Scams Are Legal Now - WAN Show October 4, 2024

Summary

Summary of "Scams Are Legal Now - WAN Show October 4, 2024"

The WAN Show, hosted by Linus Tech Tips, delves into the murky waters of advertising legality, corporate puffery, and emerging technological privacy concerns in this October 4, 2024 episode titled "Scams Are Legal Now."

---

1. Tesla's Self-Driving Claims Under Scrutiny

[00:53]
Linus Sebastian opens the discussion with a significant legal update: a judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit alleging that Tesla exaggerated its self-driving capabilities. This dismissal is rooted in the defense that Elon Musk's statements amounted to corporate puffery rather than fraudulent misrepresentation.

[00:55]
Luke Lafreniere concurs, noting the case sets a "good precedent."

[03:09]
Linus expands on his frustration, expressing skepticism about the legal system's ability to enforce truthful advertising. He criticizes Tesla for repeatedly overpromising on autonomous features, referencing Musk's recurring "next year" statements that have yet to materialize.
Quote:
"I don't know how to have a conversation with someone where we are not grounded in the same basic truth, that being a shifty character is not good." — Linus Sebastian [09:10]

2. Defining Puffery vs. False Advertising

[10:33]
The hosts dissect the legal definition of puffery—vague, non-verifiable statements made by corporations. They debate its limits, differentiating between harmless exaggerations and misleading, impactful claims that could deceive investors and consumers alike.

[11:07]
Linus provides a hypothetical scenario illustrating false praise, emphasizing the thin line between corporate enthusiasm and deceptive marketing.
Quote:
"That's puffery. That's Non verifiable. That's, it's, it's non objective." — Linus Sebastian [10:59]

3. Corporate Practices and Reputation Management

[15:04]
The conversation shifts to how corporations handle partnerships and misrepresentations. Linus applauds companies like Ghost Keyboards for rectifying false endorsements, lauding their sincere apologies and refund policies.
Quote:
"This is how you deal with it. We messed up. We take responsibility. We are going to learn from our mistakes." — Linus Sebastian [56:45]

4. Privacy Concerns with DIY Facial Recognition Glasses

[30:33]
A pressing topic emerges as Riley discusses an alarming development where Harvard students created DIY facial recognition glasses capable of identifying strangers and compiling personal dossiers. This technology, while not novel, raises significant privacy and ethical concerns.
Quote:
"This is the scary part—the form factor is terrifying because somebody can walk into a bathroom wearing a pair of glasses and stream data without detection." — Linus Sebastian [38:09]

5. Amazon's Dark Patterns and Hidden Price Increases

[62:29]
Linus highlights Amazon's questionable practices with Ring Protect plans. Legacy customers were unexpectedly migrated to a Pro plan doubling their annual fee from $100 to $200 without clear upfront communication. The email notifications minimized the change, relegating crucial information to footnotes, exemplifying deceptive "dark patterns."
Quote:
"Amazon has not given a reason for the price increase. This is flipping wild." — Linus Sebastian [62:56]

6. Lifetime Warranties and Consumer Misunderstandings

[15:04]
The hosts explore the often misleading nature of "lifetime warranties," clarifying that such warranties typically exclude wear and tear, focusing only on manufacturing defects.
Quote:
"Technically, legally, it is. That's a warranty." — Linus Sebastian [84:02]

7. Return Policies and E-Waste Implications

[87:11]
Linus candidly shares his past misuse of generous return policies, such as returning high-end electronics after brief use for content creation. He acknowledges the ethical implications and the unintended contribution to electronic waste.
Quote:
"I have taken advantage of generous return policies before. I shouldn't have." — Linus Sebastian [88:10]

8. Sponsorships and Community Engagement

Throughout the episode, the hosts intersperse discussions with sponsor messages, promoting brands like Manscaped, Squarespace, and 1Password. They emphasize the importance of community support through "merch messages," encouraging listeners to engage and support the show by purchasing merchandise.

Merch Message Example:
"If you want to interact with the WAN show, the best way to do it is to send a merch message like Chris F. Down here. Instead of sending super chats or twitch bits..." — Linus Sebastian [46:45]

9. The Challenge of Managing Corporate Promises and Realities

[79:27]
Linus reflects on early business challenges, particularly around crafting enduring warranties and maintaining trust without overpromising. He recounts past controversies where verbal assurances clashed with contractual terms, highlighting the delicate balance between customer expectations and legal obligations.

[86:00]
The discussion touches on broader societal issues related to power dynamics and wealth concentration. The hosts debate the ethical responsibilities of the wealthy, the impact of excessive ownership, and the potential for abuse of power in modern corporations.

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Conclusion

In this episode, The WAN Show navigates complex topics surrounding the legality of deceptive corporate practices, the fine line between puffery and false advertising, and the burgeoning concerns over privacy in an age of invasive technology. Linus and Luke provide insightful critiques of current industry standards, advocating for greater transparency and ethical responsibility. Their candid discussions aim to educate listeners on recognizing and understanding the nuances of modern scams and the importance of consumer awareness.

Notable Quotes:

• "We're one of those inverted pyramid YouTube companies where if you leave, we're in trouble." — Linus Sebastian [161:30]
• "I'm tired of it." — Linus Sebastian [69:58]
• "Companies aren't here to make you happy. That's a hopefully intended byproduct of them making money." — Luke Lafreniere [82:03]

This comprehensive episode serves as a crucial reminder of the evolving landscape of technology and business ethics, urging both creators and consumers to stay informed and vigilant.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get a hundred dollar credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be. To be. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys today. I forget what our title was, so. Oh yes, now I remember. Ah. A judge has decided that Elon Musk's statements about, you know, the things that their cars were going to do and be capable of were simply puffery. Which is not a problem. It's awesome and not fraudulent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really good precedent.

[Linus Sebastian]

So for advertising, on the heels of our discussion about what is or isn't a scam, last week we'll be talking about an actual scam and how apparently that's legal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the LTT screwdriver, by the way, is gonna automatically screw screws in for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I don't actually. Okay, I get what you're trying to do here, but I don't actually wanna make false statements about our products. They will not do that. What your. What your smart glasses might do though, is dox anyone and everyone who happens to be near you. A couple of students made an invasive DIY facial recognition glasses system that does just that. And we'll be talking about how this could usher in a whole new level of future dystopia. Yay. Do you have any good news? Can you do good news?

[Riley]

Let's see.

[Linus Sebastian]

We got Amazon dark patterns. We got.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I was going to say I didn't have any prepped.

[Linus Sebastian]

Give me good news. Good news. Let's go. Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good news or not, Minority Report is coming. That's not good Returns is actually not good either. Nintendo is suing. People can't protest anymore. Nvidia is doing Nvidia things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, forget it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. The negative show about bad things.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by manscaped squarespace1 password. And of course our chair partner, Secret Lab, our laptop partner, LG and our skin partner, dBrand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you not even looked at the table? Did you not absorb the table yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the table's orange.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love how you're able to do this sometimes. Well, I was spoiled that you never.

[Linus Sebastian]

Noticed it was an ad. I couldn't see it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes sense. That makes sense. It like glows. It's crazy. It doesn't actually glow, but just because of like the lighting in the room and stuff. It looks like it's almost glowing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, cool. Well, we'll be talking about that later. Or not. I don't know. Whatever. The table's orange. Now, let's jump right into our headline topic, shall we?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. A judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit that alleged that Tesla had made misleading statements exaggerating the capabilities of its self driving systems. And this is where I feel like I'm about to go off script. And we're about to talk a little bit more about a personal, you know, thought that I've had many times. The legal system seems broken, doesn't it? Oh, yeah, it seems broken. It feels like. It feels like there needs to be like a common sense filter sometimes, you know, where the argument could be, you know, hey, we're Coca Cola. Yeah. We hired death squads. But it was outside of your jurisdiction. So what, what are you going to do about it? That's an actual thing that happened. So there you go. Their defense literally wasn't that they didn't do it, it was that it's outside your jurisdiction so you can't charge us for it. That was the defense and I just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like we need a common sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, something that I genuinely don't understand about this is the whole Red Bull gives you wings thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like they had to add the like. Red Bull doesn't actually give you wings.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, isn't there. There's more of those. It's not just Red Bull. It's like a bunch of different.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn't it like Skittles doesn't actually show a rainbow and they have to like clarify that.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like McDonald's can't say, have you had your break today? Because nobody gets a break and, you know, not in this economy. Take a break so you could go do gig work. Have you had your breakfast?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn't it Kit Kat?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, dude, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Microsoft, McDonald's. OK, child, that was their jingle. Have you had your break today?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huh?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Don't worry about it then. There was never any kind of litigation over that. I was just, I was making a really terrible reference to my childhood.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But essentially false advertising claims in the past, even ones that are like obvious, have usually had to be clarified. However, if they're just supposed to be fun, like the Red Bull thing, they still have to clarify.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's pretty clear that Tesla has repeatedly, repeatedly, and it's got to be knowingly at this point, misrepresented the capabilities of their autonomous driving feature. And I'm going to use the world's largest finger quotes. Actually, I'm going to need bigger finger quotes. Thank you. Those are much bigger finger quotes than mine. I appreciate that. No problem. However, the judge dismissed the lawsuit and Tesla's lawyers. This is really important. Tesla's lawyers did not defend the claims that they had made on the grounds that they were true. Right. So they, you know, back to the Coca Cola death squads. They're not defending themselves because we didn't do the thing that was bad. It's more about the loophole. It's about the technicality. Rather, they have claimed that these statements that were not true were merely corporate puffery. The lawyers argued that vague statements of corporate optimism are not objectively verifiable and that no reasonable investor would rely on these statements.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hmm. Hmm. How's Tesla stock doing again?

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, I think it's been on a tear lately. I don't, don't quote me on that. I don't, I don't keep track of it. The judge, having sided with Tesla's lawyers, is therefore agreeing that a reasonable person would have seen CEO Elon Musk's statements as obvious bluster and exaggeration. I strongly disagree. I mean, how many times do we have to go through this whole, yeah, next year, next year, next year thing before it becomes pretty clear that it's not coming next year? I mean, do you, it's been, it's been really interesting to watch the recent pivot to the fully autonomous robo taxi project, when that's what was promised.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For each and every Tesla owner. I shouldn't say promised because apparently it was puffered. That's what was puffered for each and every Tesla owner years ago was that their car was going to make them money. Like their car was going to operate as a robo taxi while they were at work making the money. It was like an, it was an investment.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I found this website. I just found it now. I don't know how perfect it is, I've never looked at this website before, etcetera, But I think it's pretty fantastic, actually. It's called Mother Frunker.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's the full self driving timeline. I just found this now. So it's different quotes about what the cars will be able to do, you know, are going to end up with complete autonomy. And I think, think we will have completed Autonomy in approximately two years from 2015 with the source.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. That was not two years ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just go all the way down. I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem. I think we are less than two years away from a complete autonomy 2016.

[Linus Sebastian]

Six months, definitely. That was back in 2016 as well. You'll be able to fall asleep in a Tesla. Probably be able to deliver Teslas with autonomy in about a year. That's up to the regulators. Yeah. No, it isn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of the funniest things.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is wild. I can't believe somebody. Yeah, I can't believe somebody actually compiled all of this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It might even be missing some. I have no idea. Like, I don't. I haven't looked at the site before. The thing that I found most entertaining about this, actually, is that they gave up at some point. They stopped tracking in 2022.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, imagine your defense being if someone. Like if someone files a lawsuit calling you a liar who misled them and caused material damage to them, imagine your defense being. Well, obviously I lied. I lie all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you be stupid enough to believe me? Like, come on. I get that there are a handful of you that are musk sycophants, and that's cool. You do. You. But I stand behind the things that I do not appreciate about his approach to business and lying about the capabilities of your products and misleading people. That is. That is. That is a scam. And scams are bad. And they are not something to be looked up to. And I just. I don't know how to. I don't know how to have a conversation with someone where we are not grounded in the same basic truth, that being a shifty character is not good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that it's not to be applauded or respected. It's actually bad. We can appreciate good things that someone accomplished, but we don't have to. We don't have to respect the extremely shady behavior that they engage in. Yeah. Cool. So anyway, I don't. I don't know how to. I don't know how to reconcile this to your point with the other. With the other false advertising precedent that has been set over the years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, it's. It's. It's a bit of a. I don't know, it's an interesting line because puffery could make sense. Like, if you're like, oh, this thing is amazing, blah, blah, blah, and it's just. Okay, like that's, that's how I think puffery should be used.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exaggerated or false praise? You know, if exaggerated, I think could be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, okay. False, I don't think.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no false praise. Let me give you a context where false praise could be. Could be corporate puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So let's say, okay, I'm still CEO. Okay. We're hypothetical scenario. I'm up on stage at. In the line of Sebastian Theater, you know, whatever. I'm talking about our latest innovation in, I don't know, lapel technology or whatever. Collar technology.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. And I'm standing there and auto pop. Anyway, so I'm talking about this great long sleeve shirt that's available on lttstore.com and our chief technical officer or whatever the heck your job is these days. I honestly don't even know. It doesn't matter. Walks up to the stage in a scripted moment, shakes my hand and goes, man, Linus, you look better than in any other outfit I've ever seen. You know, that's false. That's false praise. You know, like I think my birthday suit looks a lot better than this personally. And. Well, the point is, the point is that that's not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that false praise? What if he actually thought that?

[Linus Sebastian]

But what if you didn't? It doesn't really matter. This is clearly a scripted. A scripted moment. Yeah. You are engaging with me in a way that could obviously be perceived to be just kind of corporate nonsense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not saying this shirt will have active cooling in two years.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Or saying something along the lines of like, this is the most innovative shirt we've ever made.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's just clearly exaggerated. And it's puffy and it's kind of whatever and it's non specific.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Doesn't really mean anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think that's, that's one of the problems. And that's where, I mean, I think that's where someone like a Red Bull runs into trouble. They're making a very specific statement. Red Bull gives you wings. Which even if you don't interpret it literally, you could interpret to mean that it makes you move faster potentially. Right. And it is an energy beverage. And so maybe, yeah, potentially there's methamphetamine in it. I don't know. You won't slow down. Like you could actually misinterpret that. But that's the thing with the self driving. It's not. These are not vague statements. Our self driving technology is world leading. That's puffery. That's Non verifiable. That's, it's, it's non objective. But saying go back to the, go back to the thing for a sec.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh well, I left it. So give me a sec, I gotta find it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure. This is specific. Go, go to some of the newer stuff because the newer stuff ends up being a little. Oh my goodness. The newer stuff ends up being a bit more. Anyway, the point is what is solved problem is a very specific statement. That doesn't, that doesn't mean, you know, we're really confident our world class team can solve this problem. That's puffery. You know, you're talking up the capabilities of your team. You're engaging in the kind of thing that if you said anything other than that could be like, you know, could be potentially seen as like bullying. Like if you were to say anything other than. I have complete faith in my team to deliver on this amazing new technology. If you were to say that on a stage, that would be terrible. The optics would be terrible. So I could see corporate puffery as something that you have to say. You essentially have to say that you believe in your plan and that the team is engaged in moving forward with it. You don't have to say, let's see, it will be capable of level 5 autonomy by the end of this year. That is extremely specific. That's not puffery. That's just a lie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And not only are you saying that, but you're saying it already has the hardware capability. Like we can remotely deliver this feature to you in the thing that you already own if you buy it today. Like that type of stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Corey is the name says. Can you think of any examples in which LTT has engaged in corporate puffery? Y. Yeah, yeah, I look at the store, I think that there have been cases where we've had. Oh man, nothing. Nothing product specific I don't think. But like we've, I've definitely said things that are, that are not necessarily true to the best of my knowledge. Like, particularly around someone like, like an ex employee. I would always talk up what they've done really well. I would never talk about why we parted ways, whether it was, was good or bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So in that case it was more, it's more down to, you know, confidentiality and professionalism. That's less puffy. It's not really marketing though. Okay, so hold on. Have we ever, have we ever puffered in our marketing? You know what, I'm going to, I'm going to throw this back to you guys. I'm gonna throw this back to you guys. No, I don't think, trust me, bro, would count as puffery. I think we have in good faith taken the best possible care of anyone who's had a problem with our products. It's not always been the most timely. We're a small team. Our customer support is on shore, you know, so we don't operate around the clock. You know, sometimes in particular when we have a long weekend or something. I'm sorry that our team gets long weekends.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Our video is a product.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think videos are our product thumbnails. Is that puffery though? Because the puffery here. What's puffery? Exaggerated or false praise though? It's not, it's not, it's praise specifically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How is saying it will have full self driving praise then?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it's not, it's not puffery. That's the whole, that's the whole thing I'm mad about is that's not puffery at all. That's a specific statement about the capability of the product that could absolutely mislead an investor or a company customer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Someone who flow plane chat, I think. Got it. Oh, there's two of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. They hit me on the world class thing. I knew that was coming. I knew world class was coming. I didn't want to address it. I will often, in fact, internally, the way that I'll refer to our team as world class is a bit of a meme. We have a world class team in a literal sense. I don't actually think it's puffery. We compete with the best in the world in the tech media space, tech entertainment, tech education. We are very, very competitive around the world. We are a world class team. We have a global reach for our brand and for our content. We are a world class team. However, a lot of the time I use world class and we use world class team in a verbally ironic manner internally. So you know, someone will leave the bathroom in a deplorable state.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna give the exact same example.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pee all over the seat, pee all over the floor. What looks like it could be pee in the sink.

