the concern right now? The concern is that Nintendo's terms of service changed recently, giving them theoretically the right to brick your console remotely if you do something on it that they don't like, like alter it. We've got some more discussion questions. Are you mad that there's no OLED at launch?
Linus Sebastian
It's just an up charging idea for later so I can eventually drop the price of this current one and release an OLED version at this price or higher. That's my theory. So.
Luke Lafreniere
Here'S the thing. We know that the OLED would cost more, right? Because an OLED panel will cost more. People are already outraged at the price. What would you have had them do? Would you have had them release two consoles side by side, one at 450, one at 500 or 550 with maybe more storage and an OLED panel? Would that have made people more mad, Less mad legitimately? I'm just, I want to know what people would have had Nintendo do here. People are saying bad take. But I'm not, I'm not giving you a take. I'm asking a question. What would you have had them do? It is a fact. It is a simple fact that an OLED panel costs more than an LCD panel at the same size, especially if it's a brand new form factor. And this is. I'm not aware of any other device that is using an OLED that is this size and aspect ratio. So it would be. They would have to do tooling for a new display. What would you. What would you have them do? Given that people are already outraged about the price, Rightfully so, T. Lewis says. Didn't Valve do that for the Steam Deck? Wasn't their base model IPS and a higher end model with more storage and was oled? Yes. Later, Steam Deck OLED didn't exist out of the gate. It came later. Not because Valve was just trying to bilk people and squeeze more money out of them with an OLED upgrade later, but because it took a little while for the technology to catch up and for them to be able to integrate the OLED panel. And they came at it with, I think, a pretty reasonable upcharge. And we weren't mad about that. So I just want to know what's different here. What do you think, Luke?
Linus Sebastian
I think people are just gonna be mad regardless. I think. I think if they weren't bricking people's switches that tried to mod them, I think people would be mad. I think if it was more affordable and they were bricking people's switches that modded them, people would be mad. I think the only way that people wouldn't be mad with this launch is if it was significantly cheaper and they weren't doing the brick. Your console, if you try to utilize hardware that you purchased in a way that you want, which is like, obviously bs.
Luke Lafreniere
And the game cart thing is a big.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, I forgot about the game cart thing. That's awesome.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, the game card thing is a big one. And the price of the games. I don't want to spoil too much, but I will tell you guys the premise of the video. One of the other videos we shot this week was me giving my son his birthday present. See, he had his birthday a while back and he's not a super materialistic kind of guy. And so. But one thing that I know he likes is he likes his Nintendo Switch. And so I said, okay, son, happy birthday. I got you a switch too. And he's like, oh, where is it? I'm like, well, it's not out yet. What do you. What do you think? I'm magic. I'll give it to you when it comes out. And so for a video concept, slash. Just an interesting exercise because I was really curious to get just an average gamer's perspective on it. I brought him into the studio and the intro of the video goes, happy birthday, son. Here's your Switch 2. Is what I would say if I wasn't worried that you're making the greatest mistake of your young life. You haven't even seen what else is out there yet. Why would you just settle for the first thing? Actually, I didn't do that. Why would you settle for the first thing you meet? Angle that's really funny. I should have done that for the intro. Anyway, the point is I kind of pull the Switch two away and I go, wait a second, you haven't tried anything else yet. And so we got a whole roster of other handheld gaming devices. Ally Ally X Legion Go Ayaneo 3 MSI claw I'm sure I'm missing something. And then also we had the Switch 2 in there and basically I made him a deal. I said, you can have your Switch 2 for your birthday or you can try all these other ones and if there's anyone that you like better, you can have that instead. And I'm not going to tell you guys what the conclusion is. But what I will say, but what I will say is that because I kind of trickled out the information about each thing. Oh yeah, PS Portal was one of them. Because he was like stoked on the PS Portal. But then I was like, okay, there's a catch. See that PlayStation over there? Like, that's what it's running off of. And if you're too far away from your PlayStation, it doesn't work too good. He's like, oh, okay. Because I was willing to offer a PlayStation 5 plus a portal because realistically, it's not even that far off the pricing if I pick them up secondhand or whatever. Right? So anyway, I wouldn't say the funniest moment because there's one toward the end that's like really good. But one of the funniest moments was when I kind of sprung on him. Okay, but here's the thing about the Switch too. While the pricing might actually be cheaper than some of these, like, PC handhelds, the games are really expensive. Like, I'm talking over $100. To be clear. I'm talking Canadian dollars, which they are. They're over $100 for Triple A games. And he goes, he responds, he goes. For each game.
Linus Sebastian
Especially. Especially probably used to like steam pricing 100.
Luke Lafreniere
Dude. He's. He was completely taken aback by it.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
You mean for each game, like he couldn't. It's. It's one of those things that you can't act. He just was mind blown by it. Like What?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, Nintendo games really don't fall in price much.
Luke Lafreniere
No, they don't. It's wild, dude. It's wild. But no, he's 100% right. Like, that's a major. That's a major issue with this platform is like Nintendo is trying to eat their cake and have it too here, where they've been upfront that they're trying to make money on the consoles, which. Fair enough, you know, but they're also charging so much for the games that I feel like it'd be pretty nice if that game was subsidizing the price of the hardware a little bit, you know?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, it's kind of rough.
Luke Lafreniere
All right. I feel like I've said everything I have to say about the OLED version. Okay. Our last discussion topic here for the Switch 2 is what are you most excited to play?
Linus Sebastian
I am very curious about Mario Kart World. I have intentionally not looked into it very much. It's the only game I have currently. I didn't buy anything else for it.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, technically you have all your old games too. Yeah, the Upgrade packs are 15 Canadian, which I don't love, but I don't hate. I think it's somewhat reasonable.
Linus Sebastian
Yep.
Luke Lafreniere
I do hate, by the way. This is wild. Your old carts are still locked at 30fps, so aside from not getting the HDR or any enhancements or whatever, they still. They run at a solid 30fps, but it still is frame rate locked at 30fps. That's ridiculous. If I had more powerful hardware, it should just run at more FPS anyway.
Linus Sebastian
Based computer guy take. Yeah, I think Mario Kart World, I don't want to know too much about it. If you, like played it and you enjoyed it, like, that's cool. But I don't know. I don't want to know way too much about it. It sounds really weird to me and I'm interested to experience the weirdness and see how it goes.
Luke Lafreniere
Cool. Yeah. So anyway, guys, we're gonna have. We're gonna have lots of coverage of the Switch 2 coming up. We're gonna have the review on LTT. We're gonna have that shopping video with my son. It's gonna be great. And hopefully it has a very long life and who knows, maybe comes down in price at some point along the way, gets an OLED variant.
Linus Sebastian
And here's a question I have for you, actually.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Would you have bought a Switch 2 for yourself if you weren't planning on playing games with like, Little man or others? If it was purely just for You.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, hold on by. Just for me, am I. What if it wasn't for me and my kids? What if it was for me and, like, entertaining? Because there is. There's no better machine for hooking up to the rec room TV when we host a party than a Switch.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
And for that, I mean, you know, what a, you know, frame rate, image quality, you know, enthusiast I am. You know, I like to have. It was still a Switch rate gaming experience. And so to me, the new Switch is. Nintendo's asking for $450 from me for the first time in eight years, assuming I didn't buy an OLED, right. Which I did. But, like, they're not actually asking for a console worth of money from me that often. And so, yeah, it would just be part of my. It'd be part of my setup for when I have friends over, like, Play Mario Party or whatever. I.
Linus Sebastian
Okay. And that is, in my opinion, the correct way to answer that question. But I want to move the goalpost and ask again, what if it was just for you? No entertaining just for you?
Luke Lafreniere
That'd be tough. I thought I was gonna play Tears of the Kingdom. I bought it, and then I got like 15 minutes into it, and I was like, okay, yeah, I didn't buy the Breath of the Wild expansion, and I don't need this Breath of the Wild expansion either. I know there's the building mechanics and all that, but it just felt. It felt too similar to me. What I loved about Breath of the Wild was that it was so different. And, you know, and maybe. Maybe I'm making your same argument about, you know, where I'm trying to say the Switch 2 is exciting and you're saying it's iterative, and I'm kind of making the same argument because people are going to be like, yeah, I played Tears of the Kingdom. It was so different. There was so much that was different about it. How can you. How can you possibly say it was iterative? It's emotional. It's gaming, you know, it's not objective. It's not FPS and frame times. It's. It's gaming. I haven't gotten into a Mario Kart since Mario Kart ds. I don't think that if it wasn't a launch. A launch title for a console that I ultimately decided to buy, you know, anyway, I don't think I would have just gone out of my way to get into a Mario Kart again, because Mario Kart ds. It was a very different stage of my life. I was taking public transit A lot. And I just had like downtime, you know, I don't even think, yeah, like DS Lite would have been what I had. So I didn't. I don't even think I had a smartphone yet. Like, that was kind of what I did when I had idle time. So I don't think I would pick that up again. I'm going to totally dodge your question again. I would buy it again, but I would buy it for the same reason that I bought this one, to try it. And then if I don't end up caring about it, put it in the lounge at Smash Champs. So what I've decided is I'm either going to keep this and put my Switch OLED in the lounge at Smash Champs or I'm going to decide I just don't care that much and I'm not going to use it and I'll borrow my sons if I really need it and I will put this in Smash Champs and then either sell the Switch OLED or hold on to it or put it in the theater or something. If it was just to game, just handheld, I probably wouldn't bother because I don't. I have so many games that look really appealing to me in my backlog that I haven't had a chance to finish that I just don't see the need to buy hardware to finish them.
Linus Sebastian
This is. See, this is the answer I was looking for because I think.
Luke Lafreniere
Because you want to talk about a game you finished?
Linus Sebastian
No, because ultimately I think we kind of bought it for similar reasons.
Luke Lafreniere
Right.
Linus Sebastian
And it was not necessarily just us. It was the, like the social ecosystem that this brand very unfortunately seems to be able to bring together sometimes. Like, I know it wasn't. They. They advertised as if it was going to be and then I don't think it was quite as much, but like we parties were a. Oh yeah, 100% switch parties. I don't know.
Luke Lafreniere
By the way, guys, I have spoiled nothing because I'm talking about the rationale for purchasing it.
Linus Sebastian
What? Yeah. What did they think you were talking about?
Luke Lafreniere
Well, that I spoiled my son's choice.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, no.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, because I made the decision before he even came in to shoot the video.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Anyway, sorry, carry on.
Linus Sebastian
I think that's just people misunderstanding, but. But yeah, it's a thing. It's a bringer together of people.
Luke Lafreniere
Yep. And nobody else does local gaming the way that Nintendo does. With that said, there's a lot more on Steam these days than there used to be. Like, I'm finally playing Unravel 2 Yvonne and I are almost done and it's great. It's fun. It's not super challenging, like if you're in old school gamer or whatever. You know, it's. It's. It's kind. I. It's very much like It Takes Two for me. Beautiful environments, less fun gimmicks. Like It Takes Two had a lot of different gameplay mechanics that Unravel Two doesn't really. But it's like beautiful environments and you just hang out and you just play a game and you just enjoy each other's company and. And chill on the couch. You don't have to like, think super hard a lot of the time and. And that is getting better on the PC side. But I don't think anything is quite Mario Party.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, even though Mario Party kind of sucks now, it's still. It still works somehow.
Luke Lafreniere
Anyways, I thought the latest one fixed the unskippable nonsense that I had with the one that I bought. I'm not actually sure.
Linus Sebastian
I don't even know there's been one since then, so.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, there has. That. That one that you and I played together for a little bit or like tried to play together, but it was like unusable because of how impossible it was to skip anything that was. And what killed me about it was how fixable it was.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Like, ew.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Okay, well, we're getting screamed at by Dan Besser to explain and do two merch messages.
Dan
How dare you.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, sorry about that.
Dan
I have said no words, you know, over an hour.
Linus Sebastian
He did the extremely loud action of putting the little thing on the corner of the tv. I'm massively mischaracterizing his actions right now, but it's funny to me, so I think that's okay.
Luke Lafreniere
Do you want to. Do you want to do them this time?
Linus Sebastian
Sure.
Luke Lafreniere
I just got to get something related to the thing that I was doing today to people who are working on the thing I was doing today.
Linus Sebastian
Sure. Merch messages are a thing. You can get them by going to LTT store, finding a product that you're interested in, like, oh my goodness, tall pants.
Luke Lafreniere
Whoa. What?
