Our Cable Launch Went TOO GOOD - WAN Show January 30, 2026

Summary

The WAN Show Podcast Summary

Episode: "Our Cable Launch Went TOO GOOD!" (Jan 30, 2026)

Date: January 31, 2026
Hosts: Linus Sebastian, Luke Lafreniere, Daniel Besser (Producer)
Podcast: Linus Tech Tips – The WAN Show

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Episode Overview

This episode of The WAN Show dives deep into the surprising, overwhelming demand for LTT’s new True Spec cable launch, with candid reflections on inventory, pricing strategy, and behind-the-scenes operations. Linus and Luke also unpack tech news from persistent security issues and industry lawsuits, to broader conversations about creator economies and ethical business practices. The dynamic duo infuse the show with their characteristic technology nerdery, pop culture riffs, and candid banter on the business of being a tech creator.

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Headline Topic: LTT True Spec Cables Launch – Better Than Expected!

Launch Experience & Inventory Management

• [00:37] Linus: Shares the struggle of often having either too much or too little inventory, highlighting that True Spec cables sold out in some lengths within 20 minutes.
  • “Truspec cables are here and we sold out of some lengths in like 20 minutes. Opposite problem. Good problem to have. Just freaking out a little bit…” ([01:22])
• [04:00] Linus and Luke walk through the years-long R&D and perfectionist efforts behind the cable line, emphasizing high materials cost and fair pricing.
  • “They’re very expensive because the cable stock is really expensive… I don’t think they’re unreasonably priced at all for what they are.” ([05:36])
• [09:01] The team tried "in-between" cable lengths (‘tweener SKUs’) to fill gaps, but learn that customer demand stuck to conventional lengths.
  • “Everything in the middle… just the really short ones are still there, the really long ones are still there, and everything… is just gone.” ([09:55])

Restock and Business Decisions

• [10:39] The LTT store planned ahead with additional raw cable stock, aiming for a faster-than-expected restock in March.
• [11:57] Linus addresses “false scarcity” accusations, clarifies they want to sell as much as possible (not a hypebeast drop).
  • “Do you really think that I didn’t want to sell more cables today?... These are... they’re cables. I want to sell as many cables as humanly possible.” ([12:03])

Deep-Dive & Technical Validation

• [12:54] Discussion on potentially creating a super technical ‘NER’ version video for true cable nerds.
  • Coverage of high-frequency signal validation and advanced equipment needs for 40Gbps cable testing ([13:09]).
• [15:46] Live reactions to internal scans of cables using a Lumafield CT scanner; much nerding out over the intricacies of cable design.
  • “Drives me crazy how much we take stuff like this for granted. We look at a cable and we’re just like, cable, whatever. But... it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” ([16:04])

Thunderbolt Compatibility

• Not officially Thunderbolt-certified, but the cables function in several Thunderbolt scenarios.
  • “I plugged into a Thunderbolt port... and our cable worked.” ([18:28])
  • “We’re not promising that it will with a Thunderbolt device... but as long as you’re within USB4 specs, it should work most of the time.” ([19:00])

Warranty and Quality Assurance

• [14:39] LTT launches the “TrustMe Bro warranty,” signaling their high confidence in product quality.

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Key Tech & Industry News

Creator Economy: 1% Fallacy & Platform Realities

• [24:00] onwards Reddit thread highlights the reality of “top x percent” stats for creator earnings—be it OnlyFans, Spotify, Steam, YouTube, or Twitch—where even top 1% barely sustain a living.
  • "Someone with about 20 viewers... would be in the top 1% on the platform. To hit 0.25%, you would have just 120 viewers.” ([26:42])
  • “...the gap between those is like… top 1% to top 0.1%... the range you start getting is insane in those little percentages.” ([27:28])
• Notable Quote:
  • Linus: “The only takeaway wasn’t just butt jokes.” ([32:23])

Microsoft & Windows Frustrations

• [35:56] Extended riff on Microsoft sign-in woes, launcher weirdness, and family account frustrations.
  • “How is it that I sign, they force me to sign into Windows and then I still have to sign in again to the store, again to Edge, and again into Minecraft.” ([36:04])

Best Buy: “Compare At” Pricing Scheme

• [37:29] onwards Linus rants about Best Buy’s manipulative “compare-at” prices, suggesting an LTT video exposing such dark patterns.
  • “What is a comparable value?...such prices may have been identified by Best Buy or provided... If they've ever seen it, they can kind of go, yes, that one, please.” ([38:39])
• Further discussion about the prevalence of “starting at,” “compare at,” and “up to” as manipulative sales tactics. ([40:29])

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Lightning Round: Noteworthy Topics & Quotes

Canada Computers Card Skimmer Incident

• [97:27] Discussion about a major card skimmer hack on the Canada Computers site, complexities of small shops maintaining good security, and ecosystem impacts.
  • “Do we want to funnel everyone to big players?... And in a lot of cases they're not long for this world because things like this can potentially crush them out of business...” ([100:37])

Apple Updates Very Old iPhones

• [02:08] & [93:01]
  • “The iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update. I just want to take a moment to highlight that because that is so cool.” ([02:08])
  • “This is something that, that has to be noted. Like I'll be the first to call out Apple when they do something that's anti consumer or monopolistic. But this is cool.” ([94:26])

Congratulations to “Stop Killing Games” Movement

• [02:55], [94:56], [95:05]
  • “Final count for Stop Killing Games petition verifies 1.3 million... well above the minimum to be formally considered by EU politicians.” ([02:55], [94:56])
  • “If one region forces it... it will bleed over into other regions, which is what I'm hoping for..." ([96:04])

Rant Section: Subscriptions & Modern Commerce

• Critical takes on new hardware subscription models (LG, HP), the “you’ll own nothing and be happy” trend, and evaluating when a subscription is actually good value for a tech user. ([55:36]-[62:42])
  • “But that's how they get you, right? That's the lock in that they want. They want the laziness lock in.” ([62:36])

Privacy & Encryption Key Disclosure

• Microsoft confirms they provide BitLocker keys to US government requests, raising privacy advocacy concerns.
  • “It might not be [unusual], but it should be.” ([53:16])

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LTT Product Launches & Announcements

New Products

• [79:24] onwards: Unveiling of multiple LTT Store launches:
  • Tech Pants & Premium Polo (“white-collar cargo pants” with subtle, well-engineered features) ([79:24]-[84:53])
  • Floatplane-exclusive Precision Screwdriver (Pro variant, new colorway, magnetic storage) ([85:31]-[87:33])

Labs Channel & New Content

• Voltage drop and inside-the-cable articles, including Lumafield CT scans ([20:22], [138:01])
• Product page improvements and new article features for LTT Labs ([21:22])

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Elsewhere in Tech/Pop Culture

• Windows Phone nostalgia: “Next Phone” aims to dual-boot Android, Windows, and Linux, but UWP limitations hurt usability. ([32:31])
• LG’s UK hardware subscription program: Broken down as almost always more expensive than simply buying—the console example is nearly £50 more over the rental period. ([55:01])
• Valve faces £656 million lawsuit for unfair pricing on Steam in the UK ([113:02])
• TikTok censorship and legal wrangling ([126:31]-[128:28])
• Disney/Star Wars rant. Outrage at the prospect of an MCU x Star Wars crossover as a marker of “end times” for Disney. ([131:05])

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Memorable Quotes

• On pricing manipulation:
  “Starting at, compare at and up to. Need to go. They've got to just be incredibly annoying. Yeah, because what does it even mean?” ([40:29]) — Linus

• On creator earnings myths:
  "You can be one of the top... bands on Spotify... we're talking like, like 40 bucks a month." ([25:49]) — Linus

• On tech nerd beauty:
  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? ...There’s a lot of engineering that goes into just a quote unquote, simple cable termination.” ([16:04], [16:33]) — Linus

• On Apple’s long-term iOS support:
  “I shouldn’t have to be impressed by this, but I so am.” ([97:06]) — Linus

• On Microsoft account woes:
  “How is it that they force me to sign into Windows and then I still have to sign in again to the store, again to Edge, and again into Minecraft.” ([36:04]) — Linus

• On platform market consolidation:
  "Are we effectively just funneling everyone to big players... and is that a good thing?" ([100:37]) — Luke

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Timestamps for Key Sections

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|------------| | LTT Cable Launch & Pricing | 00:37–15:24| | Tech sold out; how they estimated demand | 09:01–11:12| | Accusations of false-scarcity addressed | 11:57–12:53| | Technical cable speccing, validation, scans | 12:54–21:22| | “Tweener SKUs” / Product lessons | 09:01–10:39| | Cable compatibility (Thunderbolt, DisplayPort)| 17:48–21:52| | Creator economy: Top 1% doesn’t mean rich | 24:00–32:23| | Best Buy “compare-at” pricing rant | 37:38–46:22| | Hardware subscriptions skepticism | 55:01–62:24| | Microsoft account login & family frustrations | 35:56–36:46| | Canada Computers breach | 97:27–102:02| | “Stop Killing Games” success in EU | 94:56–96:42| | Apple iPhone 5s update praise | 02:08–02:19, 93:01–94:27| | Product launches & warehouse fun | 79:20–88:02| | Valve lawsuit |113:02–114:10| | TikTok legal/abuse reports |126:31–128:28| | After Dark (fun banter, community Q&A) |141:02–169:41|

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Language, Tone, and In-Jokes

• The show keeps a mixture of earnest technical depth and relentless self-deprecating humor (“TrustMe Bro warranty,” “meanwhile on Twitch, 20 viewers is 1%”), grounded with a touch of business realism.
• Frequent “meta” moments about livestream operations, inside jokes about, e.g., Canada Computers’ IT, and nerdy reflections on the business of content creation.
• Dialogue is candid, unfiltered, with Luke often as the voice of reason and Linus as the excitable, passionate founder.

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Takeaways for Non-Listeners

• The overwhelming demand for LTT’s True Spec cables exposed a positive “small business problem,” and the team is transparent about behind-the-scenes forecasting, technical challenges, and misconceptions around “artificial scarcity.”
• The broader tech and creator world remains fraught: from manipulative e-commerce tactics and rising subscription models, to income myths of top digital earners, ongoing privacy erosions, and platform consolidation.
• Linus and Luke shine when going deep on the craftsmanship behind mundane tech (cables, screwdrivers), but aren’t afraid to veer into business and social commentary.
• The tone is irreverent and fast-paced, with lively in-jokes and a clear affection for the tech community—even as they call out both its flaws and the industry’s worst practices.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “Truspec cables are here and we sold out of some lengths in like 20 minutes… Good problem to have. Just freaking out a little bit…” (01:22) – Linus Sebastian

• “Everything in the middle… is just gone.” (09:55) – Luke Lafreniere

• “Do you really think that I didn’t want to sell more cables today?... These are... they’re cables. I want to sell as many cables as humanly possible.” (12:03) – Linus Sebastian

• “We look at a cable and we’re just like, cable, whatever. But... it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” (16:04) – Linus Sebastian

• “The only takeaway wasn’t just butt jokes.” (32:23) – Linus Sebastian

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For those who missed the episode: This is classic WAN Show—honest, nerdy, inside baseball on tech business and product, with a heavy dash of industry skepticism and an open line to their own community, making for a highly informative tech talk packed with humor, humility, and perspective.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

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[Luke Lafreniere]

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[Linus Sebastian]

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[Luke Lafreniere]

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[Linus Sebastian]

What is up, everybody and welcome to the WAN show. Happy Friday. We've had an interesting day. I was just having a long conversation with some of our leadership about overstock on some items on LTT store and cash flow and money being tied up. And then today we had the opposite problem. We launched our true spec cables, which, by the way, I've got to give credit to. I think it was Dave on the branding side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I say the name right.

[Linus Sebastian]

True Spec. So good, man. We had so many different ideas for the branding.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're either like this is widget number A or truspec or they nail it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Truespec is so good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Truspec cables are here and we sold out of some lengths in like 20 minutes. Opposite problem. Good problem to have. Just freaking out a little bit as a, you know, small to medium business owner that just, you know, can't ever seem to get it perfectly right. But. But hey, it's definitely better than the opposite problem. What else we got going on today? Okay, I found one. That's Good news. The iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update. I just want to take a moment to highlight that because that is so cool. What else we got going on?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Reddit found a card skimmer on the Canada computers checkout page, which might explain what's been happening to us for a few years now. Find good news, Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want good news WAN show today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, not that one. Not that one. Not that one. No, that one's kind of neutral. Not that one. Definitely not that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I already can't. Dan, get rid of him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get rid of surability to can.

[Daniel Besser]

Okay, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I can't anymore. I'm not prepared for this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That one's debatable. Well, it won't be for you, but you know what? Someone's going to be happy about this. YouTube's anti ad block system just got smarter and harder. Wait, no, no, that is good for you and not other people. But I'll find another one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I highlighted one for you. I'm making it easier.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where is it? Wait, scrolling up. There's no way oh, yeah, sure. No notes. Final count. Well, that part I don't need to say. Final count for Stop Killing Games petition verifies 1.3 million of its 1.4 million signatures, well above the minimum to be formally considered by EU politicians.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so Stop Killing Games has got some momentum. That's super cool. The show is brought to you today by Zero Bounce, UPDF, Motion Gray and XSplit alongside our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Razer and our chair partner. Also Razor Razor Sharp. Sharp sponsorships, but not a sharp chair. And you're checking the laptop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They've had Razer laptops in the past have had surprisingly sharp edges.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think they rounded these a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

They learned about bevels.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They have figured that out.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, why don't we jump right into our headline topic which is. Okay, fine, it's a CW call out, but we're going to, we're going to do it anyway. The long awaited more like ad show LTT True spec cables are finally full freaking here after. Oh God. Were we actually on this for five years? I think it spanned five calendar years, but I think it was more like four. Our cables have arrived in just five hours. They have almost completely sold out. However, we did anticipate that maybe this would happen. We kind of hedged.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we weren't sure. Right. Because on the one hand we knew that they were going to be at the pricier end of the market. But in my humble opinion, extremely fairly priced for the quality with how much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They are stressed how expensive they were going to be. I thought they were going to be. I'm not saying they're cheap, but I thought they were going to be more expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I mean I don't, I don't know man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You really push the like they're going to cost a lot. And I was like braced for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe I was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This was the first time I saw the price is when it was online.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe I was so fixated on how much they were costing me. Okay. Because they're really, they're expensive like compared to what I would normally expect my inbound cost to be on like you know, a three foot cable or a six foot cable or whatever. The cost is very high. Remember we sampled from, in the video we said we sampled from dozens. Do you want to of different OEMs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You haven't seen this? I don't think. Do you want to see where some of that cost went? We have Lumafield scans of the cables.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, let's get to that. Let's get to that soon. Let's get to that soon. But first. Yeah, so, yeah, they're very expensive because the cable stock is really expensive and it's, you know, they're good, right? But no, I don't think they're unreasonably priced at all for what they are. And so I wasn't sure because we, like, we can guess, but we have no animal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You've never been in this market category?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You've also never sold anything from this market category.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not at all. And, and so we kind of went, okay, well, we don't want to go crazy and just buy $5 million worth of cables or whatever because then, like, we don't have venture capital in our company. We can't just spend someone else's money to have a bunch of stock and then spend someone else's money to market the bejesus out of it and then make sure we move through it. We just are spending our own capital, right, as a company. So we, so we were sort of conservative on the initial load in the other thing we didn't know was what the mix would look like because we tried to do something a little bit different and offer what I call sort of tweener skus. And that's a term. I don't know if that's an industry term, but it's certainly a term that I've heard before in the IT industry in between. Yeah. So I remember learning about this, this concept back when I was working at NCIX and I was talking to one of our senior product managers about hard drive sales. I was like, this is so weird to me, the enthusiast who goes in the bulk aisle and then goes and compares to the packaged one, right? To find out which one I'm paying more or less for per hundred grams. Like, should I buy Lindor chocolates in the bulk bin or should I buy them in the package? Because often the package is actually cheaper, but not always. But in the bulk bin you can pick exactly which flavors you get. So these are the kinds of considerations that I might make when I go to the grocery store. So it was really confusing to me that we had a really great price on 640 gigabyte hard drives because they weren't selling. And I was like, this is so weird. And actually, now that I'm looking at it, the 750 gigs are priced really well too. And those aren't selling either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Everyone just looks for 1 TB but.