[Luke Lafreniere]

World class.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the first thing that people will start talking about on teams is world class.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So God, I don't think that's puffery though. I think, I think, okay, yes, it can be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, it can be. But verbal irony is also not puffery. In order to be puffery, it has to be seen as an earnest statement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is where like the lines get so blurry.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do get blurry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They get so blurry.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do get blurry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someone also pointed out world class employees don't have time to aim. Sorry. That was really funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're busy making world class videos.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Another one that was brought up by somebody was, we have a great show for you today. A bunch of people have brought that one up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Intro and wan show.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We say, like, every time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I think that is an example of puffery. Yeah. Sometimes the show is gonna be. And we know it, but, like, it's not good salesmanship to say, yeah, we got nothing this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've done it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which means you're not wrong. Actually, I've. Actually I've found that some of those shows have been pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes they're there. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You never know. It has less to do with the topics, and it has more to do with, like, how much sleep either of us has had. And there's a. There's like. There's a Goldilocks zone. If we've had absolutely none, it's like, all right, getting on to our next topic. Yeah, I'm mad about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But if we're like, yeah, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

But then. But then, like, if we're really well rested, everything is pretty sane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's this, like, you need a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Little bit of derangement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. There's this magic zone where it's like, we're not really running on quite enough sleep and neither of us caffeinates, so we just start to get a little loopy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like the Japan show was, like, definitely one of those.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, 100%. With our camera operator passed out behind the lens. Yeah, I was worried about him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, me too. He's a tank.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you guys have definitely, definitely caught us on a couple of. On a couple. On a couple of pufferies, but I think when it comes to our products. I know. I don't think we. Puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like there's. There's gotta be some thumbnails, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thumbnails. I don't think thumbnails are puffery, though. You don't. You can't. You don't exaggerate the. What is it? Praise. You don't falsely praise or exaggerate the. Praise the video like I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Best computer we've ever made. I'm looking. I'm not there yet. Why did I look up you.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are you even doing? Do you even compute? By the way? That's a great video. Go back. Do you not even. Do you not even alt left arrow? What is. What is your problem? There down left. That's freaking awesome. I watched it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Canuck creator just like casually showed up at the studio. Tynan did a great job just showing him some of our. Some of our prototyping tools that we use. There's this sort of perception every once in a while when we actually do a video in the workshop, you'll see the odd comment that's like, man, they spent so much money on this workshop. They never use it. They don't. People don't know what we use it for. And I think part of that's on us because we don't really talk about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It for a long time. We should do engineering video. I think we should have a YouTube channel that has no upload cadence. We commit to no uploads. But it's LMG or whatever you want to call it. Umbrella parent company Engineering.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we just show like. Like the oversized screwdrivers. Show how we made those. The, like, metal screwdrivers, the carbon fiber one, the wooden one. All these different cool experiment things that we do. We do tons of cool engineering stuff and we tell no one about it. And there are entire massive YouTubers and entire massive fields of YouTube that are entirely based around just that. And we do it, and we're a content creation company and we don't show anyone. And it drives me nuts.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're actually not wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we could, like. I understand the pressure that the engineering teams don't want to have of needing to churn out content and just don't make required uploads for it, but making.

[Linus Sebastian]

A video makes everything take three times longer. And most of what they use this stuff for is product development.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Which would sell products.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, I know. But it would take three times longer. Look, look, look. Okay, look. Artie is on the CW team now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that he is hard at.

[Linus Sebastian]

Work on content around our. In fact. In fact, he actually shot a video earlier this week. Or wait, was it Artie who shot. I think it was Artie who shot it. It was either Artie or Sammy. They had a camera in front of their face the whole time, and I'm pretty sure it was Artie. Anyway, he actually shot a video of our meeting about the development of the Zuck T shirt. So as part of. As part of our development of a gray shirt. Right, because we wanted kind of like our. The Steve mock neck. We want to do a Zuck T shirt. I'd love to do a Jensen leather jacket as well, but that's going to be a much bigger project. I don't know how many we'd sell. It's a whole thing. Anyway, the point is, we want to do a Zuck T shirt, the Zuckerberg. And as part of our development process, we kind of went, well, shoot. We don't know what's the shirt he wears. We don't know what's special about it. We don't know. We don't know what T shirt a billionaire wears. Apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is it.

[Linus Sebastian]

We answered that question. This is the packaging that a T shirt a billionaire wears comes in. This is from Brunello Cuccinelli. We'll be unboxing it later on the show. We'll be destroying it later on the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because that's part of the product development process. We'll explain what that little machine is. Anyway, the point is, I believe it was Artie actually shot a video of us having the conversation, evaluating this shirt compared to our existing blanks, compared to our existing cotton blanks. Sort of talking about what's good about it, what's not as good about it. It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. And so we're trying to do more of that. We're trying to do more. But anyway, Canuck creator did a great job. Tynan did a great job. It's a really cool little tour, and it gives you a better idea of what exactly it is that we're doing with all of this really cool fabrication stuff. Anyway, so. Yeah. False advertising. Let's go. Or puffery. Puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exaggerated or false praise.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so actually giving you a headache. But that's not it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I literally got a headache.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my. I'm not too surprised.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Part of it is that I forgot to drink water that day. I always get a headache. Yeah, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's perfect.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's perfect. It's unusable, but it's perfect. Yeah, but both of those. Both of those are true. I think together. You can't say that's puffery. I mean, look, if Tesla was like, our autopilot is perfect. It's unusable, that would at least raise questions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would give them plausible deniability about the perfect statement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Last PC building guide you'll ever need.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's if that's actually just true.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is a factual statement. The first one got like 11 or 12 million views. And the comments are just full of like, I just built my PC using this guide.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I built a PC that can't fail.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's. It's a high availability PC. Cluster.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it can't fail.

[Linus Sebastian]

It can't. Can't fail everything. I mean. Okay.

[Dan]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Waterproof.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, that is a slight exaggeration. All right, you know what? You know what? You've got me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It took. It took a lot longer than I thought. We had to go back months. I thought it was going to be pretty quick, but the praise. The praise part makes it difficult.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which I still don't understand because it wasn't. The Elon statements weren't praise.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, they were just. Here's what we're going to do. This is the plan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll have this feature on this.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if you can't believe the CEO of a company about the product roadmap, then who can you believe and I can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I don't think you can ever believe anyone about any product timeline, because no one actually knows. But, like, I think there's also got to be some. Some amount of a limit to things.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, why don't we move on? Because I'm bored. Oh, hey, we've got Riley here. I. I forget.

[Riley]

Speaking of puffery.

[Linus Sebastian]

I totally forgot. I'm so sorry, Riley.

[Riley]

I came to puff. I came to puff up something of my own.

[Linus Sebastian]

Check it out. Check out.

[Riley]

Check us out, guys.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is. What is this again? I forget where.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Jakey.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jakey.

[Riley]

Jakey and Jakey.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Attorneys at law.

[Riley]

Thank you. Am I. Am I yelling into this thing? Do I hold like this?

[Linus Sebastian]

I forget it's. End address.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you're good.

[Riley]

I. Dan. Dan said he could give me. Dan said he could give me a chair, but I decided to just come squat in here awkwardly because I forgot the chair.

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Style.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is truly awkward.

[Dan]

Forgotten.

[Riley]

I like it, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we have an Apple box?

[Riley]

This light is really bright.

[Dan]

Yeah, don't. Don't look at that. It's not.

[Riley]

It's too late.

[Linus Sebastian]

Riley can.

[Dan]

No. Riley.

[Riley]

Linus. Did you know that it was Riley week on float plane this week?

[Linus Sebastian]

I did know that it was Riley week on float plane this week.

[Riley]

Did you know that I did a backflip for you?

[Linus Sebastian]

I know that you cannot do a backflip.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whoa.

[Riley]

You don't know that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do know that.

[Riley]

That's anti puffery.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I watched the Star wars videos. Really good. I really liked it.

[Riley]

Did you watch the whole thing? I heard you were watching it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's fantastic.

[Riley]

Who said that? I think Sammy told me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I liked it a lot.

[Riley]

Well, I thought it was okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sammy told me that it took 10 million years to edit.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not Some periphery. It took a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because it wasn't praise.

[Riley]

Yeah, yeah, no, I. It took a long time. It took. I. Not gonna lie. I stayed up all night, a couple nights to get the script done and to do the guidance.

[Linus Sebastian]

You didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you really?

[Riley]

I won't go all the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cause I don't know.

[Riley]

I don't know where your mouth is. You've been puffing up a lot of things, so.

[Dan]

Oh, wow.

[Riley]

This is wan show. We gotta keep it appropriate. Listen, Riley week is over now. There were three videos, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Riley]

Did you guys watch any of them except the Star Wars?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I watched Star Wars.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't watch any of them yet.

[Riley]

It's okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Riley]

It's okay. I mean, on the Q and A, you probably just know all of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, if I want to talk to Riley, I just talk to Riley because he's right there.

[Riley]

We. We match almost every day.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was waiting for the Star wars one.

[Riley]

So was I. I was excited about it. I don't know what else to. To say other than go subscribe to float plane, which you guys already say like five times an episode, so I just kind of want to hang out here.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, this is quite common.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is this segment?

[Riley]

Shadow puppets?

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this just. Is this just. Is this just marketing for float plane? Is that the whole point?

[Riley]

Yeah, if you could just keep switching back and forth to float plane there, that would be pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so yeah, that's Riley week among our other exclusives.

[Riley]

Why do you guys ever use the space back here? There's a lot. You could do some. You could do some activities.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The lights have to go.

[Dan]

No, we got like talk linked and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We don't have a mic that's on a. On a, you know, freely moving.

[Riley]

I know, I thought that this was gonna be more of a handheld thing, but this like this feels. Feels wrong.

[Dan]

It's two hands.

[Riley]

It's a two hander.

[Dan]

Yeah, there you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a swy hander.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think anyone took it that way, but yeah, yeah, definitely for sure.

[Dan]

It's a weapon knocking it out of the park.

[Riley]

Riley, what's your next topic?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Are you. Are you joining us for the show?

[Dan]

Like a stool?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Students make invasive DIY facial recognition glasses.

[Riley]

Yeah, sure, man. Yeah, that. That's pretty scary. Yeah, we talked about that on TechLinked this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude.

[Riley]

What, do you want me to go?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know what we're doing. Are you joining us for part of the show, like, Connor's waiting for me.

[Riley]

To go review TechLinked right now, but, like, bring him in. Wait, no, I'm not gonna do this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you want to read the. Here, read the topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Riley]

Students make. I'm not going to read the whole topic. Make invasive DIY facial recognition glasses. I'm going to summarize it, because we reported on this on TechLinked, some students from Harvard. Okay, fine, I'll just read it. Two Harvard students set up a system that uses a video feed from their Meta smart glasses to automatically scan the faces of strangers, identify them, and compile dossiers of personal information such as jobs, personal associations, phone numbers, and addresses. While the system made the occasional error, notably, it once flagged a young woman as her identical twin.

[Dan]

Oops.

[Riley]

Broken.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Awkward.

[Riley]

Throw it out. The students were able to use this system to approach several strangers and greet them by name while pretending to be an acquaintance or a fan of their work. How creepy would that be?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, it's happened. I found LA is actually the worst for that. This is what's funny. It's like.

[Riley]

It's like, hey, you want to feel what it's like to be famous for a second or to be a upper mid tier YouTube celebrity. The students have published a paper detailing their experiment, which they say was intended as a demonstration of what is already possible with current technology. Tech giants like Google and Meta have considered putting facial recognition into smart glasses in the past, and they. And they have. Google has dismissed the idea due to safety and legal concerns after public. After making a product already. But that's here. Whereas Meta's reasons for not pursuing it are unclear, Meta has not yet committed to not using the footage or images from their smart glasses for use in data scraping or AI training. I mean, that's all screwed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They've absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you, Riley. That is the summary.

[Riley]

No, as in. As in the whole, like, oh, don't use it for AI training. Everything is being used for AI training already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and they've essentially said the operating opposite. Zuckerberg, on a podcast thingamajigger, said that he wants you to have personal AIs that are powered by things like the glasses that have context of everything in your life.

[Riley]

Yeah, but like, that's one thing because it's your personal AI. I think a lot of people are probably okay with you feeding if it's encrypted and everything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Riley]

If you, like, you feed your data into a personal AI and no one ever gets it except you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

[Riley]

I Feel like the lighting on my face is perfect for this story. It's like, dystopian.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it kind of is.

[Riley]

It's like I am your personal AI2 face. I mean. Okay, what else do we have to say? I. I feel like this was actually a good topic. You guys should continue discussing it. But I have to go review Tech link.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Riley]

I really have to go. I can't stay.

[Dan]

We could bring you a laptop. You can just do it behind the set.

[Riley]

What's that?

[Dan]

Do you want to just have a laptop? You could do it there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can review it on.

[Dan]

Yeah, you just hide behind the laptops.

[Riley]

I think next. I think next show I'll come back and I'll be back here, and you guys probably won't know until I say something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

Nice work. Please. Thanks, Riley.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you, Riley. Love you.

[Riley]

Subscribe to Flow Plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. All right.

[Riley]

My favorite website.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you, Riley. Right there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I enjoy you guys. Can't see this, but he's bear crawling off the.

[Riley]

I'm leaving with dignity.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. Okay. Thank you very much, Riley. That was great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was.

[Linus Sebastian]

You never know what's going to happen when Riley walks into the room. But that actually was a perfect example of puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's my favorite website.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A near zero percent chance that's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But who cares?

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's obvious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's the thing. Puffery should be obvious and it doesn't matter. Yeah. All right, so let's come back to these smart glasses. This is. What's funny about this topic to me, is that you and I have actually talked about this for years, many times in the past, especially close to the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whole time we've known each other.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if you go back far enough, because Luke and I both suffer from some form of undiagnosed face blindness. Slash.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just complete inability to remember people's names. And we have talked about this many times in the past. How. What would ultimately sell us going all the way back to, like, the launch of Google Glass. What would ultimately sell us on this technology would be if it could serve as, like, a Rolodex, essentially, when you're at a party or social function or a work event, and it'll just tell you, okay, that's who that is. Bring up the last email that I exchanged with them. Tell me, like, how many kids they have so I can ask how their kids are doing. And if you go back far enough, you and I were naive enough, slash the world hadn't distended into. Distended. Descended into dystopia enough that we were actually bullish on it and wanted it. Now, I read about this thing that I asked for that I wanted because it would be really helpful to me in my daily life. And I look at and I go, holy sh. This is. This is fucked.

