Sorry America - WAN Show April 11, 2025

Summary

The WAN Show: "Sorry America" - April 11, 2025

In this episode of The WAN Show, hosts Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere delve into a tumultuous week in the tech industry, discussing significant disruptions caused by tariff uncertainties, the impact on various tech companies, ongoing promotions at the LTTstore, and upcoming events. The conversation is lively, insightful, and peppered with humorous banter, making it both informative and entertaining for listeners unfamiliar with the episode.

1. Framework's Sales Pause Amid Tariff Uncertainty

The episode opens with Linus addressing the recent announcement from Framework, a company known for its customizable laptops. Due to uncertainties surrounding tariffs in the US, Framework has temporarily halted sales of some of its base models.

• [02:52] Linus Sebastian: "Framework investment disclosure has paused some US sales due to tariff uncertainty."

Linus emphasizes the razor-thin margins within the tech industry, highlighting how even a 10% tariff can render low-end products unprofitable.

• [04:10] Linus Sebastian: "I've talked for years on this show about how one of the biggest problems for the tech industry is that margins are tight, no margin in it."

2. Impact on Other Tech Companies

Following Framework's predicament, several other tech giants are also feeling the pinch:

• Razer has taken down pricing and pre-order pages for their new Blade laptops.
• HP, Dell, and Lenovo have suspended shipments of notebooks and related products to the US for at least two weeks.
• Nintendo has paused pre-orders for the Switch 2 in both the US and Canada.

Linus and Luke discuss the broader implications of these pauses, suggesting that such moves are indicative of a widespread industry struggle with margins and external economic pressures.

• [05:34] Luke Lafreniere: "I don't think there's a way to go about solving it."

3. LTTstore's "Beat the Shipstorm" Promotion

Anticipating potential price increases due to tariffs, Linus introduces the "Beat the Shipstorm" sale event at the LTTstore.

• [01:28] Linus Sebastian: "Free shipping on all orders over $150, plus a never before seen deal on the MCM Essentials solution with our magnetic cable management for almost 50% off."

The promotion aims to move inventory before tariffs take effect, offering free worldwide shipping on orders exceeding $150.

• [23:16] Linus Sebastian: "What’s going on? Special SoCal Tower of Power on heights."

4. Upcoming Events and Tech Fair

The hosts highlight upcoming events, including Jay from Jacetwocents hosting the SoCal Tech Fair on May 3rd and 4th. The fair promises industry panels, raffles, sim rig challenges, and a garage sale featuring certified refurbished hardware.

• [68:12] Linus Sebastian: "There’s going to be some industry panels, raffles, sim rig challenge and so much fun stuff."

5. Discussion on Civilization 7

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the anticipation and critique of Civilization 7 (Civ7). Both hosts express concerns over UI changes and potential depth issues compared to Civ5 and Civ6.

• [10:00] Linus Sebastian: "Have you heard any news about Civ7? I heard it kind of flopped, and then the first update was supposed to make it a lot better."

Luke reminisces about his positive experiences with Civ1 and Civ2, questioning whether modern iterations can recapture that magic.

• [11:18] Linus Sebastian: "Civ has been very similar for many years. I understand the desire."

6. Secret Shopper Series Returns

The Secret Shopper series makes a comeback, where Linus and the team anonymously purchase mid-range PCs from top North American system integrators to evaluate them across various criteria. This year's theme remains undisclosed but promises thorough testing and reviews.

• [99:46] Dan: "Don't look."
• [100:07] Dan: "The theme this year is Lilac Holmes and his trusty partner."

7. Nvidia's Open-Source Move on PhysX and Flow SDKs

In response to issues with their RTX 5000 series, Nvidia has decided to make PhysX and Flow SDKs completely open-source. This move aims to empower the modding community to create wrappers for newer cards, potentially extending support beyond Nvidia's hardware.

• [101:13] Luke Lafreniere: "False promises."
• [102:21] Luke Lafreniere: "A good guy. A lot of companies would just abandon this."

8. Shipping Challenges and Solutions

Linus discusses the complexities of international shipping, particularly for US and Canadian orders. The reliance on shipping consolidators like Wismo has led to packages routing through unexpected hubs like Germany before reaching destinations in South America. In anticipation of potential tariffs, the LTTstore's free shipping promotion serves as a buffer against escalating costs.

• [158:07] Linus Sebastian: "It goes to the US first because we use a shipping consolidator called Wismo."
• [159:03] Dan: "Doesn't make a lot of sense."
• [159:05] Linus Sebastian: "But that is not uncommon."

9. Whale Land: Evolving LAN Events

The hosts share their experiences with organizing LAN events under Whale Land, emphasizing the challenges of balancing BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) and curated gaming experiences. Linus advocates for a more structured approach to maximize engagement and minimize distractions during gaming sessions.

• [74:35] Luke Lafreniere: "This is what we did."
• [83:19] Dan: "We’re not able to handle that."

10. Fun and Banter

Throughout the episode, Linus and Luke engage in lighthearted discussions about personal anecdotes, merchandise mishaps, and playful exchanges about their professional dynamics. These moments add a humorous undertone to the technical conversations, showcasing the hosts' camaraderie.

• [135:37] Linus Sebastian: "Let's put him away."
• [141:03] Dan: "God, you really are a bad person."

11. Conclusion and Final Announcements

As the episode winds down, Linus reiterates the ongoing promotions at the LTTstore, urging listeners to take advantage of the "Beat the Shipstorm" sale while supplies last. The hosts also tease upcoming content, including reviews of the latest tech products and potential future events.

• [137:03] Dan: "Nice."
• [147:24] Luke Lafreniere: "Yeah."

Key Takeaways:

• Tariff uncertainty is severely impacting the tech industry's margins, leading to sales suspensions and price adjustments across multiple companies.
• LTTstore's proactive measures through the "Beat the Shipstorm" promotion aim to mitigate potential losses from impending tariffs.
• Discussions around Civ7 highlight the community's concerns over innovation versus maintaining beloved gameplay mechanics.
• Nvidia's decision to open-source PhysX and Flow SDKs reflects a shift towards community-driven solutions in addressing technical challenges.
• Whale Land events are evolving to enhance participant engagement, moving away from purely BYOC setups towards more interactive and structured gaming experiences.

Listeners are encouraged to visit lttstore.com to explore current promotions and support the Linus Tech Tips community.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply. What's up everyone? Welcome to the Wan Show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys this week. We're going to be talking about. Oh boy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Everything and nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's been a rough week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Framework is pausing some US sales due to tariff uncertainty. And it's not just them. Razer has taken down pricing and pre order pages for new blades. Other laptop vendors are doing all kinds of stuff. Nintendo has suspended pre orders of the Switch 2 in the US and Canada. We're going to be talking a little bit about that. We're also going to be talking about how this is quite probably going to affect LTTstore as well. Which is why we have a major Beat the Ship storm. Get it? The ship storm Beat the Shipstorm sale event. I'm talking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't. Can you explain?

[Linus Sebastian]

Free shipping on all orders over $150, plus a never before seen deal on the MCM Essentials solution with our magnetic cable management for almost 50% off. So we've got lots of great stuff going on on the store this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That basically means you could get that another item and get the other item in free shipping, both for free if you think about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, hopefully they won't think of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

What else we got this week?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Turns out the XT was inside us all along. Apparently people are biosmodding the 9070 and it's an interesting story. Also, events. Jacetwocents is having a tech fair thing and we're maybe talking about whale land stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Events. Lots of events.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Storm event.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Vessi Odoo and amd. Also our rap partner dbrand, our laptop partner Dell, and our chair partner, Secret Lab. Oh, should we get right into the situation this week?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Framework investment disclosure has paused some US sales due to tariff uncertainty. On Wednesday, Framework announced a temporary pause on US sales on some base Framework laptop 13 models, specifically the Core Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U. Framework explained that even a 10% tariff would mean they are selling their lowest end SKUs at a loss. Framework also paused all pre orders for the Laptop 12, but have since unpaused all but the base models. And personally, I found this whole thing extremely interesting because we've been able to get over the last couple of weeks insight into the margin structures of these companies that we otherwise would. Wouldn't have gotten. Yeah, basically. I mean, when Logitech increased the price of that mouse, when Framework basically went, look, if we sell this thing, we're just going to be eating it on every unit we ship it, it told us explicitly what the margins are on these products. And I gotta say, I'm feeling a little validated because I've talked for years on this show, for years about how one of the biggest problems for the tech industry is that there is margins are tight, no margin in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will admit I knew that the margin on some components was really, really, really, really low. I knew that things like cases, fans, it gets a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Power supplies, power supply a little better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought laptops had more.

[Linus Sebastian]

The laptop industry is cutthroat, apparently. Cutthroat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I remember back when I worked at the best of buys selling laptops.

[Linus Sebastian]

And stuff like that, I heard that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The best they gotta be, it's in the name. I remember seeing the cost because you could see the cost in your system and it was always really close to the actual amount we were selling it for. But it was my understanding that through like Spiffs, Spiffs, kickbacks, other various things, mdf, it made it a lot better. And we just didn't see that amount because we were allowed to show the customer the cost. So I was like, the fact that we are allowed to do that means there's some play here somewhere.

[Linus Sebastian]

However, what I can tell you is that that invoice cost may have very well been fairly accurate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And yeah, they're going to be making a few more points on the back end, but the tech industry is really, really tight. Speakers and headphones are another example of categories where there's margin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think it's like if AirPods alone were split off, they're bigger than like Nike or something, but like crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, why do you think that your manager was pushing you so hard to attach a printer?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, right. Because there was margin insurance or software.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could, you could go and you could tell your super, I sold a hundred computer systems today, they'd be like, get out. You know, they don't care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Move attachments.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you exactly, exactly. And it's not just Framework on the laptop side. Razer has taken down pricing and pre order pages for their new blades. Hp, Dell and Lenovo have suspended shipments of notebooks and related products to the US for at least two weeks. Nintendo, we talked about this last week. Suspended pre orders of the Switch 2 in the US I think it was. Since then though, they have also. Thanks a lot. Suspended pre orders of the Switch 2 in Canada. This is from. Actually, I'm not sure who prepped this topic, but I feel like I've been.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Spared in this situation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, because you weren't going to buy one at launch anyway. You're going to wait until Willow Video has them. Lord only knows when that'll happen now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which this might actually help. In a weird turn of events, this might help places like Willow.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that could be true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Weird turn of events, but it might.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently it is speculated or I don't know if this is for sure, but apparently packaging for US and Canada happens near Seattle. So that could explain. If they're going into Seattle before they come up to Canada, then that would explain why Canada would be impacted. Approximately a third of Switch 2 production is happening in Vietnam and Nintendo has started routing most of those consoles to the US to hopefully avoid the worst of the tariffs. Multiple automakers have also suspended shipments or orders to the US and China, whose tariff on imports of US goods is now 125%. So going the Other Way says that there is no point in raising their tariffs further because there is no longer any market acceptance for US goods exported to China. However, it is always worth noting that any statement from a Chinese official should probably be taken with a similar amount of salt to how salty Luke was before the show that I won Wise Randle fairly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He won wise land. When? Late today. While being late. Well, at least genuinely makes no sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is not fair to have a contest where the decider of the contrast is on your payroll.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that it is not fair to park your car in a handicapped parking stall. You seem perfectly able bodied to me actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just was going so fast I didn't see the sign at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is a separate problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You were still late. You were still late. I'm fine not winning. You should also lose. It is not about my victory. It is about your loss.

[Linus Sebastian]

The China Semiconductor Industry association published an urgent update today clarifying how the country of origin of semiconductor products is determined for both packaged and unpackaged semiconductor products. The location where the wafer was processed is deemed to be the country of origin. And because China deems Taiwan to be part of its territory. Oh, okay, okay, hold on. That means that chips fabricated by TSMC Micron and other Taiwanese chip makers will be exempt from the 125% duty imposed on US products. Okay. I thought this was working against them when I first read it, but actually they're using the technicality of. Oh, yeah, Taiwan is definitely US to justify not having to pay tariffs on TSMC fabricated goods. Sure. China.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, that's really smart, I guess. And the US Tariffing Taiwan is, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredibly stupid by that logic, actually. I mean, shouldn't the US basically say, well, since Canada is our 51st state anyway, there's no point in tariffing anything from Canada. No, but the whole. Neither of them have annexed either of those countries yet, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

America's whole goal is continuing Canada's economic ruin so that they can try to, like, financially take us.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do understand that Canadians are, like, not going to, like, do that, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're not just going to be like, oh, yeah, economic victory, sieve, whatever. Like, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wonder. I wonder, you know. Okay, I don't even know if I want to go into this. No, I'll bring it up. You know how Civ7. I don't know if you've heard any news about Civ7, but you know how Civ7.