Linus Sebastian
That's crazy. Adding those to cart and then going and looking at your cart. And then in here you can see the big bonus bin banner or sorry. Actually, that's cool too. You should do that as well. But that's not what I'm talking about. The merge messages banner and click this checkbox that says you want your message to appear on the stream and then you can decide if you want to be Anonymous. Or show your first and last name and then type some content like hi Dan, smiley face. And then pick whatever style you want it to be in like swamp. And then when you check out, it'll go to Dan. And then Dan can either respond to you directly with the Tippy Tappies on his desk and then you'll see it in the bottom of the screen over there, or he will curate it for Linus and I and sometimes himself to respond to through the vocal cords later on in the stream. That's how merch messages work. And now we're going to do two of them.
Dan
Well, you're going to do one and then you're going to.
Linus Sebastian
We're going to do one of them and then we're going to do some other stuff.
Luke Lafreniere
We're going to follow instructions for a change, Luke. We're going to follow the bloody instructions. That's what we're going to do.
Dan
No, I don't like this. Can we not do that?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, we should do it slightly wrong.
Dan
Yeah, let's read one and a half, merge messages and then move on. Hello, lld. I will protect brettasaurus at all costs. Luke, as a single developer working on an app, how should I go about security? Been looking at Firebase authentication tips or tricks? Don't.
Luke Lafreniere
We don't need to know your relationship status there.
Linus Sebastian
Are you. Can you can get someone else to roll your auth for you? I don't remember the names of them, but there's some services that you can just get that'll do it. It depends. Like are you, are you, are you pre revenue? Do you. Do you have money backing you?
Luke Lafreniere
Pre revenue? I like that term. I remember when I was pre revenue.
Linus Sebastian
Pre revenue. Pre. I think that would.
Luke Lafreniere
That would have been such a. That would have been such an. Like. Oh, that would have been such a hack thing to call it, you know, when I was.
Linus Sebastian
This is about it. This is a startup thing.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, I'm sure it is. I just haven't heard it before. That's great.
Linus Sebastian
Are you pre revenue? Are you pre investment? Are you pre team? Are you pre idea? Pre idea is my favorite one.
Dan
Pre competency.
Linus Sebastian
We have a fantastic team. We poach them all from. You know, they're all like ex Googlers, ex Microsoft, whatever. We're currently pre revenue. Pre idea. But we're gathering funds, you know, it's great, it's great. But yeah, you could get a subscribed off. So just like pay somebody else to handle your auth for you. I don't know how much it Costs and, I don't know, example companies, because we've never done it, but I know it's a thing.
Dan
Someone else should do it, basically.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, maybe. If your idea is really good and you want to get it to market. Things move really fast these days. You might not want to make it yourself. When we first started floatplane, the amount of things we had to make ourselves was crazy. If we were remaking all of floatplane right now, we would not have to do as much of it ourselves. I'll say that much. Yeah.
Dan
Anyways, all right, I've got another half a merch message. Hey, tips from tech. Building up for the new hoodie. Any possibilities for a crossbody bag or strap? How about some announcements?
Luke Lafreniere
Wait, what did I just. Sorry, hold on. What did I just hear? I was following up that thing. I'm done.
Linus Sebastian
Now we're breaking the rules.
Dan
We're breaking up the merch, man.
Linus Sebastian
Messages.
Dan
So you'll get the second half after you've done the announcements.
Linus Sebastian
Nice.
Luke Lafreniere
Sorry, what did I hear about a cross body bag?
Dan
You got to do the announcements. You'll get.
Linus Sebastian
We got to do the announcements. Announcing the Bretosaurus hoodie. This hoodie that Linus is wearing right now.
Dan
Did you get yours?
Linus Sebastian
Yes.
Dan
I forgot.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, yeah. Maybe you should put it on. I'll read it. You put it on.
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
Luke Lafreniere
This hoodie is so cool. It's so cool. Okay. It features a new printing technique for us with an embossed breadsaurus. That is subtle. I don't know that it's that subtle, but it's adorable. Making it easier to pair with other clothes and show off how cultured you are. It also has a great tactile feel to it, so it's, like, raised. Can you guys see the Brett Soros? Ah, it's so cute. Like most of our other hoodies, it has a secure pocket for your phone or earbuds to make them less likely to fall out. And also has custom baby version of our chonk draw cord with LTT stamped metal tips. It is super comfy, super soft on the inside, and you look amazing. You both look amazing.
Linus Sebastian
Thank you.
Dan
Don't lie to me in public.
Luke Lafreniere
Dude, they nailed the color on this one. They did such a good job. The team just crushed this product.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, it's. It's. It's very. It's very, very comfortable. Yeah, it's the baby versions of the. Whatever these are called. Again. Drawstring tips are nice.
Dan
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So we. We made our own draw cords for, I think, the Supasoft, and so we Called them the Chonks. And because they're metal at the end and they're like a nice thick weave, so these are like that. But they're baby ones. They're small, so they're still metal, but they're not, like, ridiculously huge.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
So they're baby chunks.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. It's very comfortable. The embossed logo thing is really cool.
Luke Lafreniere
Get yours at LMG GG Breadsaurus.
Linus Sebastian
Yes.
Luke Lafreniere
Panda asks, is this the permanent product or limited time? Who knows with us? And it's not because we're trying to be mean or anything, but a lot of the time, the first order, we're testing the waters. If it doesn't sell at all, guess what, it's limited edition. If it sells really well, guess what, we're going to reorder it. We're still, in the grand scheme of things, a really small company. There are things about us that are kind of on the bigger side. Like, we sell a lot of screwdrivers. Screwdriver has been an absolute smash hit for us. But on the clothing, like the apparel side, we're still a pretty small company and we run up against challenges where minimum order quantities are just, like, not doable for us very regularly. That's the thing. So we're going to do our best with it and if we can, you know, bring in more of them, we'd love to. But if you really want one, you know. Yeah, but if you can, if you're in a position where you can afford it right now, I wouldn't say don't buy it. Someone asks why no restock of the firewall shirt? Because that was limited edition. That was a print to order where we only made as many as people ordered. So that's. That's how many we're selling of that. It's. It was to celebrate our April Fool's joke. It wouldn't make sense on the store forever. I would say this is on the heavier side for hoodies. Would you agree with that, Luke? Versus like a super light.
Linus Sebastian
This is a warm. This is a warm hoodie.
Luke Lafreniere
It's a warm one.
Linus Sebastian
To be fair. I am a warm boy and I'm sitting here and I'm fine. It's not. You're not going to, like, absolutely roast, but it's a warm bed. It should be nice in, like, the.
Dan
Fall or evening outside fire. Summer. This is a great summer fireside.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Dan
This is really, really nice.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
All right, what's next?
Dan
Do you want to do another one or do you want the rest of that merch? Message.
Linus Sebastian
Weekend mukum.
Luke Lafreniere
Another.
Linus Sebastian
Excuse me, we can't mukum mcm.
Dan
Okay.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, sure.
Linus Sebastian
No, I'm. I'm doing.
Luke Lafreniere
You're doing it out of order, Luke. Way to go, Luke.
Linus Sebastian
Well, I think they're cheating because I don't think they're supposed to get two announcements, so maybe it's not out of order.
Luke Lafreniere
You're in charge, Luke.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Weekend MCM deal. Also, this weekend save when you buy two individual MCM components. 2 for 24.99 USD on the US site and two individual MCM components. 2 For $24.99 USD on the US site, and 2 for 3499 CAD on the global site. This includes arches power bar keys, power brick holders, and cable tie holders.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, that's really aggressive, Shop. Oh, wait. No, no. Okay. No, no. It's not as aggressive as I thought it was. Okay. Wait, what? Oh, no, that's really aggressive. I'm getting 2 for 24.99. Click through and it'll be clear.
Linus Sebastian
Oh.
Luke Lafreniere
You should probably screen share. Just an idea.
Linus Sebastian
So it's new to this. It's not really individual components.
Dan
Oh, it's a bogo.
Luke Lafreniere
It's packs, basically. It's a. It's a buy one, get one cheap.
Linus Sebastian
But it's buy a package.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Get one cheap. This was worded. Not good.
Luke Lafreniere
Be nice.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
These are your colleagues you're talking about.
Linus Sebastian
That's true. Okay, cool. It's just. It's. Yeah. Because it's a individual MCM components, but it's. It's individual packs, so. Because that. Yeah. Anyways, shop MCM at LMG, GG, McMbogo. B O G O.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, cool. Did you show them the site and show them how to, like, add the.
Linus Sebastian
Things I will do again.
Luke Lafreniere
In the meantime, Dan, do you want to hit me with a merch message?
Linus Sebastian
Sure.
Dan
Hey, tips from tech. Building up a new hoodie. Any possibilities for a cross body bag or strap for tech sack? Maybe Would be useful for my future activities when the community.
Luke Lafreniere
This is the thing you read before?
Dan
I read half of it. Yeah. No, he wasn't asking for a strap. Yeah, it was a strap for a tech sack.
Luke Lafreniere
I'm tethered here, so I'm not sure how far away I can get.
Dan
There we go.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, no. I could unplug.
Dan
More like binas.
Linus Sebastian
What is he doing?
Dan
I don't know anymore. Man screaming.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, I don't actually know if I'm supposed to be leaking this already.
Linus Sebastian
Already?
Luke Lafreniere
I think I might have talked to Nick about it. I can kill the feet if I can't remember already.
Linus Sebastian
I saw where you typed. You can type it out.
Luke Lafreniere
Leaking.
Linus Sebastian
I can kill it if you need something. What is it?
Luke Lafreniere
What's that?
Linus Sebastian
Well, I don't. I want Arty to know what it is. What is that?
Luke Lafreniere
It's a crossbody bag.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, cool. Oh, it's like a little one. Nice. Is this, like, tech sack so you.
Luke Lafreniere
Can wear it around kind? No, I would say.
Linus Sebastian
I would compare it to tech sack.
Dan
Artie is very angry. Cross body bag.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, he's typing. He's typing.
Dan
All caps, screaming.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, okay. Should I not show it anymore?
Linus Sebastian
Well, why would you show it in the first place?
Dan
Oh, he thinks it's fine. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
He said, I warned you, dog. You did. Sad face. I told you about stairs. What are you people even talking about? I told you about stairs. What does that even mean?
Dan
It's a sweet bro in hello.
Linus Sebastian
He's not angry.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, well, anyway, he's not angry.
Linus Sebastian
He's just disappointed.
Luke Lafreniere
Here's how the Switch 2 goes in. We have, like, a screen safe flap here.
Linus Sebastian
So it's got to be bigger then.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, so then there's. Yeah, it's bigger than the tech sack, I think there's another screen safe pocket here. So it's the other side of the same screen safe one. See, like that. So you could put, like, a phone in there or, like, handheld, really small tablet. And then over here, you've got. These are tbd, but a couple, like, elastic kind of things. So you could put a thing in there, maybe a charger. You know, whatever. I think this zipper pocket might go. Because you'd probably just use the exterior one if you wanted to use that volume. Right. This will probably change to, like, webbing over here. So this is pretty early, but the goal we were targeting Switch two.
Linus Sebastian
Don't, like, say things will probably change, because then. What if they don't?
Luke Lafreniere
They will. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had my meeting about this already.
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
Luke Lafreniere
This is. This is pretty far away. Like, we're still. These are. There's. This is still very much subject to change. So we were targeting Switch 2, but we also wanted to be able to do Steam Deck. So you can see it's a. It's a pretty tight fit, but who.
Linus Sebastian
Knows, because it's subject to change.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it's. It's. The idea is like, a gaming handheld crossbody is what we're. What we're kind of targeting here. Yeah, it fits Ally Lax as well.
Linus Sebastian
Nice.
Luke Lafreniere
What other handhelds do I have with me? I have My Ally. But that's about. That's about the same size. If it fits the Ally X, it'll fit the Ally.
Linus Sebastian
I guess I can't really ask because it's subject change, but I was going to say, what's the branding like on it? Is it the square that's on the tech sac, or is it something else?
Luke Lafreniere
No, it's the. It's the little tiny. Hold on, let me just see if I get my preview up here. Oh, man. I don't even look pretty.
Linus Sebastian
Like, sleek and stealthy.
Luke Lafreniere
There you go.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, it's the little. Those are black on black from the commuter.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
That's the only branding that we have on it right now.
Linus Sebastian
That's pretty sick.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Dude. Every time I see a complaint about, like, our branding being too garish, I'm just like, nah. No, I actually cannot take you seriously as a. As a human being.
Linus Sebastian
No one outside of our audience knows about the store because there's, like, no branding on anything. It's not too garish.