[Dan]

We're.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Everything's f. Yeah, well, because I think the thing that we were wrong about, and I think a lot of people, including us, were wrong about these types of things, were that we thought it was going to be ours. Like, the whole Rolodex idea is that you knew these people. You were essentially inputting this information. It was checking locally to your information and then letting you know. And that's just not going to be what it is, because data makes the world go round. So instead of it being yours, it's going to be Zucks or whoever else is, and you're going to be checking against their information and giving them more information, also known as updated facial recognition information for these people to make sure that it's more accurate. And any data and analysis that you're able to scrape from that moment is going to go up as well. Transfer into a pool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I also didn't think about at that time, maybe I was just younger and more naive. Right. Like, I didn't think about an authoritarian government using this technology.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To keep track of absolutely everyone and where they go and what they do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And who they see, police officers or whoever else. Yeah. Because they already have it in cameras, so that's not really new. But this would be. Yeah. Given to police officers, facial recognized, figure out if they have, like, outstanding warrants or whatever else.

[Linus Sebastian]

And. But it's not just like the outstanding warrants. Like this could tell people, suspect level, all kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff about people that comes down to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have another topic that we'll talk about later, but it's the Minority Report thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like, Buddy here frequents, you know, the seedy theater, you know, on 6th Street. And that might. And that might be factually true. Right. But that could activate someone's prejudices. You know what I mean? So it's not like I don't even mind if it scans someone. And it's like, there's an outstanding warrant for their arrest. That sounds actually reasonably helpful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's one like, say there's a. Say there's a riot going on. Because every time that there's a riot, there's some people that are, you know, involved with the bad things in the riot and other people just trying to get away.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's like that woman voted for Hillary Clinton and this riot is based around whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So she has an increased likeliness of being one of the people that is involved with the damaging of cars. So arrest her. Even though you didn't see it happen. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like dude, that level of. And if you think law enforcement doesn't profile, they do. They 100% profile. And you give them more and more tools to profile. We are, I don't know if I want to live on this planet anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, I had a conversation recently where I was, I mentioned that I want to die on Mars and I was like, yeah, that, that just increases over time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Handyman says to be fair, I think you should mention the story is kind of exaggerated since you can already achieve this using your mobile phone camera or any kind of camera. It's basically just calling third party services. And we did acknowledge that it already exists. That's their whole point is that this already exists. But it's the form factor that's scary because somebody can walk into a bathroom wearing a pair of glasses. You can't walk into a bathroom with your phone out streaming data to some third party, you know, image identification service. Unless your name is guy, whatever is whatever his Last name is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dr. Disrespect. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like no, no cool person walks into a bathroom with their camera out. That's a pretty normal looking pair of glasses.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're just glasses.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what's scary about it. And the fact that you're right, this is just totally a thing that already exists is exactly their point. They're not developing this as a product. They're not even trying to, they're not even releasing what they've done. And to your point, what they've done is not a huge technical achievement. All they did was take off the shelf stuff and hook it into other off the shelf stuff. But that's the point. Right now, today you could have someone walking around a disorderly says, but you can buy a spy camera that looks like a pen you clip into your pocket. Yeah, absolutely. But it's the ease. It's the ease and it's the integrations and it's the smoothness of the workflow. Like if you just have a pen, a pen. If you just have a pen camera sticking out of your pocket and what you have to ultimately do is go home at the end of the day and ingest that footage and then crunch it on your multi GPU server. Cluster and retroactively go back and figure out who you interacted with. That's what we'd be talking about 10 years ago. Right. That wasn't that scary. But this whole real time, how many kids do you have and what are their names and where did you go to school? Dude, that's. That's scary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I still want the local Rolodex thing where, like, you have to input the information of the people, but then that doesn't even work because I'm sure there's just going to be databases you can download. You can. You can use it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That data will leak.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All. All data. All data will leak. Leaky data. It's our new. It's leaky condos. Leaky data. I'm just saying it's a widespread problem. Leaky data. It's gonna cause all kinds of trouble. Dude, you see 23andMe's in trouble. Oh, that whole data set's gonna end up with someone. I'm so thrilled. I'm so thrilled that relatives of mine have used these services. And I'm so excited about that. Yeah, really? Thank you. Thank you for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like every time we talk about this kind of stuff and we'll have people in the audience that are like, yeah, but like, legally, insurance providers can't use that data. And guys, laws change. Laws change.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The only people ignore them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that too. That too. If laws mattered then we wouldn't be where we are today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can pretty much guarantee you every single person in this building currently has broken the law at least once.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. I probably sped in my car on the way here today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I probably did as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Dan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like that. That's the thing. Right. So, you know, whether it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So just to give some insight on that, I bet you every single person that drove in B.C. did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Our speed limit follows.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The speed limits here are too low, where it would be dangerous if you did.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I watched a really interesting documentary, like, ages ago. I've. I've looked for it multiple times and I haven't been able to find it. So it must have been pulled off of YouTube or something. It must have been copyrighted. But it was basically like an investigation into our speed limits and why they're too low and why it's like, actually dangerous and it just. They just need to go up and how the provincial government just ignores it for the most part. Yeah, really interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's wacky, man. You'll be driving with a police car behind you, following the pace of traffic like 20km an hour above the speed limit. Police cars not lighting you up.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they'll like go around.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. They'll also get frustrated because you're actually going too slow. It's just like, what, what is this? Like, oh man, what a joke. Anyways, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cassou Cat in Floatplane chat says, and this is such an example, this is such a great example of how laws are, are often so sort of myopic in their, in their, in their implementation goes legally. I can't ask age in a job interview because that could. Based discrimination. I added the end part there. So I ask when you graduated from college, it's like, yeah, you make a law sometimes with a really solid intent. Age based discrimination, that's bad. Okay. But people are going to, people are going to find a way around it. They're going to find a way to technically. Either they're going to just do something illegal in a way where they're not going to get caught or they're going to find a loop. They're going to find a way to technically get around it. It's just our data is not going to be protected. These products are absolutely going to end up in nefarious hands. And I'm so uncomfortable with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then out of the other side of my mouth, I talk about how I want to do like automated scorekeeping at the badminton center and how we could use facial recognition to track people's gameplay and whatever else. In fairness to me, I trust myself to store that data only locally on site. But maybe I shouldn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that still doesn't technically mean that it's invulnerable.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it doesn't. And I hate to open this can of worms again, but let's say that I died or I sold the company or whatever else. There might be an expectation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not laughing because he said I'm gonna. I'm laughing because I realize the can of worms that he's mentioning that he's opening. My bad, my bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

My point is that that data sitting there could be seen as a treasure trove by whoever inherits or purchases that business.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you saw what happened with the servers at ncix. Yeah, like this happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

The thing, the hypothetical that I'm talking about right now actually happened at ncix, the owner did die, but the data was not managed correctly. And people who ended up with servers from the auction ended up with customer data from the auction. That absolutely happened. All right, cool. We're supposed to explain merch messages and do two merch messages Now. Thanks, Dan. Okay, so merge messages. If you want to interact with the WAN show, the best way to do it is to send a merch message like Chris F. Down here. Instead of sending super chats or twitch bits or anything like that, we strongly encourage people to send a merch message. That way you can throw money at your screen. You can support the WAN show and all of the cool people who produce the WAN show and me. And you can also send in a. I don't know, something, whatever. You can send a message. So it'll either be replied to by producer Dan or he'll send it to someone internally who can answer your question for you. Or he'll just pop it up on the screen if you just got a shout out or something like that. Or he will curate it and that'll look a little something like this. Dan, do you have a couple curated merch messages? Oh, I didn't tell people how to send one. Go to lttstore.com and add anything to your cart and you will see a box where you can fill out a merge message. All right, there we go.

[Dan]

Sure. Yeah, I've got one here for you. Hey, LLD, did you ever get any contact from iFixit with how they feel about your precision screwdriver?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, I. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure what to make of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you talking about the tweet?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Oh, no, no. I'm talking about. I'm talking about an email that came through after we talked about it on the. After we talked about it on the WAN show. Basically, we got an email. Yeah, you know what? Screw it. We got an email from their agency saying that they are going to be pausing our relationship. They provided some reasons for that that are like, whatever. I told our team they agreed to continue throughout the rest of the month of October. But I told the team if they want out, we shouldn't force them to work with someone that they don't want to work with. So if it's, you know, if it's the reasons they stated, then, you know, cool, they can keep going or whatever. Or if it's different reasons and they're not comfortable working together, you know, that's fine. Basically what I, what I left off with was we take our partnerships seriously. We want to maintain positive working relationships with everyone who shares our passion for repairable technology. Just tell them, take their time, we'll be here when they're ready, I'm good, or whatever. I mean, we're. We're at a scale right now. Where no one sponsor can do anything which impact us, which is important, which is. Which is super important. And to be clear, guys, there could be totally, totally unrelated business reasons or whatever, right? Like, I don't want you guys to pass any kind of judgment. But, but we have heard back from them. Not about this, like, not in response to any questions. We just heard from the agency. So that's where we're at. Transparency. Transparency. No, I'm not going to tell the reasons because that's their personal biz. Right. But what I will say is they sound like perfectly plausible business reasons. So there's no judgment here. I just want to make it clear that from our side, we have no intention of forcing them to fulfill any kind of pre agreed contractual obligation. If they want out, then I have absolutely no problem with that. And if they ever want to work with us in the future, then the door is 100% open. But if I were you, I wouldn't expect to see a ton of Ifixit sponsorships on Linus Media Group properties. You'll probably still see their products show up from time to time. Like I've said over and over and over again, we like the products, we love the mission. We consider them an ally. And so it is what it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, all right then.

[Dan]

Next up, get some announcements out of you first.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wait, no, don't we have another merch message?

[Dan]

No, you got to do the announcements and then you get one more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I do the announcements. Okay. The long sleeve polo shirt is now available. We wanted to make something that you could wear to the office office this fall without sacrificing comfort and without sacrificing having a little personality, little flare, a little bit of flair, a little bit of spark. So we created a long sleeve polo shirt made of soft and slightly stretchy cotton elastane. Pique. Is that the word peak? Pique. Whatever. The best part is under the collar is a fun little pop of pink. You'll also notice that the buttons on the polo shirt aren't buttons, they're snaps. Not only are they easier to fasten, but they're great for jobs where buttons aren't allowed. Like when you're working with specific machinery where loose items can't be risked. Available now at LMG GG Longpolo. And that link goes to the forum that may be misdirected. Daniel Besser is looking at it right now because I think he probably saw me click on it and saw me go to linustechtips.com yep, that link is not working. So I'm just gonna manually show you guys the long sleeve polo. Oh, my goodness. This is such a hilarious shot of Dennis. They've definitely been having some fun with the photo shoots lately. Massive shout out to team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually looks dope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man, I love it. Tatiana Sherrod.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I love the posed ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I actually, I'm kind of. I'm kind of loving it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like, these look great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Groups of people posed in things.

[Linus Sebastian]

The office attire has actually been a shockingly big mover for us. Just like something that's just. Yeah, that's just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there even a logo on this? Oh, yeah. Very subtle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Here, I can switch to the loot cam if you can show the people the logo. Oh, yeah, it's in there somewhere. Yeah, we want to, you know, we want to. We want people to be able to rep the brand without like, feeling uncomfortable if the. Or if their workplace doesn't allow logos or whatever else. Yeah, it's just quality product. Trust me. Row guarantee all that. Good stuff. The cargo pants have been doing really well. By the way, I have some good news. If you're a 32 inch inseam, I believe our reorder will include 32 inch inseam. So we are. We are currently putting together a list for a reorder and longer. Boys are going to be pretty excited to see that. I think that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's mine. I think you mentioned you were too 32.

[Dan]

32. 32. Maybe, maybe 32, 36. I cannot remember, but 32 inseam.

[Luke Lafreniere]

32 inseam.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, you guys are in good shape. Robo86 asks, how much do you pay your staff for modeling? We actually don't. It's completely voluntary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's on. It's during your shift.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. So we do pay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you get.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your hourly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. And it's. And it's completely voluntary. If people want to do it, then that's totally cool. So everyone who ever posed, like, in their underwear did so because they were like, I'm gonna pose in my underwear. Let's go. Oh, you usually. Or often or always. I forget the exact rules. I think you get to keep the thing that you model as well. So. Yeah, it's just if you feel like it and you want to. And you want to, like, rep the brand and you want to be on the site, then you can do that. Or otherwise you don't have to. There is absolutely no pressure whatsoever to model the merge. Yeah. And I just. I think it's so cool that people volunteer. I think it's so cool that the models on our site are actual people who actually work on actual stuff here. So, like, Thomas works for Creator Warehouse in engineering. He's working on a cat toy right now. Oh, among other things that I can't talk about. But the cat toy is like a low pryo thing that he's working on. Yeah. Sharad from the business team. Tatiana from the Career warehouse fashion team. Like, these people. These are the people who actually, you know, bring you the content. I love that when I clicked him, he was actually. They were like, making eye contact.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You gotta look at yourself.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Oh, boy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So I think that really. I think that really sets our. I think that really sets our site apart from a lot of other, like, merch stores. We wear the product and clearly people want it enough that they're willing to, you know, they're willing to pose with it for. Just to own it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So someone said, can you stand up to show shirt length?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

Go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

What size are you wearing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Xl.

[Linus Sebastian]

Xl. Okay. And I'm in the medium. All right. You're welcome. All right. What are we supposed to do?

[Dan]

Dan, you still got some announcements? Unless you want to save them later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I have more announcements.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah?

[Linus Sebastian]

What are those? Oh, good gravy Mod signups. We are another week closer to the launch of the LTT mod to get notified right when it launches. Sign up at LMG GG modmat. I really hope that actually goes where it's supposed to go. Cool, that's good also. Okay, this is big. Want to shout out ghost keyboards? Last week I kind of gave them a hard time for publicly misrepresenting an endorsement from me of their product because that never happened. But they made it seem like it did in E Blast to their customers. Anyway, I don't want to. I don't want to harp on that right now because they have, in my opinion, done everything that is. That is, that is right and reasonable for them to do to make it right. They publicly posted what feels like an actual sincere apology, taking responsibility for misrepresenting the situation, taking action to make this right. For anyone who bought the keyboard based on a perceived endorsement from me, they have offered an extended refund window to anyone who purchased the keyboard in question during the time that they had that promotion running. So, guys, apology accepted. Thank you very much. I am extremely pleased that we can just move forward in a positive fashion. So. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Top Gear 1224. Other companies take note. This. This is how you deal with it. We messed up. We take responsibility. Here's what we're doing to make amends. We are going to learn from our mistakes. Sincerely. Boom. Thank you. Yeah, you guys, you guys, you guys made it right? And I appreciate that. I. You know, I don't think you should have done that in the first place. But look, the past has to be in the past at some point, and that point is now. All right, Dan, what's next?

[Dan]

All right, I got one more merch message for you and doing some more topics. Wan Dll Linus, you're a big fan of the Apple AirPods. Even though you use an Android, would you recommend it to other people? What are the biggest issues you've had that I need to know before doing the same?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this the announcement?

[Linus Sebastian]

But do I use an Android, though? This is my new phone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this the first time you've told them no?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. I've talked about how I'm gonna go iPhone. I actually haven't set it up yet. I tried earlier this week and it errored out because I moved around in the office and I think I went to. I think I swapped to a different AP and so the transfer errored out and I had to reset it again. So I'm. I'm getting. I'm going to get switched to it very, very, very soon. It's. It's living in the pocket. It's going to happen. When I have a free moment, I'll get the transfer wizard done. But overall, there's. There's some annoyances, like the fact that there's no official app to change the functionality of the long press. That's kind of annoying. I don't know if it's just because my phone is really old, but the performance of the AirPods when they're paired to an iPhone is so much better compared to when they're paired to my Note 9. Like, on my Note 9, if I flip on the microwave to pop some popcorn or whatever, I basically can't hear anything if I'm standing anywhere near it because of the 2.4 GHz interference from microwaves. But if I have it paired to my iPhone 12 Pro, which was my, like, utility iPhone that I had and that I will occasionally have them paired to, it's like, like almost flawless. It's not flawless because interference, but it's way better. Like world's better. Um, you know, not having battery monitoring, I guess, is kind of a drag, but I just charge them every day. I've been using, like, I just don't really care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

AirPods with Android the whole time and I don't know. Yeah, just plug them in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it just. Yeah, it just really doesn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Doesn't bother me that much.