[Linus Sebastian]

I heard it kind of flopped, and then the first update was supposed to make it a lot better. That's all I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is how Civ works every single time. To be fair, this time I'll throw this out there. I don't know if it's fixable. There are core things about the game that I actually just really don't like. Right. And I don't think they can fix. But one of the things, like the Aztecs.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Aztecs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of the problems is you couldn't stay them if you chose them. You're. You're.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no. So if you start every, like, Persians, then you just, like, become.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Every era changes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wherever Persia. Because it could become. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Iran.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Or if like, like. So you'll be the Ottomans at some point and. Or you'll be the Greeks and you just turn into Romans or whatever. You just get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Any leader can lead any civilization. So you could be, like, Caesar.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you could be Gandhi leading America, the Australians or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I personally do not like it. I don't like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

But anyways, no, you should get. No, you should get to be like, freaking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like one leader, one Civ the whole way through. It's been that way the whole time. I understand they're trying to change things up. Civ has been very similar for many years. I understand the desire. Yeah. Artie saying, the more I play Civ 7, the less I like it. And that was true. I only played one full campaign. And that was true for me the whole way through the campaign. I liked it less and less and less and less and less the whole time.

[Linus Sebastian]

So tell me that. Actually, Wait, did I even.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think I finished.

[Linus Sebastian]

You say civ's been really similar for a long time. That's funny you bring that up, because we actually shot a video earlier this week of younger people reacting to the games that were formative for me and one of the games. And I kind of picked not just games that I played a lot or enjoyed a lot, but ones that marked significant milestones for me. So I have the first one that I ever upgraded my computer for. I have the first one I ever bought a special peripheral to play.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have the first one I ever bought a tower upgrade for, and it was Civilization two test of time. And the reason was that the emissaries were 3D rendered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So until then, I only ever had software rendering. I only ever played games that required software rendering. All of a sudden, I needed a DirectX 6 or something like a DirectX accelerator and at least 8 megabytes of VRAM or whatever the requirements are. 16 megs, something like that. And I don't think. Spoiler for the video. I don't think that Civ 2 got a fair shake because they only had, like, a few minutes to try each game. We weren't going to give them, like, six hours to familiarize themselves with Civilization 2. But I do wonder if you, as a Civ veteran, could go back and play something like Civ 2 and legitimately enjoy it still.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I think yes, because. And my reason for this was a long time ago. I don't know if you remember this, but I did a stream for one of my birthdays where it was a charity stream. And I played one game for an hour for every year that I had been alive. So I played one. I remember that I played one game for an hour that was released in 1990. And then I played one game for an hour that was released in 1991. I went all the way through to current year, and in that, I played Civ 1. And in the hour, I took over all of Europe and Asia. And I Hadn't touched that game since I was like a wee lad.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I think I could still figure it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you enjoy it, though? I enjoyed my question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I enjoyed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you ever play Civ 2? Because I never played Civ 1.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm fairly certain I did, but I haven't since it would have been like the current Civ. It's been a long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I tried to go back and play Civilization 1, having played Civ 2 as my first Civ and I found it to just be utterly lacking in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, depth.

[Linus Sebastian]

Creature comforts that I needed. Civ 2 felt like. Like going from Warcraft 1 to Warcraft 2. Like it was just a better game in every possible way. I never actually got into another one though. And I know some of the other ones are really, really great, but I just. I became an Ano boy or more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Realistically, Warcraft after that and it was fantastic. Artie and I are extremely agreed on this. Civ 5 was the best one. Civ 6 I do think aged very well. It got better. The expansions are really good, that type of stuff. But I still think Civ V was kind of peak. But anyways, Civ 6, I will give it as much as I didn't like it as much as Civ V. It had a fantastic UI. The UI UX of Civ 6 was clean. It felt good. It was a good experience. Civ 7, there was a huge problem because the UI was really bad. You know who pushed over 300 bug fixes for Civ 6? Again, Civ 6's UI was fantastic. You know who pushed over 300 bug fixes for Civ6?

[Linus Sebastian]

Him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Luigi Mangioni.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? The guy who assassinated the guy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not kidding.

[Dan]

Yeah, most based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He. He was really good at Civui. It was very good. It's probably the best. I love Civ 5. So. Wait, so 6's UI was probably the best one they ever pushed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. He worked for them at that time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. I thought you meant like he was a super, super player and he like. No, you mean like actually pushed bug fixes, like actually. Okay, I thought you meant like, reported so. No, he like actually, like, he fixed him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He made it good. He made it really good.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you're saying that he did you appreciate the work of Luigi Mangione?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he did great stuff for Civ 6 was fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

And by Civ you mean Civilization at Large.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He did really video games for Civ.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or Civilization or you know what his improvements to the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To the civilization was really good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Elijah's in chat. Fix your wording.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He allegedly did it. Right, Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Allegedly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How did we get on this topic again?

[Linus Sebastian]

China does not rule out other forms of retaliation against the US Announcing that they are reducing the number of Hollywood films permitted to release and restricting import and export rights for a number of U.S. companies. Our discussion question here is. Move directly to next topic. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As a technically partial owner of Framework, how do you feel about the impact on Framework's business and if Framework's future based on this? I know that you said the only thing that would cause you to pull out was a change in their. I don't know what.

[Linus Sebastian]

Principle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ideology. Principles. Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This doesn't feel like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But how do you feel as a partial owner about the decision, the direction, really, their margin?

[Linus Sebastian]

I got to be honest with you, and I'm sorry, Nirav, I am way more concerned about my own margin and my own store right now. Like, a Framework is cool and all that. Literally every person that I've met there, like, seems legit from CEO down. Seems, like, awesome. Like, legitimately awesome. I was. I was. I was. I was super impressed the first time that I met, like, a broader group of the team there because literally everyone I spoke to just, like, so quick, so focused on what they're doing. Like, they just seem like a super focused company. They have a great culture, as far as I can tell from basically. Basically the outside, but they aren't my company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm rooting for their mission. I'm super excited for their mission. But I think that, you know, they have already opened a lot of eyes and there's a lot of momentum. So in terms of my goal of what I was trying to achieve with the investment, I think I've gotten a lot out of it already. I don't think this is going to kill them either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I think this is. This is a. It's a storm. It's a. It's a little storm, and I think they're going to weather.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is a storm that everyone's going through.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. And realistically, you know, it's not that I don't empathize. I 100% empathize, but I've got to focus on keeping my ship upright right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This might be. You know, I think it would be very reasonable for someone to say that this is really stupid for me to bring up, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, this is really stupid of you to bring up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Cool. I think it's interesting that software is dodging all of this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Software is. Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I'm wondering when that is gonna flip, because a lot of America's exports is software.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And nobody's doing that right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting. Yeah. It's only physical goods.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you want to hurt them, make that many physical goods that they export out. That's why they have all these trade deficits with these countries.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I probably just wouldn't have brought it up. I don't know, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's. It's just really interesting now. EU is on that. Okay, so somebody's working.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, EU's on it. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, like, that's gonna become part of the equation. And then float plane is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Avon Fox says. Yeah. The US Has a huge surplus in entertainment media as well, so China's already on that, allowing fewer. I mean, fewer films. In China, they were already super restrictive, not to mention being super restrictive in terms of the content. I mean, when was the last time that had, like. Oh, man, what are their. When was the last time we had a triad as a bad guy in a Hollywood film?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's been a hot minute.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel it's like 90s 80s, because.

[Linus Sebastian]

Basically, if you have, like, any Chinese funding, from what I understand, if you have, like, any Chinese funding in your film, which they have invested extremely heavily in, you're. You. You pretty much have to follow China's censorship rules in America, which is. Yeah, but that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's. That's like control of the import. That's not even a tariff.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, I mean, they already blocked so much US Media anyway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The digital landscape is going to get really weird if that happens because we've. We've never had to deal with this anywhere. It's been. It's been full free market forever.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, no, there are, as far.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As tariffs are concerned, a lot of.

[Linus Sebastian]

Tariffs in the world as it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, for. For digital stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, digital y. Yeah, no, that's. That's a fair point. Back to making sure that our own ship is. Is doing okay. We've got a pretty exciting sale event going on right now of the graphic. I'm going to get real inside baseball for you guys here. Basically, we have a lot of inventory that we had planned. Big plans for. For Lime Day, so, like upcoming promos, big plans for just, you know, having in stock so that we have things in stock on our store. As we said last week, we're putting in place every mitigation that we can to shield our customers from as many price increases as we can. But with that said, there will be some price increases in areas where we simply cannot absorb any potential tariffs in our costs. We don't know exactly what all of those costs will be because the whole situation is extremely fluid. So what we're doing right now is before May the second, when theoretically, if everything goes into. If everything goes goes according to what has currently been communicated, costs for especially our US Customers are going to go way up on our items is we are launching our Shipstorm sale. We are doing free shipping and this is not just for America. Okay? Free shipping on all orders worldwide. Over $150 on LTT store. This is a pretty high cost promo for us, guys. So click that shop now and please make sure to add at least one thing other than the MCM Essential solution bundle. This is the lowest price we've ever done on this. This is our headline deal to kick off this sale event. It's 80 bucks for. This is a really, really nice magnetic cable management kit. So you can do a power bar, you can do a couple power bricks, whole bunch of zip ties, lots of cables. We've got one of the big boys in there. Lots of metal plates for mounting them. Cable ties. Basically everything you need to do to make your setup look like this. Absolutely gorgeous. And yeah, you know, while you're at it, grab a commuter backpack. All right, Grab a precision multi bit screwdri and bit set. Grab a screwdriver, stubby screwdriver. Just. Oh, scribe driver. Great time to pick up a scribe driver. So throw together a cart. 150 bucks free shipping. Shout out Conrad for this awesome little. This awesome little animation at the top.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The bar thing is really nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually shows you how much you got to fill up your bar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Things are going to be tight. I don't know what kind of promos we're going to be able to afford to do over the next little bit. So now's a great time to get an order in. We're going to get everything shipped out before the second and who knows, maybe none of the tariffs will happen. I don't know. I don't know what's happening. But I do know that we want to get out ahead of it and you know, get you guys hooked up. Garrett H. Says make LTT Store Canadian dollars. We will be launching a Canadian dollar store at some point in the near future.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't more work than you'd expect.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't expect like one to one pricing. If something was US$99 on the US store it's not going to be 99 Canadian dollars. That is like literally not how it works. But we will have a Canadian pricing store. We are working on all kinds of mitigations, as much as we can, as fast as we can. We're doing our best, guys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Our dollar is getting better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. That is not. Oh my God. Another basis point today. Yeah, I don't remember the last time it moved this fast. Actually, I do remember the last time it moved this fast because it was the 2008 financial crisis and I was working in product management at ncis. So I remember exactly. Dude, we used to place orders for product and literally have no idea what our retail price was going to be. Because back to our conversation earlier about extremely thin margins in the computer industry for commodities like hard drives, it was a regular occurrence for NCIX to be making maybe 2 to 3% by the time you factored in, you know, credit card or any other processing fees, any labor or salespeople commissions associated with selling the product. Like we were selling them at 6, 7 points gross. But you have costs associated with bringing these things in, putting labels on them, stacking them on shelves, like there's, there's costs, right? And so functionally speaking, we basically didn't make a profit on them. So if you had a 2%, 3% shift in forex in between when you place the order, when you got it, you could literally put your price on the site based on your order and then by the time you actually get it and ship it, you're losing money. And making matters even worse, so much of our product was on net terms. So it wasn't just the delay from shipment to receiving, it was actually the delay sometimes from when we, from when we placed the order to 30 days after we received the order, when we would finally know how much we were paying for the product. So you could bring in a pallet of GPUs, sell them for some price that you thought was profitable by 5% and then it turns out you actually sold them for 1% loss gross, because the currency was all over the place. It was madness, dude. It was madness. And when it swung the other way, obviously you were happy. But I mean we would pull moves all the time. Like we would, we would try to hedge, right? Like we'd try to be like, hey Kim. Oh sorry, I didn't see your bill. We'll get to it right away. And we'd like try to push things off a week hoping that the currency would, hoping the currency would recover a little bit to be clear. I didn't do that. I was not involved in that. But I heard through the grapevine, because I'd go to place another order, I'd be like, yeah, can I get another order? And they're like, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I remember you kind of, like, raging about this back. Back when we worked there.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was a separate issue. That was when they were running out of money. This was when we had money, but we just were deciding not to spend it on the things that we had already gotten into our warehouse and sold to customers. It was a whole thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, is there a topic that isn't about the economy?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. We're moving right into our next topic, which is more of a discussion. There's been a lot of conversation this week about moving electronics manufacturing back to the US Whether that's possible and if it is, what that would look like. One phone company, Purism, says that their $800 phone will become $2,000 when made locally. In general, this is not related to purism directly. Materials would need to be sourced and imported or mined and refined at home. For instance, titanium, not found in America, and lithium, lots found in America, but only one active mine. And that's a really interesting part of the conversation that I think some folks are overlooking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The, like, time delay of getting more minds up and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, not just that. Sorry, yes, that. But also an element of this, that pun intended, that I think is. Is fascinating is the number of people that look at the cost breakdown of something like, you know, an iPhone or a Purism phone or whatever it is, and they go, okay, well, the labor cost for it was, you know, X in Mexico or in China or Vietnam or whatever, and it's X times, you know, whatever multiplier in America. So realistically, and we've seen this argument where I think it was McDonald's or someone was, like, complaining that if they increase the minimum wage by some amount, that it would dramatically increase their prices, but it turned out it didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, the whole Denmark thing. But anyway.