Luke Lafreniere
We've cost ourselves probably a lot of sales by having such subtle branding over the years.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Because we're trying to be cool, man. Because I think it looks great.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. YETI Wrangler asks any chance of an LTT camera bag in the future? I got to be honest with you guys. A lot of it's a space I don't personally understand really well, and it's one that we definitely do have thoughts on as a team. But I have a hard time imagining what the identity of our camera bag would be that is substantially different from what others are doing really well in the space. We really try to find areas where we don't feel someone else is already doing an outstanding job, because if they are, then we should just buy their product. I'm not saying we'll never make products that are just about sort of enriching the portfolio and broadening it and making sure that we have a solution for every customer. But it's not really our. We have such limited resources right now. We really want to focus on the things where we can really do something different.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Dan
And then we got.
Luke Lafreniere
Of course it will be big enough to fit the charger. Mind paradox. That's like. That's our whole jam, is making sure there's room to actually put chargers in our bags for the devices you're carrying.
Linus Sebastian
Is the official Switch 2 charger less annoying than the Switch 1?
Luke Lafreniere
It's. It's detachable, so I consider that a plus. Both from, like, a right to repair Slash like serviceability standpoint as well as just a. Like a usability standpoint. I like being able to take like. Oh, okay. It's. It's powering my setup right now, so I can't show it to you now, but I like being able to take my like. Sick. Coming soon lttstore.com you know, chonky LTT long USB C cable and use that for my switch if I'm, you know, sitting in bed in the hotel and the. And the plug is far away or whatever. Right. Like, I like having that flexibility for sure.
Dan
Will it be able to hold an IOhio or Virginia class submarine?
Linus Sebastian
That's a good question. Oh, good. That's a promise.
Luke Lafreniere
As long as you 3D print it small enough, as long as you 3D print it small enough, then it'll hold it just fine.
Dan
Always the asterisk.
Linus Sebastian
Got him.
Luke Lafreniere
That's how they get them and flow plane.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Wait, no, we have to do another merch message. We have to do the second half of that merch message.
Dan
They just did that was that. I read them both together because I'm in control.
Luke Lafreniere
Wow.
Linus Sebastian
Fascinating.
Dan
For the first time.
Luke Lafreniere
What even is this WAN show today?
Linus Sebastian
What is any WAN show ever?
Dan
Yeah, they're all like, that's fair.
Linus Sebastian
Fall plane announcement. Smash Champs is finally open and we have an exclusive video of what happened during the launch day. Everything from setup, mini games, not being able to cut the ribbon itself to what high level.
Luke Lafreniere
That was cringe, dude. If you're okay. No, you gotta. You gotta bring this up. Bring this up on the screen share. Bring this up on the screen share. If your entire. If your entire bloody job job is to rent out novelty sized scissors. Okay. Those have one purpose. To cut ribbons at grand opening ceremonies. Whoa.
Linus Sebastian
Huge.
Luke Lafreniere
So if you're. If you're novelty. Yeah. If your novelty scissors. Okay, get. Find, find the clip. Find the clip. It's probably toward like the, the back half. It'll be pretty obvious. Before that. Before that. Before that. Keep going.
Dan
Oh, keep going.
Luke Lafreniere
There we go. Okay, this is. This is a fiasco. So it's me and the mayor of Surrey and Yvonne. Okay, we're trying to cut the. We're trying to cut the river. Look at this. Pathetic. Pathetic.
Linus Sebastian
I think it goes further back than that too. Oh, it goes a lot further. Oh, you're just standing there. Never mind.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it. Just. Anyway, we're, we're very happy to be working more closely with the city of Surrey and you know, trying to get stuff done I feel like we are very close to getting everything rounded out for, for whale lands in the future. I. I don't want to here. I gotta find some wood to knock on because things can be challenging. But for everyone who was trashing on me when I was talking about the, the, the fire code nonsense, I was right, by the way. So thank you for not believing that I know anything about a building project that I've been.
Linus Sebastian
Sorry.
Luke Lafreniere
What were you involved in? For years I was right that the, the issue with the egress distances was misinterpreted by whoever was looking at it and that none of it mattered because people were really upset that I was like questioning fire egress standards. I wasn't. I was questioning improper interpretation of them. I'm not just a completely uneducated scrub coming into this. This is not my first rodeo.
Linus Sebastian
I don't know if that's how you worded it at the time.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, what did I say exactly? I don't remember what I said. I said it was bs. Yeah, BS and it was stupid.
Linus Sebastian
I don't know if you said, I think the interpretation is BS though.
Luke Lafreniere
It doesn't matter. It was wrong.
Linus Sebastian
All right?
Luke Lafreniere
People didn't ask, you know, who was opposing it. They didn't ask what the actual issues were. They knew nothing about the project. They just assumed that I didn't know what I was talking about. But 100% did, and I was 100% right. So that's resolved now. And we will be able to have proper security at our lens, which was really important to me, and we will be able to have totally proper egress for. In the event of an emergency, everything's fine. So I'm really happy that that ultimately got resolved with the engineer.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
You just. I don't have my button, man. Don't think I don't see you. Don't think I don't see you.
Linus Sebastian
What do we do?
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, dude, it's been. It's been such a nightmare. I mean, we were talking about this after our trip to, to Taipei. Just like, I don't think that necessarily places of business should just have. Alex showed me this hilarious picture of this restaurant that just had a couple of like panel style breakers just like mounted to the wall and just like wires going into them and then going off somewhere. Like, I don't think that that's necessarily how I would want our electrical code to work here, but I do think that we have reached a level of control and a level of regulation that makes it ridiculous to try to get Anything done.
Linus Sebastian
There's lots of examples of this. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
If approvals were fast and if there was like a common sense application or an application of common sense in. In dealing with these problems, and it was speedy, like, I think it would be. It would be fine. But, man, we've got. We've got a lot to. We've got a lot to figure out. I think there's got to be a middle ground somewhere. I was talking to the mayor and her. Her new kind of slogan is Surrey's open for business. And she's, you know, she's open to feedback about this stuff, and I definitely have feedback about what we can do to make it easier for businesses to operate. One of my favorite stories that I've been telling people lately is that because we don't have two sinks, we are not allowed to even do so much as microwave a Hot Pocket and hand it to you. It's like, yo, oh, my God, who cares?
Linus Sebastian
But I also don't want to. Yeah, it's. It's weird. It's. It's a. It's a push pull. Because like, obviously that's ridiculous. But then screaming with food.
Luke Lafreniere
Can't have any random. Yeah, you can have any random. Just serving food.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, Right. So it's like, oh, man. But then, yeah, we should be able to just like, have a microwave. I don't know. It's a sports facility. People could bring, like, it's. It's almost like a potential cost savings for people. I don't know. Like, it's.
Luke Lafreniere
Gerald says, probably food prep sink versus dirty sink. And you're 100% right. Except I don't need a sink to make a Hot Pocket, so, like, Yeah, I also don't need to wash any dishes. I can just hand it to you on a paper plate and you can throw it away. Like, that's the. That's. The whole thing is like, there's. Yeah, I know. Crystal says expecting common sense and regulations is an exercise in futility. I know. I just. I'm a. I like getting stuff done. You know, I like. I like doing things. I like doing cool stuff. And I like. I like moving forward. I like finding solutions. And as long as everybody is working in good faith to move forward and find solutions, usually fine, I'm happy. I'm happy, you know, because I get it. There's sometimes, you know, stuff is challenging. I get it. But when we're not working forward in good faith, when we're not trying to find solutions, that's when I just. I kind of lose it. Like, I don't know how to deal with that.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'm gonna steal a comment from Binky in full plane chat, but I. I do agree with you. We should drop all regulation. The children yearn for the mines. We should. We should let them go back.
Dan
Finally someone said it.
Linus Sebastian
Start. Start getting that coal. They, you know, they're tired. They're tired of their Switch twos. It's these boring new video games.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, well, they've got 20 dolls before. Now they've got like three or four dolls.
Dan
And it is clean coal, so, you know, we're good the day.
Linus Sebastian
Of course, you'd never have not clean coal. The children yearn for the clean coal. Should we talk about quarter of the century?
Dan
I want that on a shirt.
Linus Sebastian
Should we talk about AMD pulling in Nvidia with the 9060 XT?
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
Linus Sebastian
Should we talk about something else? Yeah. Cool. The 9060 XT is out and AMD has copied Nvidia's idea to continue selling an 8 gigabyte version of the 60 click card. It's got rDNA 42048 cores. It has 128 TMU, 16 gigs of GDDR6VRAM on 128 bit bus or 8 gigs on 128 bit bus. The $300 for the 8 gigabyte version. Or it's $350 for the 16 gigabyte version. The 16 gigabyte version.
Luke Lafreniere
Keep in mind that the difference in price is like a few bucks between 8 and 16 gigs of RAM these days.
Linus Sebastian
The craziest point to me.
Luke Lafreniere
Just make the good one.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, like.
Luke Lafreniere
Yep.
Linus Sebastian
Oh man, so much.
Luke Lafreniere
Dude. This is like a huge part of why we even build some of the products that we do on LTT store. Because the other options honestly are like fine. Or they could have been fine if they just spent another like 73 cents. Like the difference in cost between making the cheap crappy one and making the good one is so, so small sometimes it drives me bananas. Anyway, sorry, carry on.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, no, big time though. Seriously. And like, really like going through the work of having multiple SKUs and multiple marketing and everything for this. Like, really, Really. I don't know.
Luke Lafreniere
The margin is way better on that eight gig crappy one because the difference in cost is like a few bucks and the difference in. Actually, no, the margin's way better on the other one. So why did they even bought. I get. Okay, we're making it more accessible at a lower price point to, to gamers who can't afford $350. And that's a justification. But like. Oh, my God, you're. This is like. What's that? The famous thing with the boots. The rich man and the boots and the poor man. Boots. Rich, poor or something. Something.
Dan
Boots theory.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness. They are selling poor people crappy boots that break down and I hate it.
Linus Sebastian
Crappy boots that break down because you can't play games. That would fill the frame. Sure, okay.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah. Because it's not gonna last as long.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, okay. Sure.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. It's not future proof. Whereas the. The rich gamer can afford the more future proof card and they don't have to upgrade as soon. This is totally Boots theory.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
I feel like you're giving me a hard time about this, but I don't understand why this is. Dan, back me up here.
Linus Sebastian
I think it's just like.
Dan
I think. Yeah. Like if you really stretch it. Yes, absolutely.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Because you're only saving $50. That's the thing is you're not even saving that much for the amount of time less that you're going to get out of it.
Linus Sebastian
$50 is quite a bit.
Dan
It's quite a bit to some markets.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Yes.
Dan
But we've had this debate in before, haven't we?
Luke Lafreniere
$50 is 1/7 of the price of this product.
Dan
And that's where you get into Boots theory is because.
Luke Lafreniere
And that's where you get into Boots Theory because if the one that costs $50 more can last for being a seventh more expensive or a sixth more expensive, if it can last 30% or 40% longer, then that's the better value. And that's why the person who can afford more today ultimately gets screwed over less. That's Boots theory.
Linus Sebastian
I think. I think the reason why the boots theory thing starts to break down for me.
Luke Lafreniere
I get it.
Linus Sebastian
What is he gonna say? Because he probably knows.
Luke Lafreniere
No, no, I was gonna say, I get it. The boots theory breaks down because that's. The whole Boots theory is that they break down.
Dan
Promoting.
Linus Sebastian
I don't even want it. Like, I genuinely don't want to explain anymore. Not because, like, oh, he cut me off or anything, but just because that was actually like so good that I feel like we should just move on. It's actually great. And I was just okay with it and we should move on.
Dan
This wins. Wanjo again.
Linus Sebastian
That was actually fantastic.
Luke Lafreniere
I had to win something today. I think I'm losing something else based on Luke's secret topic. But why don't we get through this one first?
Dan
You Were also late as well.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, see, maybe you lost twice taking those L's.
Luke Lafreniere
That's why they call me L, Sebastian.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, no bell for you that time.
Luke Lafreniere
Actually, because my name's Linus.
Linus Sebastian
Oh God. Despite reception and recent praise for AMD when it comes to gamers, or at least the vocal ones, apparently none of the other ones. They have lackluster. Yeah, exactly. They have lackluster graphics card market share. According to the Steam hardware survey, the first discrete AMD GPU to Appear is the RX6601 spot below the RTX 4090. AMD claims that the RX9070XT's week one sales beat previous Gens by 10x. But a couple months later it's still not even on the Steam hardware survey. Nvidia is also claiming record gaming revenue, but it only accounts for 8.5% of their total revenue as data center sales have just completely taken off.