[Linus Sebastian]

I rarely need them for more than four hours in a row at a time. So the actual, you know, battery life of the airpods themselves and they charge so fast when they're in the charging case, it just. I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they charge in the charging case, so just plug the charging case in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Most of the quality of life issues really don't seem like a huge deal. There is one really nice thing when you're. When you're on an iPhone and you take them out, it'll pause. You take one out, it'll pause, you take two out, and it'll just automatically switch to the phone speaker because it knows you don't have either of them in. Whereas on my Android phone, it's a lot fat. It'll just play through them. Then again, just playing through them on my Android phone is how I found them. When I left them somewhere in the house, I turned the volume up and then I was able to find them. But then again, if I had an iPhone, I could just use the Find My feature. So I don't know. I don't know. It's all good. I like them. I still. I really like them, but there are some really solid alternatives. So, you know, by all means, check out Pixel Buds. Check out Galaxy Buds. I've heard the latest generation Galaxy Buds are really good, but I haven't tried them. Comptia revoked Linus's A plus certification. Question mark. Question mark. The question mark.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How could they.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, they didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so I think they typed Internet. I think they typoed the thing, but the Internet. Here's my. Here's my. Here's my A certification. So I'm gonna.

[Dan]

Here.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I read this out, can you verify. Sure. What.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What link do I have to. Is it in the doc?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, my candidate ID is comp 00.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you. Am I supposed to be doing it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you. Are you doing okay? Luke, you okay? Luke, are you okay? Over here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I got it. Okay, I thought you wanted me to actually type in it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Comp 001.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

022.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

462.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

766. Oh, wait, they totally entered it, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I'm confused now. Did they revoke it then? Because I thought Chewie said that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, you didn't check?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, no, Chewy said Chewie told me they didn't and he said that he replied to the thing that they didn't and then that. But that it wasn't getting a lot of traction. And so I was supposed to talk about it on the WAN show. Yeah. The verification code. Oh, oh, hold on. Apparently. Apparently, this is the verification code. Okay, well, verify.comt.org hold on, hold on. Here we go. Verification code. All right. Slifo. They missed a letter. Yeah. Active. There you go. So. No, no, they did not. Apparently the use. Okay, so I gave you the candidate id. So what code is this? Five piece. Oh, oh, it's the code at the bottom here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I see it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not the candidate id. So, yeah, no, here's my framed A plus that I still have for now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look at you, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

People can trust the videos now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep, Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's good. We needed this.

[Linus Sebastian]

My bros. They can trust me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. What was my product that showed up defective? We're gonna be taken care of. I. I think so. He's got an A plus certification.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. A plus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A plus.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the. That's the grade. Yeah, it's like A, but better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like you should probably trust them, bro.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's Canadian. It's enhanced Canadian. A. Sorry. We should maybe do something else now.

[Dan]

C is just D. Hey, look.

[Linus Sebastian]

Amazon's doing dark patterns again. Legacy customers with Amazon's Ring alarm system will soon have to pay double for its monitoring service. According to emails sent to Ring Protect plus customers, they will be migrated to the Pro plan in March, which costs $200 a year, as opposed to $100 a year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's an increase.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's double the number of hundreds of dollars a year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

One of those customers happens to be Verge writer Sean Hollister, who found it strange that Amazon's email started with this is your reminder because it's the first time. Yeah. He did manage to find an FAQ that claimed that customers had been emailed about the change in September of 2020. He won. But he then dug up the relevant email, whose subject line read, important. Your plan name has changed. In the body of the email, it read, don't worry, everything else is staying the same. The actual notification that the plan itself would be phased out and migrated to Ring Protect Pro was located in a small footnote at the bottom of the email. That is Skeezy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, if they. If they got the upgrade for free, then sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Other Ring users have posted emails from Amazon on Reddit which have the Heading, new name, new features, same great price. These emails then go on to note that their subscription will no longer include alarm, professional monitoring and SOS emergency response. Amazon has not given a reason for the price increase. This is flipping wild. Here's some screenshots. This does not sound like a price increase.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's a question for you. Here's a question. Is this puffery?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean apparently, apparently that's a throwback to our first topic for those of you who are just joining us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's a massive. Yikes. This sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is happening down there?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the D Pran spot. I don't know what it is. Okay, I don't know how to deal with this because we've talked about this fairly recently actually, where I basically said look, a contract should be a contract and you shouldn't be able to unilaterally change it. And the response to that is, well, from a legal standpoint, the contract is auto renewing on a monthly basis and every month it's a new contract. So they're just giving their customers a new contract. The problem with that logic though is that in my mind there's an implicit long term expectation for anything with an upfront cost that we are not in fact on a month to month deal here where you can change it anytime you want. And for something like a security system, that upfront cost is a lot more than just, you know, a few hundred dollars on a camera here and there. It could be creating a workflow around it, it could be training people on how to use it, it could be the time that you invest in installing it. Once you're in this ecosystem. It's actually a hugely, highly frictious high friction. The point is that it can be a lot of work to get out of it. And so if all you have is this, you know, month to month agreement that can just be changed unilaterally by the provider at any time, what is your protection? What is the point of having a contract? And I don't know how to deal with this because yeah, you can't, you can't force, you can't force a company to maintain the same terms of service and the same pricing model in perpetuity. That's not fair or right either. But you also can't be in a situation where freaking everything is like negotiating with Darth Vader. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further. Well, why? But I'm. But I'm stuck in this deal. Yeah, I'm Lando.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if it, what if, I think we've had these conversations before, but what if, what if you were offered a full refund at that moment? Like, hey, this subscription cost is doubling. We're gonna actually tell you properly instead of trying to hide it to be clear, let's make that major change and then offer you a refund. Because I understand the initial buy in thing is rough, but I can also understand where like, you know, market conditions might change, they might need to charge more for the upkeep and maintenance of something, but if that's the case, do they just offer to essentially buy back your product?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think, I think if they buy back the product, I'm okay. Yeah, I mean, Google did that with stadia. I wasn't mad. Like, if you're, if you, if you can't afford, if it's not, if it's no longer sustainable for you to offer me the service that you offered me at the price that we, that would, the price that we all agreed on, then by all means here, you can, you can take your stuff back and I'll take my money back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can say as much as you want about how they should have scoped it in better and understood their costs and stuff like that. That's all farewell and good when you're talking about things without doing things. But when you start doing things, you run into this problem where basically every company, if they want to be competitive, have to operate on economies of scale. So when you're developing something, you have to assume some amount of scale and price into that. And if you don't reach that scale, it might not be economically viable anymore. But at that point, like it's not your customer's fault that it isn't economically viable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's not their problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you gotta buy back your devices.

[Linus Sebastian]

Squirrelking makes a really great point here. Like, let's pretend that an employment contract worked like this. Would you accept that? Would you accept an employment contract that was essentially a month to month contract that they could just change at any time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess employment contracts don't, but contract contracts sort of do. Depending on the terms, usually they max at a year and then you have to renegotiate.

[Linus Sebastian]

They can, but that's more, that's a little more complicated because a lot of the time a contractor can also make the argument that if they're fulfilling the role of an employee, that they, that they should be considered an employee and their protections should be employee grade protections as opposed to just contract protection. Yeah, like there's no, I don't think people would accept that. And so if we don't accept that, you know, that we could just be paid less. If our employer decides arbitrarily this month that we'll be paid less.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, then obviously I agree with that, to be clear. But it's. I'm just. I'm trying to think of scenarios where that does happen. And I guess it happens on a company level, but I don't think it normally happens on an individual level. Like if we, if we have a. Some form of work contract with some company, it's very likely that it might be a shorter term renewing contract.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, we'll probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's company to company. That's not person to company or person to person. But usually person to person, there's more protections and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, and I'm talking about like consumer. Consumer protections.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like protections for the individual. It just feels like we've ignored them for so long.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm tired of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lena Khan. Dude, she's doing work. It's been getting a little bit better.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what else we got anyway? Amazon. Dad, stop it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sponsors. Thanks, Dan. The show is brought to you today by Manscaped. Can you spot me in this photo? Nice. That's what you'll look like if you don't tidy yourself up. With Manscaped, they just dropped the new Chairman Pro package and it has everything you need to transform yourself from Sasquatch to Sphynx. Inside, you'll find the Chairman Pro electric foil shaver, Power shave gel, and Face Shave Soother all in one bundle. The foil Shaver features a 360 degree contouring head and two two interchangeable skin safe blade heads. So whether you're going for smooth as butter or a rugged look, they've got you covered. Plus, with their flex adjust technology, the pivoting head adapts to the contours of your face and neck, making shaving a breeze. And don't forget the Power Shave gel and Face Shave Soother, which help reduce redness and irritation before and after you shave. Check out the Chairman pro [e-mail] LTT20 and use code LTT20 to get 20% off plus free shipping. Look at that. That's international shipping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. That's good though. That's good. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. Ever gotten lost in one of those how to code a website tutorials? Trust me, even with all the tech tips, your site can still end up looking like a five year old's Art project Uncle Linus Painting company that is actually from me painting at Dennis's house. Fun fact. Anywho, our sponsor Squarespace is your all in one website platform that uses AI to help anyone build a beautiful personalized website with ease. Not only do they offer a variety of award winning templates, but they also provide tons of features to help you run your online business. You can send invoices, accept payments from your clients through debit, credit, ach and more and you can do it right on Squarespace. You'll also get access to analytics so you can track your site's performance and see what's working for your business. Business we love how simple Squarespace is. Anyone can hop in and make updates and that's why we use it for our site too. We're actually working on a redesign that's going to look a lot better than this one, so stay tuned for that. Plus you can pick from tons of domain names with built in privacy and security. So start building your website today and receive 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com LTT finally, the show is brought to you by 1Password Imagine your company's security like the backyard of my house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huh. That's a really interesting shot that they chose.

[Linus Sebastian]

Weird shot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You've got some real distance going on there.

[Linus Sebastian]

The nice paved paths are laid out for company owned devices, IT approved apps and managed employee identities. So only the approved ones can enter my house. But the shortcuts through the grass symbolize unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and trespassers like Dennis. Most security tools only operate on the brick paths but ignore what lurks in the long grass. This is such a weird thing that he's done. That's where our sponsor 1Password Extended Access Management comes in. It helps weed out unmanaged devices, apps and identities, ensuring strong and protected user credentials. They address issues that traditional IAM and MDM can't handle. It's available now for companies with Okta and coming later this year to Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra. Check it [e-mail] Wancho cool huh?

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. It's merge message time apparently. Yeah, hit me.

[Dan]

Dan ldl hoping you can settle an argument I've been saying for yes, I've been saying for the non gamer intel and AMD weighted too long to release Hedt chips and Apple now dominates that space with the Mac studio. Thoughts?

[Linus Sebastian]

No?

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, next question.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I think should we say a little bit more about it?

[Dan]

Get wrecked. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. Okay. Okay. I think the bigger thing that happened to the Hedt market is that the high end consumer chips kind of took their place. I mean you can get a Ryzen 9950X which has 16 flipping cores. They're ripping fast. There's N5 and you can put that on a commodity AM5 motherboard. I believe some of them even support ECC memory, even if it's unofficial. Does Ryzen still support ECC? I actually did not look into that. I'm going to have a look. Yes, they all support ECC memory with the caveat that it requires motherboard support. Is that different than the 7000 series? Yeah. Okay, so it seems to, seems to still be a thing. The point is that if you want a, if you want like a random like affordable workstation, you don't have to go to high end desktop. And the only real reason to go thread replacement Pro to go for a true high end desktop. Oh right. Then on the intel side you've got like their 24 core chips at the high end of their consumer models. So the only real reason to go high end desktop would be if you need like Mondo memory bandwidth, which admittedly the Mac Studio is going to do a great job of. Especially if your workload benefits from sharing that memory between the CPU and GPU. Or if you need a whole bunch of PCIe expansion which the Mac Studio doesn't address at all. I don't think the Mac Studio is really up against HGT at all. I think it's up against high end consumer and high end consumer is anything but dead. That's not dead at all. With that said, I think that Apple has kind of killed their own workstation market a little bit. I was thinking of pitching this to Horst as a Mac address video. Like I think the biggest damage Apple has probably done to their, to their M Silicon lineup is by making the M1 series too good. I have not talked to a single person running a first gen M series Mac who's like, yeah, I really need something newer and I'm sure there's people who are like hardcore into like music production.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How old are the M1 Macs at this point?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, like 4 or 5 years old now hardcore into music production or who does a lot of rendering work or whatever else who legitimately like needs a better one. But in terms of general consumers which, let's face it, there's a lot of Apple's customers, even though they put pro at the end of everything, M1 series is like, yeah, Dwin Len says, yeah, I'm still on M1 and it's great. Yeah. 2020. Apparently it was 2020. Yeah. My M1 Max Mac studio is still kicking butt. J Fife says M1F. Yeah, dude, there's just. There's Apple keeps kind of coming out and being like, yeah, we've got new M Silicon and it's really great. And if I was buying a new Mac because I, like, didn't have one, I would get the new one or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that type of life cycle is just becoming a thing for all computers now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, I realized the other day, my dad, who still plays, you know, not necessarily the most demanding games, but he plays any game that he wants.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That comes out new. Whatever. Sandy Bridge.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The point where I never realized to.

[Linus Sebastian]

The point where you're a bad son.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was never a problem youm know which one it is too? It's the one you gave him for doing the whole room water cooling.

[Linus Sebastian]

No way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's kind of sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Because I was like, wait, what? Wait, like, why would you even have that? Then I looked in his computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was like, if Rob needs an.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Upgrade also, by the way, I have literally given him one. He just hasn't built the computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Never mind. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because he wants to do this. Like, I haven't had the heart to really tell him that Tynan already did it, but he wants to do a, like, hard copper piped cooled system and he's like designing it all and all.

[Linus Sebastian]

This kind of stuff that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

With one of the. Actually one of the members of Community that was one of the whales at Whaleland that's designing it with him. It's gonna be this like, sick thing. So he hasn't bothered to upgrade his platform and stuff yet because the games that he plays doesn't really need it anyways and because he's waiting to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like an epic build. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all copper builds have been done many times. I don't think. I don't think it matters that it's not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And he's got like this. I don't want to spoil it, but he's got this, like, specific design element that he wants to tie in, which is like, genuinely really cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So super cool. Luke's DAD AMD ultimate tech Upgrade I mean, look, I can't. I can't preferentially, you know, make sure he gets one. But I think. I think if you. I think if you threw him in the thing, I mean, he's, He's. He's done some stuff for us behind the scenes. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. You know what? I don't want to. I'm not in charge of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, if the rule makers are cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Clear it with the powers that be. Clear it with the powers that be. I'm fine with it, though. That's what I'll say. I'll say that.

[Dan]

Hey, Luke, Dan and Linus, was there a point in the business where you ever questioned where you wouldn't be able to keep promises that you had made to anyone inside or outside the company?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a hilarious question. Remember the whole trust me, bro, backpack warranty controversy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. That was like. That was a big part of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what it's based around.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. That's the whole. That's the whole thing where I was like, okay, we should. We should really thoughtfully craft something that will be enduring and that will capture the spirit of, you know, what. What I would do if I was still around, but also not be, you know, an albatross hanging around the neck of someone that might, you know, inherit or purchase the company or whatever else. And it turns out that what people actually wanted was just a generic, like, warranty statement that basically just allows us to weasel out of anything. And we gave them that, and they were happy with it. And I was like, okay, bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Oh, wait, I'm not allowed to say that.

[Dan]

Okay, bye, everybody.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, I think as well, like, these days, I mean, we have. We have proven that the company has a lot of resiliency these days. Yeah. But in the really early days, I think we were all somewhat doing that to each other, just being like, no, we're fine. It'll be okay. We're fine. This new debt or big risk that we've taken or whatever is fine. And then a few years in, it ended up being true. But I think at the beginning, we were all somewhat. If you reassure each other enough times, you're kind of reassuring yourself.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean, there were definitely times in the first six months that. That I told Luke and Ed, okay, we got this. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And I wasn't 100% sure if we had this, but I was sure as heck gonna do my best. That might have been some puffery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Back to the backpack thing for a second. My point was always just that the will of the company to honor the warranty is everything. And the exact terms are sort of immaterial. And I think that we've seen this time and time again since I said that. So now you guys have a written warranty statement, but if you carefully read it, it's basically at our discretion if we do anything. And if you read anyone else's warranty, it's the same. It's basically at their discretion because a warranty exists as legal liability, but covering. That's why. That's why it's written.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not for you, it's there for the company. It's not there for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And there's a lot of things that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are true that way. And if. Pay more attention. I don't know what else to say.