[Linus Sebastian]

But here's the thing. Here's the thing, right? Because at the end of the day, everything, not just the assembly, everything is impacted by. Is ultimately labor, right? A hunk of lithium, the price you pay for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, it's got to come from somewhere.

[Linus Sebastian]

You didn't pay the ground you took it out of. You paid the people who extracted it. So if you actually were to. So these. These. These comparisons people are making are actually really apples to oranges because they're looking at the sourcing of these raw materials that are being done by people who are being being paid far less than Western wages, regardless of whether they're ethically sourced or, you know, whatever, it's still going to be a lot less than a Western wage. So the calculations and purism may be doing the math, right? I'm actually not sure, but I see comparisons that people are making that are like, oh, this won't be that big of a deal. Remember when McDonald's complained that the labor costs going up? Well, that's because all their raw materials being produced by, you know, Western labor costs or whatever, that was already factored in, whereas here they're not. Now, most rare earth metals are mined in America, but supply of these may not be enough to meet demand, at least not immediately. So new manufacturing sites would need to be built. A lot is manufactured in America already, but some companies have overseas manufacturing to supplement demand. For example, New Haven Display manufactures custom OLED screens in Illinois, but they also have manufacturing over in China. Actually, I'm sorry, I'm going to totally go off in a different direction for a second. Do you see Mr. Beast's comment about it? Oh, yeah, he was pretty upset because he was saying his Feastables bars are manufactured in the U.S. but the materials are coming from he apparently. And look, this is all just based on his theory.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. How much like cocoa comes from the States.

[Linus Sebastian]

He says he's working really hard to get like ethically sourced cocoa or whatever, but it's not from America. So if he gets tariffed on that, those imports, all of a sudden the whole business model makes no sense. And he's like, well, that could impact American jobs. Did anyone kind of. Did anyone do that math?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably not. There's a lot of stuff like that. Like there's, there's mattress companies and they have to get like, like Dunlop Latex. Like, I don't think any of that exists in the States. I could be wrong, but I don't think any of it does. But I believe they manufacture the mattresses up here. I don't remember what specific brand, but there's, there's like interesting component stuff where it's like, yeah, not, not everything grows or exists in specifically the United States.

[Linus Sebastian]

New supply lines will need to be implemented. Some manufacturing projects take so many resources and people and time that they essentially create small towns. I actually had never heard of this. One of Apple's biggest final assembly test and packout centers is in. And I'm going to butcher this. I'm sorry, Zhengju. Anyway, it's apparently called iPhone. It's kind of referred to as iPhone city. And the doc points out millions are employed in China by Apple alone. New truck and train routes will need to be figured out since materials and goods will have to move from one location to another. Still, this is going to, this is going to take some time and this may be, this may be a hot take depending on the audience that I'm talking to. But overall, I totally get what the US is doing. It is actually a terrible, terrible plan to have critical supplies completely owned, operated and controlled by a country that you are essentially locked in a cold war adversarial with. Yeah, yeah, I get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think there's a way to go about solving it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not taking a position on that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, I get that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wouldn't be very Canadian of me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Especially if it's like planes, boats, stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

100%. Yeah. And it's everything. It's microprocessors, it's AI, it's critical minerals, it's. It's everything. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's like practically no ship manufacturing in the States anymore. It's like. Yeah, that's knowing how America feels about their boats. So that's maybe not a good thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's, that's a really interesting dynamic in all of this for me is I'm looking at what they're trying to accomplish, which is, you know, some freaking independence, some self sufficiency. I mean they were independent long time ago, but some self sufficiency in a, in a world where, let's be honest, China has been engaged in economic warfare for as long as I, I can remember in my adult life.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, look no further than what they're doing to attempt to destroy the automotive industry in literally every other developed nation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. I mean they do this in a ton of ways too. It's not, it's not just the automotive industry. They do this in lots and lots of ways. So like waking up and finally playing ball totally makes sense to me. Totally. I just don't necessarily think this is the so and cleaving, you know, every single other country that exists and some of your own, you know, military bases and stuff is maybe not the way to go about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. So here's the thing though, is that if you. Well, okay, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try to explain why they did that. There are some potentially valid reasons why they cast such a wide net in order to prevent pass through shipping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whole thing Yep. G kuns in floatplane chat says at Linus, any suggestions on how to do it better? And I think you basically nailed the curse that I live with. I am smart enough to recognize the situation and not for what it is, but I am not smart enough to solve it. Well, you're not like shameless enough to pretend that I know how to solve it and to offer you easy answers. So I basically kind of sit here as helpless as anyone else while everything happens around me. I honestly some days envy the people who just don't really seem to understand some of the negative impacts of this and what they will potentially be because it seems like they seem happier.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's interesting up here too because there's some sentiment of like, oh, like we can still get cheaper stuff, right? Like the. The Switch is probably not going to be exceptionally expensive up here unless they just mirror the price, which happens sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which they could very little.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's extremely common that Canadian pricing is just, you know, U.S. pricing to U.S. pricing. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But these are. This is unprecedented in my lifetime.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So how everyone's going to handle it, we don't know. Could be all over the map. I mean, you never know. Nintendo tomorrow could say, hey, you know, we actually have enough switches to start shipping these right now. We're going to keep them software locked until, you know, after the official launch date that we announced or whatever. But yeah, you know, we took a page out of out of LTT stores book and we were like, emergency sale, everyone buy your switches now. And then we'll just leave them software locked until. They probably won't. There's no way Nintendo would do that. But they could conceivably. They could conceivably do that. I mean, They've been manufacturing Switch 2s for months now. If the rumors are anything to go by. By the way, just want to remind you guys, now's the time to pick up some pre tariff, pre tariff LTT store merchandise. Free worldwide shipping on orders over $150. You're gonna hear me talk about this a fair bit today because we need to move some inventory. Go, go, go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought it was kind of funny. I was reading something the other day. I forget a lot of the details because they're skimming it, but Canada and Japan are in talks about like working together for market stability. And I was like, man, it's cool. That's a good thing we should probably do that kind of sucks that it's like two of the worst. Like what is it? G20, whatever. Econom. Like yeah, let's try to not be so bad together. It's like. Oh man. All right, cool, man. Yeah, let's. Let's figure it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we've got our overpriced housing crisis. They have their worthless countryside. Can't give them away housing crisis. We've got our sort of. We had no idea what we were doing with immigration crisis. They've got their. Well, we don't have immigration crisis.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our birth rate sucks too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. I don't know how we solve that. One of just forgot that GDP per capita is supposed to go up. We just decided like no, we'll just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Brute force it with. With capita.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, we'll just have more.

[Linus Sebastian]

All capital. Don't bother building. Don't bother building more houses. In spite of the fact that we're a global leader in supply of softwood lumber. Yeah, yeah, let's not use any of it here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no, no. That all has to go away. That all has to go away by default. It has to go away. It can't stay. Yeah, we have our own problems.

[Linus Sebastian]

If that was ever unclear. Whenever we are pointing out issues in other countries we have plenty of that is not because we are not really big ones actually acutely aware of the problems that we have here in Canada.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When your GDP per capita goes up by 0.5% over the course of 10 years, you got some things to work out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cobby says please do the all good news wan show soon. Please. I'm tired, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've tried multiple times. We genuinely really tried multiple times.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, I got some good news for you on LT Store right now. You get free worldwide shipping on any order over $150. We've got an amazing promo running on our magnetic cable management essential solution. Don't forget you can pick up the commuter backpack. I don't know if the price is going to go up for this. It might, it might not. I don't know. The prices could go up. They could stay the same. Our mouse pads are the same price no matter what size they are. Same for our water bottles. Oh, you can get a framework embroidered hoodie. I promise you that an all over embroidered hoodie is going to cost a lot more than $150 if it's made in the USA. Go, go, go. All right, what else we got today, Dan? What are we supposed to be doing?

[Dan]

Oh, well, let's move maybe into some merch messages.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, sure, let's do that. If you're not familiar the way to leave a merch message and Interact with the show is to go to lttstore.com and check out our free worldwide shipping on orders over 150. Okay. Okay. Add an item to your cart and you'll see the merch message field pop up. You go ahead and populate that it'll go to producer Dan who will do something with it today. Realistically, there's going to be a lot of them, so we'll get to as many of them as we can. Or Dan will reply to them himself and his fingers will get arthritis. Or he will forward it to someone internally, get an answer for you. Whatever the case may be, Dan will take care of it and some of them will be curated for me and Luke to address. Dan, go ahead and show them how that works.

[Dan]

Absolutely. So first one I've got for you here. Do you think the Switch 2 is a unique position because it still has exclusives not on other platforms while most AAA games are cross play compatible? Or would that cause a decline for Nintendo?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, I think Nintendo, by sticking to making keeping a console a console.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Has actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's two countries selling closed down computers and there's one company selling a console.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nintendo seems to be the only horse left in the console in the console race. And to be clear, I'm not saying that I disagree with Microsoft's move to make the Xbox and the PC a more cohesive ecosystem. In fact, I think they could do more to make them more value added to each other. Like we're owning a PC right now. If you own a decent PC. I can't think of any good reason to have an Xbox.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to want the Xbox app on my computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And right now I super don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

All it does is kind of get in my way when I'm trying to do something super right now. And maybe part of that is just because I've already solved all the problems that the Xbox app would solve for me because I'm like old school. Like maybe if I was a young kid who came from Xbox and got a PC I'd be like, oh yeah, Xbox app. That's how I screen record. That's how I do this. Whereas I'll just open obs. So maybe that's part of it. But also I just, there's certain default behaviors that just don't make any sense to me. Like the fact that I press the Xbox button on my controller when I'm in Steam big picture. And by default Microsoft puts their Xbox overlay in front. I'm using Steam right now. I am not using Xbox app. Right. Now, I get why you want the Xbox button to do Xbox things, but then you got to work with partners like Valve to make sure that the Xbox button doesn't do really important things in Steam as well. Right. Like it's just, it's not cohesive. And I don't. Again, I don't have the solutions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, me neither.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I definitely can identify the problems.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, it's not as bad as like the Vista era games for Windows Live trash. It's not as bad as that. But you still have like, you know, Forza Horizon 5. It was a great game. Practically impossible to play with your friends because trying to do the Microsoft version of friends stuff was just an absolute nightmare.

[Linus Sebastian]

The one that I feel will be left out in the cold either way. Now that Microsoft has quadrupled down on functionally just being a game publisher, game developer behemoth is Sony, because I don't really understand what the identity of the PlayStation is going to be when it's just, functionally speaking, a timed exclusive box. Right. Like it's a, it's a, it's a hardware. It's a hardware access key for timed exclusives. As far as I can tell, the dualsense controller is outstanding and works best on PlayStation. So that's something. What, what, what else, what else are they doing? And to be clear, I think they have. I, I don't think there's really any debate that they won this generation between them and Microsoft. Right? Like the Xbox series. Like they won the battle, man. I do honestly think that a significant part of Microsoft's challenges with Xbox come down to the confusing naming scheme.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I agree.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, dude, we saw what happened to the Wii U, right? And Microsoft saw that and was like, let's go even worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not 100% confident of what the current one is. It's the Xbox Series X. Yeah, I thought so.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that replaced the Xbox One X. And also there's a series S that replaced the Xbox One S. And before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was the Xbox.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh crap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

1.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, shoot. Was there a One X? Crap. Oh, I think there was a One X. Yeah, one. Yeah, that's it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is the problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then before that was the 360. And then before that was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the original Xbox and the Xbox360 were great names games.