Luke Lafreniere
We don't need to see the graph again. I've seen the graph enough.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, and Intel's not even. We're not even talking about their inclusion. Sadly, Nvidia is also claiming record. Wait, wrong line. Discussion Question Will we ever see reasonably priced GPUs again? Here are the price categories from Anandex. Whose idea was this? Because this was brilliant. From Anandex 2008 GPU Holiday Buyer's Guide adjusting for inflation, $130 then would be $194 now. And $300 for the stunt in category, which I'm going to share in a moment, would be $447 today. And then check out this screenshot.
Luke Lafreniere
This is wild. The people's performers at 100 to $130, which would be under $200 today. Let's ridiculous.
Linus Sebastian
130 to 180. I remember trying to build a computer when I was probably like, yep, I don't know, 14 or 15. And I remember having a conversation with a guy that I worked with because I had jobs from when I was really young about components and he was like all the important components. And what I think he meant was like, you know, cpu, gpu, probably drive at that point in time he was like spend about a hundred bucks. I still, I'll never forget that conversation because he wasn't even that far off and that's just impossible now. But yeah, it caps out at. Well, not really because it says plus. But Stunton is 300 plus and it says single and multi GPU graphics solutions.
Luke Lafreniere
Yep. 2008, baby. What a time to be alive.
Linus Sebastian
It was A good time.
Luke Lafreniere
Now you literally cannot get anything that is branded gaming. So I'm talking rtx, whatever. Like you can get cards that are GT whatever, but you're not going to get the X on it. You're not going to get the like gaming class cards the way that they categorized them for less than what would have been Stunton in 2008.
Linus Sebastian
Do you know what the to the east side reference is?
Luke Lafreniere
I would, I think is Eastside just more expensive in New York probably. I would assume. I'm just guessing in New York.
Linus Sebastian
Interesting. The Jefferson's. Great guess.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. The Upper east side is known for old money glamour with higher price tags.
Linus Sebastian
Apparently it's a reference to the Jeffersons.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, all right, never mind then. Cool. Good chat.
Linus Sebastian
Cool. But yeah, crazy, crazy screenshot. Really cool that whoever wrote this topic included that. I thought that was cool. Good idea. YouTube takes down Jeff Geerling's self hosted video Self hosting video more than a year after it's released. And then I have a bit of a spoiler that apparently it's back now, which is good. Jeff Geerling's consistent the way it came back.
Luke Lafreniere
I'm not stoked.
Linus Sebastian
Uncomfortable, definitely. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Let's get to this.
Linus Sebastian
Jeff Geerling's concerns about YouTube in his 500th video special a couple months back were apparently prescient. Prescient, prescient, prescient. Earlier this week, his video about rolling his own Apple TV alternative published in May of 2024 was taken down by YouTube for promoting dangerous or harmful content.
Luke Lafreniere
If you guys remember, that's exactly the same justification that they provided for taking down our video where we showed how to ad block on YouTube.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Which is live on floatplane piracy in his. In his video.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh no, I can hear Dan. He's upset.
Linus Sebastian
No. He yelled. Correct.
Dan
No, I'm literally with you 100% on that. And we'll defend it to the death.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, you can do it.
Luke Lafreniere
We'll show you how to do it.
Linus Sebastian
You can decide that. It's fine.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
My God, back in my day we thought pirates were cool. What's wrong with this generation? In the video, Jeff demonstrates using open source software Kodi and Libralec on a Raspberry PI 5 for 4K playback of legally acquired content stored on his local NAS. Geerling appealed the community guidelines strike on the grounds that A, it's been up for more than a year without an issue, B, it's had more than 1.6 million views, and C, the video doesn't promote or even mention copyright circumvention tools or techniques.
Luke Lafreniere
The first two are pretty weak.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
That last one, pretty strong. Big deal.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, that appeal was rejected. In response, Jeff has posted about the situation on his blog and on X and potentially elsewhere and has uploaded the video to his floatplane account. Let's go. X itself and the Internet Archive, which was a bit of a gamer move and he, he donated some money to the Internet Archive alongside that. This isn't in the notes, but I'm pretty sure that happened just to support them, which I thought was extremely based team YouTube has acknowledged Jeff's comments on X. Such a terrible name on Twitter, whatever. And a response from others on the platform to their response has been largely negative, which is good. Geerling speculated that there may be some word on a new internal ban list that has triggered the takedown, but no notes that in quotes, there's no transparency about the exact issue. YouTube reinstated the video at around 2:40 Pacific Time today. Jeff speculates that he made enough noise to trigger a human review process, although I don't think that saved our video. Jeff has received a community guidelines strike before on a video about Jellyfin. That video had been on YouTube for over two years before being pulled for harmful, dangerous content. That video was also restored on appeal. I shouldn't have said. Also this one wasn't restored on appeal, but that video was. Discussion question. How can YouTube create a more equitable content moderation system? They can't hot take.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I don't think they can. I don't think they can. Nobody's gonna, Nobody's gonna agree. And I don't think it's really a question of equitable here. I mean, it's YouTube's platform. Ultimately there's no legal basis that we can use to force them to have any content on their platform that at their own discretion, they choose to not have there. I mean, I said very much the same thing back when they nuked our video, even though I strongly disagree that my video was dangerous or harmful to anything other than Google's bottom line. Which again, you know, fair enough. That's. I understand why they don't like it. I mean, honestly, most of my objection was like, you guys have my phone number. Why didn't you talk to me about this versus just like ripping it down and then telling me like later.
Linus Sebastian
Common theme. Anyways.
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, it's like I was saying earlier, look, I'm all about finding solutions and working, working together to move forward in good faith. I am all about that. But you know, that to me was not them doing that. That to me, was them just arbitrarily enforcing this. Because the thing is, we have tons of content on our channel about piracy, whether it's media backup or whether it's game emulation or whatever else, things that I would classify as piracy. And the first time they've ever cared, we literally, once our 90 day probationary period was up, we uploaded a video on how to get Windows for free. They didn't care about any of that. They only cared when it impacted them. So it's like, whatever, you guys. This is not about policy to you. This is just about YouTube ads.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
And again, fair enough. That is their right. That's their right.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Doesn't mean I have to like it. What should we do? Speaking about not liking it. We have a topic in here that is titled Floatplane Limits Downloads.
Luke Lafreniere
How dare you? How dare you.
Linus Sebastian
I'm gonna read the comments on this and then I'll talk about it afterwards. A user posted on Reddit this week asking if Floatplane limits its downloads after they had a please wait five minutes pop up after downloading two shorter videos. The answer, yes, Floatpl has had a download limit for actually a really long time. There was some commenters being like, what? They changed this? And no, we've had a download limit for like a super long time. Elijah asked me about this and I said to him that I think it was like the last five or so years, but honestly I don't remember. But it's been a long time. This is not a big change.
Luke Lafreniere
Do you want to talk through some of the technical reasons why we allow mass downloading, but not in this way? I.
Linus Sebastian
100%. Well, I'm gonna get through this first. But yeah, I want to talk about this more. When we have mentioned in the past that we are okay with mass downloading, it has always been. And you know, we might not have vocally asterisk this at the time, but what we've been talking about is through kind of like tools, not you just sitting there and clicking download on every single video. We are expecting people that do mass downloading on the platform and trust me, people do to use a tool. There's a variety of community made public tools. There's also some people that have gone through Plex and done it that way. But yeah, I will, I will now talk about why we are not an enormous company. Flow Plane is actually a very small company and the impact of someone just going through and clicking download on a trillion videos all at the same time is extremely high compared to someone just sitting and Watching a video like the. The difference is enormous. Not only because it's happening simultaneously, but also because download rates versus just watching a video, etc. You could like, if we opened it up, you could effectively smash the platform. Now it's not that we don't want you to be able to download a bunch of videos. Just like, please don't just sit there and click download a million times. So again, use something like, like a plex. And it doesn't have to be plex there. I. As far as my understanding goes, there are these scripts on a variety of plex like tools. And if you don't want any of that at all, there are some again, community members that have made larger downloading scripts available for Flow Plane. And please feel free. The point isn't that we don't want you downloading a bunch of videos. The point is that we don't want you crushing our service because we are not. We. We are genuinely not like that huge. We can't just absorb you downloading all of our stuff. Well, we could. We can't absorb you and a whole bunch of other people doing it as well. Maybe we can someday, but. But not yet. But yeah, download to your heart's content. Just use something that will help us help you in kind of trickle downloading it over time. You know your subscription is going to last for at least a month. If you set one of these things to our rate limit for at least a month. You can download a lot of videos. You can download a ton. Ask me how I know. People do it all the time. It's totally fine. Yeah, yeah. Dan's done it.
Dan
I didn't know that we could have that bypassed for me. So I was doing it with the rate limit.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah. So like I don't know. There's also. There was a cut that thread, man, every once in a while you people drive me nuts. That, that thread, there was somebody commenting about how like. Oh yeah, well, I wonder if I can find it. Let me search for my name because I think I can find it that way.
Luke Lafreniere
Should I talk about the new.
Linus Sebastian
There are a lot more data conscious in the last few months. Definitely not true. They implemented a quality switcher on the floatplane streams that we did a while ago. And Luke says something about that everyone always uses the highest instead of the one appropriate for their window size. I don't think we even have metrics on that. So I don't think I would have been able to say that. But if I did say that, you.
Luke Lafreniere
Might have said that at Some point, but certainly you don't always say it, I can tell you that much for sure.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, but we actually we implemented the Quality Switcher because people were complaining that the auto tool that we had was setting it too high for them. We did it for the opposite reason. We did it so that people could turn it down because they wanted to, not because we wanted to do it for them. Yeah, I don't know that. Definitely not to the. We're a lot more data conscious the last few months. Definitely not. Not only is this download limit rule like super old, but the, the float plane quality switcher thing was because people were annoyed that it was too high. So like. No, we're chilling. This is, this is not.
Luke Lafreniere
It's not about limiting the data overall. It's about limiting the momentary.
Linus Sebastian
The spikes. The spikes are the entire problem. Yeah, yeah. Like we already have a like global time zone spike because we have more users in North America than elsewhere. Luckily, North America is pretty cheap to serve to. Actually the problematic zones are Germany because your ISPs just fight each other all the time and Australia because Internet in Australia is just a problem.
Luke Lafreniere
Got them. Don't forget about Antarctica when we had that one person that was actually camped there. Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
That was pretty cool.
Linus Sebastian
Heck yeah. Like the, like one time. That was awesome.
Luke Lafreniere
Speaking of things that are pretty cool. New EU rules for smartphones and tablets. Smartphones and tablets that go on sale in the European Union on or after July 20th of this year will be subject to new requirements. Devices must be designed to resist accidental drops, scratches and dust and water ingress. Batteries must withstand at least 800 charge discharge cycles while retaining 80% of their initial capacity. Producers must make critical spare parts available and provide proposed repair information to professional repairers for seven years after the end of sales for the product model. That part is super cool and super important. This should happen after the product is no longer on sale. And the reason for that is that you can say, hey, we're going to do seven years of software for this and that can be on day one. And then you could have that product live for three years and then someone buying it at the three year mark is only getting four years of support. So they're basically saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you're going to say seven years of software support, that means seven years for everyone who buys it based, not for the first people who buy it. The regulations clearly lay out parts and information delivery timelines what repair information must be provided and includes provisions to ensure equitable access to qualified Repairers OS upgrades must be provided for at least five years from the end of the of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model. This is super cool. Why is the EU so based? I don't understand it, but they do it and I'm into it.
Linus Sebastian
I like it. Keep going. Also, I want to jump back to the floating topic for a second. I saw a discussion question at the bottom.
Luke Lafreniere
Is this what it's like when I'm responding to people's stupid comments? And yep, no.
Linus Sebastian
I saw the discussion question at the bottom. It this isn't us. Honestly, the float plane users are like, yeah, cool. I don't know. It's fine. Because again, none of this is new anyways. Discussion question is, with the obvious vacation of floatplane happening right now, how much of a raise can our shareholders expect? And the answer is immense amounts. We are saving so much off of the people downloading being now rate limited that we are increasing bonuses for floatplane executives by at least 40%. The next line is.
Luke Lafreniere
Can you talk about what a floatplane bonus? I don't think so.
Linus Sebastian
No.
Luke Lafreniere
Cool.
Linus Sebastian
Nice.