[Linus Sebastian]

The 500 gig and the 1 TB.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I need A cheap one are moving like Billio. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And, and so my boss was explaining to me, he kind of goes, yeah, no it's, it's the problem with these ones is that they're tweener skus. We don't make the rules. People just like whatever they perceive to be nice round numbers. Sure. And they will gravitate towards those. Even though, you know, this one might have an advantage of being a single platter design or all these techie deci, you know, details that a big nerd like you might care about. The average customer doesn't care about or notice at all. They just want to see nice big round number. And I'm like okay. And so I had this kind of idea for the truspec cables which is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry. Which is funny because sorting out all the junk in my house, I found my old hard drive like bin and a bunch of 640s. I didn't really think about that until now.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, like our water bottles and like our desk pads. I wanted the idea to be a fair price regardless of the size and you shouldn't need to buy a six foot cable if all you needed was four feet in order to reach wherever it was you were trying to go. So I had this idea that we would, we would offer in between sizes as a way to differentiate and, and as a way to sort of reinforce our ecosystem of cable management products. So our magnetic cable management solutions. But I had no idea what the mix would look like. Was the entire industry right that everyone wants a 1 meter or 3 foot or a 2 meter or approximately 6 foot cable or was there a market for a 5 foot cable or a 4 foot cable? I didn't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it turns out everything in the middle, no in between or doesn't matter. Go for it or don't go for it, just everything in the middle. When you look at the dropdown thing, just the, the, the really short ones are still there, the really long ones are still there and everything, like 10ft to basically one and a half feet. Everything just below 10ft and above one foot is just gone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that's which by the way, if you're watching this and you checked them earlier and it said unavailable and you have the same confusion Iowa had for like a split second which was like why did we not order any of the ones in the middle? No, we did it just sold out. Unavailable means it's coming soon.

[Linus Sebastian]

So they added restock soon wording just right before the show. Yeah, so. So, so yeah, we wanted to get an Idea of the mix. So what we did was we brought in a guess. And then what we also did was we ordered more raw cable stock that is sitting staged, ready for production. So what that means is that our first restock instead of coming in May or June, is going to be hitting in March because we have pre produced raw cable stock and terminations.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we just need to do a little bit of number crunchy. Go crunch and. And figure out exactly what lengths we're gonna cut them into, get them produced and get them shipped over here. So we're gonna get on it as fast as we can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a good idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nobody is less happy about us being out of stock than I am, I promise you that. But hopefully now that you guys can kind of see what the process looked like for that you can kind of understand why we did it. I saw the most ridiculous post on Reddit. Yeah, typical. To bring in just a little bit to hype the demand and make it seem. Oh my God. Do you really think that I didn't want to sell more cables today?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, some companies do do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For like actually not a Hypebeast limited edition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like we're going to make three of them Supreme Brick or something. Yeah, fine, whatever. But these are. They're cables. I want to sell as many cables as humanly possible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We would love to sell cables.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come on, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to do a super NER version of the cables video. Any thoughts, peeps? Flowplane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, this is Tynan. I actually, I saw that and I actually flagged it for writers meeting. So we're gonna talk about it, I think. I don't even know if it would go on a CW channel if we get around to a labs channel in the near future. Or maybe. Or maybe even a full LTT release on the restock is the way that I'm leaning right now. Because I think that a lot of people really want a deep dive on the cables.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'd be potentially down. Tynan. I'm not committing to this right now, but I would potentially be down for us to look into a rental of one of the really high speed scopes. Because one of the challenges for us in doing the 40 gigabit cables.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could we just visit someone?

[Linus Sebastian]

Possibly. But even then, like that will take some time. But what would be really cool is one of the challenges for us to do 40 gigabit cables was that we can't validate them internally. It's really freaking fast. 40 billion per second. This is like incredibly short timelines. Here. And so for you to actually measure the eye so the gap in the rising and falling, we don't have equipment that can do it like our cable tester. Tynan, if you could give me. Give me a hand on this. But I think our cable tester was able to do up to 10 gigabit, and I think we had to go external for 20 and 40. You'll have to correct me if I'm wrong on that. It might have been that we could also do 20, but I know for sure up to 20. Thanks, Tynan. So I know for sure we couldn't do 40 internally. So we had to. We had to go outside for that validation. So I think it'd be really cool for us to get our hands on the equipment and show, like, guys, this is the time scale we're operating on, and this is what our eyes look like, and really, really deep dive. I don't know, man. It's. It could be. Could be a good opportunity for us to talk about the cables again. Get super. Get super geeky. Super nerdy. Hey, speaking of super geeky stuff, do you want to pull up the Lumafield?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have a few things to show in regards to super geeky stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. I should probably just. A couple more things. Okay. They come in USB A to C and USB C to C for now. Lots of speed and length options for a clean setup. Makes a great pairing with our magnetic cable management solutions for the ultimate desk setup. They also come with our TrustMe Bro warranty. So this is a limited lifetime warranty and is meant to show you guys, I mean, we stand behind our products regardless. But this is meant to formalize how much we believe in this product. Obviously, like any limited lifetime warranty, you know, there's terms and conditions with respect to, okay, obvious abuse and wear and tear and, you know, that kind of stuff. But go ahead, read through the full thing. We're extremely proud of this product, and we. And we stand behind it, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if you want, you can flip through the Google Drive link there to see all the photos, and then I can load up the actual Lumafield link if you want to, like, view it in some other way.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because the. The on laptop Lumafield viewer can struggle sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what are we looking at here?

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my good. She's so sexy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The twists. When you get to see the twists from the back, it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

From the back, it's pretty. When you see it from the back, it's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can see all the Little wires.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, dude, it's. It's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks, Lucas, for doing this, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Drives me crazy how much we take stuff like this for granted. We look at a cable and we're just like, cable, whatever. But like, look at it. It's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait till you see some of the other ones, man. There's a bunch of photos. I mean, you can just click the arrow. You don't have to turn.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a fun shot, Ermergird. And you got to think like, that's. That's blown up pretty big. That's really small.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's so small. There's a lot of. There's a lot of engineering that goes into just a quote unquote, simple cable termination. So you can see here's the. The shielded coax, high speed lines right here. Hey, Tynan, what are these ones? Are these, Are these ground or low speed data? Tynan would know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'll take a sec, but yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably CC lines. Thanks, Tynan. She's gorgeous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That one of the rides. Fun. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And yeah, to do something there, to do something properly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Guys, nothing is so sick. There's also some differences here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nothing simple people that are watching.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's some differences here in like the, the lengths and capability of the cables. There's also A versus C and stuff like that. So I believe this is one of the like higher spec ones Lucas was explaining to me. Hopefully I didn't butcher.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tynan's addressing a question that a lot of people have had with respect to Thunderbolt. So. Okay, couple things. Displayport, alt mode should work perfectly fine with the 20 gigabit and 40 gigabit rated cables. Um, as for Thunderbolt, we are not certified in any way for Thunderbolt. Uh, but what I will say is that I plugged my laptop Thunderbolt port. Oops, let's get that out of here. Not sponsored by that. In fact, I've been having some issues with that. So I plugged into a Thunderbolt port on my laptop and I plugged into the back of that big Dell 6K Thunderbolt display that's in my office and our cable worked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been running a Thunderbolt display off my laptop for the last six months. Off of one of these.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So it depends when intel opened up Thunderbolt to third parties, when they basically kind of gifted. I believe it was Thunderbolt three was when they did it, when they gifted it to usb. If all of a sudden magically. Regular USB cables, as long as they were rated for a High enough speed started working. So just because you're not Thunderbolt certified, that doesn't mean that it won't work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not promising that it will with.

[Linus Sebastian]

A Thunderbolt device anymore. Because Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, if I recall correctly, are kind of like. They're not the same. Because Thunderbolt is Intel's certification level where it supports some optional features, but they're like kind of equivalent ish in terms of bandwidth. And many cables that do support USB4 should support or should work between Thunderbolt devices. What it won't do is it won't do the maximum Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth for sure. That we know. Not that we know like, that we know of like that we know for certain.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's all neat. You got to keep going through those slides.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tynan said that that is either the 20 gig or 40 gig. Which makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The one we're looking at.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not a USB 2 cable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This has too much girth and too much sex appeal to be a USB 2.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the shielding.

[Linus Sebastian]

God, it's beautiful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cable section and shielding. And then this is fun. This is a longitudinal scrub.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. So you can like see the twist through it. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It reminds me of a loading screen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For like, you know, PlayStation or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, there's more, but we have kind of seen most of it.

[Daniel Besser]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. The other one is that there is an article now on LTD Labs on true spec cable voltage drop testing yet again from Sir Lucas. You can scroll down and see that they did test results on a few different brands of cables and they did it. You've got your output voltage on the left, current on the right, and then your. Your drop over distances. It's fun. It's very cool. Check it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Capes said Thunderbolt devices do fall back to DP alt mode. So Thunderbolt monitors will work. I did not know that because I had not really looked into it since the like OG Thunderbolt monitors like Apple's early Thunderbolt displays. And I think there was like an LG 5K back in the day that was like Thunderbolt only and those ones really were Thunderbolt only. So my bad. If that's the case, then make of it what you will. These are USB cables. They're not Thunderbolt certified.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Another thing about this is that we have a new style for our articles. So we have table of contents on the right and a little loading bar as you're reading through them. And people kept asking us where the, like, RSS feeds and stuff were. So we called it out here so you could see it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then if you didn't see it there, it's at the top of the latest articles thing here. And then if you didn't see it there, it's down here. So. So I think you'll find it. I think you'll be fine now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, in a nutshell, really happy with how the product turned out, and I'm really happy that we at least have some additional cable stock staged. And we will. We'll let you guys know as soon as. As soon as it's back in stock. But in the meantime, what you can do is you can sign up to get a notification. So if you find a length that you want, you can click this button, enter your email address, inform how many people are interested, and yes, that'll help us. Help inform us in terms of how many we order of each size. So definitely a good idea to pop in there and get a. Get a. Notify me. All right. What do we want to do next?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Should we play the thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

Play the thing. I. I don't think we need to talk about the cables anymore. There's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, next topic. What is this thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

What thing? What do you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this a tech topic?

[Linus Sebastian]

What are you talking about, Willis?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This.

[Daniel Besser]

I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Is it a tech topic?

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't see what you're pointing at.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Highlighting on the doc. It's all this tech. Ish. Internet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A 1 percenter is not what it used to mean. A now remove post from me.

[Linus Sebastian]

IRL was outlining on r/irl. It's a subreddit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, well, the way you said it sounded super weird.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Was outlining an adult creator's income for being in the top 30. The top 37% of creators on the platform. It's an adult creator platform. You can put it together. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Makes your PC really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you only use fans for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Other cooling methods. They. They stated that they brought home less than $100 a month. Several commenters followed up on the post outlining some examples of other industries that have similar effects. For Steam, over 50% never made more than a thousand dollars, and only the top 5% make more than $200,000.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I just thought. I just thought this was really interesting because we think of, like when you think of a top 1%, if you thought top 1%, anything, whether it's OnlyFans, whether it's Steam, Spotify, Twitch, YouTube, you might think, oh, you're like, you're ballin' or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also really crazy. Even going from in like any performance field, basically. And what I mean by that is not like singing, dancing, or this thing. What I mean by that is like anything that is effectively competitive. If you go in almost all of those fields, if you go from the top 1% to the top, like point 1, the variance between those is like, similar to, like, I don't know, the top 1% to the top 50. Like, it's. It's crazy. The last little bit is nuts.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It's like the extremes at the edge of the bell curve are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's that guy, I don't remember his name, but he was in the NBA. He was benched almost constantly, but he was in the NBA. And he made this comment of like, yeah, but I'm here and like, the gap between me and you is enormous. The gap between them and me is a lot closer than the gap between me and you and you, like, think you can make it. And then I. I'm going to get some of the story wrong. But, like, a bunch of people challenged him and he went out and played basketball against them and just wiped all of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Brian Scalabrine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy. So if you want a more accurate. I'm closer to Lebron than you are to me. Yeah, that was his quote.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So another one. And to be clear, none of this is, like, verified. It just. It was really interesting to me to hear these anecdotal stories, but we have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lots of examples of this from YouTube, from Twitch, from all these different places.

[Linus Sebastian]

So for Spotify, someone piped up saying that their band, which is in the top 20%, never made more than $500 in a year. And that's not just on Spotify. That's across all services. Yeah. So you can be one of the top one out. You can be more popular in terms of streaming than four out of every five bands on Spotify. And we're talking like, like 40 bucks a month.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this is exaggerated by platforms like a couple meals that you can create an account for in roughly a minute. But even if you look at more older school traditional businesses, like the competitive nature of restaurants.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For example.

[Linus Sebastian]

Meanwhile on Twitch. Meanwhile on Twitch, Elijah, put this together for the topic. Someone with about 20 viewers, which you would look at and go, bro, give up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, if you were A negative Nelly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Big mean guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Someone with that, with that 20 viewers would be in the top 1% on the platform. To hit 0.25%, you would have just 120 viewers. And like, I can tell you as someone who has seen Twitch checks before that you, you ain't like working full time with 120 viewers unless you are able to also leverage off platform revenue sources.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suspect there are some people that do, but this is. We're getting into to like on average, probably not.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's gonna be tough. That's gonna be tough. And then with an average viewership of 1500, that would put you in the top 0.01%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This exactly lines up with my comment. Top 1% is 20. Top 0.1% is 1500. Like, the range you start getting is insane in those, like little percentages.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So anyway, this Reddit thread sparked a lot of discussion about how concentrated earning and spending among top creators across all these industries and even had people comparing this to real world wealth distributions such as salaries. So this was, this was a pretty cool little table here. Okay, so the 1%, right, you think of. A lot of people would think of the 1% as like the problem with society. Right. Like we had the 1% occupy movement and all that. So the 1% on OnlyFans is getting like shy of a quarter million dollars a year. And that's your top. That's your top one out of 100. So there are 99 people showing their butthole that are getting less than that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Specifically that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Out of every hundred. Out of every hundred. And then real world. Right, so you're basically 1%. You're like a successful dentist, if that kind of makes sense. And I don't know about you guys, but I never really, I never really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Successful dentist is 600k a year in the States.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it depends what you're doing. Not if all you do is like cleanings all day, but if you're doing, if you're doing anything beyond that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. If you're running your own practice in particular. And like, I don't know about you guys, but personally I never really felt like my dentist was the problem. Growing up with society, definitely. Like, like a good surgeon would be able to bring that in. Someone says, not in Italy, this is. And that's fair enough. Yeah, we're talking, we're talking USD here. And then what's, what's really wild is the fall off. You can be in the top 2 to 3%. And now you're still making like a, like a good income here. You're still making a good income here. But look at the fall off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

90Th percentile dentists in the US is 263K.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that okay?

[Luke Lafreniere]

But private practice owners report. Private practice owners report over 600. So, yeah. If you own your own practice and it's going well. Okay, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the time you get out of the top 10%. This is wild. You're literally making 1 3, 60th. Am I doing the math here? Right? 1, 3, 60th.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow. Yeah. In the, in the, in the top.

[Linus Sebastian]

12 of the top 0.1%. That is flipping crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is. Again, a lot of these platforms where you can create an account in a minute.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are kind of like this. The barrier of entry is effectively 00 +Butthole.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, we're not doing a deep dive into this topic.