[Linus Sebastian]

I get shot as a messenger a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know, Whatever. But yeah, just like, stop. Stop assuming, like. Yeah, I don't know. Company. Companies aren't here to make you happy. That's a hopefully intended byproduct of them making money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mr. Blonde, 42 says a limited warranty limits the customer's rights, not the company's. Yeah. And what's actually really interesting is we did a video recently. I don't know if we've actually uploaded it yet or if I've. Or if I've watched it. But you guys haven't seen it yet. Oh, no, I think you guys have seen this one where there's this memory. It's the buying the worst products. The worst products. 1. The memory comes with a limited lifetime warranty. And then if you actually dig into the warranty, which is not available anywhere on their site, but Tom's Hardware asked them for it when they covered the brand. I forget what the brand is, but it's in that video with. Within the first year, you get a brand new replacement. After the first year, for the next two years, you get a refurbished replacement. And then after that they charge you to fix it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My favorite.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you told me you have a lifetime warranty, but after a couple of years, it basically meant, give me that water bottle. Oh, it's broken. Okay, that'll be $25 for a new water bottle. Is that. Is that a fucking warranty?

[Luke Lafreniere]

My favorite.

[Linus Sebastian]

Technically, legally, it is. That's a warranty. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My favorite limited lifetime warranties are when they're limited lifetime warranties only on manufactured defects.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's like if you don't notice a manufactured defect for 40 years. Yeah, we'll cover it. But it's like. What do you even mean? Yeah, I don't know, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

The warranty for the backpack is like. Yeah. It doesn't cover wear and tear. So literally, it's a lifetime warranty on that when you first got it. It's good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if you never removed it out of the box and you kept the box in a temperature and environmentally controlled chamber and then opened it in 20 years, maybe, you know, and there was a defect with it or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

People had no idea what they were asking me for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you know what? I handled it poorly. Oh, yeah, let's go. Poor handling.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like. Yeah. I did not explain it well. And realistically, we should have just dug your heels in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should just given him a warranty.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should have just. We should have just had the stupid, meaningless piece of paper.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just done both. You should have given the warranty first and then been like, by the way, it doesn't matter. What matters is this other stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

We probably should have a lot of things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, at that time. At that time, I think the CW team was, like, seven people or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe even less.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we didn't have. We literally still don't. We still don't have a lawyer on staff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. Like, we. We didn't have a ton of experience doing that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We wouldn't have enough work for them. But it does suck sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know. 100%. I just mean, like, I'm looking at it going like it was. It just. It just wasn't a priority because we knew that if there was a problem, we were going to take care of it. And I get it. You know, you guys wanted assurance. It's just that what we gave you wasn't assurance. The only assurance we gave you was our word and also this worthless piece of paper.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Al Lawn, I don't know if this is true or not, but Alon in Flowplain chat says lifetime is the expected lifetime of the product as defined by the manufacturer, not the lifetime of the.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't even know that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, the whole thing is just completely nonsense. It's complete nonsense. And.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

But. And to be clear, some companies are really good about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, they will honor stuff well beyond what is. What is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually, usually it's companies honoring things beyond the warranty. It's not. Yeah, yeah. Or they have, like, an agreement, which isn't technically a warranty.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Neen exists. Says it's a lifetime warranty. When it wears out or is broken, the lifetime is up. So the warranty has run out.

[Dan]

Genius.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love it. Anyway, we got you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, interesting. Ben Mitchell said, lifetime fluids in cars equals a warranty, period. A BMW Lifetime fluid in a gearbox is 50,000 miles. Wow. Yeah, the wording of things is so crazy sometimes. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh man, that's hilarious. All right, hit us, Dan. Sure.

[Dan]

I got one more. Hey guys, was wondering, what are your thoughts on continuous returns? Buy a laptop at Costco, play for 90 days return. Get brand new one. Is that bad? E waste wise?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm pretty sure it's fraud.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's called friendly fraud or retail fraud.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So have fun with that.

[Dan]

Pay your taxes or don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What do you guys think about not paying your taxes ever? If I never pay them, they can't find me. They won't know I exist.

[Dan]

And free housing Speedrun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't be surprised if you eventually do get put on a Persona non grata list. You may not be welcome to shop at Costco forever if you do that. Look, I am not going to lie to you. I have taken advantage of generous return policies before. I shouldn't have. That was bad. I actually, I actually remembered recently probably the most egregious example of this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We. Woo wee, woo wee woo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's bad. It's really bad. The most egregious example of this was actually when I was working at NCIX and I bought, I know this one, three TVs from Best Buy so that I could make a video about a triple TV setup and then I returned them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's not great.

[Linus Sebastian]

I gotta admit, I didn't properly think about the implications. Like I didn't, I didn't think about that. These were, these were basically going to be sold out at a loss. Like I didn't look at their open box pricing. I was just like, I need three TVs now. Wait, do we have to keep these? Yeah, I don't need them anymore. I kept, they're in perfect shape. I put them back all nice. Like. Is this really that much of a problem? That was really bad. I really shouldn't have done that. 5609 says. Don't people do this with clothes a lot? I've actually heard that that's a trend that is skyrocketing right now. I forget what it's called. There's like a term for it. Is it called labeling or something? Buying clothes and returning trend. Wardrobeing. Yeah, the term wardrobe may not be common yet, but the trend is. This is from Times of India. So yeah, shoppers are buying clothes just for the Instagram pic, hiding the labels in the shot and then returning them. And apparently like high end boutiques are Dealing with a ton of this right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's super cool, dude. That's awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So it's a. It's a whole. It's a whole thing. And have I. Have I done this? Yes. Do I feel bad about it? Yes. Should I do that again? No. No, I should not. I think that. I think that for my part, unless I have a strong intent to own the product, like, I'll return things if I'm not happy with them, if they don't meet my expectations. But if I buy something, it's because I have a strong intent to own it. I'm sorry. Best Buy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've barely ever returned anything. I don't buy very many things, which is probably the root of that cause.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you and I have both taken advantage of extended warranties. I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, let's go that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Given the predatory nature of them, I think I could probably rationalize myself into an I don't feel that bad about it space.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. However, it's not technically okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

What I will say is I probably took it pretty far.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But, you know, that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

That. Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just. You decide what you're okay with and move on.

[Linus Sebastian]

That also happened at a time when I really didn't have any money, which doesn't make it okay either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But also.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm sorry. But also, that whole extended warranty thing at particularly the shop that it happened at, Future Shop, was pretty skeezy and pretty pushy and pretty exploitative. It was realistically, only through taking advantage of loopholes that you could ever really benefit from it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so I found those loopholes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And benefit from them. I did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I shouldn't have done that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

How did we end up on this topic?

[Dan]

That was. That was a merch message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what it was, but, yeah, it was.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Two, three more topics.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Hit me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

California tries to keep big tech out of your brain, but does it go far enough? California became the second. It's gone. California became the second US State to officially protect neural data in state law after Colorado. The bill amends the California Consumer Privacy act of 2018 and as such, prevents companies from selling or sharing a person's neural data. It also requires companies to make efforts to anonymize the. Okay. Make efforts to anonymize, also known as eh, why not? And gives consumers the right to know what information is collected and the right to delete that information. However, some mental privacy advocates don't feel the law goes far enough in how it defines neural data. While this law protects the raw data from your brain and nerves, it's not clear whether the law covers inferences and conclusions made from that data. Oh. Information that is arguably more sensitive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, good Lord.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, I'm reading ahead. This is. Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For example, MIT Technology review points out.

[Dan]

That.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Research has used EEG data, a measure of the brain's electrical activity, to predict volunteers sexual orientation or whether they use recreational drugs. Conclusions like this may not be covered.

[Linus Sebastian]

Although what is interesting is that if you were ever not sure if, like, being gay is real, because, I don't know, you live in the Stone Age or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Brain waves.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're welcome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Privacy advocates. Privacy advocates have also argued for broadening the definition of neural data to encourage to include physiological and behavioral data. Since brain activity isn't the only indicator of how you're feeling. Heart rate can indicate excitement or stress. And eye tracking can indicate what choice you're likely to make. Interesting. Oh, man. Yeah, eye tracking. If it indicates what choice you're likely to make and then if they figure out that you're choosing the one that they don't want you to choose, they could do like a flash sale right before your eye to get you to get the one that they want you to buy. Well, that sucks. That's terrible. I'm happy they're moving on this, but I like.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, it feels like it's not going to be enough. There's going to be loopholes. We're just. We're boned.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even. Even at the front, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, we're boned, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're requiring companies to make efforts to anonymize the data. That means they're going to the absolute minimum as required by law and to hide it as much as possible. That doesn't mean they're going to do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Saffron says we already know free will isn't an actual thing. You could very much predict a lot of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Corey is the name. Says the proletariat will rise up and eat the rich before this all gets too far out of hand. Just wait. I don't know if they can. What's. Oh, man, who did that? Good video on authoritarianism, power. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who was it? CGP Gray. The rules for rulers. You should watch this. Because the thing is, when you have the tools of mass surveillance and you have tools of mass oppression, you don't actually need a lot of people that you take care of really well to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maintain power.

[Linus Sebastian]

To maintain power. Over a great many people who you are exploiting. And it's pretty scary. It's an older video, but it is definitely worth having a look at the rules for rulers from CGP Grey. CGP Grey hasn't had any, like, controversies or anything, has he?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who knows?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Well, I mean, I just mean. Okay. I hope not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's too hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know who I'm promoting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they just gotta. Audiences gotta get over that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's too much.

[Dan]

I would be so sad if he ever did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I have seen his face.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Which I don't know if it's interesting because, yeah, he might have. He might have done a face reveal. I have no idea. I haven't paid attention lately. I would also just like you guys to remember that I advocated for you. Don't eat me.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you eat me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, are we talking if I was dead already or you would actually participate in the murder first?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I'm not. I'm not gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like which scenario are we looking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not gonna Caesar you. I don't.

[Dan]

We could find 12 more people.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if someone else seasoned me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Caesar. Caesar, I meant.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Caesar.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right. I'm just. I'm just.

[Dan]

Put some franks on there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would put franks on. Yeah. Lucas and Brutus. No.

[Dan]

And you. Lucas.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, but when you're. When you're running your call. Cult Town.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You'd have to be careful to not get Caesared.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. Oh, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I'm not going to be running a cult town. We've talked about this. That's. That's your dream. Not my dream.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Instead of our dream. It's loam.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. Crystal says I'm not a billionaire, so I'm not rich enough for that. And I am not. I want to make that very clear. By any measurement of my assets, I am.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where is the line? Is the line billionaire?

[Linus Sebastian]

I had this conversation with David. I know, like, ages ago. I forget. I forget where the line is. And it's. It's after hours, so I'm not gonna bother him about it. See?

[Luke Lafreniere]

See, I'm one of the nice ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Please don't eat me. Like, I'd call Nick. Okay, yeah, whatever. Nick Nixon management. Whatever.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But people are saying. Most people are saying billionaire. It looks. Oh, Canadian or American. That's a huge difference.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, nowhere near either. Like, it's not even.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not even on the radar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm saying where the line is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, we got to talk. In US Dollars. US Dollars is the global measure of wealth.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. Well, without looking at the answers. Okay, so where's your line? Let's bring Dan into this. Yeah. Where's the eat the rich line?

[Dan]

I mean, there's a couple schools of thought because.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, we have an expert. Thank you, Dan. Yes.

[Dan]

I mean, cuz you've got like a lot of people talk about the middle class.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And the lower class and the upper class, but there's only working class and like the ownership class. Right. Middle class is kind of a design to split the people. Right. Against the uppers of society. Technically, Linus would be one of those people already because he employs people and owns a factory.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But he does also work.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but I don't have to though. You don't have to. I think that's an important line. I don't. I don't have to realistically anymore.

[Dan]

Yeah, exactly. Does Linus deserve to be guillotined?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, hold on a second. Let me just jump in and correct you. It's guillotined. That's probably not going to win me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now that he did that. Yes.

[Dan]

All right, I'll go get the one in my car. I've been waiting for this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I don't know. It's a little difficult. Right. Where is the line of like Bezos to Linus? Literature would tell us that there is no line.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, Interesting. But I can tell you that the difference between my lifestyle, the difference between my lifestyle and my wealth and Bezos's is extremely dramatic.

[Dan]

Absolutely incomparable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Colossal. Buddy literally wanted them to deconstruct a fucking bridge so that he could get his boat out of the shipyard. Like this is, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is a historical bridge. I like.

[Dan]

Everyone has a price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like my boat.

[Dan]

I would like to get my shirts out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My boat needs to be in slightly different water.

[Dan]

Yeah, it's. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure there's a lot. Well, because you have the $400 shirt and you need them in your villa and in the south of France.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a great. This is a great post from Imperator. The difference between $1 billion and $1 million is approximately $1 billion.

[Dan]

What if you had 800 million or 500 million or 100 million?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't. I don't know. This is. I feel unqualified to weigh in on this. I just, I'm just kind of, kind of sitting here.

[Dan]

Has money. Right. And I think Linus, we've talked about this after wan. A few Times now. Right. Linus is. He's got money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But there's also. There's also.

[Dan]

But he doesn't have like a lot of money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also an interesting question because, like, the valuation of the company was something that was brought up a little while ago. So we said publicly what the offer was. Yes, but this is one of those. As much as we've tried to rage against this, we are one of Those inverted pyramid YouTube companies where if you leave, we're in trouble.

[Dan]

Like the machine is not sustaining. Like Amazon will be okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It might have a pretty flat bottom of the pyramid. Inverted pyramid, but it's still an inverted pyramid.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. And we're trying. And we're trying, we're trying to make that better, but it is hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What we do.

[Dan]

It's not necessarily about that, I think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. I think it is though, because that is not cash that he has, that is an asset that he owns, which is the company.

[Dan]

If we take Linus out of the equation, I think he's just an example in this. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Take me out of the equation. I don't like the direction this is going.

[Dan]

We'll pull him into pieces. Right. Like Linus has money. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Those machines are in Diablo.

[Dan]

Yeah, exactly. But he doesn't have like extreme levels of wealth. Intergenerational.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What I'm saying is too, is if he stops working, also known as leaves the company, the value of the thing that he owns goes down significantly.

[Dan]

But again, it's not about necessarily Linus in particular when we're talking about this line. Right. Say Linus just owned the factory that is lmg, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Dan]

He could dissolve it. That would be fine. He could take the money from the buyout, which would be what, nine figures or something like that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But the buyout required him to stay, so he's still working.

[Linus Sebastian]

It did require me to stay for a period of two years.

[Dan]

Again, you're still using him as the example. You had $100 million, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And wasn't working or just owned the company and did other things like. Is that where the line is?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is.

[Dan]

Is it 50 million?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because what I'm saying is he doesn't have $100 million.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because he didn't accept the buyout and.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I own an asset that's worth that, but the asset is worth less if I'm not working.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So it's complicated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. But my question. Let's get off the subject of me for a minute.

[Dan]

That's what I'm trying To do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

My question is, where would the line be if we weren't talking about me?

[Dan]

That's what I'm trying to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does it come down to what you do day to day? Is it your lifestyle or is it your wealth, like your net worth or is it your cash? Because you could have a very frugal lifestyle, but you could have a ton of cash in the bank and just choose to live like a normal person. You could have an extravagant lifestyle but actually have no real assets. You're just. You're living check to check. But you have a huge income. You could have huge wealth, huge net worth, but actually all of it is illiquid. Unliquid, illiquid, whatever. It's not liquid. Right. It's tied up. It's in companies that are private companies. So you can't just trade the stock on the open market or anything like that. In that category, you could live a very extravagant lifestyle or you could not live a very extravagant lifestyle or you live somewhere in between. Like, what are we measuring here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. I think, I think it depends on too many. Yeah. Your disregard for human life, which is an impossible thing to measure. But I do agree, which is part of the problem because like if you, if you own a bunch of businesses but aren't raking disgusting, ruin the world level profit margins like a lot of businesses do, and you're employing a bunch of people in jobs that are paying them well and stuff like that. If you have a bunch of wealth because you technically own all these businesses, I don't think you should just be guillotined.