Luke Lafreniere
All right. 40% increase. Approved.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, that's always so easy. Okay, can you talk more about the challenges you have learned about data limits and bandwidth costs when developing flow plane even on simple things like quality control settings for live video. The quality control settings for live video, honestly, we don't know a ton about because we like didn't care. And then people were annoyed because they wanted it. They wanted to change it themselves. So we made it so they can change it themselves. And we didn't remeasure. Live has been.
Luke Lafreniere
A challenge.
Linus Sebastian
Maybe a loss leader, maybe a neutral leader the whole time. We like don't make money off of live. It takes.
Luke Lafreniere
I bet we could, I think we could argue that we do. If we factor in merch messages, if we consider the ones directly attributed to WAN show completely, completely part of live, we could probably make the argument. I don't think they are merge messages.
Linus Sebastian
Have nothing to do with floatplane.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, they don't not. I mean they don't have nothing to do with floatplane. Floatplane is certainly a mechanism by which we execute on merge messages. It's a promotional mechanism for merge messages.
Linus Sebastian
How?
Luke Lafreniere
Because some of those audiences that are, some of those audience members that are paying for merch messages are watching on floatplane. Like that's where they're, that's where we're going to them. They're. They're bringing us that business. So it's like a promotional Mechanism.
Linus Sebastian
Okay, Like I said.
Luke Lafreniere
Look, I told you it was. I told you it was a stretch.
Dan
Sure.
Luke Lafreniere
I'm just saying. I'm just saying if people are watching on floatplane and they're buying a merch message, we could attribute some of that revenue to the fact that we were delivering the message to them live. That's all. That's all I'm saying.
Linus Sebastian
Okay, nice. But, yeah, the amount of development time that it's taken to support, like, the chat and the chat tools and the live player itself, because it has been very disproportionate to the value that it brings. I'll say.
Luke Lafreniere
All right, fair enough.
Linus Sebastian
But the talking about data limits and all that kind of stuff, and someone just shrank it. Hooray, let's go. It has been interesting. I do remember many a year back when we. When we did originally decide to do the download thing, it's because there was a script. There was a script somebody had put up on GitHub and they were sharing it on, like, Reddit and the forum and stuff like that. That just zerged the heck out of downloads.
Luke Lafreniere
I remember that.
Linus Sebastian
And it was like, actually severely impairing our ability to serve videos. Like, it was a problem because a ton of people were just hammering the download service all at the same time, and they were doing it through. It was script kitty rife. Right. Like, you didn't have to know what you were doing. You could just download this thing off GitHub and it would do it for you. So we were getting crushed because again, we're a relatively small company, so we had to start implementing limits. But if I remember correctly, at that time, we reached out and we're basically like, yo, we're not mad. This is what we're setting our limits to. If you could just adjust the script for people so they can keep using it, but it just doesn't crush us, that would be awesome. And if I remember correctly, they just. Yeah, they just changed it so that it just sat right outside of our rate limiter. And then it's like, okay, cool. The people still have their tool. The site doesn't go down because of it. Sounds great. So it's been interesting. Live data is really expensive. Vaud data is wildly cheaper. Yeah. Anyways, we can move on.
Luke Lafreniere
Get that good low latency.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. What do you want to talk about now?
Luke Lafreniere
Intel draws a line in the sand. That's right, a sand line. CEO of Intel Products, Michelle Johnson Holthouse announced at the bank of America's Global Tech Conference that Intel will only be approving new projects if they can earn at least 50% gross margin. Adding on that this is something we probably should have done before, while also clarifying that future operations, including Panther Lake and Nova Lake, are currently expected to reach a 50% gross profit number. The push comes from Intel's new CEO, Lipp Bhutan, who is reportedly laser focused on making this happen, including potentially canceling or changing unprofitable deals with other companies. Hold House predicts a tug of war within intel to get aligned on this mission. I. I don't like it to innovate, sometimes you have to make low margin products and make big investments. And I really need you guys to keep doing GPUs. So that's what I have to say about that. Not cool.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Mind you, I don't need intel losing money either. Like that's also not constructive. But I think realistically, at a time when your sales overall are suffering and your brand reputation is that your products are at least on the consumer side, not a good value right now. At least on the CPU side. I think Battle Mage is awesome. I think just like focusing on a margin target is just making me wish Gelsinger was back. So please don't stop making ARC GPUs. Please, please. That's all I have to say about that.
Linus Sebastian
This smells a lot to me. Like the intel that sat on its laurels for a decade and lost every lead it had. Which, like, if you want to keep doing that right now, I guess you can just die.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, I don't think they're just gonna die because they made major investments into products that are turning out to actually be pretty sick. Like without spoiling anything, the Claw got a long look. At least when we were looking at that. When we were looking at all the handhelds with my son. Is the Claw 8 AI plus or whatever available? I don't know if that's actually out yet. Hold on. Here it is. Best Buy. Is this pre order still? Oh, no. People are buying it. Yep, it's available. It's really expensive, but it's. It's good.
Linus Sebastian
I wonder how the handheld market outside of the Steam Deck and Switch is doing.
Luke Lafreniere
I. I gotta say, I. Or I gotta think it's really small.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
To be honest with you.
Linus Sebastian
And there's a lot of players, but.
Luke Lafreniere
Like with that said, dude, remember when we did Whale Land? How many people had flippin. Yes, Steam decks, but also like Rog allies and stuff? No, there were a couple allies. More than a couple.
Linus Sebastian
Are you talking Whale Land? Yeah, like the test.
Luke Lafreniere
The test no, no, no, no, no, no. Whale land at ltx. Oh, yeah, like they're. The video was sponsored by asus, so I was acutely aware of like whether there was ASUS products that the ones we were showcasing, not because I wasn't going to showcase anything else, but because I figured I should at least throw them a bone here and there. And it wasn't hard. There were allies all over the place. I was very surprised.
Linus Sebastian
Interesting. Very interesting. I mean, you know, I don't want intel to die. I hope they do. Well, it's just, yeah, I hearing this, it gets me concerned about stuff like their GPUs and like what an incredibly complicated market to try to get into with two generations.
Luke Lafreniere
Yep.
Linus Sebastian
Like, you gotta give it a while. This is this, this is a, a market segment that leans a lot on trust and experience. And you really haven't been in the game that long and your last gen was like, not that purchasable. This new gen is purchasable, but has some asterisks on it, like you're making fantastic progress.
Luke Lafreniere
And don't underestimate the funnel of getting people familiar with the product in their gaming rigs. And they tinker around with it a little bit and they maybe they learn a little bit of AI on their Intel GPU and then they become.
Linus Sebastian
Producers.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, exactly.
Linus Sebastian
You had them for years on the CPU side. It's worth fighting for it. But it's just stuff like this just. It makes me concerned, that's all.
Luke Lafreniere
All right. Microsoft wants to save us from USB C confusion. Beginning with Windows 1124H2, PC makers will need to include a number of of previously optional features, including DP Alt mode, which allows you to output DisplayPort over your USB C port, PCIe tunneling and Thunderbolt compatibility, which are basically the ability to run PCIe lanes through your USB C port and must use Windows built in USB driver stack in order to be compliant with the Windows hardware certification program WHCP. The changes are meant to ensure that USB 1, 2 and 3 peripherals will just work for data transfer, charging and display on any USB C port ON certified Windows 11 devices. Systems supporting USB 40 gigabit per second must also be fully compatible with USB 4 and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals. Device makers can make use of Microsoft's MUT USB test tool and Windows Hardware Lab Kit to ensure their devices comply. These requirements, however, don't apply to desktop PCs at this time. Overall, overall, this is a W and our discussion question is what does Microsoft gain by doing this? And I think they gain their computers not being super confusing. Apple computers have their confusion like, oh, this one can support this many displays and this one can support not as many displays. They definitely have their issues. But generally speaking, the hardware for the MacBook is way less confusing to buy than the hardware for a Windows laptop. And I think Microsoft is really starting to look at the share that they've lost to Apple over the years and go, okay, holy crap. No, no. Whether it's partnerships with Qualcomm for ARM processors or whether it's finding ways to reduce the friction of the Windows PC buying experience, we have got to deal with this.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I mean, the Windows laptop ecosystem has always been kind of a mess with a lot of just kind of junk in it. And I think this is a good move from Microsoft to try to clean up their space and make them look more serious and professional, to be honest, because USB has been kind of gross for a long time now. Like USB C is just very annoying to deal with. And yeah, I think, I think it's a good move, to be honest.
Luke Lafreniere
All right, our last topic before we get into After Dark is the recall AI thumbnail yesterday.
Linus Sebastian
We used to hear Dan.
Luke Lafreniere
No.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, I thought he could hear you this whole time. We never did sponsors.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh crap. We should do that.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
The show was brought to you by Squarespace. Imagine this. You're perusing Ye olde Interwebs and you run into a site that looks just as old as someone saying Ye olde Interwebs, except unironically. Well, it could have been made with our sponsor Squarespace, that's for sure. With their modern looking blueprints, you get eye catching templates to start with. Then you can edit and customize them to your heart's content with their drag and drop code free fluid engine system. And if you want to make a site that actually does something and is not just a virtual museum for pet pictures, Squarespace has you covered there too. For those using it for business purposes, it has support for the majority of popular payment options and you can even invoice clients directly in their portal. Speaking of which, you can also keep track of performance and sales numbers with their powerful website and seller analytics. So head over to squarespace.com wen to get started on building your website today. You can even get 10% off just by using offer code. When the show is also brought to you by Thorum. We're headed into full blown summer weather and you know what that means weddings. Thorum's got that area covered with their super unique rings which are great as wedding bands or if you're a guest, something to just tie your outfit together. They use exotic materials like meteorite and World War II rifle stocks to add a bit more personality to some already BA looking rings. Check out this one called the Voyager. Definitely giving final frontier vibes. Each ring comes with a silicone activity band, a walnut wood ring box, and most importantly of all, a limited lifetime warranty. They even make watches with some of the same materials too, so your wrist won't feel left out. Head over to thorum.com today and use code when to get 20% off. We're going to have that linked down below. Can I help you boys?
Dan
The other one normally has your face in there.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, the camera just went to your empty chair.
Luke Lafreniere
Nice. This one is the show is.
Dan
Sorry.
Luke Lafreniere
The show is also brought to you by AMD Vance's AMD Ultimate Upgrade came out earlier this week. If you haven't seen it, it is worth checking out and getting subbed to Floatplane for some juicy extras. Highlights of the upgrade for me was definitely getting the broken 12 pin power connector out of his gaming rig. Seriously, it had a broken clip. It wasn't the latest one that has the biggest issues, but still. So we replaced that with a 9070 XT that has working clips on its classic not melting power connectors, just eight pin PCIe power connectors. You love to see them.
Linus Sebastian
My favorite part was Linus Barista Tips.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh dude, I look okay. I actually was pitching to Sammy that we should do this as a whole series on floatplane. Person X does thing Y that they've never done and like try to find stuff that most people have done. Like whether like, like Elijah learning to ride a bike for instance. I just have never made coffee before and as someone who doesn't drink coffee, I have no idea what, you know, you do to make coffee taste more.
Linus Sebastian
Better or more worse or something I would request out of that series. I love the series idea. Something I would request out of that series is to have someone that knows how to do it do it afterwards. Because I saw you make that coffee and it seemed completely fine. And then he was like, oh, it was like my uneducated young cousin did it. And I was like what would the chain. What would the difference be? What made sense?
Luke Lafreniere
I think you're supposed to. I think you're supposed to wet the coffee grounds before pouring everything through. That's one thing, sure.
Linus Sebastian
But like, but that's what I mean. Catch anything else, have someone that knows it do it afterwards. I don't know anyways.
Dan
What? Like in a French press?
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know what it was. Dude. You're asking me like. I don't know. It was a mocha. Who knows? I. I don't.
Dan
Oh, mocha pot. That's advanced.
Luke Lafreniere
No, no, that wasn't that. I don't. I don't know what it is.
Linus Sebastian
Have any idea what you're talking about.
Dan
I'm trying to. I'm trying to come up with like fake terms and I just. My brain is goop. All of that was actual. But I just want.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I was going to say. I know French press is real. I've heard of that before.
Dan
Might as well.
Luke Lafreniere
Not good news, by the way, for everyone tuning. Oh, question for Linus and Luke. Who would you choose if you could give someone not from work an AMD upgrade? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think doing your dad's would be pretty cool. He's actually working on a super cool rig right now. I feel like an AMD upgrade would go a long way towards making that system done at some point.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, you kind of got there before me. I would be saying the same. Because he needs. He has, he has. His case is like, almost finished, but he needs all the components. He hasn't any components. Anyways, that'll be my job.