[Daniel Besser]

Deep.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it was just something that. It was something that I just thought was pretty interesting because I. And like, obviously. Sorry, what now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That really is a low barrier of entry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, there are chastity belts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just saying it is low. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Full plane chat. You're doing good. Okay. Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just thought. I thought it was pretty interesting because I think that this sort of perception that just sort of. Anyone who's kind of getting views on Instagram or, you know, through their reels or, you know, anyone who's getting views on YouTube or Twitch or other websites, it's quite an accomplishment, like raking it in or whatever. And that's not necessarily the case at all. Unless they.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some people really are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But like, you know, clearly, you know, I have been. I've worked hard, my team is amazing and I've been very successful on social media, but it's not a. It's not a given at all. And so I don't. I don't know, man. I just. I thought it was interesting, that's all. So I brought it to the WAN show. Hopefully it was interesting and the only takeaway wasn't just butt jokes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a pretty good takeaway. Yeah, I'm pretty okay with that takeaway.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Windows Phone fans rejoice. Next Computing's upcoming NEXT Phone dual boots, Android and Windows and even DB and Linux. Let's go. When. When docked. Okay. The device runs the full ARM version of Windows with a custom skin made to look and feel like the old Windows Phone ui.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is kind of cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. XDA has a great article on this. This is really cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's built around the Qualcomm Dragon Wing QCM6490, a modified Snapdragon 77. Sorry. 778G. When docked, you get a full desktop environment. That's cool. But uwp, or Universal Windows platform, is no longer recommended to developers, so Windows apps don't have the responsive design required to adapt to small screens. That is unfortunate. XDA Director Rich woods said the experience of launching a Windows app on the phone isn't too pleasant.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suspect that's a kind way of saying it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean, I can't say that I super miss uwp because there were definitely some problems around gaming with it, if I recall correctly. I honestly have not thought about UWP for quite some time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not convinced, man. This is. This is not uwp. But I had to download and install Minecraft last night.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. Yeah, that's just Microsoft Store or Windows Store, bruh. I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I went to the Minecraft site, went to go download it. I was like, oh, nice. I don't have to go through the store because that's the worst experience ever. So I can just download it. That's good. Download it. Go to the launcher. It failed the installation because I didn't read the little part. There's a hypertext link. It's not even a button. It's just a hypertext link that's like, make sure you're signed into the store. I didn't read that. I just clicked install. So then I went and signed into the store. It was already signed in. It just wanted to launch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, okay, whatever. And then I click install again. Download goes to the complete end, never completes. Have to close that. Then I try to launch it again, and this time all the launcher does is it launches the store. Then the store launches the launcher again.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you want to really play, if you want to really play on hard mode, set up a computer for your. For your minor dependent and then try to play with them. Seriously, it took me like an hour plus to get all the permissions sorted out for me to play multiplayer games with my kids who are in my family unit.

[Daniel Besser]

Did you play Minecraft together?

[Linus Sebastian]

Minecraft Dungeons.

[Daniel Besser]

Minor.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, you know what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if he can ding for himself.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think he.

[Daniel Besser]

No, no, I dinged you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but I. I was checking to.

[Daniel Besser]

See if you made that joke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He didn't, though.

[Daniel Besser]

He said minor. It's a pun. He just didn't know he made his Own pun.

[Linus Sebastian]

You gotta stop saying minor Dr. Disrespect's gonna show up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, and maybe a few. Paul.

[Daniel Besser]

The doors are locked.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A gaggle of politicians. I can hear them driving up now. Flying.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, at their age.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Waddling.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Man, I had a point. Don't remember what it was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Quality show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Honestly, I find Microsoft Universal sign and stuff is just universally terrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not universal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And oh, like how is it that I sign, they force me to sign into Windows and then I still have to sign in again to the store, again to Edge, and again into Minecraft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Launcher to remember my login. Don't ask.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Thank you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so annoying. I always click yes out of hope. I just know it won't work. But I'm like, please, please.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, me too. Every time I sign into teams I say don't ask me again. And this application only not device wide because this is my home computer. I just need to message somebody on teams right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's. And it's frustrating because they have like amazing compatibility with everything and stuff. It's just so bad. Frustrating. Use Multimc. Is that some other like launcher client thing? I'm not surprised. There is one that makes a lot of sense to me. Mole dmc. What is this? Alternative launcher. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, maybe I'll grab that instead. It's like pretty annoying. The Microsoft one is pretty annoying. Oh, there's arguments, there's other alternative launchers. Okay, all right. I think I found the Linux community of Minecraft people. I will figure this out on my own. Yeah, please. Nice. Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, let's try. Let's talk about something pretty trash. I am, I am not really that happy with this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, this sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is from Best Buy and this is in their like product details. Why does your site say the comparable value is $459? The Acer website says the MSRP is 299. Okay, so here's the answer. Oh no, this is. No, no, this is from someone. But basically Best Buy. Oh my God. Has started pulling this horse shit where instead of showing a regular price and just you know, a special price or whatever their price is, they've added this compare value. So this is a $210 monitor, which honestly, yeah, doesn't look like a terrible deal for $210. 31.5 inches, 180 hertz. Tell me the resolution. What's the resolution? Why is that 2560 by 1440? You know what looks great? Not at $460. Definitely not that. So what is a. What is a comparable value? Our comparable value prices are based on the price at which the product or a comparable item was or in the future will be offered for sale by Best Buy marketplace sellers, manufacturers, suppliers, or other retailers online or in store. Such prices may have been identified by Best Buy or provided by marketplace sellers, manufacturers or suppliers. Purchases from Best Buy offer many advantages over purchases from others. And we invite you to learn more about our pricing, the services we provide, and our price match policy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is obviously ridiculous. You know how they have like gold leaf burgers that cost like a thousand dollars?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So McDonald's could just be like, Well, I mean, a Big Mac is comparable.

[Linus Sebastian]

To a thousand dollars. It's available now for, you know, $1,000 off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Snowpig put it pretty well. Lol. So it's any number you want, quite.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Literally is what that means.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. If they've ever seen it, they can kind of go, yes, that one, please.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, not even they said will be in the future. So yeah, so they don't even have to have seen it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. So I'm kind of thinking this needs a dedicated LTT video where we basically go, okay, look, starting at, compare at. And what was the other one that really made me mad? Hold on, hold on. There was, there was another one that I wanted to add to it. And up to. Starting at, compare at and up to. Need to go. They've. They've got to just be incredibly annoying. Yeah, because what does it even mean?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's almost always some like obvious junk thing in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. There are exceptions. So the current gen Mac Mini, starting at. Just buy it, love it, love, love that computer. It's like actually an outstanding value for what it is. But by and large, starting at means. Here's a craptastic configuration that we created so that we can have this price. But the one that you really want costs way more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like actually way more.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we're making a ton of margin on those upsells. And then it's. Honestly, it's the same thing for up to. I mean, we ran into this. Oh, I don't think this video's up yet. Well, it's coming soon. We finally got our hands on an RTX Pro 6000. So that would be, I don't know, kind of inside baseball. We tried a new workflow for this video. Let us know if you liked the video. It was prepped by the labs closer to like a short circuit product sheet. And then instead of just hosting A short circuit off of the product sheet. I spent a couple hours turning it into an LTT script. And so it's like an ltt, but it's like a hybrid between the labs sort of product test workflow, the short circuit host prep workflow, and the LTT writing guidance editing workflow. So we're trying some stuff. We actually did a very similar thing on our Ryzen 9850x3D video, which was also. That one was actually written in an hour and a half by me with some really good prep done by the labs team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think I want to, I want to say it was. Shoot. Was it Plou for Eli who did the guidance? Whatever. One of the. One of the writers, one of those two, I'm pretty sure did the guidance for it. And I just feel like having people do smaller, bite sized chunks of the work in this way is actually helping their creative juices flow a little bit better. We talked about this in writers meeting today. But like I thought that, I thought that both Elijah and Plouffe, who have been the main guys who have been doing guidance on these videos that I've been writing recently, really did their best visual guidance work for the editors on those videos that I wrote. Which is kind of unintuitive because you'd think that as you're writing you would have a better idea in your mind for what you want visually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I get why it would.

[Linus Sebastian]

Work actually, but what, what Elijah said was like, it's. It's more just like fatigue from looking at something for too long. And when you're coming into it fresh and alt and offering like, like a new perspective, they're seeing this thing and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Being like, oh, I would like to see this here, let me go find that thing and suggest it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So yeah, it's. I don't know, it's pretty cool. But what was I talking about? We did the, we did the. Oh, right. Up to. So up to. We found was doing some extremely heavy lifting when it came to clock speeds on that RTX Pro card. And we ran into multiple situations where it actually underperformed compared to an RTX 5090. Even though it has three times the VRAM and costs three times the price, it has 10% more CUDA cores. It theoretically, I think either clocks the same or higher. Basically, there was no downside. Normally these Pro cards, right, they'll have more coup de course, but to account for the extra power, they'll advertise a lower clock speed. In this case, it didn't. It just had more everything. So theoretically it should just be faster across the board. But it wasn't. And we found that sometimes it wasn't clocking as high because up to. Up to. Sure. Compare at.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Starting at. I'm just. I'm tired of it, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's probably a good opportunity to discuss dark patterns.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bazaag says it's like. It's like saying the new LTT trucepec cables start at a dollar, but just having a SKU that nobody would want and pricing it at a dollar and then everything else is, you know, 15 to 30 bucks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We do something else. That's kind of funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what do we do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, the. The.032ft cable is the same price as the 16.4ft cable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, because. Okay, well, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you could. You could say starting at $29.99 Canadian. It also ends at $29.99 Canadian.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could do that.

[Daniel Besser]

You could have a really short cable that was free, then just out of stock all the time. Is that illegal?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably starting at free, you could sell one, and then I think it would be illegal. You could restock one of them every, like, quarter.

[Daniel Besser]

Not a bad idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are multiple prices. It's complicated. Oh, wait, really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there are multiple prices for some of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wait, there is?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But it's. It's not by that much. So you reach a certain point where it. Where it becomes not just about the labor cost and like, the actual size and weight of it start to matter. And the sheer length of cable stock that you're using do start to matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there is?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It does vary a little bit. Not, Not. Not as much compared to other things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it seems to only get cheaper than what I said, so I don't feel too bad. Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just noticing something here that I need to sometimes deal with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Spending a session of noticing is something I've learned is valuable from Wendell. Sometimes you just need to notice things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm noticing a thing that I need to follow up. Okay, cool. Anyway, so.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not cool. Best Buy. And the thing that annoys me here is that because Best Buy is a leader in the market, it's a matter of time before this gives other retailers permission to do the same thing. And then all of a sudden, nobody knows what to compare anything at. Unless, of course, as part of that video, we may be kind of review various price comparison tools.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

And shopping tools.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

That way it's more than just because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someone needs to make vinegar.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, look, right, like I. We did that. I don't want to be angry anymore video recently. Right. And I don't. And I do think that there's a lot of upside in the world of tech. Right. There's a lot to be really happy about. There's a lot to be really grateful for. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't call out bad behavior when we see it. I just, I want us to be really focused on offering up solutions to it, if that makes sense. At the same time, like, still approaching everything that we do with constructiveness at its core, if that makes sense. Because I've seen some people go, okay, well, so what, Linus, you're. You, you don't want to be negative? So you're just going to be positive about everything? Absolutely not. But I want to have an intent, I want to have a point to the, the, the negative things that we're shining a light on. I want to accomplish something through it. I heard from a company that has gone through some. Some difficult challenges in, you know, restructuring and rebuilding over the last little while. And one of the things that. And this was an employee of the company, not a member of the leadership team, but one of the things that they flagged for me was that, you know, some of the, some of the coverage of the struggles that they had gone through did not in any way help them turn the ship around and if anything, made it much more difficult for people to stay employed and people to get paid and to please their customers. It was just, in some ways, there were good elements of it where a kick in the teeth, or kick in the teeth, kick in the butt was needed, some motivation was needed, but the, the destructive rather than constructive approach was, like, super unhelpful for anyone involved. And I thought that was. That was a really interesting perspective to get from someone who's gone through something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Obviously you can't name, but I'm interested.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I can just tell you. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Apparently they're, like, doing a lot better now and things are going good and they want to, like, partner on some stuff. And we're, we're really, we're really excited to see them come back because we. They've been an innovator for many, many years. And yeah, they, you know, made some mistakes, but I don't know much about them. I think how you, how you recover from your mistakes says a lot more about you than whether or not you ever make them? What else we. What else we got? What else?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What the mistakes are. But yeah, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you know what? That's an interesting. I. That. That's an interesting conversation. I saw that there was a. There was a convicted murderer who was. Who was appointed to, like, like a police advisory board of some sort, like, like a citizen advisory board. And this caused, like, a major fracture within the community where it wasn't that he didn't hide anything, but they, like, didn't ask and just, you know, went through it. And there were people on both sides, some that were basically like, look, that's a felony offense. You, like, killed someone. You should have nothing to do with any kind of law enforcement ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And then there were other people that were going, okay, but hold on. This guy, like, seriously reformed and has spent considerable energy trying to make amends.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And be a positive advisory stuff. Yeah. Someone just pointed out, like, if. Catch me if you can. I mean, I don't think he killed people, but catch me if you can is a good example of, like, sometimes you need people who are informed from the other side to help you be better at what you're doing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I. Anyway, I, I honestly, I don't. I literally. I'm not even trying to. Trying to go all centrist on this. I don't have a take on it. I don't. I don't know how I would feel about that. I thought if I was someone that had a connection to the victim, I'd feel. I can tell you, I'd feel super emotional about that and I'd be. I'd feel very negative about it if I was removed from it, though. And, you know, looking at. At some of the. Well, like you said, like, practical benefits potentially of having, you know, a reformed offender involved. I. I don't know. It's really hard for me to say.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we're getting into topics that we're far from experts on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not that that isn't effectively always true, but like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I don't think that's always true. We've been an expert on something at least once. Always is such a big word.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We talk about buttholes earlier in the show. Maybe that was it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I've got one. I think that entitles me to an opinion.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like it to me. I think, like, yeah, I don't know. It's. Are people redeemable? Is maybe not a topic for the way and show. I'm just sitting here thinking, like, should I say anything? So probably not. We're gonna move on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was what? What was that? How did we get on that?

[Daniel Besser]

I don't know. Does it matter?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

I really don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I'm not. I don't know. I do think you making a video about the Best Buy thing could be good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I want to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could be a good time to yet again highlight dark patterns.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dark pattern, a little bit multifaceted. I think that could come later on in the video. Yeah, but I think it could be a little multifaceted. But yeah. Speaking of things that suck, Microsoft says it handed over BitLocker encryption keys when the government asked. Cool. Microsoft has confirmed that it handed them over and the F to the FBI during a criminal investigation last year and says that this isn't unusual.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, it is. It might not be, but it should be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To me, that means we've done this a bunch. According to the company, it receives around 20 requests per year and will comply again if the government follows the proper legal processes. If you sign into Windows with a Microsoft account, BitLocker keys are automatically backed up to Microsoft servers, tying them to your account and devices. From Microsoft perspective, turning those over is just another lawful data request. But privacy advocates argue that quietly holding encryption keys defeats the point of encryption.

[Linus Sebastian]

That thing. That thing he said just now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting. Microsoft notes, users can request to delete stored keys and local account workarounds still work. They're trying to make that not a thing.

[Daniel Besser]

Dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They actually say that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's become such a hassle, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did Microsoft actually note that local account workarounds still work? That's crazy. But most users don't even know this is something they can do. Is that. Did they actually say that?

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I don't. I don't see that in the Windows Central article.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The way this is worded, it could mean that they just noted that you could request to delete your stored keys. And also they didn't say this, but that might be what they meant.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not sure. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they said that. That's crazy. I don't think they did. More bad news. LG subscription program for Audio Visual Devices LG launched a new subscription program called LG Flex in the uk. In the UK for premium devices such as tv, sound bars, monitors and speakers. They have partnered up with Raylo, which offers subscription services for other brands such as Dyson, Apple and Nintendo.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've never even heard of this Raylo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that a UK thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

What the devil is Reylo?

[Luke Lafreniere]

LG Flex subscribers can opt for a one to three year subscription with longer terms having a lower monthly payment. At the end of the term, the customer can decide to get a free upgrade with a new subscription. That's not free with a new subscription, keep paying monthly or return the device to leave. Oh, to leave the subscription terms, I guess. Ars Technica calculated that under a three year plan, the subscription would cost more than buying a TV after 27 months.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so here, here's a Nintendo Switch 2 refurbished. Oh, very good. Reylo. Certified refurbished. Okay, very good. 36 months would cost me £11 99amonth. Okay, calculatrice. So 12 times 36 is 432 pounds. Nintendo Switch to refurbished. No, no, I'm going to compare to brand new. Okay. I. Because I'm curious. Smith's, Smythe's toys. Is this a UK thing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. I'm happy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has a little banner like you.