[Linus Sebastian]

I disagree.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like 360.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remember all the speculation that the next one would be 720. Yeah, even that would have been better than what we have now. But it should have just been Xbox two, period. I'M sorry, I can't get behind. They could have even pulled what's, what's their nuts. Who did this? I forget someone recently on the phone side. Was it Samsung or something? I can't remember. But one of them basically like, or maybe it was Apple that like skipped a number or something so that they could. So that they could kind of realign things with, you know, years or something like that. I forget someone did this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn't they do that when they went to the X?

[Linus Sebastian]

But I could see like, I could see Microsoft just skipping two and going straight to three so that it's clear that the Xbox 3 competes against the PlayStation 3. So they could kind of get realigned.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I think they could have done that. I think they could have done that with the 360 naming and then gone to like 460, 560, whatever, and just had it not been based on the circle. So I think it was called 360 because of the circle.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. But they could have done Xbox Infinity and done two circles or they could have done freaking anything other than one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, one was terrible. One X was terrible. Series X was terrible. It's all been terrible.

[Linus Sebastian]

360.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I definitely agree is debate. I liked it, but it's very debatable. I can understand someone not liking it beyond there. It's. It's just trash.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's a funny thing because I don't, I don't know any living breathing like, like through their nose, not like, like through their mouth. Like. I don't know any. Non. Actually no. I don't know any, any even remotely functional human capable of producing words that thinks that the Xbox naming scheme is good. So who are the. Who is driving this? I actually want to like interview them.

[Dan]

Middle managers.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I, they can't be. It can't be because middle managers would take the safe route. Only executives can do something that stupid. Middle managers have to get buy in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should, we should get Phil Spencer. He would never. But we should get Phil Spencer to join Wan show and just be like, what's going on?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure he's been asked this a thousand times.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're wanting to get more and more into the PC space and make the Xbox ecosystem a big thing. You're trying to partner with handhelds, you're trying to do stuff like that. That's our realm. If you want buy in with this community, come here, come on our show, talk to us.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll talk to the community.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because we don't understand. So if you can make us understand you're going to have a huge win. Come join the show. Talk to us.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's not going to talk to us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He never will.

[Linus Sebastian]

He never will. What was the question?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seriously? I, I, I, I, I think it's reasonable. Like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh hold on. I wanted to go somewhere else with that. I think I wanted to go somewhere else with that. Do you think that Nintendo. Because I think Switch 2 will be successful. I don't think it's gonna be Switch one successful. I don't think it's gonna be we successful. Like there's no, there's no great secret. Nintendo knocks it out of the park when they deliver cheap enough hardware and great games. That's the formula. And I don't think the Switch 2 delivers on that formula quite. I think 450 is something that will end up under people's Christmas trees but not as many and that's gonna hurt their ability to build an enormous library for it. And all of those things that sort of those, those knock on effects.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They also lost the Reggie factor. So they the, the Wii Sports equivalent, whatever it's called now the stupid tutorial thing is paid.

[Linus Sebastian]

You've got to be. They gotta be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't care how many dollars it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It doesn't matter to be zero.

[Linus Sebastian]

It should be zero.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Agreed. 100%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're losing those types of things which is bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

But tell me this because I think Switch 2 is going to do fine. I don't think it's going to be a Wii U, but I don't think it's going to be a Wii. Yeah. What about what's coming next?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know. There isn't a lot of like VR.

[Linus Sebastian]

Seems like a dead end. Sony gave up motion control was, was super innovative and cool at the time but even Nintendo seems to have mostly given up on that. Aside from you know like wank minigames in Mario Party or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think Nintendo is gonna do anything that you put on your face.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it was gonna do VR or ar.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like are we just, is it just Switch three, Switch four, Switch five? Like because that was the whole thing with Nintendo, that was their identity was they didn't need to compete toe to toe with the, with the, you know, the HD juggernaut when they have oh they, but we have second screen that you can like sit on the toilet and stream your game for. Like they had the, the gimmick factor. What is Switch Twos gimmick?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know they did my point to in the future. Yeah, the, the shitty mouse thing is weird. Yep. My bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like what is that? You know what? Maybe I'm gonna be so wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think people will use it. I still think it's gonna be better for shooter games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like maybe they're gonna use it for like, you know, weird, you know, leg wank game or something like that. So you can. Well, I don't, I don't know. Like, like because you can use an optical sensor for anything. It doesn't have to be a mouse pointer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's a question. There was, there was a sports movement for Switch, right. A Wii Sports equivalent thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think there was some kind of sports game for Switch. I don't, I don't remember what the dealio was with it though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Switch sports game. Nintendo Switch Sports.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Did anyone care?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know but I feel like.

[Linus Sebastian]

They kind of like if a Nintendo Switch Sports falls in a forest, does anyone hear it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I don't like here's a potentially.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hot Aramin says I love it and interested Panda says wasn't good. So all right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, I think if they effectively just took Wii Sports and spruce it up a wee bit, get it and, and put it on and put it on Switch 2 and made it free like it was with the original Wii. I think the switch 2 would kill.

[Dan]

Because isn't the new tutorial paid right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. I'm not even talking about the tutorial though. I'm talking about a sports game, a bundle game. It wasn't just the tutorial features of Wii Sports that people like. People genuinely really liked the game. I had a fun time playing Wii.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sports and anyone any age could play it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely. That's Nintendo's killer thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was probably the first thing that first gaming experience. The only gaming experience that I ever shared with my in laws.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. My mom loved it, my dad. The Wii liked it.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Wii brought us together in the living room.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

In a way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's what Nintendo does.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Switch doesn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's why I'm saying they're not going to make something that goes on your face because they want it to be a family thing. All of their commercials, there's, there's multiple people playing. You think about Xbox or PlayStation commercial. Maybe they show people playing together online but not usually in the same room anymore. Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's like the lights are out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like there's RGB gamer mode. Someone's like locked in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Switch is often multiple people hanging out in a brightly lit same room. Situation.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what are they gonna do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They gotta embrace.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are they gonna do to move that forward though?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they tripped on the release personally. They should, that tutorial thing should have been free and it should have actually just been a sports game that also had tutorial features. And then I think they would have.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you just say like look, take the Wii format, rinse, repeat. And they've said up, up front that they're, they're aiming to make money on the hardware this time. I, you know, I'm not, I don't work for Nintendo. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't know their mind, you know, but I, and we could be wrong and I could be wrong, but I feel like why are they breaking a formula that, that has worked so well and then every time that they've deviated from it has not worked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, get, get consoles in people's houses. It works. And then they'll, they'll buy games every once in a while because they want something new to do because the, the buying of the game is an easier cost to stomach even when the, with the inflated price than a whole freaking console.

[Linus Sebastian]

How big, how excited do you think people would have been if the Switch 2 was launching and Mario Kart World was a pack in for $450?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would have cranked. People would have went nuts. Yeah, 100%.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they could have been temporary. Like they could have done it for the first month or the first three months or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because think about how the original Xbox sold, right? Halo, it wasn't a pack in but everybody bought it with Halo.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what would happen is they would essentially turbocharge. Pun intended. The, the adoption of this new console while generating some revenue. And realistically over the lifespan, I mean if Mario Kart Wall is going to be another 10 year game like we saw with Mario Kart 8, they will make back their development costs. Once they stop packing it in. People will still buy it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like for first two, three months it's packed in. Sure. That'd be interesting. Here's a hot take on Switch three. I think I've devised what they do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I'd love to hear it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Camera with AI detection of movement and tracking.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you can do that. Could probably be done by the time a Switch 3 rolls around.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like sports things or dance games or whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bring back dance games where there's like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually really good tracking on things. So they're not. You could bring games anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

Holy. You could bring back Rock Band because you could just do everything with the camera. So the peripherals wouldn't even need to be plugged in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would actually be sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we're assuming, you know that it's going to be another six to eight years. Probably assuming that the kind of. The kind of AI processing that you'll be able to do on a little, you know, thing will advance far enough to do that kind of real time tracking of like drumming and whatever else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Might be a little bit rough right now, but you can do a lot of that right now on a phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So like. Yeah, give us eight years. It should be pretty cheap to package into a console.

[Linus Sebastian]

Interesting. You could do. You could play Wii Sports with just like. Like actually probably better motion controls and you could have a really rudimentary gyroscope in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Like you could have some controller.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just think you could use tracking. You could probably do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I, I feel like it'll be something like that because Nintendo is going to try to get you. Yeah. Together and up and moving and family friendly and stuff like that. So I think, I think this could work. And. And my, my hint for it was that they are selling cameras for the switch right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a path forward. That's something. That's something. Okay. Dan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey.

[Dan]

LLD with Anno117 coming out this year, allegedly, what improvements or quality of life are you hoping for in the franchise at this point? I'm hoping they just don't Civ 7 the UI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have the lamest take on this in the world.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anno 1800 was perfect and if they just do that with a skin then it'll be a great game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is the lamest take in the world and have the exact same one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean they put.

[Dan]

Dude, how all good games just give.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me a cool theme and really don't change a bunch. A lot of the expansions for no 1800 were really just more of the same.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they were great.

[Linus Sebastian]

And yeah, that team put so much love and care into. Into what they do. There's so much depth to the gameplay. The voice acting is. Is great. The characters are so fun and it like I. I actually never played the campaign.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

I dabbled like a tiny bit but I like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't really need it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just love.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's really not a big deal and I don't think it needs to get much better personally. They could make it a Little better. I'm sure there's some possibilities there, but I don't think it needs a dramatic change. It's basically just the multiplayer, but with some like, themed tasks.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I love how they handled their. Their microtransactions. They felt more like classic game expansions because they really did literally expand the game. They.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which made me completely cool with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everything that was great about it and made it bigger and more better and deeper and with. Again, back to what I just said. With love, with thought, with care, with love. Making sure that the expansions don't wreck the balance of the original game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And destroy what was great about it and make it so you don't need. You don't need them. You can still just play the original game and enjoy it. The only thing is, and the way the multiplayer works is depending on which expansions you each own, you just activate or disable them for your joint play session. So not everyone has to have sunken treasures or whatever else. You don't have to have every expansion.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's things that I think they could improve, but I wouldn't want dramatic changes. I bet you they could make expeditions a little bit cooler.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, would you want them to be like grittier? Like, could your people. Could your people need, like, do you need to have like anti drug enforcement or something? Like, like, could. Could they make it like, like grittier? I'm just, Just an idea. Okay. What about land combat? Because the Original Anno. Anno 1602 had land combat. It was kind of terrible. It was janky, but it existed. And it was an aspect of conquering islands that in my opinion conquering islands is a bit too easy in anno 1800, at least against the AI character. Because you don't have to. There's no land campaign. You don't have to do anything. You just destroy their. Their warehouse. And. And there's also economic victory where you can like buy shares in their island, but there's no. There's no land campaign. You can't conquer stuff. You can't take over what's there. So there's no actual capture of anything. I'd love to see. Okay, you know what? No, I got ideas. I mean, it won't help with 11117 or whatever it is because it's. It's too. It's too old. But I would have loved to see like naval. Naval combat. Not just. Not just firing cannons at each other, but I'd love to see ship to ship combat like, or sorry, ship to ship hand to hand combat where you can capture a ship. Yeah, thank you. Boarding. That's the word I was looking for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that'd be kind of. I don't know how you do that mechanic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Boarding on the water. You could have waterboarding.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In the bay. I don't know how you do that mechanic in a top down game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Super well, I mean you could, you could, you can do it. This has been done before. So you could, you could approach the enemy ship and then you could just have an event that pops up that basically goes auto calc or manually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The other one basically where it would.