Luke Lafreniere
That sounds like a job for me. Yep. Good news for everyone tuning in right now. You can enter AMD's latest giveaway for chance to win. 9800x3D. A motherboard and some RAM for both yourself and a friend or loved one. Go check out our link in the video description to enter today. Time is running out. All right, are you ready to just get it over with and tell me you finished Final Fantasy 6? I saw your secret topic.
Linus Sebastian
Final Fantasy 6.
Luke Lafreniere
I knew it.
Linus Sebastian
And it was amazing. I took a bunch of screenshots and I sent them to Riley because I was. I wanted him to put them in the dock, but I didn't want to put them in the dock early so that you didn't get involved.
Luke Lafreniere
I saw Luke's secret secret topic and I knew what it was. Also, the enemy that you were complaining about the other day is in Kefka's tower.
Linus Sebastian
There's other points in the game where that happens.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, but I. I knew that you got hit with bad breath in Kefka's tower.
Linus Sebastian
Okay, but there's other points in the game where bad breath happens.
Luke Lafreniere
Yes, but I knew you were in Kefka's tower.
Dan
Ah.
Linus Sebastian
Ah. This guy. I took some Some screeny shoddies. Let me see if I can bring them up. They're not in the secret topic. Right?
Luke Lafreniere
I can't believe I lost this. Do you know how close I am? No, I am super close.
Linus Sebastian
I was pretty sure I was having a conversation with a friend where they were like, oh man, you're sick again. And I was like, yeah. And it's horrible. But also a blessing because I would not. I would not have been done by today because I finished last night. I would not have been done by today if. If it wasn't for being sick.
Luke Lafreniere
If I pulled an all nighter last night, I could have finished last night too.
Linus Sebastian
I didn't. I am pulling on later.
Luke Lafreniere
I am done. My color. I need to shoot clear.
Linus Sebastian
Dan, can I send you. Oh really? So you're like one pass from done?
Luke Lafreniere
No, it's multiple coats of clear coat. But like you can go at it pretty quick. Clear coat goes on real fast compared to a lot of the stuff that I've been doing. Like, I can probably finish it in one long evening of. Of painting now.
Linus Sebastian
All three of those. Yeah. If you wouldn't mind. Where are you gonna put. Oh, at the top. Cool. So I will share these 1. This is just a random thing that I noticed somewhere that I was in the game. You're. You have to go through all these different sections collecting these little things to fight this guy. It's like Fog of War. Except the mini map fully works.
Luke Lafreniere
Nice.
Dan
Hello.
Luke Lafreniere
I think that's broken. I don't think there's a mini map in the original game. So that's. It's one of those little enhanced edition things that just like. Really, you guys?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I was wondering if this remaster thing. Yeah, yeah, I noticed that. And was just like, okay.
Luke Lafreniere
And then mini map is hacking.
Linus Sebastian
I. So another thing that I was going to say is that I didn't do everything that I wanted to do because I. I let two things kind of defeat me. But I did go very completionist on this. I noticed with Gao. I went to his. His father's house without him. And then later on I happened to go there with him. Just unplanned. I thought I forgot what it was and I wanted to check what was there. And he was in my party. And then the whole thing happened.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And I was like, oh no. There's a ton of content hidden behind having the right person there at the right time. So then I went around everywhere with. Trying to bring different people. And I tried to do it somewhat logically. So I didn't technically do every person everywhere, but I went like, okay, is this person relevant to this area?
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
Linus Sebastian
So I think this one with the mini map, actually, I had to take the painter girl and what is his name? Relman Strago or whatever his name is. Yeah, I had to take them to. I think it's Thamasa or something. But that made relevant sense. Like, okay, that was reasonable. So there was a few of them where. And I think I.
Luke Lafreniere
Did you stay in all the inns with Shadow?
Linus Sebastian
Oh, no.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, you get his whole backstory if you stay in every inn with him in your party.
Linus Sebastian
I did some inns with him, but I didn't do, I didn't do all of them. I got a lot of the content, though. The two things that are, you know, and there's probably more than this. But the two things that I know of that I didn't end up being able to chase all the way down was the cursed shield. And lord help me, I tried. It says there's the one hint that I was able to find about the curse shield at all. I didn't find any outside of that was that it requires a long battle. So I tried. Like, I even. I got into a fight that I was able to sit in infinitely.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to fight 255 battles.
Linus Sebastian
So after.
Luke Lafreniere
The way to, the way to hack it is you go to sells starting island in the World of Ruin, and you just, like, you just put a weight on the A button and then you just like, leave them walking back and forth on the island all night, and then it'll turn into the Paladin shield.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
So I, I've never actually done that because that's lame.
Linus Sebastian
That sounds really lame. I, I, we had agreed I would follow no guides, so I ended up googling it after I won because I was so curious because again, the topic says something along or the, the, the hint of. Because my note is the hint. Something along the lines of a long battle or something like that. So I tried one that was like, I think it was at least 10, 15 minutes long. I walked away from the computer and then came back and then killed it, and it still didn't uncurse itself, so I gave up. And then the other one was, was an esper, and I'm confused because it said, I, I got an achievement. I got an achievement for unlocking all the ESPers, but there's a blank spot on my espers list.
Luke Lafreniere
Ah, no, we got them all then.
Linus Sebastian
I don't Know what's up with that? But either way, okay, here is the state I was in when I went into the final battle.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, my goodness.
Linus Sebastian
So every character except for Edgar is blinded and silenced, and almost everybody is dead.
Luke Lafreniere
Nice.
Linus Sebastian
But. So this was my second attempt because I. I died the first time, which I. Yeah, I'm not even ashamed to admit, because I'm pretty stoked that I somehow scraped by on the. And I have my winning screenshot, which I'll show you in a second. And it's close, but I somehow beat it. My second attempt. The first attempt, I got. I got raffle stomped, but I. I. Your. Your characters come in in a queue. And this is all of my original four. So I made it with the first four that I attempted to go up with, which was cool, but that's how the game ended.
Dan
Absolutely insane.
Luke Lafreniere
Unreal.
Linus Sebastian
Three characters at one gp.
Luke Lafreniere
That's unreal.
Dan
Credible.
Linus Sebastian
And I took these screenshots because when I. When I took this from first one, I was like, you know, I'm gonna. He was talking at this point in time, so it was fine. It doesn't show any dialogue on the screen, but he was talking at this point in time. So I. I knew I was safe to take the screenshot, but I was like, I want a screenshot that I got here. And it was so close, and I expected to attrition through a bunch of units and stuff, but then I realized when I think it was Gogo died. Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, somebody will die and then it'll cycle them out. Right. It didn't cycle. Go, go. And the second he died, I was like, oh, no. And this is after, actually, I think, a fair amount of revives. And then I. I started realizing that I should use the. The Phoenix magic, the re. Rays or whatever.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Because Kefka brings you all down to 1hp. And then I was trying to heal everybody up frantically afterwards, and I was like, it's actually easier to just.
Luke Lafreniere
Yep.
Linus Sebastian
Bring them back up afterwards. And oddly enough, my. The, like, two primary carries I had for most of the game ended up doing probably a minority of the damage. And Edgar just jumping repeatedly for so long is what ended up killing them. Because the two primary characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I ended up doing Dragoon for Edgar, and I would cycle it on other people, but Edgar was the main one because he seemed to just do so much damage.
Luke Lafreniere
Because he can use pikes.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Yeah. And there's. There's only a couple, I think, Mog and maybe one other that can use pikes. Go. Go. I didn't like it first, and then my. My main character. I can't remember what her name is supposed to be.
Luke Lafreniere
Tara.
Linus Sebastian
Tara. Yeah. My main character, she gets this scroll thing that gives her dual cast, and then it, like, happened by accident. I didn't realize Gogo would gain the dual cast. So I would cast Ultima twice, which ended up casting Ultima four times.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And then every fight over. Yeah. Which was amazing.
Luke Lafreniere
But that's one of the fun things about old games is that you can get these broken builds that just. Yeah, just. Just crush the game.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Because Celes, I. At first I was building her as a caster, but then I liked the idea that the. She was, like, more melee focused. And then my Tara was more magic focused, so she had the. What is it? The. Oh, man. I can't remember the name. I think it's the Genji Glove which.
Luke Lafreniere
Lets you do the offering.
Linus Sebastian
And the offering is.
Luke Lafreniere
It offering lets you hit four times. Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And then you pair those two together and you hit, like, eight times or something. It's crazy.
Luke Lafreniere
Lock with the Genji Glove and the offering is one of the. Like.
Linus Sebastian
I never. I liked Mug. It was fun stealing items, but I never really used Lock Munch. One thing that I realized afterwards was one of the times that I played and then stopped playing for a long time. Right when I stopped playing is right when I unlocked Gao. So I never really, like, figured him out because when I came back, I forgot what I was supposed to do. So he was, like, worthless on my roster. And then my Googling afterwards was like, okay, apparently he's amazing.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. He's one of those ones where you have to really make a serious investment in him. And then he's completely op. But I never really liked the random characters and the fact that I couldn't select what he's going to do on his turn. I've just never gotten into that playstyle.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I was really excited to get the yeti. And then I realized that he just does his own thing. And I never really used him because of that Gogo I didn't even really like much. I only really started using him once I got that dual cast thing and I realized how overpowered it was for him to be able to mimic it. But I didn't really like his character until that moment. And I actually didn't really use him much. I only used him here because I knew it was so overpowered.
Luke Lafreniere
Right.
Linus Sebastian
And I just wanted the power to kill the boss. But I didn't find it fun.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. No, I agree. I, like. I've always preferred to be able to actually control my characters like this.
Linus Sebastian
And I know one of the reasons why I liked him was because I actually really enjoyed the key inputs. But Sabin was probably my favorite character of the run. And a bunch of people, when I said this a long time ago, when we talked about Final Fantasy, a bunch of people told me that he. Why didn't you heal before? Not that it matters, but still. What do you mean?
Luke Lafreniere
No, no, he had already won. He had just been slammed, and he was just like, there was one more hit and then he won.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. This top screenshot, you just went through, like, a huge gauntlet. Like, there's a reason I got here beat up, and then down here, the game just ended. Yeah. But, yeah, people were like, oh, Sabin sucks. Sabin sucks. Sabin's awesome. And Sabin was awesome the whole way through. And again, I don't know, maybe I just didn't use because I didn't realize Gal was really good or whatever. So maybe I didn't realize that certain things are really strong. But Sabin was the first character for me to get to capped damage. And then once you get. Whatever it's called Razor, Gale or whatever, he. I was. I was having him hit for 3 to 4k per target, multi target, and hitting capped damage on single target way before anyone else.
Luke Lafreniere
Sabin. Sabin is awesome, but he's like. He's not cool to, like, basically, is what it comes down to. Oh, because he. Because he doesn't cap out as high in the end game as some of the other guys. That's all got it. Which is just like, whatever.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I don't care about that at all. And I enjoy.
Luke Lafreniere
I know. You're like a backstory guy as well. Yeah. His story's cool. Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I don't know. He was awesome. I really. I really liked it. I also really liked. It was kind of refreshing that you get to the end and you have to kill Kefka, and Kefka is just evil.
Luke Lafreniere
He's like, it's very clear. He's my favorite video game villain for sure. He's just. He's just such a jerk.
Linus Sebastian
Like, the speech at the end where he's like, why are you even alive if you know it's gonna end? And like, all this kind of stuff is like, yeah, this guy sucks.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, he's such. He's such a crap head.
Linus Sebastian
Which is great because then you fight him and then. And then it's such a. Like, It's a brutal fight. He constantly just flips you to one gp. He does that thing where he blinds and silences you. I'm pretty sure he did that as well. I swear. And then he just hits you so hard that he'll just one shot one of your guys randomly. So you're like trying to keep your team alive and he's just like, that one's dead. That one's dead. And you have no idea how much HP he has because the game never tells you, which is so frustrating. So it's like very likely that I had him like one hit from dead for a long time because I was just trying to keep my team alive when I could have just one shot him. So it was so tense the whole way. And then I beat it with three characters at 3 HP. Ah, man, it was. It was great.
Luke Lafreniere
I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. I. I have an update for you as well. I sent it to Dan.
Linus Sebastian
Oh.
Luke Lafreniere
I think I did. Oh, did I not? Oh, hold on. Did. Where the heck is my attachment?
Linus Sebastian
But I'll say this much. I was never that into even the idea of Final Fantasy Games. And now I'm like, I'm worried that you gave me the one that I would like like the most. So it's just downhill from here.
Dan
But I am can't wait for you to try 10.
Linus Sebastian
I am more interested in other Final Fantasy games now.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. I will get you well. Hey, there's the. There's the War of the Lions.