[Linus Sebastian]

See that little dark pattern there? Yes, I'm happy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. What was that? It was a cookie banner.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it was a cookie banner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a Yikes 385.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Brand new, not refurbished.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oops, what did I do here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What were you calculating?

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Daniel Besser]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's your problem right there. There you go. 432. So literally I could get the Nintendo Switch to Mario Kart world bundle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you get a game.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if I plan to have this thing for three years, then I should not do this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you could buy a snack. You could get the console a game and a snack and own all of those. You know, you might eat the snack, but you could own all of those forever.

[Linus Sebastian]

This one's so weird. I know that carrier subsidies for phones are not as much of a thing like overseas, but as someone where who grew up with carrier subsidized phones where you effectively pay for the phone monthly anyway, seeing buying like a non carrier locked for like the price of what.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A plan used to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like what, like I used to get, I used to get stuff with this along with the phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Wow. Okay, so this would cost me like a couple hundred bucks a year for an S24 Ultra. That doesn't actually seem that bad. The iPhone seems like though you might.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not own it at the end, you have to give it back. Yeah, there's no, there's no not giving it. Well, okay, hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is another one we actually shot a video on this week. I don't know if you know this, but. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you could you, you only get to keep it if you just keep paying monthly. I don't think they have like a pay the rest and buy out.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we actually did a video on this this week. HP has a rent your rental laptop service now. Yep. So hold on, wait. One of the. Hold on, relax. One of the SKUs comes with a SIM card and your rental includes your data plan for includes next day on site service and you can just apply for an upgrade. So when we were looking at it, we compared it a couple of different ways. We compared it to buying the device outright and like, where's your break even point there? Right. And then we also compared it to reselling. Where's your breakeven point if you resell your old device? And then the last one that we looked at was, okay, but what if you are like a frequent. What if. What if you're a frequent upgrader and you would be like buying a new device? And then we looked at it both in terms of if you. Right, right, right. If we looked at it in terms of if you resold and in terms of like if you didn't, if you repurposed. There are SKUs that we've looked at and we went, okay, this might not be absolutely crazy depending on who you are and what exactly it is that you're trying to accomplish. If you're someone who is not tech savvy, does not want to deal with buy, sell, trade, and just wants a working laptop all the time, there's like one SKU that is like a pretty decent laptop and comes with the data plan and like could potentially make sense. And it seems like HP kind of figured out that the value was too good for some of them. And the other program for gaming laptops that they launched later, it was pretty hard for us to find anything that made any sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have I been a good boy? Can I respond now?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, do whatever you want.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There you go. That's honestly pretty much all I have to say.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. As long as you can count on them to keep the price the same, then it's great. Except. Well, yeah, this Exhibit A. However, however we actually found that the best deal was to rent it for a year, return it, and then buy the same one after it had depreciated for a year, which is interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's kind of funny. That is kind of funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

However, however, however, however. We found that the pricing for this particular model on the buy it outright, so your compare at was felt really high compared to what we could find this particular laptop for in the used market today. So basically what I'm trying to say is your point isn't invalid and this whole you'll own nothing and you'll like it thing is toxic. But that doesn't mean that there might not be deals out there and we should be open to something that's a better deal and then immediately closed once it isn't a better deal if there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn'T a reasonable alternative. And I don't feel like they're going out of their way to make it so that there isn't a reasonable alternative. And it takes constant upkeep. A subscription is fine to me. Yeah but in a lot of cases that's not. It's like the heated seats subscription. No, you can just leave. That could just be a button. You don't need to. Constant upkeep. That. That is unnecessary. That should not be Subscript description. Go away.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it depends on. And it depends on how you use it too. Like if I used Game Pass to play a whole bunch of single player games over the span of a year and then I canceled my Game Pass subscription, it could be a freaking great value.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're playing an entire single player game a month.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's probably still not that bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

However, paying playing new ones. I don't know if Microsoft is publishing new full fat AAA titles once a month.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well yeah, but you might have a backlog. It like true, you check out what's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On game are not going to be that high value when it's at 30 USD a month.

[Linus Sebastian]

However. However if you're the kind of person who no life's one game for six months at a time, it's crazy to be paying for Game pass. Right. So it's. Look, I'm just saying, you know, horses for courses. Sometimes something can be a really great value and then the next month it can't be. And we just have to have the discipline to cut off that subscription when it's not a good value anymore. But that's how they get you. Right? That's the lock in that they want. They want the laziness lock in. If that makes sense. Yeah. I'd never heard of this raylo thing before, but. Oh man, this is always funny to me. 4.5 stars on Trustpilot. It's not clickable. Okay, is it though? Very low. Trustpilot. Is Trustpilot one of those ones that it's basically just like you bribe them to have a good score?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, okay. They do have 4.5 stars on Trustpilot. How do they have 21,000 reviews and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They'Re all 5 star.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we believe?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you go?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not all. Do we believe this though?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

It came next day promptly. It was in pristine condition. Wrapped up perfectly. Feel happy with the phone. It's a perfect gift to my kid bro who's been down these days. Hope it will lift his spirits. There is no way that this is real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there some reward for leaving trustpilot reviews?

[Linus Sebastian]

This reviewer was automatically invited to write a review following their experience with the company. This type of review is automatically labeled verified automatically. Good service. Is that a link deliver on time. This one I actually believe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I believe this one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

The why would you leave a four star review and this is the only thing you had to say about it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I kind of might believe Janine's one as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorted my problem I had and very grateful for the help and understanding they were. Problem solved and very nice was the manager. I don't know dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That does not sound like an LLM output.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but it's shocking to me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh check our history.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah I'm about to. It's shocking to me how much spam doesn't seem to use an LLM output. Like the number of bots that are not writing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like more expensive I guess Bother.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it's working anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right Janine. So 4 days ago on Trustpilot very understanding and compassion Very efficient and lovely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Friendly I just so positive of low.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well what is Lowell debt collecting no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Combination way is brutal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way there's no way no shot. Let's keep going we look too far into the abyss. Let's keep going back the next one run okay so very adjective and adjective Very adjective and a couple more adjectives. Lovely friendly is great for more than.com.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm going to use lovely friendly often insurance agency.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh this is so paid. So paid. You just reviewed a device rental company, an insurance agency and a debt collector. Four stars or more. These are the four star reviews that are designed to make the five stars seem plausible. Brother, there is just no way that this is a real person. Sorry. I would like to see more. There's a 3 EV every. Just ring doorbell once and don't bat on the door loudly frightens me. What are you talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They just want the person to ring the doorbell once. Not like because it scared them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Logistics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come on now it's just ESL stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

No it's not. This is not a real person. Okay, I'm sorry. There's no way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. But like that sentence is, you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

There'S no way this is real. Also, like, okay, what's her first language? Well, okay, I. I have some familiarity with the patterns that you might see in written language for various first languages. Most of the people I've encountered whose English second language looks like this do not look like this. I can tell you that much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Origins.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is Brsk? Internet service provider? Dude, these are all spam. Now it is. It is possible that this is human spam. That is possible. I also think it is highly probable that this is highly, highly probable that this is bot spam as well. All right. Anyway, so congratulations, lg, on the partnership with Reylo. Did you finish getting through this topic? Yeah. You did. Okay, let's move on. Should we probably do sponsors? We should really get sponsors done. Okay. Or we can do merge messages. You know what, let's get sponsors done. Let's do two of them. The show is brought to you today by Zero Bounce. If your business does any kind of outreach, automated or otherwise, your emails are no good if you are sending them out blind. So what happens if your messages never make it to their intended destination? Our sponsor Zero Bounce says that over 28% of emails disappear every year. Whether that's from people changing jobs, losing access to their accounts, or using fake emails to sign up for things. Zero Bounce helps verify fake emails and clean them from your system within minutes. Zero Bounce can rid your inbox of bounces, spam traps and fake signups. Plus they are SOC type 2, SOC 2 type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, keeping your info safe. So try 0bounce now and use When Code. Use code. Oh my goodness, I can't read use code when 20 to save 20% on any of their plans. How does it feel to not be able to read?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mm, that was a lot of Luke style mistakes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you made right there. Thank you. Mm. You know what? I feel strong, I feel jacked and like I have a more positive outlook on the world.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stat block changed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently. Soc 2 is pronounced Soc 2. I don't have a ton of familiarity with email, whatever email systems, so thank you. I appreciate that. Sock two Type two. That does make it easier to say. The show is also brought to you by UPDF. When working with PDFs, most readers can be pretty limiting in what you can do with files. UPDF is a PDF editor, annotator and converter that works across your desktop and your phone. UPDF has added cross platform AI tools that all work with one account on as many devices as you need. You can edit text and images like just as though your PDF is a Word document. Or you can use OCR to turn physical scans into searchable documents and convert things into Doc or Excel sheets without breaking your layout. If you need help finding sources or summarizing a PDF, their AI Scholar research tool can speed up the process. Hit up the link in the description to grab their new 2026 discount and upgrade your workflow with UPDF. Legit, useful tool, though actually. Shout out people who just don't use PDFs in the first place.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, big time.

[Linus Sebastian]

For those times when we're stuck with one, shout out updf. All right. Should we do merch messages? Yeah, if you are not. Wait, Dan, you baited me.

[Daniel Besser]

What do you mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

You put up the sign. It needs to say checkout chats.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, did we decide on checkout chat?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we're definitely not calling them that anymore. I ended up in a whole debate with someone on the subreddit over this, where basically they were like, I fundamentally disagree with Linus's objection to the word merch to describe the products they make, because I view merch as something that I buy for a higher price. That's just to support the person I like. And I was like, buddy, okay, you just. Hello. You weren't even done your sentence. And you proved my point. We don't want anyone's charity and we respect your hard earned money enough to make products. Not merch. Products not merch that are a good value and good quality and that we stand behind. So calling them merch just doesn't work for us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like supporting other creators. I've bought a decent amount of random merch stuff. I'm a huge supporter of something that I think we were at the. The front of the curve for, which is like, YouTubers getting into, like, real products. A huge range of YouTubers, by the way, not just like reviewer people. I think that's super cool. It's a really cool industry. It's really cool having people stand behind their product and be excited about things and blah, blah, blah. Very into all that. A lot of merch is just trash.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that's the problem too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Manufactured waste. So we're trying to get away from that. That's all it is. It's tough because it's like literally the word just means merchandise, which is definitely exactly what it is. But then words are how people use them realistically. And the way people are using merch in this context is describing it as something that is at a cost level that does not equal the value return that you're getting, but you're doing so in order to specifically just support someone, which is not the goal of the store. So it makes sense that they might want to redefine. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, cool. So check out chats. If you're new to the show, the way to send in a message is not via super Chats or Twitch Bits or anything like that. Instead, you can send a checkout chat. All you got to do to do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I think we need a better name than check out chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we're working on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're gonna call it that for now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

All you got to do is head over to lttstore.com and you can throw. Oh, tech pants. Tech pants are here. Oh, tech pants. Okay. Add to cart. All you got to do is add it to your cart and you will see the. Well, whatever. We're gonna get this updated. Don't look at it. The point is, you will see this. You can type a message, and it will go to producer Dan, who will put it in the, you know, one of the little boxes that appears, or he will respond to it, or he will curate it for me and Luke to respond to. Oh, you do have to actually complete your order. Listen, it's been a very chaotic week. I'm doing my best.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Product prompts is pretty okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really. Peepee merge.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

So people buy a lot. They send a big pp.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Do you verify your gamers? Do you actually verify your gamers? Do you make sure that they are verified actual gamers?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I've been known to do that before. Yes.

[Daniel Besser]

I have to do that now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I think we should still cook on the name. I don't know if product prompts merch messages flows nicely. We can find something and we can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just make it CC instead of cocktail. And then it's like, you know, also credit card. Give us your. Give us your CC. Give us five CC's of love.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sucks through the. That's terrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Through the Internet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not saying. I'm not saying PP is the way to go, but I. I think.

[Daniel Besser]

Well, I mean, we could try it out. I've got a pretty short PP here from Sergio. Howdy. Lld. Any update on the DIY home battery? Has it made you more conscious on how you spend daily?

[Linus Sebastian]

There is an update coming. It has been in the works for quite a while. Pankratz and one of our new writers, Danny, who is now off probation, have been working on it. We have our. So we Already did part one, which you saw, which was there were a lot of comments about what could have been better. It's great. Thank you. Keep them coming. Part two will be the proof of concept for what will be the final deployment, and then part three will be the scale deployment. And I gotta say, being conscious of how much I'm spending isn't helping me spend any less right now, which is frustrating because I just have a bunch of stuff to do before I can sort of tone down our energy use. But it is absolutely something that I want to do at home because, yeah, it's. It's a lot is what I'll say.

[Daniel Besser]

Let's see another one here going. Hey, Dll, any new updates on the solar at your house? What works well and what would you change now, having had the solar system for a couple years?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, yeah, updates. So the plumbers who plumbed it into the walls of the pool, they filled it and didn't tell me. Or maybe they did tell me and I forgot. Anyway, all the PVC piping cracked in the winter, so the plumbing side of it doesn't work at all. As for the solar side, the good news is they're perfectly functioning solar panels, and we got a deal from the manufacturer on them. So it doesn't really matter if the plumbing doesn't work because I didn't pay more for them than I would have for regular solar panels. I'm still up on the deal, I guess. Apparently, maybe. Probably not. The point is, in Vancouver, solar panels were more of a. Hey. So that we can, like, make content and it's cool and less of a practical. You should definitely spend money on this because we just don't get enough sunny year. But, man, there's. There's days when it's a sunny day and I'm looking at them like, dang, that is. Wow, that is a lot of power coming out of these. That's pretty neat. Oh, man. There's a robot messaging me about, like, a bunch of. Bunch of stuff you could call.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry. Ginger Nutted. Great name in full plane chat. Gave a really interesting idea. You could call them tweets.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, my God. We can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can we? Why not?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Daniel Besser]

Wasn't there somebody going after the trademark already?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, yeah, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not very good, but it's funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely a meme.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is a meme.

[Linus Sebastian]

Twek out to tweets now would probably be, since we're. Since we're talking about checkout messages. Calm. That's kind of neat, calm, you know? I don't know. Send a message through the com port.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not too bad. Checkout messages is better than checkout chats.

[Linus Sebastian]

Check out messages is better comport. That's. That's actually not bad. We're doing comms. Comms Now I check out messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like comms. I like the abbreviation more than the wording, but I think that's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lt store comms.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And if someone sounds like a really strong one, it could be like a comm Dom. They send a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have another thing to maybe talk about. You want to talk about it now?

[Linus Sebastian]

This thing, we should probably finish talking about, like, all the products that we launched this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that's what I was gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

That one last. That one last for sure. So Luke is actually. Oh, oh, yeah, Luke is. I'm wearing everything decked out head to toe in a couple of legitimately really exciting new products for us. So. He's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My butt. He's wearing everyone look at my butt.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, okay, But. Okay, hold on. Don't go away yet. So what's cool about the tech pants is that. Yeah, cool. They're very. You went and stood right behind the laptop, for crying out loud. Luke, now you've got the. Do not put it there. No, I just. I still need you to stand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Timestamp that. Noki.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't timestamp that. Noki doesn't want to do that. Okay. Move that. The point is, what's cool about the tech pants is they're very office attire friendly, but they have extra hidden pockets if you're more of a cargo kind of boy. So there's a pocket there. You could stash a phone there. That pocket actually goes all the way across the front, by the way. So you can actually put, like, a ton of stuff in there.

[Daniel Besser]

Grilled cheese sandwich.

[Linus Sebastian]

While following the office dress code. So there's like, a little hidden zip. There's another hidden zip on the right hip, I believe, in the seam. So you've got your regular pocket. No, no, up. There you go. Oh, there's a hidden zip right there. You'll figure it out. Oh, God. Okay. Yep, There we go. So you've got. Yeah, so you can put, like, something that you want to be a little bit more secure in there. To be clear, it doesn't have, like, arc, RFID blocking, lining or anything like that. I'm not talking about that kind of secure. I'm talking, like, just. You don't want anyone to put their hand in your Pocket. And notice it, zipper pockets on the regular pockets as well. And then at the back, I believe. Hold on. Yes. So in addition to the two back pockets, there's a hidden zipper pocket right where your right finger is, I believe. There it is. Or is it just a pocket?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, just. Okay. Extra pocket. So they're kind of like. They're kind of like an office friendly, like cargo pant, but not a cargo pant.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're like cousin is a cargo pant.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They are not. And they don't really give the visual indication.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, they're like a white collar cargo pant. Really, really excited about this product. It's one of the things that we've been legitimately extremely successful with is office friendly, but really tech forward clothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People asked about the fit of the Polo, it feels longer, I believe, which I like, are.