[Dan]

I think that that kind of depends on the person. Right. Because technically you would be of the ownership class and therefore subject to head separation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. Okay, but does it. Okay, so then tell me this on the subject of head separation, then does it come down to what your answer to the trolley problem problem would be? Would you.

[Dan]

Do you own the company that produces the trolleys? Are you the train company? If so, head separated? If you are employed by the train company to drive the train over people, then you don't get guilty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But does that mean that the person pulling the lever who doesn't own anything, regardless of decision, is cool?

[Dan]

I don't know. If you had four billionaires on one side and one billionaire on one side, like, how can I drift across both tracks, you know?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh man, it's deja vu.

[Dan]

I've seen that done a lot. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Where is the line? If it's Just monetary wealth. Like Linus said, it depends how you use it. If you just have a lot of wealth and are nice, like, okay, Bill Gates. Okay, Bill Gates versus Jeff Bezos.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I could talk a fair bit about how.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Drop them both.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bill Gates has done a lot of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if I just owned all the farmland reputation.

[Linus Sebastian]

What would happen then?

[Dan]

What about the guy that bought the onion futures for the entire US for, like, ever and then had to get rules made about him? What if you'd have just so much money you can just be like, I own all the vegetables.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Which happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gates has yet to provide a really solid defense for why he owns so such a large proportion of the agricultural land in the United States of America.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if I controlled all of their food? What if I was the one that got to decide if you eat or not?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's what he's doing. I don't know that I would draw a distinction between those two, particularly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't at all.

[Dan]

What if it's living outside of your means? Like, if you have two houses guillotine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Living outside of your means, though, if anything, I think that could. You could make the argument that they're a victim of a society that has. Hold on. I'm going somewhere with this. Okay, all right, let's go.

[Dan]

I'm into this.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. Of a society that has.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're pulling the rope back.

[Linus Sebastian]

That has made. What if they're a victim of a society that has set unrealistic expectations for what kind of lifestyle they have to uphold in order to be one of the cool kids? If that's meaningful to them. What if they're a victim of the kind of lending borrowing culture that we have? And they. And they were, you know, they felt pressured in order to keep up, to borrow money in order to sort of, you know, build that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that the way you were trying to live outside your means?

[Dan]

Not necessarily. Like, I think more like being inside of a societal place. Like, everybody has enough. Like, eventually you have enough. Right. One of the. One of the arguments that I wanted to make was like, okay, you have more than $200 million, just 100% tax. You can't have more than $200 million. But then thinking about somebody like Bezos who actually has no money because he just has giant loans, and then he borrows against those loans. So he's in debt forever. Right. He uses his massive stock wealth, which isn't really anything, to basically be in, you know, hundreds of million dollars of debt. Like, Linus probably has more money than bezos maybe. Probably not, but you kind of get the comparison.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably got more liquid cash just in case he like, I don't know, feels like doing anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, in case he's like a gold plated. Maybe I need to buy a tissue paper to break.

[Dan]

Exactly. I just. I just have a bunch of gold bars in my basement. That sort of thing. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wonder how many seconds it would take.

[Dan]

It's already. It's already that many.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan]

If you have two houses, if you own 400 acres of land, if you have 75 cars.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you have 400 acres of land and it's all agriculture and you're growing crops for people and you're not necessarily making.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, what if you're not gouging then, are you? I think a lot of it to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me is the gouging. How are you actively using your immense wealth to make life terrible for other people? And I think just hoarding wealth and doing nothing with it is a form of actively using it to make other people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, tell me this. I mean, it's no secret that the badminton center, based on the list price, is worth anywhere between about 20 to. What would the math be? 20 to 23 million US dollars. Okay, that's not a secret that you can look that up. I clearly own a badminton center because I made a video about it. And this building and this building and the other building and the labs building and the other building and creator warehouse building. Your house and my house. You forgot my old house. Where my in laws live.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I didn't know that was public.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, whatever it is now, apparently.

[Dan]

I think you have talked about that online before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Guillotine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do we. Do we make a fancy one? Do we brand a Skin It LTT store?

[Dan]

We could live stream it the end of the streak.

[Linus Sebastian]

Their artificial skin partner.

[Dan]

Oh, geez.

[Linus Sebastian]

Am I doing anything that makes someone's life actively worse?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's where a lot of it comes down to me.

[Dan]

You don't invest in real estate. You invest in business real estate. I always respect that about you as you're not buying up houses.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I do. But okay, so if I own two houses, but I literally give one of them to a relative to live in, am I evil?

[Dan]

I think landlords are evil. Landscape like real estate prospector type people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, am I a landlord if I don't charge them or am I just a land guy? No, you're like.

[Dan]

You're like land bro, land bro. We're putting your rent down this month. I'm sorry, I have to pay you now land, son. I don't know. I don't know. It's. I mean, this is a thing that's been debated for a bazillion years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In my opinion. It completely comes down to the. The. Yeah, the oppression and neck stomping that happens. And if you're, you know, if you have your 400 acres, but you're doing it to grow crops that you're selling at fair prices that are not crushing.

[Dan]

Anyone, you could argue that just having that much capital in general is bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it is impossible for anyone else to do farming because you own all the farmland, Bill Gates, then yeah, I agree that that's bad. But there is a lot of land. Like, if you have 400 acres in Canada and you're not really close to the American border, who cares?

[Dan]

Yeah, but what's stopping me, with my vast amounts of wealth, to just go to another country and buy up all of their stuff?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right, but, but, but you didn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, so is it the power then? So back to what we're. What is. Where's the line? Is. Is the line power?

[Dan]

This is where we go to the ownership class versus the working class. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But there's degrees of power. There's degrees of ownership class.

[Dan]

And so where is the power line? Right. If money's not a problem, how much control and power do you have? Right. I think that should be the deciding factor.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Poorly, though, this is now we're getting into.

[Dan]

See, I don't back onto the person.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The terms for what these different political and philosophical arguments are, but I'm going to call this the Superman discussion because. Good, dude. Tons of power. Right. So I think there is, like I'm saying with this farmer, 400 acres, but not competitive. 400 acres, that's growing crops and selling them at fair prices. That.

[Linus Sebastian]

That man should fight him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Keep him in check.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, like, I think. I think I would want to pay attention to that guy. But I. It's fine. People need crops.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sue for AWS asks. Don't you still own the old Langley house also? As a landlord? Yes. The only reason, though. The only reason. The only reason is they asked me not to sell. That's three houses they were going to. They were gonna buy it.

[Dan]

It's a lot of business property.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. They were gonna. They were gonna buy. We said we wanted a lot of things. Okay, give me a sec.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pull the rope.

[Linus Sebastian]

We wanted to sell it because we weren't interested in. Philosophically, I am against speculative investment in residential real estate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can verify that this all happened, by the way.

[Linus Sebastian]

We wanted to sell it. The tenants asked us not to because they wanted to put together a plan to be the ones to buy it. Because they like the house, they like the area and it isn't. It's nice house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe they even gave you a timeline.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. They ultimately were not able to do that and asked to renew their lease.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was it because of your oppressive landlord pricing?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

We gave them, we gave them, I believe the same. Don't quote me on this. I believe we gave them the same or a very similar rate to expand to the rest of the house once you moved out of the basement. And we have never increased their rent ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're never going to leave. Is there, Is there a. Too nice.

[Dan]

No. No, there's not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there a.

[Dan]

This becomes the other argument. Nobody has enough money to be nice to everybody. There. Therefore it is. You're being mean.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right?

[Dan]

You could just use your money to buy a swath of houses and then have everybody live in them for free. And it just like that wouldn't work either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now we're making the town.

[Dan]

Yeah. 400 acres of forest in northern B.C. and then build a town and then have everybody live.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Everything comes back to life.

[Dan]

You could even provide them clothing and like food. Food.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you would know the clothing was made well by us.

[Dan]

I mean the hypothetical people who lived in the town.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have my. You have my personal commitment. When they move out, we're going to sell it. I, I do not. I, I believe we have, we have a demand problem here for housing, but we also have a supply problem. And I don't want to contribute to the supply problem. But I'm also, I'm also not into raising rents. I believe. I mean, we talked about this earlier on the show. To me, a contract is a contract. It's an agreement. And unilaterally changing the agreement is pretty stupid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What about things like. Here's a question, like if the, if there's natural inflation and things like power hydro. Do you pass power and hydro on?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not surprised. I bet you you don't. Just because it would be like annoying.

[Linus Sebastian]

The truth is, I actually just don't care about.

[Dan]

I think you're defending yourself and I don't think we need to because you're like a good one. Maybe we will find out eventually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it possible for there to be a good one though? That's the question.

[Dan]

But where is the power line?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there's gotta be a limit.

[Dan]

Where's the power line? Like Linus doesn't have enough money or enough power to be a concern. Right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could. Who knows?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't. I don't know what I could do. I've never really, like, I've never really thought about it.

[Dan]

I think. I think it becomes a problem when you have so much wealth that you can buy all of the onions in.

[Linus Sebastian]

The U.S. oh, and like, I can't.

[Dan]

You know what? Do you know what I mean? Like, you could destroy an economy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I can't buy politicians.

[Dan]

You can't buy politicians.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, maybe I could. I heard they're pretty cheap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna say, I think you actually could. Looking at some of the dollar documentation that I've seen online, I think you could probably buy a few. They don't. This seems to be a relatively easy thing to do.

[Dan]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're really not that expensive.

[Dan]

I'm not well read enough on the subjects to like give all of the arguments.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So hear me out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Please, please do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Please, please, please, please.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll put the guillotine away.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a really cool blade. It has a really flexible zoning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

It allows for recreation use, office use, multi unit residential use.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The town.

[Linus Sebastian]

It has over 600 underground parking stalls. This building is the size of a city block. It allows for mixed retail use. So we could literally have like a store. We could have like a. Like an LTT Tech. Tech shop where you could come get your computer repaired.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get like, you know that tech mall in Taiwan?

[Linus Sebastian]

It is almost 250,000 square feet. It is literally larger than the entire real estate portfolio that I currently own combined.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it's 256,000 square feet, that would just be sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

The only problem. The only problem is that this is an infamous building. Oh, it was originally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it like haunted or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

Here we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Vacant since 1998.

[Dan]

Oh, let's do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a really cool YouTube video where they go into it from a few years back and this thing has rotted. Oh, it would be a nightmare.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Moving vlogs for four years.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Dan]

I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get mesotheliomia from putting all the cat 16 in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Here it is though.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's right between Guildford and Surrey Central City. So it's like actually an amazing location.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Allowed to just be abandoned this whole time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. I heard. I heard a story that like an American investor showed up at a previous court ordered sale and bought it for like a song, like a couple million dollars or something like that and then just sat on it and then sold it. I think it sold a couple years ago again to someone who thought they could resurrect it. There's another court ordered sale coming. Clearly. Clearly nobody can get this thing off the ground.

[Dan]

They don't have a world class team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On the floor. What if you could you like section off half the building or honestly from the sounds of it, three quarters of the building.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that the city.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And renovate part of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that the city is highly motivated to have this not just be an eyesore on like one of the major arteries. However, there would be serious like, like safety and building code concerns around any effort to resurrect this thing.

[Dan]

I'm so sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you though?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Reddit is really funny sometimes. I used to, I used to have problems with the Reddit. The Reddit has been hilarious for quite a while now. Oh man, that's really funny.

[Dan]

No, I need him to employ me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, don't, please.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, I have a weird opinion that I think a lot of the eat the rich stuff has been like rage. I don't know if we bleep that word out or not, but I did anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

He said porn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I guess we don't then.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Sometimes we do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, I think it cuz like the amount you hear people say like, oh, I'm gonna whatever. Like it's either that or it's that whole thing where like you say you're going to do something, but then the second you say it, you're no longer really going to do it. So if you're going to commit to things, you should just do it without talking about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently it is.

[Dan]

I'm all about that now.

[Linus Sebastian]

So now he's not about it.

[Dan]

Yeah, I'm just going to quit now because I've already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, because you get, you get the like social credit.

[Dan]

Even thinking about it, you get the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Social credit for saying you're going to do the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right? And then it's like you're satisfied, you get the, you get the dopamine hit and then you're done. Yeah, interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like a lot of times especially you should, you should start and then form the habit and then you can tell people. You should establish the habit first.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huh? No, I don't have a doomsday bunker. My goal is to live in harmony with the people around me and not need one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I hope.

[Dan]

600 cars, 600 car garage, doomsday bunker videos.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you Did a doomsday. You know you can drive EVs in a doomsday bunker.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Be pretty sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. Bill Randall, executive VP of the real estate company, said he's been involved in the building for 20 years, dating back to previous owners. Reached Friday, he confirmed ban as the current owner and list price of 63 million. Little Rich for my blood. The important thing here, you know how.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The baby center is like 99.8% done.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, if you just abandon that project immediately and sell the whole building and then sell all your other buildings, all of them combined, then just.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't, I still don't think we could afford it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And a bunch of debt. Who cares? Whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, because the actual. Because the problem is not the $63 million. Like, we could get. We could get. We could, with our cash flow, with our assets, we could, we could probably get loans. We could, we could probably buy it. Because if we were going to occupy it, we would only need, I think, 10% down. Like we could put together $6.3 million. We'll do another. We'll do another lime sale. Linus Inventory management experience sale. We'll raise a couple mil. That way we'll, like, we could, we could probably scrape it together. The problem is how much we're going to spend in renovations. And to my point earlier about like, safety and building code. You can't just be like in there working while you're renovating it. You can't. Well, okay, you can get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can if you do like seals and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

The plumbing is rotted out. Like, it's bad. It's real bad. And yeah, yeah, Megor says home renovations are always on time and on buddy. So, yeah, we would literally have. We'd have sold all of our buildings. We'd have nowhere to operate while we're like looking around going, okay, we're a bunch of like clothing designers and video production people. And now we're renovating a building. Like, it's just. I work from home.

[Dan]

3-30-25.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think we could afford to fix it. That's the problem. Even if we could afford the building, I don't think we could afford to fix it. If we could work out a deal with the city where they would allow us to get a small part of it up to speed while we tech reno it or something over a span of like you said, like four years, then I don't know, it would probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Take more than four years.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, probably. Yeah. I was wrong about the size. It's 275,000 square feet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even bigger.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, so this, this building we're in right now, including all the mezzanine spaces.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, with the amount of parking spots you could, you could have in with where it is and the amount of parking spots that there is, you could probably have an income stream, just like renting out parking spots.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no one would park there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

600, isn't it right next to Guilford?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's in between Guildford and Surrey Central. Oh, it's like in no man's land. It's like if someone wanted to shop at the Super Store and, and walk two blocks, then they could park it. Except Superstore has their own parking, so we got nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just got to make that the happening place to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, dude, this would be, this would be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

By completely abandoning your badminton center and rebuilding it from scratch, this would be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tens of millions of dollars if you're lucky. And so this is the problem. In an eight page sales brochure posted online, Colliers noted that the 2024 BC Assessment value was more than 114 million. The problem is that if you buy this thing at, what did I say? 63 million? Yeah. If you buy this thing at 63 million and you spend $100 million renovating it, you're underwater. And I think that that is maybe not 100 million, but I do think that it is not unrealistic for anyone who buys this to potentially spend that kind of money fixing it so you could end up like. I. Okay, I had a somewhat, I had a pretty not serious conversation with Yvonne that was like, we should show up at the auction and offer like $2 million. Because if this thing is going to cost $100 million to renovate, then maybe it is actually worth nothing at a certain point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's, it's worth the knockdown value.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, knock down land. Oh, I don't know if the city would even allow you to do it though. Like you need a permit to knock down a building. And I think they, I think they, the city wants this thing to be a thing. Yeah, this thing, dude, this thing is friggin wild. Yeah. In 2021. 2021, there was a tour, there was a tour of the building here. I'm gonna wait till this, I'm gonna wait till this ad finishes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that a form of ad block? Is that okay? Is that fine by watching this, by showing this to the stream? By showing this to the stream but not having them watch the ad?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you just perform?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's an ad for Navigator. There's an ad for Navigator. Was that whatever black press media is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You all just say all everyone watching just engage in piracy.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's right here. They're fine. Okay, so here we go. So here's the inside. Actually, like, looks pretty decent. Vacant for more than two decades.