Linus Sebastian
I'm definitely gonna check that out.
Luke Lafreniere
It's a very different game. No, that's probably a better game.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, cool.
Luke Lafreniere
It's really good. Yeah, I have. I haven't played any of the. I haven't actually played the War of the Lions version. I've only ever played the psx, like Final Fantasy Tactics version. Okay, Dan, go ahead and share that. Sorry, the file share didn't go through before.
Dan
Oh, could this go in the dock? Oh, no, it's just a picture. Yeah, sure.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
I hated the Final Fantasy combat style before I started playing, and now it's like totally fine.
Dan
Ready to see this, Luke?
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'm ready. Oh, they're starting to look good though.
Luke Lafreniere
Circles, wheels. Done.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, that's awesome. Actually, it helps having the. The middle bit be black.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, that was a lot of work because painting a candy coating evenly like this is really hard. We had to find a way to spin the wheel while holding the gun stationary in order to get it like, even. And we had to find exactly the right angles to kind of hit it from to get good coverage. We masked it up the other night and, and did the black. It looks incredible in person. I'm actually pretty excited for, I'm pretty excited for when it's done. Someone asked why paint where the tires go? It's not, it's like not done well. Like that'll be covered. Don't worry about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm spraying right. So it's not like with a brush.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
The kid across the street asks, couldn't you dip it? I can't. I don't know how I would dip a two tone like this. I guess you could dip it like if you painted it. I guess you're asking if I painted it black and then like I dipped one side and then dipped the other side.
Linus Sebastian
That sounds so rife of failure.
Luke Lafreniere
But the, but the pink is not a solid color. It's a candy coat. It's translucent. So it had to be painted over white. So this has, this was blasted primered white, multiple coats of primer, multiple coats of white, then two coats of pink, then one coat of pearl, then masked, then two coats of black on those parts. Then it will get clear coated for the whole thing. So it's a, it's a, it's a super multi part process. And I got as far as not having done the black yet. Having done two coats of paint, two coats candy. I think I did that time and it was a disaster. I had to completely redo it. So both of these have actually been fully stripped twice and redone. It's been an absolute nightmare, this project. I am, I am so, so done. Anyway, I think like one more big session. Also. I can clear coat just this and the frame and they can start assembly and then I can do the rest at my leisure. Especially now that I lost the challenge. No, but it's been good because it's kind of motivated me to keep working on it. So. And now I'm close enough that I can just get over the line. I'm hoping to ride this summer.
Linus Sebastian
I, I, I'm happy with how I approached the game. I think I got a lot more out of it playing it the way that I did. Like no guide and like, oh, definitely experimenting with things and trying things and stuff. But brother, that was a long game.
Luke Lafreniere
It is a long game.
Linus Sebastian
Like I, I don't know if I've played almost any game that took me that long to actually get through the story. Like whoa.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. And the World of Ruin.
Linus Sebastian
Maybe Morrowind.
Luke Lafreniere
The World of Ruin is really not as tight as the World of Balance. So I think I told you that the game was supposed to end at the World of Balance that's supposed to be the final fight. And they were like, oh, we have room on the cart. Let's just keep making the game.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah. It. There's. And you know, there's definitely like, oh, that tower. There was a lot of unnecessary rooms and stuff. There was also like. There's one room in particular I could just talk about Final Fantasy Forever. There's one room in particular where I just got roasted. I don't remember. I was quick saving fairly often and it was like one small room and it's the only place in the entire thing that I ran into this one mobile job.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, dude. Quick saving. Such a hack. There was no quick save when I played that game. But sure. Okay.
Linus Sebastian
Really?
Luke Lafreniere
I did.
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
Luke Lafreniere
So you can only save the save points.
Linus Sebastian
I did noticed. Interesting. Okay.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, it was brutal.
Linus Sebastian
I misinterpreted that then because I noticed the save points so I, I assumed that there I. Oh, interesting. Dang. Yeah, that would have been a lot.
Luke Lafreniere
Harder.
Linus Sebastian
In mostly just an annoying way for sure. Oh, 100% the way I thought it worked and I never really paid attention. The way I thought it worked was that you had to because there was times where it wouldn't let you quick save. But you didn't always have to normally save at a save point.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
So I thought quick save like wouldn't stay if you close the game.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh no. So I thought that.
Linus Sebastian
I thought the save points were still valuable because of that, but I guess they just literally were meaningless because I.
Luke Lafreniere
Would feel like more that you can. You can use them for sleeping bags. Intense.
Linus Sebastian
I didn't know that.
Luke Lafreniere
Really.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, I almost never use sleeping bags. Intense.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh yeah, tents are good.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, I will say another. Another thing that I want to praise it for is that the like, how it teaches you how to be self sufficient within the game is really interesting. I'm assuming everyone goes through this where like at the start you're dealing with inns and sleeping bags and tents and potions and the economy's rough. You don't have all that much money and you're spending it all on potions. It's like, ah, this, this is sucks. And then you start getting healing spells and you're like, okay, I can heal, but then I run out of mana and that's an issue. And then you get whatever it's called or. Or osmos.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
And then you can.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, sorry, Osmos not raspberry damages their mp.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. So you can. You can now pull mana from monsters now. You can now you can pull mana and you can heal your team. So if you find a fight that's not that hard, you can like bring everything back up and like all. It's. It's very cool. It's really well thought out game.
Luke Lafreniere
Anyways, I think it's time for After Dark.
Linus Sebastian
I think so. Yeah. I would recommend you play it if you haven't. There's probably not that many people that haven't, but I'd recommend you play it if you haven't. And I don't know if it's better following with a guide, but I really enjoyed the search. I thought that part was actually very fun and very rewarding. I think one of the problems with, with enjoying the search is you end up searching in a bunch of games that have nothing. And a lot of my favorite games actually have stuff. Like Morrowind had stuff. If you looked, things were there. And I found in this game, if I looked, stuff was there and very rewardingly there sometimes. And I swear a lot of these were not required. Sometimes I would go find something and it would take me like a day. There's no way this thing was, like necessary, but it was awesome. Like unlocking, I don't even remember, but unlocking like certain people's abilities or getting little things that like, definitely weren't necessary but, you know, made the game a little easier. Whatever added flavor, added character, story, there was so much to it that, like, I had to dig pretty hard for, which. And there's interesting ways that they arm you to do that. Because I use the Bestiary to find parts of the game that I had never found. Was the Beastiary in the original version?
Luke Lafreniere
No.
Linus Sebastian
Okay, well, all right. Either way. Because I would look and because if you highlighted a question mark, question mark thing on the Beastiary, it would show you where it was, but it wouldn't show you what it was.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, that's interesting.
Linus Sebastian
So I could look at an area and be like, I haven't been here. How do I get there? There was a few different ways. There was the dots on the map not going big if you hadn't actually found the thing. So realizing that, like, okay, something's there and I can't get there yet.
Luke Lafreniere
And then also that's a new creature Comfort as well.
Linus Sebastian
So I would not have found anywhere near as much stuff if I didn't have these tools.
Luke Lafreniere
And honestly, that's a good thing, though. Because it was easy to miss a lot of the content in the game in the old version. So there are certain things that are really good.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. But yeah, I thought the beast area was. Was awesome.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Dan, want to hit us with After Dark?
Dan
Yeah, sure. I got some merch messages for you here.
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
Dan
Hi Wan dll. Linus noticed almost all the T shirt designs were taken off. The store was waiting for a bunch to restock. What's the reason for the purge? Loved the designs and I'm excited to see more soon.
Luke Lafreniere
I think we're kind of refreshing everything. It's been kind of a nightmare between just supplier challenges and tariffs and implementing like new colors and our tall blanks and also just the relatively low volume of our printing partner, which is not a criticism, it just is a thing that is so doing the same kind of volume of T shirt designs that we used to do has been a real challenge. It's something that we do have plans to fix, but it's just like anything, it's going to take time.
Dan
When do you guys think we will ever see a time in gaming where we will try and make sure it works properly versus just dropping it and hoping to fix it later? I really hate the state of most ah, ah games that's Triple A and Quadruple A.
Luke Lafreniere
I don't see that getting better anytime soon. I mean, now that games as a service is the new meta, I, I just don't, I don't, I don't foresee that being a thing that's going to happen. I think that we just have to kind of wait, invest in games when they are in a state that we believe is finished enough for us to enjoy and hope that the devs of the games that we love are going to continue to invest the time to get them to a working state. In fairness to devs, the hardware variants that exist today or variations that exist today are much, much broader than they used to be. Optimizing a game is harder than ever. That shouldn't just be a crutch. That shouldn't just be an excuse for poor quality work or for, you know, a publisher or management forcing something out when, you know, everyone knows it's not ready, but it is also a reality.
Dan
LTD Store underwear is my favorite. Is it coming back? Love from Australia.
Luke Lafreniere
Yes.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, thank goodness. That's a question I've had, actually. Thank you for asking that.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
Dan
Do they come in upside down though?
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know. We have some really cool designs coming up though. There's this one with like pixel art Australians and one with pixel art, like potions and stuff on it, like kind of gamer, gamer underwear. I'm pretty stoked.
Dan
I'm sorry.
Luke Lafreniere
Luke.
Dan
Hi, Wan dll. I've been watching for about three years now, and you have always been my main mentor throughout my IT career. Who are your mentors and what did you learn from them?
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, I mean, I've had a lot of mentors. I guess. You know, one of them I hired as our CEO, Taran taught me a lot. My other boss at NCIX taught me a lot. Jack. You know, externally, I, I have been really impressed by people who came before me in tech media, like Chris Perillo. I just thought his professionalism, that time that we had him on wan show was big time. Unreal.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Very inspiring. I, I, I don't know if I describe that as mentorship because I don't, like, know him super well. Like, we've hung out a few times, but other than that. But inspiring, but definitely inspiring. Yeah.
Linus Sebastian
Was this question specifically for you?
Luke Lafreniere
I don't think so.
Linus Sebastian
I've used, I've used Wendell, so I think a fair way of saying it.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, he definitely would qualify as a mentor for you.
Linus Sebastian
100%. Yeah. Wendell's been huge for me, actually, because when, when I started doing floatplane stuff, I didn't, I didn't know a lot of people that were like, managing software teams or anything or building software. Not even, not even managing software teams. I knew very few people in that industry at all. And he was extremely helpful, extremely understanding, generous with his time and extremely generous with his time. Like, and still is. I still go to him for stuff.
Luke Lafreniere
Now, but especially, like, it was actually a genius, so.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah, he's fantastic. I very much enjoy just hanging out with him. And then at this point, it's mostly hanging out with him. And then there are tidbits that he'll, like, say something and I'll be like, oh, okay, I'm gonna note that down. It's less like direct question and answer and it's more like osmosis. Just being near him for a while is, like, helpful.
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know about mentorship, but I've talked before about taking a lot of inspiration from Noctua's leadership in how they approach product development. Same with Framework. I love that they're staying true to their mission even though, you know, they've taken VC money. And it can be really tempting to just do whatever it takes to make a buck in order to generate a return for your investors.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
Investment disclosure. Hit me, Dan.
Dan
Hello, Land Duke and Dynus. What is your biggest distraction during the workday? Getting in the way of getting things done. Also, more brettasaurus merch, please.
Luke Lafreniere
Interruptions.
Linus Sebastian
Too many notifications because of too many incoming communications on too many various communication platforms.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. I second that motion.
Dan
Ding.
Luke Lafreniere
Hit me, Dan.
Linus Sebastian
It's a huge issue.
Dan
Ding. But it's your phone this time.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
Dan
What watch is Linus wearing? I noticed it during the switch to unboxing.
Luke Lafreniere
I think it's a. I think it's the 2R from OnePlus.
Linus Sebastian
So basically doesn't even know.
Luke Lafreniere
It's fine, I guess. I don't know.
Dan
Whatever the new thing from Rolex is, I don't even care at this point.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, my God.
Dan
I just have a guy people like.
Linus Sebastian
Who watches a lot. He takes my Maybach down and goes and picks up the new release.
Dan
Oh, you're still driving around in a Maybach.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, Luke. Oh, geez.
Luke Lafreniere
Why do I talk to you? I only just found out what a Maybach is. Don't even give me that.
Linus Sebastian
That. I did. Yeah, I found out, like, a week ago.
Luke Lafreniere
Me too.
Dan
Doesn't have the new endangered seal. Seat covers. Yeah.
Luke Lafreniere
So it's. It's not letting me use the menu. I'm trying to navigate to the. Find out what model it is.