[Daniel Besser]

Jamie was saying something that it was a bit longer. Yeah, it's a bit of a longer cut, probably. If I stand up and measure it on my longness, it's slightly longer than.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Normal, I would say, which kind of makes sense. So I think that can maybe look a little bit professional and it's probably nicer for the people that want to tuck it in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So just like some of our other sort of office attire, we've added just, you know, a little splash of fun, a little splash of color. Obviously it's a high quality garment. So it's a Tencel cotton blend. So really soft, really smooth feel. Custom knit collar and cuffs. Plus a do not drop branded button or actually, sorry, all the buttons are. They just have like a little cute. Can you see it? They say do not drop on. Oh, that's just a subtle LTT touch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're not gonna read that unless you're like the person wearing the shirt. So it won't. It won't stand out in an office environment.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there is LTT branding on it. Even though it's probably pretty hard to tell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, Very small embroidered right here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Black on black LTT branding. So be totally fine right above the nip.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I. I've been really happy with the photos coming from creator warehouse for a long time now. I think the photos for the shoot were like, sick. Really captured the vibe really effectively.

[Linus Sebastian]

They've been doing a really good job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just want to give props.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then there's one more product launch today. I know. What a day. Four product launches. We had the cables, we have the premium Polo, we have the tech pants. Tech pants I think have been in. In Development for like two years or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

These feel nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're really feel very nice. People have seen me wearing them on camera a few times. I've been. I've been demoing them for quite some time. I've been really pleased with the stain resistance of them. That's not to say that that's necessarily an advertised feature. I don't want to set incorrect expectations or anything like that. But for a light colored garment to survive in my environment where I live in is pretty remarkable there. Oh, there's a couple other other little things. There's a subtle safety feature. So there's a reflective stripe inside the cuff that becomes visible when it's rolled up. So if you were, say, for example, someone who bikes to and from work and you still wanted to look workplace appropriate, you can roll them up and there's a reflective stripe in there. Cool. I think that's probably enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's neat. I wouldn't have noticed that. Yeah, it's not like you don't really feel it, which is good.

[Linus Sebastian]

A gusseted crotch. So just extra, extra comfort, whether you're biking or just running between meetings or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did notice, like, I put them on and walked for a bit and it was nice. And then I came to the set here because I put them on right before the show and sat down. And when I sat down, I was.

[Daniel Besser]

Like, oh, yeah, that's pretty comfy.

[Linus Sebastian]

They really comfortable. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't mind wearing these for a bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

Intro it. Intro it. Last one, last product.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Might be my favorite packaging for anything we've ever done. It's so cute. My goodness. I even like that when it's like a little bit out, it just feels like there's sand at the bottom.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like solid so much. I'm so happy with these. I sort of knew these were coming.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, can I have that? Yeah. Okay. One quick thing I'm gonna jump in with. We are rebranding. Yes, we're rebranding the precision screwdriver that has the bit storage in it. The pro. What does that mean? I don't know. We'll find out later. But this is going to be the Pro now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I heard the whole story and agree with it. But I do wonder, what would Linus say if this was like a tech product and that it's pro and that it got renamed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wwls.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I'd probably be annoyed with it, but I understand why we did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly. I don't necessarily disagree.

[Linus Sebastian]

And There have sense. There have been times when that rationale did not exist. So I don't know, Man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Trying to capture it. There it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, check it out. Check it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and like, that's cool. And it still has the. I'm not gonna fully. Oh, you. I. I spoiled it. It still has the magnetic door, but behind the magnetic door.

[Linus Sebastian]

Float plane exclusive precision driver.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I gotta line these up before people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get upset with floatplane color scheme.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will. I will fix it for the OCDs. I got you. Hold on, hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's all good. Okay. It's. It's. It's all right. I think it's okay. I fixed it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also, is the anodization on that driver incredible or what? Hold it in line with your face. There. Now it's in focus. It's okay. Luke's new to being on camera. He's never done it before. First time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. The problem is my eyes suck, so I can't see, so I can't tell.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could get glasses. That is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It still has this. They're in the car.

[Linus Sebastian]

Terrible. Nice, satisfying bearing.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, it's the same driver.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It just looks cool. It has multiple different colors of blue because the float plane blue is not exactly an official thing, so. Which is kind of nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Still comes with the detachable magnetic parts tray with the little segments in it. And. Yep. It's everything that you already knew and loved about the. The precision kit Pro, which is what it is now, but a little more blue. Available exclusively to folks who are subscribed to LTT on floatplane.com. all right. Okay. There. Now we're through all the products that we launched this week. Geez.

[Daniel Besser]

Only a couple.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was crazy.

[Daniel Besser]

How many. How many cables. SKUs were there? Like 16?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, something like that.

[Daniel Besser]

Damn.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's been. It's been a whole thing.

[Daniel Besser]

There's been a couple merch messages today. Just a few.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. But what else we got for today? What do you want to talk about? We could talk about Iran's Internet blackout. This is brutal, man. It's now been 22 days since the Iranian authorities have imposed a near total communications blackout in response to anti government protests during which as many as 30,000 protesters are thought to have been killed. Fixed line Internet, mobile data and Internet voice calls have all been cut off with domestic communications and Starlink communications also seriously disrupted. Some connectivity is now slowly being restored, but the Iranian government is reportedly utilizing deep packet inspection and a whitelisting system to impose what an anonymous Iranian cybersecurity professional has called digital isolation. International Internet access won't be reopened until at least March, but it will never returned to its previous form. According to an Iranian government spokesperson. This new approach is also expected to have a major impact on the effectiveness of VPNs and Tor connections. So this is seriously.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not good.

[Linus Sebastian]

A problem. And a trend that as technologically driven control tools get more and more more sophisticated and better understood, is only going to increase in certain parts of the world. Hopefully, hopefully. Hopefully not all of them and as few as possible. So just wanted to flag this for you guys. This is a real problem. Our stance is that this is Terrabad. Was there anything to add, Mr. Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think think so. Starlink is an interesting one because I'm not sure necessarily how they are like jamming it or stopping it. I don't know if they've requested that it doesn't because I know that that is a thing that you can do. Not sure, not necessarily that they would comply. I'm not saying that, but I know that you could ask for that in, in places like China with the Great Firewall, VPN usage is like a extremely open secret. Like everybody kind of knows.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have a feeling Iran might not go quite the same route with that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is. Yeah, this is what I'm kind of thinking. I also don't know exactly how this is happening. Like would it even be possible? Are they even connected at all?

[Linus Sebastian]

Far now asks. I wonder if the global Internet is dying if there will only be regional nets. That's exactly what this means. Like Runette's a thing. China's own firewalled Internet ecosystem is a thing. The tools exist and it's big business providing these tools to authoritarian regimes. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's happening. It's coming. Yeah. Magic cheeseburger says Mulvad. VPN apparently has several anti censorship methods to obfuscate VPN traffic. I wonder if they can get around this packet inspection. I hope so. You know, I hope that the. That the VPN companies win the arms race here. But I, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean obviously this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like when it, when it gets to whitelisting, I think there's only so much you can do. Bro, what's up?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it team speak? Sorry. Noki linked this thing obviously like this. You know the whole thing sucks. But it's. It's kind of fun hearing things like this. Apparently over a thousand Iranian Dota players like at Once were playing Dota 2 local hosted lobbies and this looks like in a locally hosted Teamspeak server. And the, the video that we have on this, if you full screen, it is just scrolling through all of the different voice lobbies that they have going in a, in a Teamspeak server that seems to be called Dota Iran, which like that is. It's so cool seeing people come together in horrible times. Like obviously it's a horrible situation. I don't want to praise that but like it's pretty sweet that not only were people able to get together to a certain degree, but they also got so many people together and like this, this, you know, spark of unity amongst terrible situation is, is cool. So I'm, I'm props to, props to the people getting that going.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Ginger Nutted says it's both sad and terrifying to see people who are just like you and me, just regular gamers who just want to live in peace and play some, play some Dota, like just be left alone to live their lives and function and you know, sometimes dysfunction if we're being real about the Dota community, you know. But do it on their terms. Yeah, Cool. The iPhone 5s just got a security update. Apple quietly released updates for some very old iPhones and iPads, including devices running iOS 12, 15 and 16, some of which hadn't been patched in years. The updates renew a security certificate, so services like iMessage, FaceTime and Apple account Sign in will keep working past January of 2027. Our discussion question is should Apple be praised for keeping decade old devices minimally functional or is this just the bare minimum to avoid breaking its own services? Well, I wish it didn't deserve praise and yet in the world we live in, in the re. In reality, yeah, they, they. This is something that, that has to be noted. Like I'll be the first to call out Apple when they do something that's anti consumer or monopolistic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But this is cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That means the rule is that I got to be the first one in line to put their D in my mouth when they do something that is genuinely cool. Like making sure that someone who bought an iPhone 13 years ago is still able to use it if they can tolerate the, you know, the, the experience that they're having on that device. Pretty rough, but still, that's, that's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of pretty cool, 1.3 million of its 1.4 million signatures were verified for Stop killing games.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is well above the minimum to be formally considered by EU politicians.

[Linus Sebastian]

I had no hope for this, really. Yeah, Stop killing games. I just I mean, we talked about it, we promoted it. We were like, yeah, if this works, that would be great. But I just, I didn't think it would make it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do, I do.

[Linus Sebastian]

What were the odds?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Obviously in support of the idea. When this first became a thing and I like tried to talk about it with some nuance. It got a lot of hate. But then we were luckily able to lean back on the many years of examples of us supporting this general concept. The. The problem I have with things like this is I just hope that they get good consultants on the result. That's all.

[Daniel Besser]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I just didn't think we'd even make it this far.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Totally. Yeah. And I'm excited about it. And the EU's done some cool stuff so hopefully this goes well and I'm feeling good about it. I just, just a little bit concerned that they might do something that. Or they might sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do nothing.

[Daniel Besser]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But which would also suck. It is forced onto the agenda of the European Commission. That is something cool. And if one region forces game developers to do this, whether it's to open source the server software or whatever it is. Right. Partner with the community to run the services that are needed to keep the game alive. Whatever it is, if one region forces it. Well, at that point they've done all the work anyway. And a lot of the time it will bleed over into other regions, which is what I'm hoping for because so far Canada's got its hands full doing a lot of other stuff right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pretty busy. Maybe we don't work on this right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

The US is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's this big.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got his hands full doing a lot of stuff right now. Yeah, doing a lot of stuff right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're definitely things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there's def. They're definitely. Boy, are they ever doing stuff. I'd say things are going pretty good down there right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is funny. Bernardo Baruk said about the Apple. The Apple topic. It's like seeing a mayor actually do their job. Yeah. It's basically like that. It's like I shouldn't have to be impressed by this, but I so am. I so am. All right, what's next?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Reddit found a card skimmer on the Canada Computers checkout page. A Canada Computers customer has discovered a card skimmer embedded directly into the company's website checkout page. The malicious script was found siphoning names, addresses and credit card details to a third party server in real time, suggesting a server side compromise rather than a single browser based attack. Reports indicate fraudulent charges dating back to early December, meaning the breach may have gone undetected for weeks or I mean, really potentially longer. Considering it saying fraudulent charges, they might have been harvesting for a long time before they started actually using, which is extremely common in these cases. So I suspect it was a lot longer than that. Canada Computers has not yet issued a public statement and affected customers are being advised to review recent credit activity via an email. Dang. Is an email enough of a notification? When dealing with this big of a security breach, what should companies do to handle this? I don't know how much more you can really do than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, other than like not have it happen in the first place, but clearly that ship sailed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they're a relatively small shop running a Internet commerce operation. It can be tough out there. This is one of those things where it's like totally the consumer advocacy of this, like, something's got to happen, all that kind of stuff. Are we effectively just funneling everyone to big players, managing their stores for them? Is that a good thing? Do we want that?

[Linus Sebastian]

We don't want that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then sometimes there's going to be some security problems. Even with the big players are going to be security problems.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, but this is, this is the issue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The overreaction to stuff like this can result in.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you're so right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Scaring people away. Do you get tired of it from being responsible?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, is it just exhausting to be you? No, but this is one that I gotta admit, I would not have seen that angle on. And if you gave me, if you gave me like two hours to sit and think about it, I wouldn't go, oh, my God, we need to chill out. We need to kind of let Canada Computers regroup and we need to continue to support them because otherwise, oh my God, our only options are just going to be freaking Amazon and Newegg.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To be clear, Canada Computers, like, almost certainly brought this upon themselves in a variety of ways.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Never responded to my email. Guys, come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I remember. I remember them being a meme internally at ncix. You saw how broken our IT infrastructure was and our internal systems were like. I think I showed you like, like our, like product management portal and stuff. Oh, yeah. And then the punchline was, yeah, but Canada Computers was still using facts like a year ago. So, like. Right, but still, at least, at least they exist. And I guess that's something that is, that is kind of good, you know? Yeah, yeah, Shout out Memex too. I guess. Those are, those are our Canadian. Our Canadian computer retailer Bros. And that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The problem is they're, they're holdouts and I'm not gonna single them out. I'll single out everything. Basically. It's not just the computer industry, it's every industry. Shops like this are holdouts and in a lot of cases they're not long for this world because things like this can potentially crush them out of business. And then you just funnel people to Amazon or, or whoever else. Basically Amazon and Walmart and the big box places that have extremely long histories of abusing people on much deeper levels than credit cards, which are often fixable because your credit card company, if you report it properly, will just give you your funds back and give you a new card.

[Linus Sebastian]

Compare at unfixable. Sorry, going back to an earlier.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like do you want to funnel to the. To places like that?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. So. Okay. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's the same argument that I used to have with people who would rage at Blizzard developers who would say kind of silly things at BlizzCon is like the result of that which we saw happen was less developers on stage taking less questions. And if they do take questions, those questions being curated beforehand, which is less transparency and less good for you. Like you sometimes have to think about what. Like not what is the result that you want, but what is the result that will happen based on your actions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So Canada Computers has released a statement. Thank you, the female audience, for posting this in floatplane chat. So they're, they're doing their best, complimentary to your credit monitoring and etc. We're investigating, we're doing stuff. So, you know, thank you for, you know, doing stuff. And hopefully this isn't too damaging to either the customers who were inflicted or to Canada Computers. By and large, we do want smaller. Even if they are chains, we'd still rather have a smaller chain exist. Can you imagine that we'd be sitting here today saying that I'd rather, I'd rather root for like my smaller chain than the large like giant mega fish that eats up everything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The mom and pop computer shops are like gone. Yeah, there are a few.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Even Black Lab, I think, shut down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Or that the store did anyway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's see. We have gone mobile. Yeah, there it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is another way of saying that we don't have a brick and mortar anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

We do on site services. Same great number, same trusted service. So this is the one that I, that I bought out all the inventory of have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's a sick acronym.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Black Lab on site.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a sick acronym.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean he's a, he's a funny guy. Like he had a lot. He had a ton of personality. That's. That doesn't surprise me that he would have like a. But a pretty cool brand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super not surprised. And the next one on the the order to get knocked over is places like Canada Computers and Memex and again all the other industries. I'm not, I'm not like signaling them out. Singling. Sorry. I still have like a clogged throat from being sick. I'm still, I still have like minor symptoms from being sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

I still have a bit of a clogged throat from that. Apple Praise. Oh yeah. We need to talk about Whale Land. Hey. Our first whale land of 2026 is just three weeks away on February 21st. As always, we will have contests, challenges and big team games that everyone at the LAN can participate in. Our gaming lounge zone is being amped up as we expand it with an additional projector and enough controllers to have eight plus players at each of the two 120 inch setups. Plus we'll have a product booth there so you can grab some LTD store items alongside a unique Whale Land shirt or hoodie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what might actually do quite well at a LAN is true spec cables.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know if we'll have any by then, but sure, some tickets are still [e-mail] Chewy asks if the ice cream machine will be back. Yes, it will. Whalen.com so you guys can go check that out. February 21st and 22nd it is at Smash Champs Badminton Club and you just click here for buy tickets. And here's all the information including parking schedule, hotel recommendations. Oh yeah, Starforge. We're partnered with Starforge for the whale ticket systems. I think we still have. Yeah, Whale VIP is sold out, but BYOC plus, so you have an extra foot of table space is still available. Oh goodness. Not many. Nine tickets available for BYOC plus and we still have 100 tickets for BYOC. But don't just sit on that. At last time, at around this time, like three weeks prior, we had like a hundred plus tickets available and there were quite a few people that were like, oh yeah, well there's. I don't know, there's like a hundred left. No problem. And then in the days leading up to the event, they're like, where did all the tickets go? It's because a lot of people make these kind of decisions last minute. Don't be a last minute Larry get your ticket. Because you never know when a group of 20 people is gonna all buy tickets together and they're just gonna start disappearing in very large chunks. I eat. Cool. Good chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I eat.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. What do you eat? Not cake, that's for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For dinner, it will be chicken and sweet potato.