[Linus Sebastian]

Switch to like an RTS game because that's. And it wouldn't be. It wouldn't. Like you could. As someone who only ever played Anno 1800, you could go, oh well that's not Anna. But 1602, literally the first game had that. You could, you could grab your soldiers and click and move them around and fight and micromanage and like it was a bad rts, but it was an rts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't, I don't know if there is a result there where it's actually good. That's one of the concerns that I think I have.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because in, in my opinion one of the reasons why the naval combat works pretty well is because they needed to build a lot of those systems anyways for all the shipping and stuff. So they're building on top of other systems. There is no other system that would use.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what about bribery? Bribery would be an interesting element. You know you could. Tariffs would be interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ah, doesn't that exist?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you can charge more for goods or less for goods. Man, trade is so complicated to build a good interface for like even loving Anno. I don't really use trade with the NPCs much. I just trade amongst my own stuff because it's just. It's kind of too much work. Or I'll set like certain things like the, the guy who runs the prison, he buys soap at a good price. So I'll distribute soap from my production island to all my islands that need it and then I'll dump whatever's left at his island before going back to pick up more. So if you have like a surplus production in your, in your nation or whatever, then you can like, you can make money that way. But it's generally speaking a little bit too tedious. Hootmon says that's getting pretty close to a total war game. That's fair. Maybe that's part of why I'm talking about it. Because I, I did enjoy total war games back in the day and played a modern one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm getting a concern like when you, when you have too many focuses for a team that's true you it will inevitably diminish certain other things.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's fair. And it could alienate the people that really just like building sprawling empires.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I do think an ability to potentially do that, like maybe, maybe you have certain ships.

[Linus Sebastian]

Spycraft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Spycraft would be sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what would you spy? Because there's no tech tree in Anno.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But if you could have them influence riots.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh sure. Or, or like economic sabotage. Yeah, that would be interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you can screw up someone's like what are those things called? The like trade centers where you install the things and it buffs the area around them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, trade unions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Trade unions. If you could have them like sabotage trade unions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that would be interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There could be. There could be potentially interesting things that you could do there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Alright, well sure. In that case I'm excited for N11 7 and if they made a ship.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was built for boarding but it was notably weaker so you had to have it be part of a fleet and then if you could damage another ship and then use that ship to board them and then if you did that action, it just gave it to you.

[Linus Sebastian]

But then thinking about how much there is to do in Anno, like would you have time to micromanage that? Probably not. And that's part of what keeps it so engaging is that there's always something. One more, you know, shipment to attend to, one more trade to complete, one. One more expedition to follow up on. I think it might be kind of flow breaking. So maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, maybe not.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what, I'm going to leave it to the experts. Oh, sorry. Is it 1107 or 11 7? I actually, I actually don't know. I'm pretty confident paying attention.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I've said this before and been super wrong. And I've said this before and been super right. So who knows. But I'm pretty confident it's going to be be good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hope so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't see like looking at the pattern of, of actions that they did for 1800, I don't see them breaking that so much with the really positive community sentiment that they had and everything else to. To take.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're also going to want to innovate though. So they're going to take some risks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And hey, there's definitely areas that could be better. I think, I think, you know, visibility of incoming quests could be better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think expeditions could be more engaging.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Right now it's just like. It feels like a choose your own adventure book where there's like, almost always.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A obvious right answer. Yeah, well, it's a little bit too easy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or a lot of the time just isn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because there is either no right answer or no good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everything's a die roll. And it's just like. Okay. This could have been automated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It just doesn't feel super great. It's not terrible or anything, but it's not super great. Rod says Luke doesn't know. What do I not know? Oh, did I say I don't know?

[Linus Sebastian]

Darn it. Thanks, Rod.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Darn it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I. There are things that they could improve, but I don't want dramatic changes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hit us with one more.

[Dan]

Do we even have a third?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I mean, there's so many.

[Dan]

Yeah, but most of them are like, thank you for free shipping.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Dan]

Hahaha. My things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have acquired goods. Thank you very much.

[Dan]

Bless. I got one from Paraguay and from Portugal and so many from Australia.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's gonna cost.

[Dan]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Dan]

So they're just getting them in there before.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We just sell a lot of stuff to make money. Let's eat all our margin by giving everyone free shipping.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. The more they order, the more we can kind of absorb the shipping cost, but also the more the shipment cost to send.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but you guys designed it. You guys designed it.

[Dan]

They don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you want me to even break it down? I'm sure people have figured it out. You guys designed it in a particular way, which is interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

We did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What did we do? I'm curious. I know what we did, but what did we do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, there's the one primary discount on weep. You can't find it this way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There it is. One primary discount. You need 150 bucks to break the ship storm. So if you already wanted MCM.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is now down to 79. If you top it up, there's a variety of ways to do this on the store to almost exactly 150.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then you get this. An item and free shipping, all for the original price.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's actually totally not what we did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's nice though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a crazy way to go about it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's super cool. Yeah. No, that's not what we did. Basically we just did the math for how little we're making on that and how much averaged out over the world shipping will probably cost us, knowing that our Orders skew much more international when we do a shipping promo and hoping and praying that the other things that they add to the cart will be things with reasonable margin on them and that most people will exceed the exactly 150 and that we will come out ahead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that happening so far? Can you see?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I can, I guess.

[Dan]

Don't look.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't think so, Dan? Because I don't. I just.

[Dan]

I don't want to make him sweat a little bit. Yeah, no, people are. People are going crazy because I think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They just want 199.

[Dan]

They've been looking to do a big.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This person just doesn't care. 75 bucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, who does that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Screw. Screw your sale.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the horse it rode in on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn'T get the kill management stuff. Just whatever. I'm just. I'm just shopping like normal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

I got one here that's 330 bucks from Poland.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Damn.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, boy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

1591-591891-69199, 154. 199, 154, 154.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, my. My report.

[Luke Lafreniere]

29. 154.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shopify change.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a lot of 154s.

[Linus Sebastian]

Shopify changed their. Their dashboard. And I, like, kind of don't know how to use it anymore. I don't spend that much time in it because we have, you know, people who work here whose job is to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People found you can get $4.97 over the free shipping with a specific set of things, and a bunch of people did it.

[Linus Sebastian]

The top selling items, though, actually are the. Oh, God. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna be okay. Like, realistically, this is about. This is about burning some inventory right now, and we are achieving that. Yeah, we're not doing much more other than achieving that right now. I will say, though, that the next best selling item is actually commuter backpack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's the mcm, obviously, it's that essentials bundle that's crushing it. It's well in the lead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So with community, if that's the only thing, just get free shipping on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not quite. Oh, because the commuter backpack is $149.99.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

But there's lots of, like, relatively low cost items on the store that you could. That you could add to that. Yeah. Backpack is next. Oh, in terms of revenue dollars. Not in terms of units. I'm not sorted by units, but yeah, no, it's. It's. It's cable management, commuter backpack, screwdriver. Precision screwdriver, framework hoodie. A lot of people seem to be waiting for a deal on the framework hoodie. So that's. But moving a bunch of those.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A nice hoodie. I like wearing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Water bottle scribe drivers. It's all the usual suspects. But hey, don't forget about the apparel. Yeah, don't forget about that. Okay, Dan, hit me with one more. Oh, wait, no, two more topics. Let's do two more topics. Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I gotta get some water.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, Jay's two cents is having an LT A Tech Fair. He's holding what he's calling the SoCal Tech Fair on May 3rd and May 4th.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'll be able to meet awesome creators like Bitwit Austin, Evans, Jay himself and more. They are promoting Tech Family Feud. There's going to be some industry panels, raffles, sim rig challenge and so much fun stuff. Let's go ahead and. Oh shoot. That's a link to the video. I actually wanted to go to the website.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also a huge garage sale featuring iBuyPower certified refurbished hardware and some of Jay's own lightly reviewed hardware as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wanted by ibuyPower. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Because they're like the. Like co hosting or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Isn't height. Is Height an affiliated brand with IBuyPower? I actually don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe so.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I don't actually know. I know NZXT is. I don't know the height is. Well, okay, I think NZXT isn't. But anyway. Okay, what's going on? Special SoCal Tower of Power on heights.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Support website, it says that Height is the sister brand of ibuypower.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, there you go. Okay. Tower Power. So they're doing like motherboard tower build things. PC speed builds. Race Jay's car, Buy nothing trade in booths. That's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, in the sim. Okay. I just heard you say Race chase car.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they've got actually a bunch of great partners for this Intel. AMDA, Sue's Corsair, Pulsar hall of Tech, CyberPower PC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, did we just lowfug eventbrite? That doesn't make any sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did we what? Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look, this is. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

What is it? What did you do? What are you doing? Luke? What is that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I clicked on the link in the doc.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Oh, did we break it? Hold on. No, no, mine's still loading.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Weird.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well anyway, if you're in Southern California.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

It loads now then. Yeah, maybe. Maybe Check it out. I guess that's it. Our discussion question. Who Wrote this. Our discussion question is, when is ltx coming back? We don't have a plan to bring back ltx. Some people seem very confused about this fact, but ltx was never profitable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We were explicitly clear about it at every stage, but for some reason, some people are very stupid and can't figure out that. That. That that means that we're not really profitable at it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are things we could have done to make it more profitable, but we didn't do them. But we. We. But we didn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

We spent a ton of money to make LTX what it was. And at this point, unless we could make LTX what it was and what I wanted it to be, I don't really see the point of doing it. The last one was really cool. It was a really. It was a high note to end up on. We had something like 60 or 70 creators or something. I can't remember what the number was, but it was incredible. That. That group dinner was awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm probably including plus ones in that number. That's probably why that number.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really liked the last ltx.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it was great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The one before that was pretty solid as well. But the last one was like kind.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of prima pretzel Parkour Sundays you said 2023 was profitable, but it put a huge strain on the team. It was profitable in terms of gross profit. It was not profitable in terms of net profit. Once we factor in all the time that we spent on it, it was a huge strain on the team, and it wasn't a lot of different ways.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To measure that stuff. Yeah, what he's kind of talking about is like. Like the. The writers needing to work potentially overtime and stuff in order to prep for LTX and make their videos leading up to it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not just writers, logistics.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That doesn't necessarily get factor.

[Linus Sebastian]

Direct cost creator warehouse, everyone. It was all hands on deck, and it just. It. It just crushed us. And so if we can't make it what we. What we envisioned it to be, then I'd rather that. I'd rather that the last one just be. You know, it's swan song. With that said, I'm actually really excited about Whale Land. Yeah, not the first one. Is that. Is that part of our. Is that part of the document? Okay, there it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What the hail do you want to do at whale.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so we had our infrastructure test. Was that two weeks ago? A week ago? I can't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Timing is an illusion that I do not look at.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so we had our infrastructure test where we went we wanted to make sure that all the networking and power was working. And thank goodness we did because it turned out that three of our California standard 50amp power plugs were just not hooked up at the breaker panel. Electricians told us it was hooked up. They, they ran the cables there. They just weren't in the breaker panel. It turned out that it was a bit of a, a bit of a. You take it, I got it. Situation with the lighting contractors who went and took those breaker spots. And then whoever was working on the, the power plugs was like, oh, I mean, they're occupied, so someone else's job. See you later. Is my understanding of what happened.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who knows? But that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not super happy with how that all went down, but the good thing about the contractors that we used for that building, the, the, the, the general contractor that we used for that building is that while they were very expensive, they are the kind that you follow up with, you know, six months, nine months after completion and they actually mostly return your calls and try to deal with things. So my understanding is that it is being dealt with. So I appreciate that. I wish it didn't happen in the first place, but I appreciate that. It's mostly being dealt with anyway. So it's a really good thing that we did that test and it's also a really good thing that we brought a bunch of gamers out to do that test because I think that. But Whale Land has a bit of an identity crisis right now. You know, I think Luke and I approached it as like, I remember getting together with friends and playing video games and those being treasured memories. And the most obvious way to do that is, you know, like a byoc. Bring your own computer, you drag your rig out, all your peripherals.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is what we did.

[Linus Sebastian]

You set everything up for realistically, you know, an entire weekend of gaming and there's, you know, balls, energy drink and, and pizza takeout. And it's, and it's a. And it's a whale of a time. Right. But what we kind of. Or what, at least I don't know, I realized and, and this was based on talking to other. It was staff and plus ones that we brought out for the infrastructure test. Talking to other people. What I, what I put together is that maybe BYOC is dead and maybe that's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Might be.

[Linus Sebastian]

So hang with me here for a second because it is pretty much a guarantee that the very first Whale Land will probably be basically a byoc. But I have what I think is a. Okay, I've got people Saying no, it's not. But okay, here's my.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait for the explanation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, wait.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's kind of cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, wait, wait for a second. Because it's not that they're dead and it's not that they're boring and it's not that they're bad, but what they are, is sub optimal for every hour that you spend at a byoc. What are the, how many minutes of that do you think you are spending actually playing a game with people who are also there actively engaged? The, the. The game time density for experiences that we are dependent on being in the same room for is really, really low. And it's just, it's whether it's faffing about with updates or someone's mic not working or not being able to find the right discord people, or someone, you know, not having the technical skills to, to go and get the totally legit copy of Halo Custom Edition that's on a server somewhere and get it installed it like whatever it is, there's always something. There's always something delaying the game. And so what I was kind of thinking about is like, okay, how do we remove barriers? Because there's other barriers too. Like a lot of us are, you know, adults. And the prospect of being completely engrossed in something for an entire weekend is not only, not always possible, but it's not always even appealing. And adding to that, like, I thought you lost something, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What did you lose? I forget.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Power adapter for my monitor.