[Dan]

I bet it smells lovely.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if you kind of. But they talk about it. They talk about it in the video. You kind of gotta dig a little deeper to like. No, this is actually bad. Developers envisioned an Asian showmart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Surprisingly not like discolored. That doesn't matter almost at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

But.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are those?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Buy it, then you get those.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Free table.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's huge.

[Dan]

Dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, the place is freaking enormous. 275,000 square feet. Just like things that looks like open. Here's a plywall thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you say there was residential?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's zoned for multi unit residential.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So how much residential?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think less than 60%. So it would still be a very substantial, potentially very substantial amount of residential. This could. This could literally house the entire company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is where I'm.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like every endeavor, the company does that. That was why I was like. But no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, you don't. You don't do necessary company housing. You just have it as an option that is cheaper to the point where, like, you'd be kind of dumb to not do it. And then you don't do a necessary company store, but you have a store on the premises that sells clothing and food and everything that you need. And then you can pay Linus Bucks at the store and you earn Linus Bucks for good conduct at work.

[Dan]

Yeah. We can use the AI tracking to make sure that people are on task.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And behaving nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every ten lines of code, you get five Linus Bucks.

[Dan]

Yeah. And your weekly food ration.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah. I like this idea. Yeah, It's a good idea. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Surrey Board of Trade says they should just tear it down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sorry. CEO and president of the Surrey Board of Trade. That's the city. Surrey. All right. Well, anyway, good luck, everybody. Oh, yeah. Okay. I didn't imagine it. American lawyer Donald Pitt, who helped launch the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team decades ago, bought the building in the mid 2000s. Construction was completed at that time. Since then, prospective renters and or buyers have included Fraser Health, Simon Fraser University, and the rcmp. But all deals eventually didn't happen. Potential uses pitched for the building have included banquet hall, office space, homes, restaurants, bowling alley, even an auto sales lot. On the ground floor. None of which ever materialized. $2 million.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's my final offer. Who do you have to buy it from? Is it the city or is it.

[Linus Sebastian]

The current owner who is Kuldeep Bansal?

[Luke Lafreniere]

But they're forced to sell it.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a court ordered sale, but I don't know what that means. This article is really interesting because it's like it's kind of everything you need to know. The. The important thing here is the lenders and the owner, Everyone along with us, we're trying to work together to find a positive solution for the property. And this is the realtor. This is a bit of a positive spin on this. But there is equity in the building. You know, the mortgage holders are well protected. The court ordered sale is not because there's a negative equity situation here. So negative equity would mean that it is worth less than the amount you owe on it, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or like then the total liability. But I also think that I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Know if it's worth practically anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

I am not sure if you have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To rip up all of the plumbing and very likely all of the electrical and potentially the walls and everything else.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also, I think you're paying a cool like million dollars a year in property taxes the entire time you hold this property. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, so it's probably not gonna happen ever. But it'd be cool. Be pretty sick. Finest media campus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, do it. It's not my debt. Go for gold.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, it's a cool building.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is very cool. Yeah, it looks neat. Imagine you could play soccer on the lawn in the front.

[Linus Sebastian]

Heck yeah, you could.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Company activity.

[Linus Sebastian]

Heck yeah, you could.

[Dan]

It's like half the size.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could do outdoor badminton on the lawn in front.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at all these windows. It's like kind of a cool building.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why not every single person has a corner office.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, right. Look at all these corners.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a lot of corners.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's beautiful. What are we doing right now? What are we talking about? How do we end up on this?

[Dan]

Luke has 14 minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. Luke. Oh, man. Oh, man. Okay, Nintendo. I killed the Ryujin X switch emulator last weekend. Russ of the YouTube channel. Oh, wait, no. This is about the copyright strike for Russ from Retro Game Corps, that is. Yeah, thanks Nintendo for that. They got their first strike after covering the MiG switch now called the MiG Flash, which allows you to dump games from your Nintendo Switch to your computer. According to Rust, Nintendo. Nintendo was able to strike that video because the title screen of Super Mario 3D World was shown on his computer. The new strike was on a video where Russ apparently demonstrated a Wii U emulator. It's perhaps worth noting that you can't buy Wii U games from Nintendo anymore since the company shut down the console's Eshop last year. Then this Tuesday, it came out that Nintendo Switch emulator Region X has been wiped out a year after rival emulator Yuzu was shuttered by Nintendo. According to the Region X development team member Rip in Perry. Perry, the lead developer, GDK chan, was offered an agreement by Nintendo to stop working on the project and remove the organization as well as all related assets. While GDK chan didn't tell the team whether or not he was complying, the emulator is now gone from GitHub and the official site's download page has been wiped. It is speculated that this was a buyout rather than any kind of threat of legal action, because my understanding of Region X was that it involved complete reverse engineering, not any Nintendo ip, which was supposed to keep it safe from any Nintendo legal action.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if any of the rest of this matters that much, so maybe we should do a couple more merge messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Dan]

We gotta do When After Dark.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that way we can at least transition to When After Dark, before Luke just leaves.

[Dan]

Yeah, sure. I'll focus on the Luke ones. Luke, did you or have you considered using the Flutter framework for Floatplane? Seems like it would work well to have a unified code base across platforms.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not changing frameworks right now, my dude. I haven't looked into it. If this was something that we were, you know, if we were making a platform from scratch, maybe we could look into stuff. But yeah, we're not. We're not doing that right now. Sorry. The chat is also very upset at this idea. I don't know, dudes.

[Dan]

Hey, Linus, do you have any pictures of that sweet Suzuki you've been painting? And Luke, have you ever rode on the back of it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, his weight sitting behind me, up higher than me on a bike we would tip.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, your bike.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we did the first red light and just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, I wrote on the back of a scooter that Dennis was driving in Taiwan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we live scary.

[Linus Sebastian]

Colton and I both rode with Dennis at the same time. It was pretty scary. That's channel. That's true. Let's see, one actual human or two homunculi. No, I don't have any pictures. I have been completely stalled on that project. Kind of demoralized by some of the setbacks I'm gonna pick it up again. I really need to. I really. I really need to pick it up again. I'll get it done.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Sorry, this is a bit hard here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Person who asked that just wants to know when we're getting the beard back. Phony Tony said in full play chat. That is kind of true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. That's fair. I want the beard back. I think. I think I'm ready.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Dan]

Hey, dll question for Luke. Any thoughts on Star Citizen charging $40 for the Atlas? Essentially making a problem with loading cargo and selling a solution to the problem they made.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I didn't know that was part of it because I didn't know about this ship because I check out Star Citizen like once a year. I don't know, dude. They also sell like tens of thousands of dollars for a single ship, don't they? I don't know the whole thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I don't think they have anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do they not?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think so.

[Dan]

They do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they don't. I know they have that. Are that expensive?

[Dan]

No, there's. There's a ship that is the like largest luxury yacht and I think it's five figures at least.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Most IDRIs. Is that 20, 22, 725.

[Linus Sebastian]

IDRIs is old, that one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How much is $25,000? 600i executive edition. Hey, it's. That's.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Javelin is $3,000. Largest destroyer class ship 480 meters in length.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but there's the 600i executive edition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. 25 grand. Yeah, there's nobody. There's no way anybody bought that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I pretty much guarantee you someone did.

[Dan]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For human use as an expeditionary vessel. For players? No, for players, the ship is only available as a reward upon reaching the Legatus Nav concierge rank which requires a spending. Oh, requires a spending of 25 grand. So even though the ship.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For spending money.

[Dan]

Oh, I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a rank for spending money, my guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. The interior is in pre concept stage design and will be updated at some point in the future.

[Dan]

There's a VR chat level for it, so you don't have to buy one ever. Like a normal person. Moving on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So like. Yeah, I don't know. That sucks.

[Dan]

Star Citizen cool though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They do genuinely some pretty incredible things. The tech behind it is super interesting. What they're working on is super neato. You don't have to spend that much money on the game at all. You just play the game and earn money and then buy ships that way and it's Totally fine.

[Dan]

I'm still working on my $60 ship buy since it first came out a thousand years ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And you're probably fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like this cargo ship thing. I wouldn't be surprised if you can just make some money in the game and then just buy it in the game.

[Dan]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So like I don't know, just ignore it. Don't. Don't play into those things and move on.

[Dan]

Talking of games, have you played zero sievert?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Dan]

Okay, no, look, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Can we do something really fun really quick here?

[Dan]

Oh yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is still a thing. There's a $50 super.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's just gone.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I have to click here to see it. But they don't stay here forever. Pretty. Dude, pretty wild that it's just not in the viewer activity thing. This has been open the whole time. Whole time. Merge messages, use merch messages. Okay, cool. Bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

0Sivert looks sick from just like the Steam page, but I don't know. It's a. It's a extraction shooter, but it's like a little top down game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's cool.

[Dan]

I guess. Nuclear focused.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very positive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool seems neat. There's so many cool games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, one second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, am I going back to your laptop?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They called. They called the area Zakov, which is like the closest thing to Tarkov. All right, that's a little nuts.

[Dan]

All right. They know what they're doing. Luke, you've said in the past you wouldn't do an AMD tech upgrade. Is it be too boring? Would you do it with this big kicker? Linus is in charge and picks what you get.

[Linus Sebastian]

I already pick what he gets for his upgrades.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, to be honest, no, I. My problem was that like there. It just. I. Yeah, I didn't have a. An interesting. I actually said no at one point. One was offered to me and I said no because I didn't think it would be interesting for people. That is no longer true. But. But I am at the whims of the rules of whoever draws the thing. So I don't know if I'm eligible or not. It doesn't really necessarily matter. I get the free computers because of that ancient awesome deal anyways. So something that could be kind of fun is you were mentioning my dad getting one. We could maybe do it that if I get drawn, it just goes to my dad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, why don't we do that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Something like that could be cool. And then I don't know if I. There's potential that I'm going to be dramatically changing my setup probably in the new year because my roommate moved out. So we're going to be moving our desks into there and I could maybe drag Linus over to my house for that and we could just like film it, but it wouldn't have to be an AMD tech upgrade.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, weird. The behavior of the dashboard seems to have changed. Something was incurated that I wanted to uncurate so that I could type a response and then push to stream, but it seems to have gone straight to push to stream instead of giving me an opportunity to type a response. So Anonymous, I don't know anything really about the WordPress.org thing, but I will say that the whole if you don't agree with this legal fight, take a buyout and then get out move seems like not really good leadership is what I'll say about that.

[Dan]

Back into incoming.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that's what I thought, but it didn't seem to go there. That's fine. We can figure it out another time.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what else we got?

[Dan]

You got any more topics or is this When After Dark? Officially?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's officially When After Dark. There's a couple more topics. I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't have to leave. Exactly it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Redditors can't protest platform changes anymore. You have to. You have to send a request to take your subreddit private. There. Okay, that's that. I think we talked about the flappy bird thing last week. Sketchy game dev announces a recovery plan and a new Kickstarter. So the background here is the day before was a hyped up multiplayer survival horror extraction shooter that was misleadingly advertised as an mmo. The game was very limited and technically flawed when it launched in December 2023 and was withdrawn from sale after just four days. The developer Fantastic, also garnered controversy due to its alleged use of volunteer and severely under paid labor and its alleged habit of fining employees as punishment for poor output. Now Fantastic has returned with a promise that it's changed its ways and a Kickstarter for $15,000 to develop a physics based multiplayer co op Escape game called Escape Factory. A demo of the game is available on Steam. However, according to Data Miners, the game's assets are flipped Unity Store items and its networking and matchmaking features are based on Unity demo code. So maybe don't buy it. Cool. All right, that's it.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, we gotta cut the Zuck shirt. Let's do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should we just do it next week? No, they need it oh, okay. It's time to unbox a $400 T shirt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm excited.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you like to do it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is actually the second time it's unboxed, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I unboxed it for a flip exclusive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get a little card. You got to read the card first.

[Dan]

All right, I'll read the card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't open your present without reading.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thank you. Thank you for purchasing from our online boutique. We have prepared your order with the utmost care in Salamio. Salomeo. I don't know, some Italian city. Our customer care is available to assist you. Scan the QR code to contact our team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Oh, man, I just cleaned the guillotine. Okay, look, look, I didn't buy it for myself. The company bought it for competitive product research.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and we're destroying it so that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can research it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It comes in a bag.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, you can't figure out how a frog works without taking it apart. That's what they taught me in biology class.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why does it come in its own bag?

[Linus Sebastian]

So that you have a bag.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so it's not even a bag.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're not good at this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that surprising to anyone?

[Dan]

Okay, he doesn't have a lot of experience unboxing any clothes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you ever unlocked a four hundred dollar T shirt?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Usually my clothes just show up at my desk.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're holding it behind your laptop. You are actually the worst at this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's got a big, really big tag.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's it. It feels like a shirt. Not even like a particularly thick one or anything. I'm just. I'm feeling like this pinch. Feeling it. I don't know. Dear customer, please be advised that the product cannot be returned if this security tag is removed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, do it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You held it under the table. Luke, you need showmanship classes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the content's better when you get mad, though. Hey, there's another tag. This one. Show how much it was. No. Why is there another tag?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I guess I can try and find the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This product of quality. This product of quality. Fruit of our labor, is created in Solomio, a small medieval village at the gates of Assisi, where men and nature are still aware of the harmonious rhythm of time. Kind of sick. So we're cutting this thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is. Do you want to cut it in, like a specific spot so it's still wearable by someone? Is that impossible? How big is the circle? It's pretty big.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. No, you just. It's still wearable after you cut a circle out of it. I mean, you just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a 400 shirt. Do that.

[Dan]

Do the nipple.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It. Oh, yeah. Nice.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You want to. Here.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't actually. I don't actually see it. I'm a little confused. Is. Does it say anywhere what the product is? Like, do you have a label?

[Luke Lafreniere]

One sec. Okay. It feels nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you going to give me the label?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, that's just.

[Linus Sebastian]

The label's there. You took the label. All right, all right. Okay. So what. What is it? This is C8190 medium.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like, I didn't think.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I think that's. I think that's a skew.

[Dan]

Hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I can probably. I can probably search by that. Okay, so the little rubber disc, C8190. Is that going to work? Unfortunately, it seems we couldn't find any results for that. Okay, well, I can't find it anymore. I can't find it on their site, but we definitely ordered this. We bought it, and now. Okay. Right, right, right, right, right. So one of the things that we wanted to do is make sure that our Zuck T shirt, which is just going to be a gray T shirt, but, you know, comfortable or whatever, you know, like billionaires. Like, we wanted to make sure that it is pretty similar. At least we're not going to have the same source of cotton. We might even use a blend instead of 100% cotton.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not going to be made the same way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It's not going to be made in a medieval village. It's a great T shirt, and it's going to be inspired by that shirt Mark Zuckerberg is always wearing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And in this shirt's defense, ignoring the price tag feels nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

It feels nice. But one of the things that we need to do in order to determine how we can make a shir like Zuck would wear is we need to figure out the weight of the fabric. And the best way to do that, I'm informed by Tatiana from the. I don't know if she's really fashion team, but she works on the fashion team and also with the engineering team on, like, materials. Essentially, the best way to do that is to use this thing. What? Oh, did I do something wrong?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I just had it all nicely lined up for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. The best way to do it is to use this thing, which basically goes on to a material and then has, like, a blade, and you spin this thing, and it. Like, it's. Yeah, it's got kind of, like a nasty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's Four blades.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Nasty little blade thing in there. So you turn this thing and it cuts it. It cuts the fabric. That gives you a standard sized piece of the fabric, and then you. You can determine the fabric weight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you just dabbed it. You got to go around now. You got to keep pressure down the whole time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm trying. Okay, here we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't have to go crazy hard because you're just going to be cutting the rubber.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Theoretically, there's four blades, so you should, you know, not have to go technically all the way around. Did we get it?

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. And here it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. Brunello. Oh, where'd it go?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's now in the shirt.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, this isn't gonna be twitch, Twitch TV safe anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that was the point, really.

[Linus Sebastian]

To have a boob cut out?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where'd it go?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where did it go?

[Dan]

Titty window.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it still, like, hung on by a thread or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a high quality, resilient shirt. It doesn't just come apart like some peasant shirt would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where. Where did it go? That's part of the vanishing fabric thing.