[Linus Sebastian]

He turned down score flavor ice cream cake prior to the show. That's crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things got bad, dude. Having no kitchen for six months because of renovation was bad. Things got bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is my plate. I couldn't resist.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm on. I'm back on track again and things are going good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Heck yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got some progress remake up. It'll be fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. We're also supposed to talk about float plane apparently. Where's that? I don't even see it. Oh, yeah. Hey. What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

We had five float plane videos this week. Three clips, two bangers. Just circle and highlight the clips. No need to watch. Can you bring up the float Float plane. If you're a tech upgrade fan, you can check out Adam's tech upgrade. Where are they now? Showcasing what changed from the very first AMD ultimate tech upgrade spoiler. Adam and Shea are engaged now. Good for them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're more of a Wan Pal, you can check out episode 19. Holy. It's been 19 months of this. Of why is wan late? Where somehow Linus is the reason why. When was late for all of January. Wow. I know. That's crazy. Also, float plane precision screwdriver. Very epic. Wow, V cool. Wahoo. What am I even okay looking at here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Noki keeps.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who wrote this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, for sure Sammy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this Sammy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

For sure Sammy.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very epic. Wow, V cool. Wahoo. Definitely Sammy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Lmg, gg slash fpwan. There you go. I did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sammy, Noki really wants us to watch the last four seconds of this with audio. I don't actually know what the last four seconds is. I've got it queued up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so I just go to Luke laptop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan, are you ready?

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke laptoprier. When is this from? Oh, this is on ywan late. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, this isn't on ywan late.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is from like yesterday or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ready?

[Linus Sebastian]

Where are you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got so confused because what was that clip mirrored? Can I see that again?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are you so confused about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Where are you standing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right here.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, it's pointing. The camera's pointing to you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The camera person is over there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I'll show you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. No, no, I get it, I get it. I get it. Yeah. No, no. I'm just an idiot.

[Daniel Besser]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, cool. Good chat. All right, all right, all right. What am I supposed to be doing now, Dan?

[Daniel Besser]

We have sponsors. It's the only last obligation.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should do a couple more topics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was a good recommendation, Noki.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you. All right. YouTube's end anti ad block system just got smarter and harder to dodge. YouTube users are reporting a spike in Linus rejoicing. What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Linus so happy. Linus winning.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you mean by winning? Oh my God. Is it this again? I have never.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Linus so happy about YouTube changes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have never told people don't use adblock.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Linus number one benefactor of YouTube anti.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ad block system unless they are internal staff here for the express reason that because we make as a company so much of our income via ads, it seems a little hypocritical for us to block them on our work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think ultimately that you know that people have to review videos on the channel at work and you just want their ad money.

[Linus Sebastian]

YouTube users are reporting a spike in this content isn't available. Try again later. Errors that appear to only go away after disabling ad blockers or subscribing to YouTube Premium. The reports add to growing evidence that Google is continuing to technically restrict or degrade playback for users running ad block. Discussion question. At what point does fighting ad blockers cross the line from enforcing terms of service into intentionally breaking the user experience? I mean, to me they're kind of one end. The same enforcing terms of service would be you're not allowed to use the service unless you adhere to the terms of the service. Aka like, would you say that if you were going to a concert and they didn't let you in without a ticket that they are breaking your user experience? I mean, they are, but I wouldn't frame it that way if that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At what point does this go from fighting ad blockers to crossing the line into Linus enforcing his will on YouTube who would love to not do this but is just, you know, Linus might talk about our wan. Linus controls what every large company does. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, if you want to channel the voices in our community, you could pick a slightly less stupid one.

[Daniel Besser]

Is that possible?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's fun though. Is that possible? It's so rude. Holy crap. You just tried to cleave like everyone. Oh my goodness.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. Okay. You know, my thoughts are my own.

[Daniel Besser]

And are not representative or Linus and Luke or Linus Media Group.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to show your face while you say that to them. Speaking of internal policies. You're not allowed to insult the audience. What about.

[Daniel Besser]

What about my peers?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm insulting you.

[Daniel Besser]

I'm talking about my peers and my friends.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You did on this show. There is no way.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't say I am always perfect for me. No, I didn't say I'm always perfect and that I shouldn't be admonished when I do it. I'm just saying it is policy to not insult the audience, no matter how stupid they are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'll have to keep that in mind. That will be very useful.

[Linus Sebastian]

Even if they're really stupid.

[Daniel Besser]

Sorry, I forgot that not publicly against.

[Linus Sebastian]

Policy, not public part.

[Daniel Besser]

I'm sorry. Oops.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, boy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, off of Linus's favorite topic of.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show, Valve will face a 656 million pound lawsuit. I love that. The UK's currency pounds. Yeah, because it just. That's a heavy lawsuit, you know. 656 million pounds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not like that tiny cost of doing business one that Google got recently. Is that in the doc?

[Linus Sebastian]

So this is in the UK over alleged unfair prices on Steam following a tribunal ruling that the case could continue. That's basically it. The case could affect up to 14 million UK users who may be eligible for compensation if Valve is found to have unfairly charged commissions of up to 30%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. But I'm interested to see what happens.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is strange. I don't really know what this means.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me neither, to be honest. We'll keep an eye on it. Are you talking about Google paying 68 million over recording private chats? Is that the one? Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, what do you mean? 68 million?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know. Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like a lot of money. It would be. My entire family would never have to work again for generations. Wow. Amazing. To Google, that's nothing. That means nothing, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they'll just do it again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They like, almost certainly made more money off of that than it cost, which is just. Again, like, come on, you have to cross that line. At the very least, it should be way more than that. But you have to cross that line. Well, I mean, Also, at least 1 million more dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

That'd be pretty nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

68 sucks.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it was gonna be low, it could have at least been funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So 68 would be doing it with someone with two butts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or one really big one.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Well, yeah. Okay. Interesting. That would be the largest of butts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a 0.1 percenter. Man.

[Daniel Besser]

You're looking at me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you seen that movie? Oh, man, it's a good movie. Oh, Dan. No pooping back and forth forever.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah, that movie's hilarious.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gilmore D. Says more cake than Betty Crocker. Love it.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, you, me and everyone you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, okay. No notes here. CNN is now putting emergency weather information behind their paywall. I think this was actually from last week, but like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my God, this. He got paid to type that from Jack Logan.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know. I'm the one who did it. I have to take some responsibility for this. That's it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That message in Full Play Chat was.

[Daniel Besser]

I even got it wrong. It's actually this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So no notes. That's bad. Yeah, the ins. Vacation of everything sucks. In other news, an early build of Google's Android desktop interface that is gonna apparently replace Chrome OS has leaked. And we have some screenshots. So like, here's some stuff. This moved.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It looks a lot like Windows 11.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Why is the middle becoming the norm? I blame Apple.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They even have the four. Okay, can you zoom in on the taskbar? There's even the four things. One of them is a search bar. Look. No, look. Just to the left of the phone. I know it's like an app thing, but if you look at the Windows one. Very similar.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, could we just. Can we not. Because you don't. Because then you don't need to look where you're clicking. You can just drag it all the way to the bottom left and then you open the thing like that's the reason it matters.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I click on it. Trying to think that. Because I actually just run it in the middle. Because I just never bothered to change it because I wanted to see what it was going to be like. And then it never affected me because I think I just press a button.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if it was in the bottom left, would it bother you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, then we're good. Yeah. Yes, I know I can hit the Windows key. I don't always have my hand on the keyboard. Say for instance, I was mousing and my other hand was occupado. Why would I want to click my keyboard?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, with that point one percent.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not even sanitary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Big eight.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Big eight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stop.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, it included screen captures running HP, Elite, Dragonfly, Chromebook, et cetera. 9 to 5. Google is where you can go check out the full article on this. Apparently it's going to be called Aluminum OS or Aluminium os. Excuse me? The code name for the Android based desktop os.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No one's going to agree on how to say it.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, they'll change it. The Bug report has since been taken down, but 9 to 5 Google managed to set save these screen recordings. It essentially looks like Android 16's existing desktop mode with some minor alterations. The other big thing here is the extensions button to the right of the URL bar in Chrome, which is only there on desktop versions of the browser. So that's, you know, not the Android one. So that's cool. Guess we'll see how that goes for them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tesla is discontinuing the Model S and Model x in the second quarter of 2020 26. This was announced by CEO Elon Musk during an earnings call on January 28th of this year. The reason for the discontinuation is apparently to free up space at Tesla's Fremont factory for Optimus humanoid robot production. Okay, now this is a very optimistic set of notes that we've got here. This is part of their strategy to transform Tesla from an automaker into an AI and robotics company. The third generation Optimus is described as meant for mass production. But then again, you know, Tesla well, More specifically their CEO also predicted that 5000 robots would be produced in 2025 and said in 2024 that they were already doing meaningful work and then said a completely different thing on, I believe that same earnings call this year and admitted that they weren't doing any meaningful work and that they were all just development in development. So that's, that's something. I'm not even going to bother with these timelines because a timeline from Tesla means absolutely nothing. Where's the Roadster 2 Anyway, sales of both the Model S Next have apparently been declining steadily. In 2025, Tesla sold only just shy of 51,000 other models which can combines Model S, Model X and Cybertruck. They don't break out individual figures for these vehicles. For context, Tesla's focus has shifted to mass Market Model 3 and Model Y which make up the bulk of their sales. Evidently Elon's $1 trillion pay package depends on him making literally a million of these robots, not to mention getting 10 million full self driving subscriptions. So there's a lot of people mad about world's first trillionaire and the trillion dollar pay package. Yeah, it's not happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He doesn't have it, so he gets it. He did get the last one that everyone thought he wasn't going to get though.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's true. But if only past performance was an indicator of future success, then we could just buy every stock that's going up right now, assuming that it will only ever go up, which seems to be what a lot of people are doing right now, which is blowing my freaking mind. It doesn't seem to matter what any of the fundamental product or technology developments are companies or sales or anything. But hey, gambling. Apparently it's a thing people like. Yeah, did you see that for my appearance on Jimmy Fallon. There was one of those market market prediction. What are they called? Those like betting on anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Prediction markets, prediction.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a prediction market thing on like keywords that I might or might not say during it. I would. Dude, I was so tempted to just bet $100,000 on myself and then just not say a word like dude, it would be free money. It would just be free money to me up on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would feel so bad in the moment.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know, right? Holy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you bet on not saying something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bit of bit says that would be illegal. Would it enforce it? Yeah, these prediction markets are completely unregulated as far as I can tell. Yeah, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Immediately that's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like a law. I mean we've talked about this before. You know, a warranty only has the value of a company's willingness to uphold it. A law only has the value of an administration's willingness to enforce it. Like if something's a law that nobody is going to enforce and it's just a giant open. It'd be a shame if I anyone knowledgeable betted on this thing that they know the outcome of. Why don't we have a completely unregulated gambling market where you can bet on anything that's a flaw in the system.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The mighty Reptar Hate the game in floatpoint chat said something interesting. He said, it occurred to me why Elon's selling the floor full self driving subscription at a low price compared to the Purch compared to purchasing it outright is to sell more subscriptions because his pay package is based on volume of subscriptions, not dollars generated from the subscriptions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that actually makes a ton of sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I added some square brackets at the end of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting, interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. Couple more sponsors and then we've actually got some. Oh, we've got some really interesting stuff coming up, man. Show is brought to you by Motion Gray. Whether you spend hours on the weekend gaming or you work from home, it's nice to have a workspace that fits your needs. Long periods of sitting can do quite a doozy on your lower back. And sometimes it's nice to stand for a while. Our sponsor, Motion Gray's Ergo 2 Pro sit stand desk fits these exact needs. And can do this while focusing on affordability. They come in a variety of sizes, all of which which support over 170 pounds of weight. They all come with dual legs for stability and use German Bosch motors for a smooth height adjustment. Everything comes in a single box, no worries of everything being shipped in different parts on different days and everything you need to assemble the desk is included inside. Grab your motion gray Ergo 2 Pro at our link in the video description the show is also brought to you by XSplit. If you ever wanted to get into streaming or recording yourself playing games but didn't know where to start, check out our sponsor XSplit. They offer a suite of streaming and video production tools for free to get you started and it works with most of the major platforms like Twitch, YouTube and plenty more. When creating a custom interface and display for your stream, XSplit has drag and drop tools to give you extra customization, so that means you can show off your personality with gifs and videos over top of your gameplay. Plus with premium you can stream to multiple platforms and unlock an unlimited number of scenes. It's also great if you need to just give a business presentation. Go to LMG GGXSplitwan and use code WANSHOW30 to save 30% off your first subscription. GIF JIF gif jif gif Deal with it I heard la la la la la I felt that inhale Deal with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did I inhale? Was that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it was you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it was that bad.

[Daniel Besser]

No, that's what it felt like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My goodness.

[Linus Sebastian]

In other words. In other news, Ubisoft continues to fall apart after after last week's horrible Ubisoft news, the company wants to cut up to 18% of the staff from its French studios, or about 200 jobs, in response to everything that management has done wrong, French Ubisoft workers have voted to strike February 10 to 12. In a press release on Blue sky announcing the strike, workers said they were calling for a halt to management's obsession with penny pinching and worsening our working conditions, saying there had been no dialogue and no respect, and that they were being treated like children while their management gets away with lies and breaking the law. That's not even the end of the Ubisoft labor disputes. The workers of the recently closed Halifax studio rallied downtown this week to urge Ubisoft to to reopen their office. Workers on the picket line say the closure was very suspicious, as the office had just become Ubisoft's first studio to unionize in North America. Ubisoft responded by saying that the process to restructure the company began two years ago, well before the unionization process started. Our discussion question is why are the French so much better at striking than North Americans? They have to do with their better laws.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very colorful history of it.

[Daniel Besser]

They.

[Linus Sebastian]

They really do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lots of Reds. Tons of Reds. Alleged political censoring and other fun. TikTok news. Days after TikTok finalized the sale of its US business to mostly Trump friendly American investors, TikTok users have apparently been unable to send the word Epstein in DMS. Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Allegedly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Allegedly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Allegedly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

TikTok says it's investigating these reports and say they don't have rules against sharing the name Epstein.

[Linus Sebastian]

Imagine having to issue that press release.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can we try this?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have it installed, but it's not logged in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Multiple users have also been reporting that videos critical of ICE are not being uploaded or shared. One example is comedian Megan Stalter, who uploaded a video to her Instagram encouraging the abolishment of ICE, which was reposted 12, 000 times while that same video failed to upload to Tick Tock multiple times. Tick Tock denies the implications and says the issues were due to a power outage at a US data center. Okay. Possibly in a separate story, Tick Tock has reached an 11th hour settlement to avoid being involved in something they should absolutely be involved in, which is the landmark social media addiction trial that could establish a legal precedent on whether social media companies deliberately design their platforms to addict children, which they definitely do. The defendants currently include Google and Meta. Snapchat landed a settlement last week and TikTok should for sure be included.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, so the problem with settlements is that. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to settle so that there's no legal precedent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there should for sure be legal precedent.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. Yeah. I would strongly prefer that this does not get settled with settlements.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. Yeah. Yep. In a very different kind of TikTok story. And this is nuts. I don't know if you've heard of this cabbie Lame. I hope I'm saying that right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

See this has sold his company.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is based a lot more than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

His entire life as far as I can tell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like everything about him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. His, his likeness, his. His like mannerisms, his voice for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For forever, I think in a 975 million dollar. Oh, all stock.