Linus Sebastian
Not a very glowing.
Luke Lafreniere
But it's not on my wrist, and it keeps locking. Sorry, one sec. Yeah, I think it's the 2R. Honestly, I just use it as pretty much just a watch these days. I've just found that it's so tedious to interact with my wrist compared to just pulling my phone out that I can't get that into it.
Linus Sebastian
That's all I got.
Luke Lafreniere
That's all you got. Okay.
Linus Sebastian
All right, cool.
Luke Lafreniere
Well, maybe I actually get to eat a meal for the first time today.
Dan
I wouldn't even bother at this point.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it's the 2R. It's the 2 ring. No, you should eat. Oh, hey, I'm getting braces.
Linus Sebastian
Oh, nice.
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. And that's the end of the show. We'll see you again next week.
Linus Sebastian
Invisalign. Or the metal ones.
Luke Lafreniere
I am. Okay, those were options. Cool options, Good options. Solid options.
Linus Sebastian
Third option.
Luke Lafreniere
But I couldn't resist the 3D printed option.
Linus Sebastian
Oh.
Luke Lafreniere
So there's this, like, new one where they 3D print the brackets specifically for your teeth so that they don't have to, like, remove them and, like, replace them. I just wanted to. I just wanted to try them huh.
Dan
That sounds cool. Let me know what that is. I want to try that, too.
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I've never even heard of that.
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, they look like. They look like train tracks, but a little more clear, I guess. And maybe I'll regret it because Invisalign is a lot more. There's a lot less noticeable, but I don't know.
Linus Sebastian
Dude, you got to get frosted tips.
Luke Lafreniere
No, it's actually more.
Linus Sebastian
And train.
Luke Lafreniere
It's actually. It's actually more expensive than Invisalign, but I just. By like. By like a couple hundred dollars or something. Not by like a huge amount, given the total outlay. But I was just like, how can I resist the 3D printed brackets?
Linus Sebastian
You got to get a Hot Topic shirt. Jinko jeans.
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, my God.
Linus Sebastian
Frosted tips. Caesar.
Luke Lafreniere
Cat, did I ever tell you we accidentally. We accidentally made, like, JNCO cut LTT cargo pants once?
Linus Sebastian
Oh, they probably would have show those up. They probably would have sold like crazy.
Luke Lafreniere
I'll. I'll. I'll wear them. I'll wear them for you when I get my. Okay. All right. See you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.
Linus Sebastian
Bye.
Luke Lafreniere
For off site audio is to just bring a wave.
The WAN Show – Episode Summary: "Okay We HAVE To Talk About This" (June 6, 2025)
Released on June 7, 2025
In this episode of The WAN Show, hosts Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere delve into a range of pressing topics within the technology sphere. From high-profile corporate and political tensions to the latest in gaming hardware, the duo provides insightful analysis and lively discussions for tech enthusiasts.
Timestamp: 00:32 – 06:20
The episode kicks off with a heated discussion about the deteriorating relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The crux of their fallout revolves around the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, where Musk criticized the Congressional spending bill as an "abomination" (Linus, 01:20). Trump retaliated by suggesting the cancellation of Musk's government contracts, leading Musk to threaten decommissioning the SpaceX Dragon Crew—a move that would potentially force the US to seek alternative means, such as Russian flights to the ISS.
Notable Quote:
"Is it possible that we are learning what the negative outcomes can be from having thin-skinned billionaires control massive parts of national security critical infrastructure?"
— Luke Lafreniere (00:06:02)
Analysis: Linus expresses hope that this conflict serves as a learning moment for NASA, emphasizing the risks of over-reliance on a single private entity for critical space operations. He underscores the importance of having multiple launch options to ensure national security and continuity in space endeavors.
Timestamp: 06:20 – 12:30
The discussion transitions to the implications of the Big Beautiful Bill on the Electric Vehicle (EV) market. The bill threatens to remove government incentives for EVs and solar energy, while paradoxically retaining incentives for oil and gas—a stance Musk condemns as unfair.
Notable Quotes:
"The big beautiful bill keeps oil and gas incentives in place, which Elon sees as unfair."
— Linus Sebastian (08:01)
"If you buy with a credit card because you can't afford that LTT store purchase, then I would really prefer that you simply not make the purchase right now."
— Luke Lafreniere (23:02)
Analysis: Luke criticizes the opportunistic nature of the Musk-Trump relationship, highlighting how personal agendas can disrupt broader economic and environmental policies. The removal of EV incentives could dampen the growth of sustainable technologies, adversely affecting both manufacturers and consumers.
Timestamp: 08:30 – 16:25
Linus and Luke delve into the ongoing challenges with Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) features. They express growing skepticism about Tesla's ability to deliver promised autonomous capabilities, citing hardware limitations and a lack of transparency.
Notable Quotes:
"When somebody breaks my trust, I don't trust them anymore."
— Luke Lafreniere (09:12)
"These are things that we've known for a very long time. And when somebody breaks my trust, I don't trust them anymore."
— Linus Sebastian (09:00)
Analysis: The hosts emphasize the importance of reliability and honesty in automotive technology. They criticize Tesla for not adequately addressing the shortcomings of their current systems and for their opaque approach to incident reporting. This erosion of trust could have long-term repercussions for Tesla's reputation and user base.
Timestamp: 12:30 – 25:33
Amidst global economic instability, Linus and Luke discuss how uncertainties and rising costs are making advanced technologies less accessible. They highlight the example of Coachella not selling out, with half of attendees financing their tickets—a stark indicator of financial strain and shifting consumer behavior.
Notable Quotes:
"We have cool tech. It's just getting out of reach."
— Luke Lafreniere (17:37)
"People are making financial decisions to finance concert tickets."
— Luke Lafreniere (21:50)
Analysis: The conversation underscores a broader trend where economic pressures are forcing consumers to make difficult choices, often prioritizing essential expenses over discretionary spending on technology and entertainment. This shift poses challenges for tech companies aiming to maintain sales and market growth.
Timestamp: 25:33 – 51:00
A significant portion of the episode is devoted to the Nintendo Switch 2, which Linus acquired unexpectedly. The hosts debate whether Nintendo has sufficiently innovated with the new console or merely iterated on its predecessor.
Notable Quotes:
"It's really good at being boring."
— Linus Sebastian (30:22)
"The game carts are really expensive. Like, I'm talking over $100."
— Luke Lafreniere (57:56)
Analysis: Linus criticizes the Switch 2 for lacking substantial innovation, pointing out minor upgrades like improved kickstands and enhanced memory card support with Micro SD Express. Luke, while agreeing on the lack of excitement, praises certain design improvements and acknowledges the high cost of games as a significant drawback. They also discuss hardware issues such as Joy Con drift and repairability scores, which received low ratings from iFixit.
Repairability Concerns:
"iFixit gave it a 3 out of 10 repairability score."
— Luke Lafreniere (40:03)
The hosts express frustration over Nintendo’s selective media engagement and the potential for remote bricking of consoles, raising concerns about consumer rights and device longevity.
Timestamp: 56:52 – 94:10
Linus and Luke analyze the current state of the GPU market, focusing on AMD’s recent release of the 9060 XT, which mirrors Nvidia’s strategy of offering multiple memory configurations. They discuss the socioeconomic implications of pricing strategies and market competition.
Notable Quotes:
"Why did they even buy? It's ridiculous."
— Luke Lafreniere (93:00)
"Can you talk about what a floatplane bonus? I don't think so."
— Linus Sebastian (91:36)
Analysis: The conversation highlights the thin profit margins and the challenges AMD faces in gaining significant market share against Nvidia. Linus laments Intel’s new policy requiring projects to earn at least a 50% gross margin, fearing it may stifle innovation. The hosts ponder whether the GPU market will ever see reasonably priced options again, given the current trends of high costs and limited affordability.
Timestamp: 94:10 – 112:35
The hosts address ongoing issues with YouTube's content moderation, referencing Jeff Geerling’s takedown of his video on Floatplane and the broader implications for content creators.
Notable Quotes:
"You can't influence Nintendo other than with your wallet."
— Luke Lafreniere (49:25)
"YouTube is removing our content for non-policy related reasons."
— Linus Sebastian (100:29)
Analysis: Linus and Luke critique YouTube’s lack of transparency and inconsistent enforcement of community guidelines. They express frustration over the arbitrary removal of content, which hinders creators' ability to share and monetize their work effectively. The discussion underscores the need for more equitable and clear content moderation policies to support the creator community.
Timestamp: 112:35 – 117:04
Linus and Luke discuss Floatplane, their alternative platform for content distribution. They explain the implementation of download limits to manage bandwidth costs and ensure service stability for their small team.
Notable Quotes:
"Floatplane is a very small company and the impact of someone just going through and clicking download on a trillion videos all at the same time is extremely high."
— Linus Sebastian (105:26)
"Use something like Plex... Trickle downloading it over time."
— Linus Sebastian (106:11)
Analysis: The hosts clarify that while they support mass downloading through tools like Plex or community scripts, they impose rate limits to prevent service disruptions. This balance aims to cater to genuine fans without overburdening their infrastructure, a necessary measure given Floatplane’s limited resources.
Timestamp: 117:04 – 124:32
A brief update covers new EU regulations requiring smartphones and tablets sold in the region to be more durable and repair-friendly. Devices must resist accidental drops, scratches, and dust and water ingress. Additionally, manufacturers must ensure battery longevity and provide spare parts and repair information for seven years post-sale.
Notable Quotes:
"Producers must make critical spare parts available and provide proposed repair information to professional repairers for seven years after the end of sales for the product model."
— Luke Lafreniere (121:07)
Analysis: The EU’s stringent regulations are lauded as a step towards reducing electronic waste and promoting sustainability. Linus and Luke appreciate the focus on durability and repairability, contrasting it with other regions' less stringent standards. They view these regulations as progressive measures that could set a global precedent for responsible technology manufacturing.
Timestamp: 124:32 – 161:56
The latter half of the episode shifts focus to merchandise promotions from the Linus Tech Tips (LTT) Store, including discussions on hoodie designs, crossbody bags, and upcoming products. The hosts elaborate on the challenges of maintaining inventory, dealing with suppliers, and meeting customer demand amidst economic constraints.
Notable Quotes:
"We have made our very conscious decision to not have buy now pay later functionality on our shop."
— Luke Lafreniere (24:01)
"These are things where we could really do something different."
— Luke Lafreniere (82:05)
Analysis: Linus and Luke emphasize their commitment to responsible selling practices, discouraging customers from purchasing beyond their means. They also highlight the creative processes behind designing and producing LTT merchandise, navigating supply chain issues, and striving to offer unique products that stand out in the crowded market.
Timestamp: 161:56 – 165:00
The episode concludes with a nostalgic deep dive into Final Fantasy 6, where Linus and Luke share their personal experiences and challenges faced while playing the game. They reflect on game mechanics, character development, and memorable boss fights, providing a blend of gameplay analysis and personal anecdotes.
Notable Quotes:
"And I ended up doing Dragoon for Edgar, and I would cycle it on other people, but Edgar was the main one because he seemed to just do so much damage."
— Linus Sebastian (138:29)
"What a reference, man. I love it."
— Luke Lafreniere (141:11)
Analysis: The hosts reminisce about the intricate gameplay of Final Fantasy 6, discussing strategies and character strengths. Their conversation highlights the game's enduring appeal and the depth that older RPGs offer, contrasting it with modern gaming trends focused more on graphics and instant gratification.
Timestamp: 165:00 – End
In the After Dark segment, the hosts engage in light-hearted banter, addressing community comments, promoting upcoming events like the Brettasaurus Hoodie, and sharing personal updates. This informal portion fosters a sense of community and provides a relaxed closure to the episode.
Notable Quotes:
"The show is also brought to you by AMD Vance's AMD Ultimate Upgrade came out earlier this week."
— Luke Lafreniere (124:35)
"Can you talk about what a floatplane bonus? I don't think so."
— Linus Sebastian (91:36)
Analysis: The After Dark segment showcases the hosts' camaraderie and dedication to their fanbase. By addressing merchandise availability, discussing personal projects, and interacting with listener-submitted questions, Linus and Luke reinforce their commitment to transparency and engagement with their audience.
Conclusion
This episode of The WAN Show encapsulates the dynamic interplay between technology, politics, and consumer behavior. Through in-depth discussions and candid exchanges, Linus and Luke offer valuable perspectives on current tech trends, corporate strategies, and the evolving landscape of gaming and content creation.
For more detailed insights and ongoing updates, tune into future episodes of The WAN Show by Linus Tech Tips.