[Dan]

No, this is what you get for 400 bucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where the heck is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What happened? I mean, it's not like we can't do it again. We have a lot of shirt.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have already flipped it inside out. I'm going in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? This doesn't, like, eat it.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I saw it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw it. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where'd it go?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we idiots? Is chat gonna tell us where it is? Under the rubber? No, it's not under the rubber. You guys, look.

[Dan]

Oh. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

How to get under the rubber. How the heck did it get under the rubber? That was like a magic trick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's wild. I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, did they.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did Tatiana also give us a scale?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's awesome. So we're gonna find out the fabric weight right now. Did she give you, like, the formula for how much the. Whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's grams normally, and then it's GSM if you 10 exit, if I remember correctly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, wait, it's not zero. Tear it. Tear it. Okay, I'm going. Oh, no, the other tear.

[Dan]

Oh, palm to tear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where's the zero? Oh, here we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. You good?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why does it need a lid?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I don't know.

[Dan]

Error.

[Linus Sebastian]

Error.

[Dan]

Air. It's a very sensitive, accurate scale. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because of the air.

[Dan]

Air currents.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, was that 1.71? I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, 1.71. Grams.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So perfectly fine. 17.1 GSM.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It shouldn't matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

But is that. Is that like a lot?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fabric. That doesn't sound like a lot. That doesn't sound right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, it doesn't feel super like thick or anything when you hold it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. No. 17 GSM. Seems like it could be. Could be a thing. Alibaba 12 GSM. Non woven fabric. Here we go. Okay. Yeah, those look like, pretty, like normal fabrics. Like. Like you could make a shirt out of or something. Wait, you know, this is 140GSM. Hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that just like a mat?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, this is fabric for T shirts. Yeah. No, this can't be right. This can't be right. Grams times a hundred.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, is it times 100?

[Linus Sebastian]

If it's times a hundred, that would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Forgot what she said. Yeah, the right thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

170 GS GSM sounds a lot more like the range I was expecting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what GSM numbers normally are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Grams per square meter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I. Thanks.

[Linus Sebastian]

How much do you charge if they just raise for a gram?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why do they bother change the number?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Okay. What else are we. What are we talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, it's grams times 100.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, perfect.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She's in the chat.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I forgot. I thought you said 10.

[Linus Sebastian]

No way. Her username is Material Girl.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's kind of. It's pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like it. I mean, we're living in a material world, so it makes sense that you'd be a material girl.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I took it off and put it back on again. It said 16.9 or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, we'll. We'll let Tatiana do it properly because realistically, we can't be trusted, apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

Just lost the fabric sample. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a question for her. Is 7. Does 17 sound high? 17 or 170? No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. I can tell you the answer no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, is that right? Is that a high GSM shirt?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not necessarily. It's like, fine. Yeah. No, your observation that it's not a particularly, like, thick shirt? She says no, that's pretty normal. Yeah. Worksman says put the shirt on with the circle. All right. Want to do a merch message in the meantime?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. You got one, Dan?

[Dan]

Yeah, I got a few. Shall we move to after dark as well?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, let's see.

[Dan]

Hello, wan dll spout v2. I got a chance to meet both Jensen Huang and Lisa Su a few weeks ago. I froze and had nothing useful to say. What Questions would you have asked. Asked each if given the chance, Jensen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Definitely. What is. What is the favorite. What is. What is your favorite artistic piece on your stove?

[Dan]

How do you properly pronounce Thai?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, pick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Pick one.

[Dan]

Pick a lame.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have to decide.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I feel like a billionaire.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, hey. It's not actually a problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, this is perfect.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Dan]

We should.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a statement.

[Dan]

We should.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I actually feel like that is an artsy shirt.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look, if. If the whole point of buying a super. If the point of buying a super expensive article of clothing is that you can afford it and other people can't, then it should be an even bigger flex to destroy it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then be able to afford to destroy it, which other people can't. And I'm just following their logic. I've said I'm not. I'm not really into the whole $400 T shirt thing. Also, there's some kind of weird stuff about it. Like, do you notice the shoulders?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does seem to sit a little weird.

[Linus Sebastian]

Little like. Like a little peek. I think that might just be from it being pressed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, might just be from it because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There'S a line all the way down your. Down your shoulder, which is almost certainly from it being folded for so long or pressed or whatever.

[Dan]

Sign in the middle of the circle.

[Linus Sebastian]

What, like on my skin? No, I don't want silver sharpie on my skin. No, I reject.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You need a black one so it looks like a tattoo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then it's a window to the tattoo.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's. It's. Normally you'd have a window to your soul. So this way it shows a dollar.

[Dan]

Sign because it's a window to his heart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will say this. You guys can see more detail about it in the float plane exclusive if you're subscribed to float plane. And realistically, if you were shopping for a shirt like this, you can afford to subscribe to float plane. But the fit, it's not great. Yeah, it's, like, kind of. Okay. It's not that flattering, in my opinion. The shoulders, it has kind of like a weird second artful seam at the bottom.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It comes really far down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unnecessary seam as well. You look at the way it, like, bunches. If I lift my arms.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I have rejected garments that had better sleeves than this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is some of this being impacted by the giant hole that we put in it?

[Dan]

I like the hole.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. The artful hole.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I think having an undershirt on that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The. The second seam on the back of the shoulder is weird.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is odd. Are you guys gonna do that, then?

[Linus Sebastian]

Do what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Put a weird seam on the arm?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess we'd have to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Well, it's the Zuck. I mean, the Steve had, like, a weird seam down the middle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this really, like. Is he. Does he wear this shirt all the time right now?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if he does right now, but I don't care. I mean, Steve Jobs doesn't wear that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shirt right now because Zuckerberg has done a big, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really? He's gonna let me get away with that one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What do you say?

[Linus Sebastian]

I said Steve Jobs doesn't wear that shirt right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my goodness. Because Zuckerberg is. He's. He's, like, all trendy now and stuff. He looks like this.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's okay. I know, but we're not gonna do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this shirt is. Apparently he. He took some phrase that is like, you must be Caesar to rule or something in Latin. I don't remember exactly how it went. And he changed it to Zuck. Let me. Let me try to find the information on it. Give me one sec.

[Linus Sebastian]

Zuck has gone full. Hello, fellow kids. Yeah, a little bit. Make an Elon girdle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's pulling it off and Elon girdle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Anyway, yeah. Patch the hole with an LTT logo. Yeah. I could be down. Make that part of the shirt you sell. No, I don't think we'd put a giant LTT logo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Apparently there was a phrase. I'm not going to be able to pronounce it correctly at all, which is like, au Caesar, au nihil, which means either a Caesar or nothing, or simply all or nothing. The saying is indicative of grand ambition, and it was a personal motto of Italian Renaissance Prince Caesar Borgia or whatever. And his shirt is the same thing, but he replaced Caesar with Zuck and he made it himself. And that's. That's his shirt. You've got that. And you guys went with the gray one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's more iconic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, he wore it for a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the gray shirt is super iconic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't pay attention to him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't blame.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's this one. There are a lot of photos of this. Okay. Wow. He really does look like.

[Dan]

He looks so much better now. I'm so happy for him.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. There was nowhere to go but up. I don't know that he looks like. He's. He looks like Logan Paul. Like, that's who he looks like. He's trying to dress like he's gonna.

[Dan]

Make prime, but it's like the number because he's like a computer. Computer guy or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This over this. I think it's a win. I think it's a win.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he's doing better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. The haircut was really problematic before.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like I want to. Can you accentuate my receding hairline? Yeah, it's like that's what he told. Or like my large forehead, I guess. It's not even receding. It's just really, really big forehead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think this has been good for Zach and be for the people because people have started liking him a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mmm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I thought.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Do people just like. Like Mark Zuckerberg now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we're not gonna eat him? Well, he seems like he'd be chewy anyway. Lizard meat.

[Dan]

No, we gotta smoke him. He's got those smoked meats. Smoke with those meats.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Baby rays.

[Dan]

I can't remember. It was a long time ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Baby raised barbecue, something like that. Sweet baby raise.

[Dan]

Sweet baby raise.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, Chat says they're still gonna eat him. They just like him. Okay, okay. So they like him, but they're gonna eat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shed a single tear.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay, that's interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many tears do I get? Do I get more tears? Enough to salt the meat?

[Dan]

All right. Pour some Internet on it. It's got more than enough sodium.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Dan]

Hi, Dwell. Do you think AMD no longer doing high end GPUs effect exclusivity, AIB partners like XFX, Power, Color and Sapphire. Could we see them reaching out to Nvidia?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I doubt it. Power, Color and Sapphire have been all AMD through much worse times than we're in now. Oh, yeah, and xfx, they made the. They made the move. They essentially like pulled an evga, except just instead of pulling out of the VGA market entirely, they were just like, we're not going to sell cards from the only chipset vendor that matters and we're going to go to AMD and try to survive like that. And they're still. I mean, they're still kicking obviously, but AMD's done this before for context. The rumor is that AMD's upcoming GPU family is not going to have like a high end, like a 900, you know, 8900 xtx or whatever kind of suck. They've done it before. Polaris, they didn't have a high end product. And partners apparently Survived. In fact, I think they gained market share during that time, so. Might be okay. We'll see. Only time will tell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'll suck because Intel's not doing it either.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so if you want high end, you're gonna pay the Nvidia tax. Period.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Getting an even cooler kitchen. Sorry. Go for it.

[Dan]

It could have a second kitchen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you. You've seen his kitchen, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Everyone's seen the kitchen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How can anyone ever get over that? That kitchen?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. It's a nice kitchen. What do you. What do you want?

[Luke Lafreniere]

My goodness.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that even that crazy of a kitchen?

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's got a mural behind his stove. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's got a mantle. Yeah, okay. It's pretty crazy. I don't know. I never looked that close at it.

[Dan]

Is that a wolf stove?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. What's a wolf stove?

[Dan]

Does he have a combi oven? If he doesn't have a combi oven, it's not a combi.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, Chad knows.

[Dan]

What a combination. How do you. How are you rich and you don't have a common.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is like, one of 47 kitchens or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I live in, like, a McMansion. It's just a normal house, but big. I don't. I don't actually do, like, you know, fireplace, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What defines a mansion?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think over 5,000 square feet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why did it autofill kitchen? Why is it asking my location? Stop.

[Dan]

Combi oven is way more. Combi oven is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Combi oven allows you to control humidity and temperature and has convection, steam injection.

[Dan]

I hate it when you're making croissants.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things do look for definition of mansion, and it says a manor house. It's like. What does that mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, it doesn't have a firm definition. That's why.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, okay, actually, the first definition is a large, impressive house. Nice mansion, bro.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look up McMansion.

[Dan]

That's just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's not even a real thing.

[Dan]

Oh, it's a real thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's 100% a thing. Yeah, it's the McDonald's version of a mansion.

[Dan]

There, they put up, like, entire. They're tasteless. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why would you say that about your own home?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's. It's basic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's lacking architectural integrity.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, well, it's not. It's not like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does your house lack architectural integrity?

[Linus Sebastian]

Bro, Old money would look at my house and be like, does it even have any history? Like, it's not. It's just. It's just a giant house. It's a normal. It's a Normal house, except it's big.

[Dan]

Like I linked one of my favorite. Like, I don't know it can. We can say blogs anymore. This. This person basically goes through and explains why they suck. And there's some insane houses just so badly thought through.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even know some dude, I don't even know a lot of the words on here. Inappropriate use of prairie mullions. What is that?

[Dan]

So I did architecture for a while. There's like so many weird, weird turns.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you zoom in a little bit? Piggy nose. Extremely stealth. Ahoy. What am I doing?

[Dan]

Oh, it's like a tiny little porthole wheel window that they put there for some reason.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, I saw some really weird houses when we were shopping. There's a lot of. In the. In the kind of area ish where I live. There's a lot of houses that the owners clearly designed it and you ended up with just some super weird stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Faced with sticks, chopsticks, machine with stuff on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not gonna say what this looks like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I didn't even see that. I like that. Hell yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is this? Is this McMansion? Hell, is this a whole site?

[Dan]

Yeah. Will fodder. There's hundreds of these.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're so good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My rich grand, My rich friend in school had this dining set, but they covered everything in plastic protection. So this all seems strangely obscene.

[Dan]

It's like money does not buy taste, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, it really doesn't.

[Dan]

How do you live in this?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I'm. I'm so anti clutter. I don't like clutter. I don't like stuff in my house that I don't use. And I hate like uncomfortable furniture and stuff. Like, I just don't.

[Dan]

How many. Look at the tiered ceiling with all the pockets.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan]

And then the tiny little anemic fan right in the center.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They don't have carpets, but the. Or they don't have like wall to wall carpets, but they have carpets everywhere. So you're always on carpet anyways.

[Dan]

Airbags, the rug.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thomasville, Chicago.

[Dan]

Oh my God. That's such a depressing room.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This one seems okay. This one's okay.

[Dan]

But all those plants are probably fake.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But there's only. There's only one note on this room because it's actually kind of nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that looks. Actually I'd sit and eat breakfast there for sure.

[Dan]

Both of you are blocked.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dueling Chode Dormers. Okay. I mean, honestly, most of what's funny about this is Just the commentary. Like, I don't think.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, no, the commentary is great, but these houses are also ridiculous.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, we need more chairs. Okay. Isn't a hoy media thing or is that just like.

[Dan]

Well, okay. Like, big ships have round windows.

[Linus Sebastian]

Soul patch final boss.

[Dan]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bigger than the house. My apartment is in just the garage.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Okay. All right.

[Dan]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

The loneliest people. Yeah, dude.

[Dan]

That's a classic, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Giant houses that just have furniture that you don't using at all. Like, I. Half the cost seems to be buying the house, and the other half of the cost seems to be buying ostentatious furniture to occupy it.

[Dan]

Look how rich I am to afford this much nothing. I'm like, you take the badminton center and then just put, like, a 1eames chair in it. Ideal living room.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no.

[Dan]

More concrete, though. You put walls on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

Yo. Getting some new lids. I loved the live demo from last week. That's why I bought these. Question for Mr. Lime. What was the driving force for you to start at ncix?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I just really hated school, and I really hated the job doing. Running the painting business, and I just was so burnt out and down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Having a trash job is a really good motivator.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, it was a. It was a. It paid well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Having and needing a job that you hate, it's a pretty good motivator to do something else.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so I was just like, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to do what I want to do, which is talk to people about technology and get paid for it. What I really wanted to do was work in the tech room, but they wanted me in sales, which probably was wise.

[Dan]

Hey, Wan DL. I have a question for Linus. Do you see Mura on the big screen beyond? Did you see? I did when I got mine, and it was quite visible on mind, so I ended up returning it and going for the PSV R2 Miura. I thought this was a thing, but I think it seems like it's an issue with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mira effect. I'm actually not familiar with the term.

[Dan]

Moire.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Do you mean. Yeah.

[Dan]

M O R I E. Like, when I wear my.

[Linus Sebastian]

It looks like a fine, grainy mesh that covers the entire screen. It stays static as the image moves behind it. Usually more obvious in dim scenes. I can't say that I observed that.

[Dan]

Screen door effect. I think it's the screen door.

[Linus Sebastian]

But why would. Why would you not just call it screen door effect?

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Mirror just means screen door effect. No, I didn't find that it was bad on that particular one. I mean, anything looks bad compared to the Vision Pro at this point, but the Vision Pro's utility is so limited that it's. I'm just kind of waiting for Apple's displays to make their way into other headsets, and then I can have the best of both worlds. I can have an actual usable headset that has a really nice screen on it.

[Dan]

Yeah, I didn't know the screen door had a name. That's pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I didn't know that either. So Now I know. PSVR2 for PC looks pretty sick though. Good choice.

[Dan]

Anonymous and last curator, I've got for you. Linus. I want to ask you as a question. Have you, as someone who was born before the Internet, have you seen an increase in general hysteria due to technology changing parts of our lives so rapidly?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a measured and objective thing that has happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's hard for me to observe it though, because before the Internet was widespread, I was 10. I wasn't paying attention to hysteria.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we definitely like had hysteria.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you can map it on even stages of the Internet. It like web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. Yeah, I think that has happened as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what else has happened?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The end of the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

We will see you again next week. Same bad time. Wait. Oh, hey, thanks, Ludie. Same bad channel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, bye. Be not coming up this week.