[Linus Sebastian]

All stock deal. So I think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And listen, man, sorry, you gotta know the name. It's. So it's 75 million shares in ordinary shares in Rich Sparkle Holdings.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. So basically he got no money for his. His work and likeness forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this gonna be the next.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe his twin will be 0.1% only.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fans like is this. Is this gonna be the next Smosh? Because they got they sure sideways. They sure did on that deal where Smosh was acquired for in an all stock deal. Who?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we supposed to know who this is? Isn't he like the biggest Tick Tocker.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or something, this guy? He does this. Yeah, it's kind of silly. And he goes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd never heard of him either, to be honest with you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't. I don't know beyond that. He might do things other than that. He might do that thing differently than I just did. Other than that, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

See? Yeah, yeah, he's apparently like a huge deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Rich Sparkle Holdings.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rich Sparkle Holdings.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a name.

[Linus Sebastian]

Most followed Tick Tocker, apparently. So this really does feel deceptive given that it's an all stock deal. Yeah, if it was stock in Disney, that would be different.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, totally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But Rich Sparkle Holdings. What is Rich Sparkle Holdings? Can I short it? Not financial advice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, even Disney stock.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rich Sparkle Holdings.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, they went up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on, hold on. This is just the one day view. This doesn't mean anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So people liked this story.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, people. People liked. People liked this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Rich Sparkle holdings spend a billion dollars on someone's name.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, what? Since when has it existed? I searched for five years and it has only existed since July of 2025, apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or at least that's how far back Yahoo Finance's history goes for it. Okay, what do you got?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lol.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So even if it is in Disney, it would have gone down 33% in five years. Good job, Louie. Bad job. Superhero movies.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was joking about this. And someone's going away party before the show. What will be the mark of the end times for Disney if you had to pick something? I already know my answer, so I can do mine first if you want to think about it for a bit. But I thought you might have a thought.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if my gut thought here is good or accurate, but I'll throw it out anyways because it was the first thing that came to mind. It'd be the closure of a park.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ooh, that's good. That's good. Okay, mine is an MCU Star wars crossover movie. Like. Like Iron man fighting a Jedi or some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, she stepped down, eh?

[Linus Sebastian]

Kathleen Kennedy stepped down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stepping down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think it's like the guy who's. Who's stepping up. I always forget Jon Favreau. Who's the other guy? There's two Filoni. I think it might be him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dave Filoni.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's Dave Filoni. Potentially exciting. We'll see.

[Linus Sebastian]

Chat hates this made my stomach hurt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Never speak that again. That was disgusting to hear.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like Vision versus Darth Vader. Like Duel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Star wars is another one of those things where like it feels very Ubisoft coded. Where it's like this was actually genuinely, hilariously easy to not do the way that you did. Like the path was laid out. He did like George Lucas sold them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Effectively a money printing machine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not just that. What you should do for the sequel series. This is what you should do. And they were like, nah. Like, are you nuts?

[Linus Sebastian]

And even if they didn't like his idea for it, at least there was the. There was the expanded universe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or extended universe. Whatever the eu There were so many.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And Kathleen is quoted many times being like, we don't have like source material to go off of.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's like, bro, yes, you did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stop. I.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the world stuff was kind of out there. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't have to use all of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But you could have used, I don't know, something, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the first people to admit that some of the extended universe stuff goes a little out there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would be fans of the extended universe stuff. Like you don't have to use all of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretzel Parkour says Vader lifts me on the air. It's so bad. It's so bad. Like Captain Marvel like flies through a frickin Star Destroyer in hyperspace and splits it in two.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you know about white.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's only slightly stupider than what we got.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you know about white armor Vader?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So this is where like, you know, EU gets kind of weird. There's a white armor Vader.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jar Jar has the Infinity Stones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Imagine white armor Vader steps into. Into view and it's like his first introduction just walks up, picks up the hammer. Cinema, cinema, Cinema.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, okay. Someone brought up Spaceballs 2 in chat. Kishan PD brings up Spaceballs to Dude. I don't. I don't know how they're gonna parody like new Star Wars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think. I think it would be kind of funny if they just did like the same thing over and over again. If they had like a two minute sequence where they just repeated things a bunch.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they. If they. In one movie. If they effectively did the Arc of, like, you just do the same thing for a while that you did in the past at the beginning of the movie, and then you just kind of rewrite everything that happened and make everything kind of weird, and then you come back and try to kind of, like, I don't know, do it again. Like, if the movie is in three parts, similar to Pulp Fiction, but they're, like, loosely linked, just like how the movies were, like, really not well linked and were definitely three completely different things not made in collaboration, which is insane.

[Daniel Besser]

If they.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If they do it like that in one movie, it might be kind of funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Roman.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They can figure it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Roman 21023 says Robert Downey Jr. Is also a Mandalorian. Oh. Oh, God. Oh, God. I don't know. Palpatine comes back again, and It's Robert.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Downey Jr.

[Linus Sebastian]

Iron Mandalorian.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Iron Mandalorian is rough. Oh, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's rough because it sounds too real.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, we have. We have Groot and. And the tiny baby Yoda thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Groots on Endor.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Baby Groot and baby Yoda. Dude, the merch sales would pop. They should put us in charge. We could make. We could do this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, we could legitimately have done a better job.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'd sell so many toys. We'd sell so many toys. Oh, man. You know, I'm not one to make a statement like that lightly. I know it's very easy for armchair quarterbacks to say, I could do a better job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I think we could have.

[Linus Sebastian]

I literally actually think you and I, as the creative heads of Star wars after the acquisition, probably could have done a better job.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just go walk up to Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau and be like, hey, guys, what do we do?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah, that would have worked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think we need to do much more. Hey. Oh, so I heard there's. There's some, like, story prompts from the guy who did this the whole time. So I guess we should, like, read them. Pull those out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe just read them and then just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, you know, work on those. Develop those. I know you guys know, like, a lot about the lore more than we do. So, like, you want to help us kind of fill this out? We'll follow your guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

I heard you guys know a lot of people in the industry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that too.

[Linus Sebastian]

We don't. So, yeah, we'd love your guidance on that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks, guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

That have been pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we. We noticed. We have all the money in the world, enough to buy the Earth and All the heavens. So we could just hire the coolest people to work on this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe. Maybe this. This idea where he just goes like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we could just throw that away.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe we don't do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We could do that to that idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. Okay, we're cooking.

[Linus Sebastian]

We could have our most beloved character. Like, maybe be cool. That'd be cool. Stupid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I actually need that thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's good, I think. Was that our last topic? No. We have one more quick one. LTT Labs article, Anchor Nano Smart Charger. 45 watt testing and exploration.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This popped off on Reddit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Labs did a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it was really cool. And I. I was as surprised to see it as anyone. And I was like, wow, this is really cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So Labs has been doing this thing for a while with articles where we're trying to ask questions, dive into things. Someone who's really been leading the charge on this is Lucas. So a lot of them are around, you know, charging things and stuff like that, because these are interests that Lucas has, which is great. And, like, totally the goal, to be clear. So thank you, Lucas, for killing it. And we've been posting them on Reddit. Well, he's been posting them on Reddit and responding to some of the comments and stuff and trying to get it out there because we're really trying to make this a space that you can go to. To, you know, maybe you didn't have the question. Maybe, like me, you've looked at phone charters for a long time, just been like, I don't know. But now someone who is interested in it can bring you along the path of, like, what is interesting about these things? Can we look into them? Obviously, super cool. Lumafield tests.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is Care mode? What does it do? Yeah, it does exactly this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now we know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it real or is it just bs, you know?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's their. Here's their marketing. Here's what we found.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This made me, like, interested in buying, like, a cool phone charger.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which I have never cared about once in my life.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's the thermals of a charger.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's how much it can actually dissipate before it reaches, like, a steady state. Here's how hot it gets. Like, damn, LTT Labs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was. There was a Reddit thread over the weekend that I kind of missed until work started again. So I got to it way too late, and it was already cold by the time I saw it. And there was a bunch of like, like, WTF is labs doing it? Didn't really pick up a lot of steam. But yeah, a lot of the comments were pretty consistent on like, what's happening? And then this got posted.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it was like a massive wave of like, oh my God, this is awesome. This is what we're trying to do right now. There are a lot of things that we're trying to do right now. This is one of them. We're also trying to better support video production and do all this other kind of stuff, but we're trying to the like internal labeling of it and I haven't watched that stuff in a long time, but you know, like the vibe in when the TV would roll into the class and you'd watch Bill Nye stuff back in the day of like, here's some interesting questions. And this person went and like sought to answer them and brought us along with them and showed us the, the ways that they tested things and how they did things and the results and stuff like that. We want to do that with. We want it to be fun, we want to be interesting, we want to be engaging. We want to ask questions that you maybe didn't think of or if you guys ask a cool question, we want to try to seek an answer and share it with you and bring you along. And this is like a huge, fantastic example of that. So. Yeah.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's it for our topics today. It's time for After Dark. Mr. Daniel Besser, do you want to hit us with some merch? What did we agree to call them? Comms? Checkout messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Checkout messages?

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah, sure. We got loads of checkout messages. We do today.

[Linus Sebastian]

I won't have time for all of them. I do have to go relatively soonish actually.

[Daniel Besser]

Yes. I think we have enough time. I think we've all right. Structured this out well. Any insights as to why? Some.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Do we need a second? Dan, behind you, putting the metal on your neck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You said. I think we structured this out well and we definitely didn't contribute to that at all.

[Daniel Besser]

Yes, you did. I don't know. You listened.

[Linus Sebastian]

You were great. Did we though? Yeah, I wasn't listening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's such a like head pat answer.

[Daniel Besser]

No, you actually, you actually did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was for once boys digitized by Google.

[Daniel Besser]

You were a good boys. Well, Linus was. I don't know about you.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't have any say in what we do. Yeah, not 50%, that's for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Daniel Besser]

No, maybe. Maybe next time. Maybe next time you can say no. We're going to do the sponsors now, Daniel. That'll Be fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would never use your full name.

[Daniel Besser]

Any insight as to why some lengths are cheaper than others? Doesn't seem to be based on length. Can't wait for more normal sizes to be in stock.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The prices can't remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, so if one gets longer and cheaper, Check the data rate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Good chat.

[Daniel Besser]

If Jimmy Fallon was on your show rather than the other way around, what topics would you want to talk to him about in this hypothetical situation? You also have access to his broader audience. Audience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I wouldn't actually be super interested in leveraging his broader audience. I would love to have an extended chat with him about how the production works and how it's worked over the years. I watched a time lapse of them building their studio. That was nuts. Just the whole thing. How the structure works, how the individual players within the game that is making that show function would be so interesting to me. Like that handler that we had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What does that person's day look like?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do they work?

[Linus Sebastian]

And I was. I was very surprised second time around to get a little bit more. An indication anyway, more of an indication that he is more involved than just like the guy who stands there and is or isn't funny, depending on your opinion. Clearly a lot of people don't think he's funny. Clearly a lot of people think he's very funny because he's one of the highest paid people on tv. Get over it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even care about that at all. I just find the production so much.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, but that's what I mean. He's clearly more than that, which I actually didn't realize first time around.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I have no idea. I would love to spend just like a week there trying to, you know, stay out of people's way. But observe and just learn. It would be very, very cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I think with his history doing it for so long, they're asking, like, if he was a guest on our show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right, I know. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So picking his brain about how it's evolved over the years, I think would be absolutely incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very, very cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredible.

[Daniel Besser]

My Canadian neighbors. What do you think is the most Canadian thing about each other? Thanks, mate, for the usb, double C, thick cords.

[Linus Sebastian]

The most Canadian thing about you, I mean your last name. I don't have to go very deep. La Freniere is about the French Canadianist name that I think probably exists.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

La Fleur, maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's another one.

[Linus Sebastian]

What else? What else we got here? What makes someone Canadian? See, it's a funny thing because Outside of Canada, it seems like there's a lot of stereotypes for Canadians. You know, we're called leafs. Like, that's a pejorative. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

By whom? I actually like it. Yeah. Leaf. Yeah. I'm down. I mean, it biodegradable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's. It's even like it kind of works because like it matches. Like if you're looking at all the flags.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was like point at the people you would call the leaf.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You leaf. You know, like. Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Like, I don't. I don't even think that has, like, bother me like a negative connotation to me anyway. I mean, I. I don't understand what people necessarily even mean by it. Most Canadian thing about us. Yeah. Like, I know. I know about some of the. Fun fact. There was once a contest to find the Canadian equivalent of as American as apple pie, and the winner was as Canadian as possible under the circumstances. I think it's the war crime thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

[Daniel Besser]

They wrote a book about us.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't know. Like, I, like, I don't think Luke's particularly into maple syrup.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, B.C.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is kind of like ball hockey, but like, you don't even. You don't even ice hockey. So like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. It's so expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's maybe the most Canadian thing about you. That's already what I thought of. I had thought about this earlier in. The thing is that you would love to and watch, but have never really done ice hockey.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. I. I want.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's extremely Canadian because ice hockey is really expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is a. I honestly, as a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kid, too, no money and too small.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a pretty big on the hitting game, but like, genuinely not that many people that I grew up with actually played ice hockey.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Most people that I grew up with played ball hockey because ice hockey is so expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

I spent lots of time on rollerblades, but by the time I was old enough to like participate in roller hockey, I lived in the middle of absolute butt nowhere. So there was no one to do it with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And roller hockey also has a pretty major expense problem as far as my understanding goes. It is cheaper.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's still a pretty major expense problem. So that. That was my kind of answer is that you like it, watch it, would like to do it, never have.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, hear me out. We got a. We finally got one. We got it. We got an LED wall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is. Yeah. This is so incredibly unrelated.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you see it? No. It's not unrelated. It's very related. Trust me. So. So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, we're gonna watch hockey on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

We didn't get the wall, but we did get a wall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I saw it in operation last night, but did you. It was just playing white bars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So, like, I. I saw it in operation today. One of the first thoughts I had was, hey, guess what's coming up? Yeah, Winter Olympics, baby. Oh. Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really like watching the Olympics.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I sent a. I sent a note over to hr. I want to do at least quarter, semi, finals, watch parties. Yeah, on the wall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

On the a wall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, this thing is incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very excited.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do they put the long Linus image on it yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, probably not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It will happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I'm sure it will.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They'll also play crab rave on it at some point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Almost certainly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Daniel Besser]

Once upon a wan show, Linus said something like, life is about sales and equating it to finding a mate. Would you expand on that more? Assuming I'm remembering this somewhat accurately?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I understand what they're saying, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a topic. Not quoting it exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So what I said was that everything in life. Life is aided by a familiarity with sales techniques is what I was. Is what I was trying to get across. And what I was explaining is that just because you don't work in sales, you know, selling cables or. Or fancy blue screwdrivers or whatever, whatever it is, doesn't mean that you can ignore the principles of salesmanship. Because everything from selling your idea to a colleague, you can have the best idea in the world. But if you can't convince anybody else of it, then the world will be worse for you not being able to sell that idea. Do you kind of get what I mean? And in the same way, selling yourself the value of yourself can help you make connections, whether they're friendships or whether they're relationships. And so learning to. Learning to speak, learning to. To just sort of analyze something and figure out, you know, what's. What's good about this, what needs to you have, and is this a match? These are just extremely valuable skills that we think of as like, sales. You ick sales, but can be very important just in life, in everything that you do. And one of the things examples I gave was. Yes, finding a romantic partner.

[Daniel Besser]

Hi, dll. Hope you're having a great Friday. Linus, what was your favorite part of the process of developing the true spec cables?

[Linus Sebastian]

I got pretty excited when I first saw the cable stock, and I was like, she thick. Like, that was pretty cool. Just like seeing. I learned a lot. That's one of my favorite things about whatever it is, whether it's like a content acquisition or a video we're making, that's different from anything we've done before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Externally, your most excited communication was about the facts. This is really interesting. When we were down at that land house and you got the one person excited, you were talking about the coaxial nature and like all these different things, like you're, you're into the, the specs and how it became a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I like to. I like to. I like to solve problems. I like to learn about problems. I like to. I like it when something is just like, better. So, yeah, I guess that's about it. But yeah, yeah, just the, the shielding, learning, you know, why every other cable is the way that it is and learning that it doesn't have to be like that. It was pretty cool.