[Linus Sebastian]

There you go. Okay. Hauling all of your stuff somewhere. Like the way people set up their stations, their battle stations these days, tearing the whole thing down, taking it somewhere, setting it all up, tearing it back down and carrying somewhere not always appealing. Now I do think that there's going to be a place for like a byoc if you're the kind of person who like really, really, really, really, really, really wants to bring your own rig and just like kind of talk about it and hang out. I think it's possible that a BYOC could carry on forever. But over time, what I would like to see happen is that Whale Land goes from, you know, being 90% BYOC and 10% what I'm about to describe to being more like 90% what I'm about to describe and 10% BYOC. Because what I realized is that when you, when you go by like a, like a, like a gaming, like a, like an I cafe kind of, you know, thing in an airport or on a street or whatever, you'll have like a group of bros that are in there, like, you know, playing their own thing. A lot of the time they're not interacting with other people in the space. And a lot of the time those spaces are dead. I went to this arcade in Singapore that was shockingly expensive. Like, I'm talking $3.50 a play on, like skeeball. No, like shockingly expensive. Now, in fairness, it was raining that day, but this place was packed, bumping packed. You could barely move. It was wild. And I'm sitting there going, I have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fun at Castle Fun Park.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what does the arcade have that the ICAFE doesn't or that the BYOC doesn't? And everyone in the arcade, they're gaming. They're gaming or they're in line to game. They're gaming, they're engaged. And it was low friction. You don't need to bring all your crap to an arcade. You don't need to configure your graphics settings for an arcade. You don't need to install the games for an arcade.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Limiting as this might sound, the games are also semi decided for you. There's a smorgasbord of them. You decide amongst the subset, but it's not. Oh, the 700 games in my Steam list, which include a bunch of single player games that I'm playing in Atlanta for some reason. It. It also, it. It's fixed. Yeah. This is the, you know, the skeeball machine or whatever. This is the air hockey table.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we've talked a lot about how we would want to like, we want to like, enforce that. When it's time to play this game, everyone's gonna play this game and. And we're gonna be like, that's what we're doing. But at the end of the day, you can't do that. Even you were a pain in the butt when we were trying to get everybody separated into teams and Left four Dead. Because you're sitting there playing like slay the spire or something with Left 4 Dead minimized in the background and not paying attention to comms.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's my best run I've ever had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because really, I set a record. Oh, nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, thanks.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was like, actually, don't do that, man. We're trying to play Left four Dead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The only thing I did was I didn't select my little icon fast enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, the point is that, well, we couldn't start the game, and that's the problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, we could, we could, we could. I was not the reason we couldn't start the game. I was not the last player selected.

[Linus Sebastian]

So so the point is that by, by having their own computers there, you introduce a lot of distraction.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we talked about like, oh, we could like block social media on the network and we could do this, but at the end of the day that's going to dis. Then you're, you're kind of pleasing no one because people can work around. The people who want the arcadey experience where everyone just goes to a station and plays, plays a game, are going to be disappointed because, like, why aren't we gaming right now? Are you playing World of Warcraft? Like, what, what are you even doing? You're not even playing with any of the other people who are here. What are you doing right now? Right. So those people are going to be disappointed. And the BYOC people who really are more about what, what's it called? Like CO play. I think co play. Child development. Hold on. I think it's called Coplay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Typically cooperative play. Typically emerging. Is it? No, no, no, it's called something else. But basically it's a, it's a, it's a thing where, where like parallel play. That's the one where. Yeah. Where a bunch of kids are doing something and the one kid that like, doesn't really have the social skills yet probably to integrate with the group will be like playing alongside them often doing something completely different and will go home and tell mom, you know, oh, yeah, me and Jenny did this and me and Sarah did that and we did that. But actually they like never talked to Jenny or Sarah. They were just like, they were there. So, yeah, parallel play, I believe, is what it's what it's called. And so for a lot of BYOC people, that is the appeal. They're going and they're parallel playing. They feel engaged with what's going on, but they don't actually want to play video games other than that one game that they like to play. And they don't actually want to talk to anybody other than that one person they like to talk to. And that's valid, but that's not what this event is trying to be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And you could go back to old WAN shows pre any whale lan and hear us talk about how that wasn't what this event was supposed to be. So this event was never supposed to be that from the start. That's why we had like, at the test that we just did, there was sectioned periods of time where people were supposed to be all doing one thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

And even then the enforcement is clearly impossible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we couldn't really do it. Teams were falling apart left and right. We tried to do a valorant tournament.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that was in the first round.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We had people leaving by the end.

[Linus Sebastian]

My team made the finals simply by merit of our entire five person squad being in the match. Because it was five on three in the semis. Yeah, because two people just like bailed. And this is with staff and plus ones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

When we've got randoms, it will be impossible to wrangle anyone. So here's a new concept for Whale Land. You don't bring anything. You bring yourself and a ticket and we make the gaming experiences. So we've got some ideas. Include like, you know, a pinball corner. You know, I. I bought a pinball machine. I put it in the lounge upstairs at Smash Champs. I, I think, I think we have a contact at Stern now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh really?

[Linus Sebastian]

And yeah, I think they might be sending over like something for short circuit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Machines are nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my gosh, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're really nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. Love it. Anyway, so you know, pinball corner and just by, by merit of having a ticket to Whale land, you can go play pinball. Just go in. You just play.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'll obviously have to not be a dick and like, you know, move out of the way if someone else needs a turn. But there's no like popping quarters into it. It's. It's all you can eat. It's like the Palladium model. There was an arcade at, at a, at a big mall here that unfortunately shut down, I guess because it wasn't sustainable. Fortunately, I don't care because these are not about like making a ton of money. They're about having fun and me wanting to play video games. But anyway, their model was all you can eat. So you just buy a pass. You go in, you play any game you want. You just swipe it. And I think it was just for tracking like which games people are playing because you didn't pay any extra except for some of the like premium games anyway. So like pinball corner, high end racing sim setups. These are just all, these are ideas that are in the dock right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you could put the truck, the truck driver.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely. And that's, that's a big part of it is we build so many cool gaming experiences around here that then we just tear down and there's no what.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To do with them that no one would be able to experience. Like.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I. Yeah, here's a big one. Have you ever wanted to play Star Trek Bridge Crew?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you ever played it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me neither.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have played whatever the old phone one is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I lied. I think I actually tried it very briefly, briefly once for a video. But it's. It's a huge challenge. You need four people, all with VR headsets, and it's like, when are those stars gonna align at whale land?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's pretty good.

[Linus Sebastian]

We could have a. We could have a bridge crew set up and so here. What else we've got? Oh, my God, Jake, he says a really big rgb fan, like 3ft. And maybe we could cool a computer and make a video about it. Writers meeting today. I told him I don't think it's video worthy. Anyway, the point is we'd have somewhere. We'd have somewhere to graveyard those projects where people could enjoy them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that'd be sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, you could even have like something that's closer to an exhibit, like a state of VR test station.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I would love that.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a VR game that I love that just. The stars never align to play it. It's called Takling's House Party.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's played it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have one VR headset and everyone takes turns being the VR headset player. You're hal. You're a home. You're a poor homeowner who's just trying to handle the takelings infestation in your house. Everyone else sits around the TV with controllers and they're the takelings. And it's a kind of co op, editive sort of dynamic between the takelings because they are all against hal. They all agree on that, but they're.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Competing against each other.

[Linus Sebastian]

But they also want to be the most against hal. Hell, it's really, really fun. It's very fun. And you need, like, realistically, if you don't have six plus takelings, it's. It's too easy for hell. You need chaos. And the more takelings, the more chaos. And I think that it's more fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When it's hard for hell.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that station would be an absolute bluff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'd love State of VR because, I mean, most people have tried, what, like a quest, I'm assuming, at this point. And if you could show people, like, you know, big screen beyonds and stuff like that, it would just be really cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So immersive history of gaming exhibits. We could have, like, older games you could play.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So a decent amount of the exhibits that were at ltx, to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Gaming trivia corner Gaming Jeopardy. Human keyboard. People could. Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't Know if we're ever gonna end up doing that. Okay. So the writers have dumped a lot of projects.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Read the. Read the last one. I wonder who. I wonder who said this.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Red Bull Chug jug. Drink from an 1800 gallon jug of Red Bull. Whoever can drink the most wins the rest of the jug. No. Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not doing that because.

[Linus Sebastian]

Call your mom and dad. What are these ideas? Okay. Okay. So my writing team is a bunch of nerds. Rage room. Your team kept feeding all match so your hard carry never came online. Smash e waste in a room to help process everything. Okay, the point is your mom, dad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We could just bring the Tuesday pod just like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the point is. The point is that. And I think we could. There is a lot of room for just still PC gaming. Like, I would absolutely want to have an 8v8. All the systems facing each other. Red versus blue Halo station.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Playing Left 4 Dead would be great. I still would love to do Savage at some point.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. Yeah. It's like a 64 versus 64 RTS FPS.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One RTS player per team. Everyone else's FPS.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's still room for us to have a ton of traditional PC gaming. Like, I'd love to have like a Worms Armageddon Station where it's just like. Like it'd be kind of cool to have it in like a hexagon. Except the chairs are on the inside. So. So you're. So you're. So you can like. So you can like lean over me. Like, I got him, you know, like, because that's what was missing at.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like one of the worms.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of people. A lot of people who attended the tech test were like, actually, you know, I had more fun at the land at your house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because we did a couple lands at my house and I was trying to figure out looking why. Because all the same people were there, all the same computers were there. So what was the difference? And it was. It was actually the potted off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isolation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because like I was in the garage, I think both times. And the garage ended up playing together.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And I was in the theater room a lot of the time. Just playing on the big screen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then there was a crew that was at my house till like five in the morning playing jackbox games on the rec room tv. And so. So that was what was missing, was giving people space to get immersed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's easier to. When you and I were sitting in the back row trying to yell at people to come play whatever game we were playing. It wasn't that effective.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When you're in the garage and there's only eight of you, that's it. It's pretty easy to get people on board. Exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Peer pressure. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's used for good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there can also be like. Like one of the ideas I think I came up with. I don't know, maybe you did. I don't remember. But we could have like a Super Mario Bros. Station and.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that was your idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could, you could. It just, you know, it's just sitting there on the first level at the beginning of the land. And the idea is if, like, by Friday night. Let's say it's a Friday Saturday land.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

By. By Friday night at midnight, if all.

[Linus Sebastian]

96 exits, if it's beat, if they.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have beat the game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You collectively the lan. If the LAN has beat the game, then, like, Linus orders pizza for everyone or something and you structure it where, like, the budget to order pizza was.

[Linus Sebastian]

The cheapest pizza in the ticket cost. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're expecting to buy it, you know, but you give them a mission, you give them something to chase, because that sounds fun. And somebody's gonna walk in and see that and be like, this is me. I will do this. And now they have, like, a mission and they accomplish it. And now they, like, earned pizza for the land. So they feel all stoked about it. And like you, you create these, like, little bits of activation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now, there are challenges. Obviously, it's going to take a long time to execute on something like this. Like, if we are literally rolling into the LAN with every computer and every console and every display and every, you know, pipe and drape, isolator for VR base stations or, you know, whatever. Right. Like, if we're rolling in with absolutely everything that's needed, it's going to be tough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'll take us time to build up to that. We could, we could do this piecemeal. Like, we could add things over time. Little bit. Little bit. Little bit. As we build up to this whole thing, you know, we don't need 1800 gallon jug of Red Bull day one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So we're going to scrappy. DP asks, where are you storing all this gear? We got a plan. We got a plan. That's actually a big part of what would enable this pivot is there was an unexpected plan for storing stuff which will also help out Smash Champs in terms of growing their retail shop presence. So for those of you not sort of up to speed, I bought a badminton Center a little while ago, or more accurately I bought a building and then made a badminton, turned it into a badminton center in Surrey. And it's actually going great, which is kind of surprising. I was expecting it to be a money losing endeavor forever. And the retail store is like killing it. Yeah, like it's going unexpectedly well. I think we're over 200 premium members, so there is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People have asked to be able to buy LTD store products.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know physically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And there is LTD store products there.

[Linus Sebastian]

The logistics are extremely challenging for doing order pickup because it's not like part of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I don't mean that there's stuff on the shelves.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. There's only a couple things, guys. It's like the athletic pants and some water bottles and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not really set up. LTT store has like hundreds of SKUs and the store is not set up for that. Anyway, the point is the retail store has been doing great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not tall XL's, short sleeve.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's a, it's a real business all of a sudden, which I wasn't really expecting. And so they kind of needed some extra space for, for like overflow inventory so that we can stock enough. Because the store itself was only ever supposed to be just like a storefront for like a handful of items just in case people forget it. But people are coming in like all the time. Like, oh, I like, I don't know, is this a store? Like, can I buy badminton shoes? And we're like, oh, I guess. Sure. Like, it's like, it's kind of crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is a relatively large and actually pretty nice store.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you ignore the entire rest of.

[Linus Sebastian]

It, like it's blowing my mind, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It seems pretty clean. It's well lit.

[Linus Sebastian]

I also felt pretty good when someone who works on like storeflow layout and design came in and was like, oh, this is like a really good layout. Because you force everybody to walk through the retail store when they come in and walk through the retail store in the gift shop when they leave. This is actually like really good. Yvonne and I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When's concession gonna be up?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's complicated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, is there like licensing or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's a whole, there's certifications that you need in order to, in order to literally like microwave a hot pocket, we have to have certifications. We have to have like two sinks that are separated for some purpose and some other purpose. Basically we just like put a small kitchen in it and assumed that our like general contractor would tell us if we hadn't like done it right. And we need a whole bunch more ventilation. We're gonna do it. I think we're gonna. So when we pull permit for that, we're probably gonna pull permit for adding some more showers at the back. And I think those will be premium member only showers. Cuz right now there's only the one shower in each bathroom because most of the other badminton centers that I've played at, all the players just like go home and shower. Um, and what people said to me was, well, yeah, if you've seen the state of those showers, wouldn't you do that? And I'm like, yeah, I don't shower there either because they're. I don't want to name any names now that we're kind of competitors. So I've been in at least one badminton center at one point where I didn't use the shower because I thought it was not something I would want to use.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's been in a lot of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I've been really genuinely. Doesn't narrow down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it does not narrow it down at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been to like four different ones with him and that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. The point is that they were like, yeah, we'd use the showers here. And I was like, oh, that makes sense. So we're probably gonna add some more showers. So when we pull permit for the showers, we'll do the, the concession at the same time. But anyway, the point is we have a plan for storage. So that's what I would like to achieve with Whale Land.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You should add basic shower things to the store. Because the amount of times I go to the gym and people forgot their shower stuff is a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a good idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like little, like travel little things of like shampoo and body wash and maybe a loofah or whatever. Sure, I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

So yeah, if you guys have ideas for what you guys want to see at Whale Land, we are super open to them. Please. How do people. How do people send this? You know what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Send what?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like their ideas. Leave a comment on the YouTube upload.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could make a forum thread.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. Oh, we could make a. Dan, do you have time to make a forum thread or are your fingers on fire still? Oh my God.

[Dan]

Not at the moment, but okay. We could send that to a writer or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I see a handful of you found the incredible ship storm sale event on lttstore.com where you can get free shipping on orders over $150 US dollars. Shop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now.

[Linus Sebastian]

We've got a great deal on the MCM Essentials solution. Just $79.99 US dollars for all that cable management. Absolutely incredible. And you can also pick up a commuter backpack, precision multiple screwdriver. You could get a regular backpack, regular screwdriver, tech sack, off site laptop bags, drive driver, any of these fantastic apparel items. Look at all of this. Oh, a floppy disk notebook. Look at that. $14.99. You could add that to your cart right now. Booo. You need me to do float plane announcements? Okay, I could do that. Is that okay?

[Dan]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Secret Shopper. Wait, are we allowed to talk about this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess. I mean, it's in the dock.

[Linus Sebastian]

Holy. Secret Shopper is back. Are you kidding me? Is Secret Shopper back? It is okay to talk about this. So we can never announce a new series of Secret Shopper until the. Until the previous or until we've gotten as far as completing the tech support challenge. Once we've completed our tech support calls, nothing the participation can do anymore to. To. To change the outcome. So we have ordered the systems, we have unpacked the systems, and we have created tech support challenges and contacted all of the companies. Secret Shopper is back. The theme this year is. You know what? I'm not going to spoil it. I am going to play.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have it C. I have it queued up already.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Who do you want? Dan.

[Dan]

Surprise. Yeah, if. If you've got it queued. Luke. Yeah. Go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Luke, clap. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, do they have audio?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on. Go back, go back, go back. Start it over. So the theme this year, if you guys haven't figured it out yet, Lilac Holmes and his trusty partner.

[Dan]

Such a stretch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gross.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought that was me for a second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh wait. It looks like he's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm dead.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It does. That's it. That's all we can show.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's gonna be a good one, boys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fantastic. Man. That side profile shot of Plouf. I legit thought it was me.

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kind of weird. I was like, I don't remember doing this. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm really excited to. To get this started for you guys. There's a little more to that clip, but. But we'll leave it there. For those of you who haven't seen it before, Secret Shopper is a series where we anonymously purchase mid range PCs from some of the top North American system integrators and evaluate them across a range of criteria. This year we're going to be looking at ibuypower, Dell, hp, Maingear, cyberpower, Origin PC, Lenovo and starforge. This is a must read call to action. Must read. The first episode drops April 17 on YouTube with new episodes every two weeks. However, Floatplane subscribers get 48 hours before YouTube. So if you want to be among the first to watch on April 15, go to LMG GG floatplane and get signed up. And the floatplane train. Float train doesn't stop there. Sammy also visited Dennis's house to see how the purchases from his ultimate tech upgrade were holding up. Despite what many thought after watching his upgrade, he did not waste his money. With that said, he really needs to clean his PC. It has not been cleaned since then. Oh, and I'm apparently supposed to play this. Did the timestamp work? Oh yeah. Here we go.

[Dan]

Not my priority to clean this PC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Linus, I need help.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's very. That's pretty gross. Look at here. It's like a little beach down here. Look at that. Okay, well anyway, thank you for that, Dennis.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A beach of dust is rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is also today the last day to get merch created by the one and only Sarah Butt. Including the floatplane exclusive. This is Dorky Dinos design.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I have to move. There you go. That's. Oh yeah, I. I know, but I could. I'm. I figured it out. Also the content Cosmos Art print and streams with Sarah art print number three. Okay, man, not this one. Okay. Until April 14th. Oh no, that one is. What is this one? I forget.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's this. But in an art print, would it not be?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think so. I'm not concerned, but I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, don't quote us on any of that. You could just order it and then see what you get. So. Call to action. Must read. This is the best time to get maximum value from Floatplane for as low as $5 a month. Subscribe at LMG GG floatplane. All right, Dan, what are we supposed to be doing? Sponsors. Why don't we do one topic before we do sponsors?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, sure.

[Dan]

Why do you bother asking me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

He likes doing that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nvidia says IDC, you fix it after 32 bit physx turned out to be the RTX 5000 series kryptonite along with other things. Along? Well, along with black screens and missing rops and melting power connectors and pricing out to lunch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

False promises.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nvidia has opted to address the issue by making PhysX and Flow SDKs completely open source. It was already mostly open source, but for the GPU simulation, currently, no, this is still cool. The good news is this should make it possible for modders to create wrappers for the new cards to play affected games without insane performance penalties and maybe even add physx support to AMD and Intel cards, which is pretty cool. It may also allow for game devs to push what PhysX can do in their games. The bad news is it's gonna be on the community to make any of this happen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Obviously, like I would. I would prefer that they would maintain it. But I will say this is what we've asked people to do when they abandon something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And most companies don't do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So they did do it. They did do it. They did do the thing and we're gonna have to give it one thumbs out of five.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I still think it's cool that they did it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of companies would have just pure abandoned.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no, no. I only have one thumb. It was a joke. My only thumb out of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I thought. No, no, you have four.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, three thumbs out of four. Nice. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We could, we could include dad.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have six Discussion question, is this a good guy or lazy bum move?

[Luke Lafreniere]

A good bum. I'm gonna. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I'm gonna go on a, on a bit of a limb here and go what I suspect might be against a decent amount of the audience and say good guy. A lot of companies would just abandon this. PhysX has not been a primary thing for games for quite a while now.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not going to sell any new games anytime soon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

New games, they were still having to maintain it. Genuinely a huge percentage of companies would have just dropped it. I was not surprised when they did it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should they do the same thing for 3D vision?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, if they're not going to use it. Yeah, they should. They absolutely should. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, Dan, you wanted me to do sponsors, now let's do it. The show is brought to you today by Vessi. You might not be a real firefighter, but you can be just as cool as one with a pair of shoes that keep your socks dry. Our sponsor Vessi has you covered. Unlike those clunky rubber boots, Vessi's are breathable, lightweight and stretchy. Plus they come in all kinds of styles like sneakers, slip ons, boots and more. Their weekend sneaker is a best seller for a reason, thanks to their versatility from strolling through Thailand to clocking 20,000 steps a day in Tokyo. They've become Dennis's favorite travel shoes. They're impressively comfortable even on long walks, and with a thicker, cushioned midsole and a relaxed fit, they'll have your feet feeling like it's the weekend all year round. Pack smarter and travel better with Vessi. Visit vessi.com wanshonow for 15% off your first pair at checkout and start exploring with confidence. The show is also brought to you by Odoo. With our sponsor Odoo, you can turn your craziest ideas into real businesses. Whether you're renting out your car or turning your dream side hustle into a reality, Odoo helps you jump through all the hoops. Odoo is an all in one business Solution with over 50 apps for invoicing, marketing, HR and their interface is user friendly and clean enough so that it might completely change how you work. And it's just one platform. No more switching between different ecosystems. And if you've got an employee like Dennis who's always slacking off, Odoo's Time off app lets you track hours, vacation time and more. Need a new employee? I wouldn't blame you. You can create job postings and track progress with ease. You only select the apps your business needs and if you need just one app, Odoo is free. Check it [e-mail] wan or click the link in the description for a free 15 day trial. No credit card required. Finally, the show is brought to you by AMD Spring forward into the Ultimate Gaming Upgrade from our sponsor amd. We've done many AMD Ultimate Tech upgrades and if you've been following the series, we just dropped a new episode yesterday featuring Bridget, our design manager for Creator Warehouse. That was a lot of fun. Bridget Knight never get to hang out. And that's actually one of my favorite things about AMD upgrades because we have so many really cool people here that I don't really get to work with. Day to day and getting to know them or giving the audience a chance to get to know them and also getting a chance to like spend some time with them is honestly my favorite thing about AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade. The next thing is. Oh, talk about handheld gaming. Yeah, handheld gaming is great. More games are launching as Steam Deck Verified than ever. More games are optimized and launching pre optimized for handheld and The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme is coming later this year. So now is a chance to get an upgrade for free. Okay cool. They're giving one lucky winner. Okay, this is this is wild. An AMD Ryzen 9 9950x3D CPU, a Meg x 870e Tomahawk motherboard, 32 gigs of DDR5 memory, and get this, a Steam Deck OLED with a terabyte of storage. Also, you get some govee hexagon panel lights to make your setup shine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Damn.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't miss this giveaway. Enter to win at the link in the video description. Absolutely sick. All right, what are we doing, Mr. Dan?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Topic more topics. One cable to rule them all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whatever you want.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is wild. An alliance of over 50 companies in China has released the specs for a new cable that I found borderline hard to believe. The General Purpose Media Interface, or gpmi. There are two different connector options. Type B, a proprietary connector with up to 192gigabits and 480 watts. And type C compatible with USB. Type C with up to 96gigabits and 240 watts. Both type B and type C will support 8K video, but apparently will lack 10 and 16K which HDMI 2.1 supports. Although who's using it from Tom's hardware for comparison. Then we have a little table here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at them numbers. Now, HDMI 2.2 is. I don't see it on here. That actually doubles HDMI 2.1's bandwidth to 96 gigabit per second. But even HDMI 2.2 I don't think does power. So GPMI being able to 480 watts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of power delivery is crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You could power your monitor off your computer, like just off your computer power supply. And it's like, why not? Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Could we just, like, have fewer cables? I'm into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And the size of the cable and the, you know, no big chunky adapter in the middle too. Like the. The cable management options here is. Are wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me see if I can find the picture. I know, Riley.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, you could power your monitor off your computer and daisy chain the power. Probably in some scenarios.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here we go. I'm keeping up articles and I can't find them. Riley has a. No, wait. That's not what the connector looks like, is it? Is that just a mockup? I think that's just a mock up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that is a mock up, but I think it's like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's just a wide USB C.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but they described it as a USB C that got like, stretched out, basically. I've seen that description in multiple places. So I Think it is kind of.