[Daniel Besser]

Dear Wandan. Thank you, Luke. Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hi, ma'. Am.

[Daniel Besser]

Did you ever. Did you ever meet or talk to Jason Momoa when you were at the Tonight Show?

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't get to.

[Daniel Besser]

You mentioned being excited and you never talked about it. I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Afterwards, no, I didn't get to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw him without his pants on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Daniel Besser]

Is that a unique experience?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, to be honest. Not sure.

[Daniel Besser]

Okay, this one's for Luke then. It often seems like you're the voice of reason or morals on the WAN show. What is the most memorable time you've had to step up and say something at lmg?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, not on the WAN show. I was going to be like, okay, that's pretty obvious answer. I have no idea. It happens on the WAN show a lot more explicitly than basically anywhere else. That's not just because Linus is on the show, it's because it's live. There's a lot less, like, pressure to correct when it's not live. And people will much more often catch themselves. Because when we're on the WAN show, it's about the next thing at all points in time. And when you're in like a meeting, you might say something and then think about what you just said while someone else is talking for a little bit and then correct. And it's like it's more casual. Right. So it's like, I think it's less.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rancho is also performative to a degree. Like, we're live, we're not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there's pushing things to extremes because it's supposed to be a show.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll play Devil's advocate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We will.

[Linus Sebastian]

We will sort of. We'll be a little more. A little more animated. I wouldn't say that Luke and I are not, like, real on the WAN show. I think, if anything, pretty real. It's a. It's kind of a relief to do WAN show because we can just kind of. Kind of drop the charade.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's still a show.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it's still a show. An amount and number one, is still make an entertaining show. We can't just go full business meeting on the show. At least not all the time. Sometimes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes it's useful, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not trying to cop out. I just. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

You also gotta remember that part of it is, like, Luke's role on the show. Like, just because I say something and Luke steps in and is the voice of reason, doesn't mean that behind the scenes there aren't things that we agree on. I might. My position might be a lot closer to his, even if the way that I explained it isn't great. And his position might be a lot closer to mine, even if he knows that you guys can't hear that right now. Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My eyes started twitching on that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm wondering, like, I don't know, man. Oh, like, some of our. Some of our, like, biggest scandals have just become kind of a mainstream opinion at this point. Like, the ad block is piracy. One is a great example.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My thing. I'm still honestly mostly just confused on that one because, like, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

You were framed as, like, voice of reason on it, but I don't think you ever actually, like, said you disagreed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was I framed a voice reason on that one?

[Linus Sebastian]

In general.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know. In general. I don't know about that one. I don't know how you said it originally. You do this thing sometimes where you. You calibrate on WAN show.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where you'll say something like, that's true. Really intensely and dramatically, and then get the feedback and be like, all right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that's a perfect example. Is that where we were like, okay, fine, we'll call it privateering. Because actually, technically, piracy is this, you know, rigidly defined crime. And it's not a crime, what I'm doing. And that's nice. But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Functionally speaking, my thing is just. It just doesn't offend me. Well, like, at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it's the people who are not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So upset about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's because you're not an insecure little bitch, maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I honestly, though, I Just like, I just don't care, like, if.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I know it's because you're not an insecure. Insecure little. That's why. It's that simple. And see, this is one of those things where I'm gonna say this thing and then he's gonna kind of do the Luke thing, where he kind of, like, absorbs sort of my very direct energy and he laughs and is likable, and you guys like him for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stop perceiving me. Yeah, I don't know. I. I think when I wear the hat, I wear the hat proudly and just don't care.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, and I think you're not an insecure little bitch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is part. This is. This is part of what I think Linus was saying the whole time, which is that he's not actually judging you for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's just saying that it is a thing, and that's fine. And back in my day, everyone that I knew wore the hat proud.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't think, like, who cares, dude?

[Linus Sebastian]

When I said it, I didn't think it was going to be controversial.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought this whole. Whole community wore the hat proud.

[Linus Sebastian]

So at that point, dude, I was so confused by the. I'm still confused. There are people who are still mad at me about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I also think there's good reasons. There's. There's malvertizing. There's, like, all these other kind of things, but sure, just. Just wear the hat, dude. Whatever. I. Yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man. We never said don't do it. We said. What I said. What I said was, you need to understand the consequences.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And there are consequences.

[Linus Sebastian]

There are consequences.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, the erosion of independent news media is a consequence of people not being willing to pay for it. That's a consequence. Yeah. Okay. The current degradation of the YouTube service maybe would have happened anyway, but the rate that it's going at is almost certainly a consequence of not every user contributing monetarily to the service's ongoing operation. These are consequences. Not saying don't do it. I'm just saying understand the consequences. And if you're gonna wear the hat, just fucking wear it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wear it, and just don't worry about it. And you don't have to. It's not. It's not like, if you're like, oh, I'm very against, like, pirating, you know, music and games and books. The. The only thing that I do in this field is ad blogging. You still wear the hat. Just with your. Your special caveats. Everyone has their own line. Everyone's lines are slightly different and that's totally okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And when someone calls you on it, don't go home, crawl into your bed, curl up in a ball and cry like a little bitch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think there's still. I think on top of that there's a good argument of like. And this isn't. It's not against the law to do ad blocking, to be clear. But even if it was, like at very few points, if any, in history has the law been truly a good moral compass for everyone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we've had to have that conversation with our kids a couple times actually. Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, just because it's a more advanced conversation. Yeah, I suspect those were more recent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But like eh. I'm. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I need to go pretty quick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

What time am I supposed to be where I'm supposed to be?

[Daniel Besser]

I was told.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought it was.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought it was six. Okay, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They might have told us something on purpose, which would have been a gamer move.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, wicked smart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Tell that to Iran. I'm sure the vast majority of people in Iran feel that very strongly right now. Like, yeah, I don't think I have to tell that to Iran. I think they know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think they'd hear it. I think their Internet is turned off.

[Daniel Besser]

Right, Come on team, speak. Hello, Dll Linus. I wanted to ask how your Expedition 33 is going. Where are you act wise. And how we. And how woo are you feeling about it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Daniel Besser]

What is your current party config?

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't even get the reference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't. But I really liked how Dan voice acted. It.

[Linus Sebastian]

Current party config is all ladies all the time. They're my girls. And part of it is because I just like their style. And part of it is that I invested a lot of Lumina points into them and as far as I can tell, that's the one thing you can't respec. So yeah, Lumina, Lumia, whatever, whatever it is the points that allow you to assign more abilities and whatnot that are not directly equipped to them. So yep, I've got my absolute fire goddess Mile and then I've got Loon with the cheater ability so that she can one, two punch the just the cheap lightning one. And then the like absolute atom bomb Earth single target attack. And then what have I got going on with Seal? I forget. Basically she's just. She's a nuke in general. So. Good stuff. I have no idea if that's the right meta. I, I, I've been studiously avoiding spoilers and anything that will affect the way that I play the game. I'm not even going to be looking at chat right now because I just want to play the game and enjoy the game and if I ever do another run through then I'll be more than happy to like search for where to find, you know, that ability or that weapon or you know, whatever else. But I want to explore the game world. I want to immerse myself in it. I want to have fun. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want it to become a job. I want to play a game and I'm just enjoying the heck out of it. I'm like ridiculously over leveled at this point just because I just want to fight everything and explore everywhere and it's been an absolute blast. I'm really enjoying the game. I'm on the third act. What else can I say that would not have any spoilers in it to speak of? How's it going? Where are you? Act wise. How you feeling about it? Yeah, really, really enjoying it though. Such a, such a good game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even playing for once though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think. Well, it's hard to tell. My, my hours in game get kind of messed up when I didn't mean it that way. Using the GPD Win5 and it doesn't go to sleep and the game is open so it gets like an extra eight hours on it overnight. So Steam says 50 hours, but it's probably more like 30, 35. But yeah, yeah, I've been enjoying the heck out of it. I, I have completed all of the beaches. Those of you who are in the know will know. So someone said that I hadn't done the most frustrating one yet when I said something about one that was very frustrating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have. I actually did not find it as frustrating as the one that I had done before. It was just kind of there's a little bit of luck involved in one of them, but I have done them all and gotten the utterly worthless rewards from all of them. And I proudly have my worthless rewards.

[Daniel Besser]

Couple more here. Bingle, dongle, dingle, dangle. How absurd are your plans for Tech House? Can we look forward to voice activated chandeliers at Fruit or local LLM butlers in the wall?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not absurd. Guy. Our buyer, our target for it is meant to be like, you know, a guy. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You named your theoretical buyer?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's kind of neat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. His wife Is Gal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

GI and gal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, nice. G and gal. So GG we kind of, we kind of created a profile for him and there was some concern raised in the community that you know, the things that we were doing might not have wife acceptance factor.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So this is a way to keep that in mind.

[Linus Sebastian]

But this is a hundred percent. We know from the start that that was going to need to be a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gal needs to accept it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly. So we need to make sure that it is acceptable to her. So there will be places that are going to be a little bit more guy zone. But one of the things that Jordan was doing today as he went through with. With our camera crew and got some before shots was he. He brought someone with two X chromosomes to ask the important questions like where would I put a full length mirror? Things that we and guy may not consider. But we absolutely do need to accommodate stuff like that. So should be a good balance.

[Daniel Besser]

Linus, how do you like the garment? I've been wearing one for many years and I low.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's fine. I. I think I just might not be a smartwatch person. I think that might be the bottom line for me. I might get a Casio calculator watch or something because I think I'm just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Those are pretty sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I'm just over it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Those are pretty sick. Yep.

[Daniel Besser]

And the last one I have, you can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can get like baller Casios watch custom. I'm not a watch guy. I can't be. I would lose it immediately.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if I want to like advertise this guy's site.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't want to get an analog watch. My brain is usually too tired to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, this guy customizes Casios. What makes them like a bunch of different.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This one I think looks pretty sweet. I haven't seen that before but it reminds me of like 80s car speedometers.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a. There's a bunch of different types.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness. There's so many.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Again, I would never buy one for myself. I would lose it instantaneously.

[Linus Sebastian]

How is the watch market so big that like this exists? I just don't understand it.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah, it's the only fashion accessory for men.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's so not true. Belts, earrings. There they are. Okay. Not earrings.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you're cool, you can have the wrist things of like leather strips and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some people do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people off cufflinks. Okay. Maybe not as much of a thing anymore.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah, that's what I've got. Greetings Earth humans. Have you had issues with unexpected items being put through the CT scanner? Who is the first to scan their lunch? And have you found issues with non standard materials?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not that I'm aware of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think anybody yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah. Not entertaining.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have a pretty good company full of pretty reasonable people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a really good question, but I don't think we can answer it. Super well. I am certain there has been some things you might not necessarily expect scanned. But Lucas would honestly be the better person to ask that. Maybe next time, time you see him post a labs article on Reddit, you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can give them an ask Binky draws says Linus. Consider watches are cool. If you like mechanical things. Totally cool. And I can go to a Bulgari store and I can look at it and I can be like whoa, that's cool. And then I can leave it sounds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like what I would do. It might skip the first step.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like the zoo. I could, I could go and I could see an animal and I'd be like, wow, cool animal. And then I could go home.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was. I don't know, man. I heard about this watch one time where they're like, oh, it tracks the like phases of the moon.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was like, wow, that sounds really.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's learn all about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I looked it up and then was like, have you ever seen it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so. I think I know the one you're talking about.

[Daniel Besser]

Sounds like a Petit Philippe or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think It's a Rolex. 32 and a half thousand dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

We got it.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, an entry level one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Yeah, that's, that's so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

32 and a half thousand dollars. Pre owned.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it looks fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it looks beautiful. Yeah. Nice.

[Daniel Besser]

Great starter watch for.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Daniel Besser]

Low income.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like you know what if someone had a, if someone had a little like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One and a half times.

[Linus Sebastian]

If someone had a little watch museum and they had the watches and they had like a little placard that you could read about it and that could.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually be quite interesting. Especially if they had like versions where you could see the motion.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or if like they had a little interactive like, like, like blow up thing that so you could see how what everything's doing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You turn the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which makes the motion move. That is like could you take a.

[Daniel Besser]

Novelty picture with the watch?

[Linus Sebastian]

That'd be so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably not.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you gotta pay a lot for that. I would, I would enjoy the heck out of that museum experience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably Pretty sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I. It's just. It's not the kind of thing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they look super neat. Yeah, I'm not gonna buy one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man. I don't know what it would take for G shocks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, people like G shocks.

[Linus Sebastian]

My.

[Daniel Besser]

My smartwatch is round and it has a screen in it. And then it can display pictures of those other watches on my watch.

[Linus Sebastian]

I had this conversation with somebody the other day that basically went like, I understand the concept of jewelry, but I think I would just rather have the raw metal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a. Wait, someone else said that?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, that was me who said that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a very. Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was having a conversation with them about jewelry.

[Daniel Besser]

That could actually be an art piece. Jewelry statement, which makes it even better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How much? How much?

[Linus Sebastian]

Wearing a hunk of gold that doesn't tell time on your wrist.

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah, you know, it's subversive. Like, that's actually good. That could probably sell for a lot of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've got nowhere to be. It doesn't matter what time it is.

[Daniel Besser]

I've seen one that was like a little tiny whiteboard, and it had a micro marker, like, attached to it, and you could just write the time on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's cute. Minus just reinvented the bracelet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How big?

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, no. You can have a gold wire and just manually bend it around your arm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't you have, like, ear piercings? I do. I have a bunch of ear piercings. I think they're gold. They might also just be sterling silver. I don't even know what they are. And in the entire time that I've been on the Internet, they haven't changed, except if I lost one. So I. I really don't. I don't think about it a lot. Gold bar bracelets exist. You've got to be kidding me. Gold bar bracelet? Okay, let's. Let's check this out. Let's check this out. That's not a gold bar. I want to see a gold bar. Yeah. Nah, this is not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, with the amount of money that it would cost to buy that moon phase watch, you can buy it. The. The Googles are. I think these things might be out of date. There's a lot of disagreeance, but it's like 7.3 troy ounces, which I don't necessarily know what that converts to.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, the thing I'm looking for doesn't exist. Okay, sorry. I'll go over to your.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'd be like a. No, I already closed it. It'd be like A bar of gold on a strap. Yeah, that's what he's talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, would you want it to be a gold strap or just, like, a leather strap with a bar of gold stuck on it? Because you want all the gold condensed, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. That's smart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Daniel Besser]

So I was thinking more of an unrefined, like, lump.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're talking this thing. Yeah. On a. On a strap. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Daniel Besser]

But would you want it to look like a bar? Because to me, the kind of. I just want the raw metal. It would be like an unprocessed hunk of gold. Like. Like, you would melt it down. It'd be 100% gold, I think. But then it would just kind of, like, be in a lump.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you were, like, a prospector and it was, like, gold that you, like, mined or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Totally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then that's badass.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if you're just trying to flex, then. No, it's got to be. It's got to be, like, proper.

[Daniel Besser]

Oh, no, this wasn't flex. This was an architement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Like, it's got to be. It's got to be four nines. Royal Canadian Mint, plus a leather bar, a leather band.

[Daniel Besser]

Awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know that streamer who did the I've got your whole house on my wrist thing?

[Daniel Besser]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've got your whole watch on my wrist.

[Daniel Besser]

I love that. I think I can see an entire series where you have. You have different watch price points, and they're all leather bands. But the cost of the watch has a different amount of gold in it. So, like, $35,000 of gold. You have a Patek Philippe that's like 1.2 million if this big lump of gold. But they're all, like, the same watch. And then you can just compare your lumps of gold, and it would be the same depending on, like, market forces.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna say all the pricing for the watches could just be market rate.

[Daniel Besser]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. Excuse me. Five nines. The Royal Canadian Mint was the first to reach five nines.

[Daniel Besser]

That'd be great art series. Somebody should do that. Linus, can I borrow $27 million? Actually, it's less after today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's just a small project.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. No, Dan. Bye.