[Linus Sebastian]

Supposed to look like that Everyone else is just using images of like HDMI ports and so. Oh, here we go, here we go. Okay. GPMI type B.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sort of works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, there you go. I don't know, like kind of are.

[Dan]

We gonna get like there we go, Mini B and microbe a lot and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, Micro B comes back. Oh no, I'm gonna lose it.

[Dan]

I already saw two letters.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It reminded me a lot of old Apple connectors. The wide boy was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's my question though. As good as this is, and I am all for higher bandwidth video interfaces. Like yeah, for real? Yeah, like with, with oled having the fast switching time that it does, man, drive up them hurts, you know, Give me, give me smoother displays. Like I'm, I'm super into it. But the article that I actually read earlier today about HDMI 2.2 basically was like, yeah, the appetite in the CE industry is not super high for more bandwidth. Given that the adoption of 8K is nothing essentially. And realistically do we need more than 144Hz or what? I think it's about 144 is the maximum you can do on an HDMI 2.1 link, 120 on most like AV receivers and stuff. Do most people need more than that given that they're running game consoles that can't drive More than that anyway? Like is there really a hunger for this that will drive industry adoption? Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The USB C compatible one, still pushing 240 watts is cool, but that's still within USB 4.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's also a couple things kind of overlooked in the Tom's Hardware chart. Thunderbolt 5 for instance, has an asymmetric mode where it can operate at greater than 40 gigabit per second in one of the directions. And the idea there is that you're driving a bunch of displays off of the device, but you have less data coming back the other way. So there are a few things that are not 100% accounted for in the Tom's Hardware chart here. But even then, I guess that's why.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'S USB C compatible.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's going to drive industry adoption of this? Because the connectors that ultimately win. The connectors that ultimately win are the ones. Yeah, but I mean you can't single handedly HDMI is as far as I can tell, literally never gonna change. Like honestly, like in the consumer electronics industry, IT industry. Okay, maybe we could talk about that. Or like I could see, I could see a niche VR vendor or something, you know, pushing this or something like. I could see. I could see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's a hot take. How many people are actually plugging things in with HDMI to their TV these days?

[Linus Sebastian]

Lots.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I kind of doubt it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you think people are just running their smart TV OS and they're just using Netflix that way?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I bet you that's most people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyone with a game console has to plug in via hdmi.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of people are going away from non switch game consoles.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyone with more devices there will probably also be adapters. Anyone with more devices than are supported is going to be using an AVR and those are 1 billion percent using HDMI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think that's ever many people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyone using a sound bar is using hdmi. HDMI is so entrenched. I mean, think about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The sound bar argument.

[Linus Sebastian]

You might have HDMI charges for every port on your device and they still haven't walked away from it. DisplayPort was technologically superior Chromecast dongles.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think a lot of people are getting those Chromecasts built into a lot of stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like DisplayPort was superior in terms of bandwidth delivery for ages. HDMI did have some features that were better supported. I think like deep color came first to hdmi. But I've been. Dude, I've been trying to figure out for years why they keep paying this HDMI license fee. And I think it's just because when you've got this level of momentum, you can't get away from this connector and the fact that they've managed to keep it backward and forward compatible all these years, the ports, the cables. I mean, obviously you need a higher quality cable to run the new one, so it doesn't always work. But the fact that like theoretically you could take an OG HDMI device, plug a brand new cable into it and you're good to go. You can just buy that at the store. It's a commodity. The fact that you could take an ancient cable and as long as the distance is shorter, run short enough, you could conceivably run a brand new device linked with it. Like it's, it's, it's, it's admirable. It's a good thing. Like think about how many cables were thrown away when we transitioned from composite to component and then from component to hdmi. The fact that you can continue to reuse this stuff for so long. I don't know. Hdmi, it's going to be tough to replace. I mean, yeah, maybe I've talked myself out of gpmi. I wish them luck because I want more bandwidth. Give me more bandwidth. Give me power delivery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Chinese TV manufacturing is doing a very similar thing that Chinese vehicle manufacturing is doing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they could just sort of force this. I do, actually. The. The soundbars argument was interesting. Some people have brought up that some soundbars can connect over WI Fi or Bluetooth.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the sound bar argument is interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I honestly think Atmos over Bluetooth. Sorry, it's not happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The audience watching this and you might be skewed towards more people having devices to put into their TVs than you think is necessarily average.

[Linus Sebastian]

But then here's my question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I promise you, over the last four or five years, the amount of people plugging things into their TV with HDMI has decreased.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. But then that actually kind of feeds into my argument for why we shouldn't bother to transition the industry to this new connector whose only benefit is like, higher bandwidth, more resolution.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's kind of fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's doubly unnecessary then, if nobody's playing tv.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I definitely don't think it's necessary, but I think it might be China wanting to own like a cable interface standard.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, that's fair enough, but they need buy in from the entire world, all the other devices, essentially.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because if you, if all of a sudden, you know, your Onkyo or Denon or whatever and your AVR receiver. I know that's. I know that's an ATM machine thing, but I'm just going to say that. So your AVR receiver has to have like a different version with like a, you know, a modular, like, IO thing for the China market. You're just like, oh, my God.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I don't think it's the China market, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you think they're just going to try and like push this world how, though?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It might have to be a mix of connectors. I mean, right now we have DisplayPort and HDMI.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not on an AVR.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm saying on the TV.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, not on a TV. Almost. Other than commercial displays, I can't think of a single TV that has DisplayPort. In fact, I can't even think of a single TV off the top of my head that has like a USB C with that supports like DisplayPort, alt mode. Like, it's just not a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a lot that have standard usb, but not for display.

[Linus Sebastian]

HDMI is universal in av.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think that means it can never be taken over, especially when you have TCL coming in swinging like they are. I think they could use TCL to force this out. And I suspect that might actually be the strategy.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that would just literally destroy TCL's sales.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't necessarily think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like if, okay, if they sell, if they eat the cost of like the dongle breakouts and they make it like HDMI signal compatible or something. But they'd have to work with the HDMI forum or consortium or whatever they're called. Is it a forum? I think it's a forum they'd have to work with. The HDMI forum forum rings a bell on that. Unless they like just reverse engineered it or like I. It just doesn't seem. It doesn't seem plausible right now. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. I mean, I thought DVI was great and didn't need to go anywhere and that went away.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I liked DVI as well. I liked chunky connectors well, as well. Like they announced the standard. That doesn't mean it's anywhere near ready for market.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it could be quite a while till we see what happens.

[Linus Sebastian]

G Kun says you could power peripherals from the tv. Yeah, you could, but you could already do that because your TV's plugged into the wall and you're not going to be powering. Actually, yeah, you could power a pretty decent power tv. But. But like, here's the thing. Why? Because now you have to put like an over spec power supply inside whatever device that's going to be powering the tv. Why do you want to do that? You're just taking a cost that could be in the TV and that would be right sized for the tv. And then you have to like over spec it because you have no idea what kind of TV someone's going to plug into it into the AV receiver. Why are we doing this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That I think makes sense for computers. Like you're saying being able to power your monitor, whatever would be pretty soon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but like, do you want. Do you want to have to buy an AV receiver that has a 2,000 watt power supply just in case it has to power a PlayStation 6 and an Xbox, you know, series, whatever they call it. And, and your tv, like, especially when.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like the cable management system of home theater setups is like the most solved one that exists. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just don't really see the point. Jee Kun says the other way. Like it doesn't. It doesn't matter either way. Either way you're putting an oversized power supply in something and then you're going D.C. power out to all the other connected. Why just plug them all In.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so I just wanted. Because there's a bunch of people that have been saying a very similar thing and I want to try to explain my argument a little bit better. Zach3323 said. I gotta disagree with Luke. My parents and grandparents use HDMI because it's what their old TVs have. Now there are a ton of dumb TVs. People buy Chromecast for WI fi connection for things like sound bars is relatively new. New. Totally. What I'm talking about is new TVs, not old TVs. These would be new TVs that are being sold. I don't think there's a huge argument for a need for this. I think the argument for this would be that China wants to own a cable connection standard. They came up with GPMI and they could push it. They could push it through TCL. That would be new TVs, not old TVs. And these TCL TVs, they could include things like Chromecast, they could include things like that where it would be.

[Linus Sebastian]

But they'd have to collaborate with Google for that, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or they'll have some form of casting solution of their own and just not care. Which sounds probably more likely. But I am not talking about this somehow working for your old TVs. That has genuinely nothing to do with the conversation or the argument whatsoever. And I've seen a bunch of comments about that. So it's. I could very likely be wrong. I think it's an interesting angle to take, so I'm just sticking with it. But yeah, that's where I'm at. No, I mean, I'm saying I could be wrong, but I'm. I'm. I'm decently confident in that take. I. I think it's pretty easy to shift people over to Bluetooth for sound bars. I think the people with consoles are overestimating how many of them there are and the ability to have an adapter or they're underestimating the ability to have an adapter. And I really think the techie audience that we have is underestimating the amount of people that just buy a TV and just use the TV as is.

[Linus Sebastian]

In what looks like an April Fool's joke, Kawasaki, of all companies, has unveiled the Corleo, a rideable robot horse that the Japanese moto maker says is actually coming sometime after 2050. Is that a typo? Is that. Is that date right? Anyway, do you want to watch this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's only about a minute long and realistically, I don't think I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen it yet. Realistically, I don't think Kawasaki is gonna copyright strike, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They might.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, we've seen dumber stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Japanese brand.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? Okay, this is just cg.

[Luke Lafreniere]

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

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought they might have a prototype.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, not when it's coming in 2050.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, I thought it would be. Okay, well, this is just stupid then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's. It's so funny how similar that is to the. The Pokemon Go April Fools thing.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

I still like the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm disappointed that it's completely cg. They don't even have like a proof of concept. I expected it to be like. Like slow or something. You know, like kind of, but like doing something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, some brand went, wouldn't it be cool if we did something 25 years from now? That'd be sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. They say it will be powered by a 150cc hydrogen engine. Have rubber hooves to handle terrain like grasslands, rocky areas and rubble fields. And controls that function. Similar to riding an actual horse. I'll believe it when I see it. Okay, dire wolves are so not back. Colossal Bio. Colossal Biosciences, the genetic engineering company for people who drink monster energy, claimed to have achieved the world's first de extinction in the form of living dire wolf pups named Romulus Remus, the mythical founders of Rome and Khaleesi. The news made the COVID of Time and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. martin posted a photo of himself holding one of the pups. There is some actually cool stuff here. Colossal managed to extract DNA from 72,000 year old dire wolf fossils, identified dire wolfish traits and edited the genome of gray wolf embryos to emulate those traits. Of course that means the pups are not dire wolves, but they are modified gray wolves that look pretty much exactly like an Arctic wolf. And our source is Arcticwolf. Png. Yep, that's an Arctic wolf all right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

The best available evidence also indicates that dire wolves were not actually wolves and they were more closely related to coyotes, African wild dogs. And what the heck are D holes?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's definitely not how you pronounce it, but doles. It's gotta be. There's no way it's D holed.

[Dan]

No, it bit me. What a D hole?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's it.

[Dan]

You're getting named that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's that? Fish like stupid headed fish or whatever it's called. Dumb head or something. Let me try to find it.

[Linus Sebastian]

You gotta be kidding me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dumb Gulper Shark is one of Them. But that's not the one I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Let me look it up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really? Oh, no. What a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a name, dude. Oh, that sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so let's talk about the. Let's talk about the. But why, though? Colossal says that their work can restore niches in the ecosystem that vanished when animals went extinct. But the part that we appear to be overlooking is that none of that helps when the direwolves prey. Large herbivores like wild horses, ground sloths and mastodons are also off the market. Colossal is doing actual conservation work, helping to restore less flashy species like red wolves, which are heavily endangered. But that does doesn't get one on magazine covers and it doesn't get one investment. So our discussion question is noble lies. Are we for them or against them?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Against.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. That was a quick conversation. What's next?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the next topic, I think, which I think is the last one. No, it's not any meanie.

[Linus Sebastian]

My email xt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's do the xt.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, let's do the xt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Turns out the XT was inside of all of us all along.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that was not supposed to be quite so sensual, but. But do go on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was. Bios modding. The 9070 members of the PC Games Hardware forums were successful at flashing a 9070 with the BIOS of its superior XT sibling, allowing the lesser GPU to run at much higher clock speeds and much higher voltage. We're back, baby. We used to do this kind of stuff back in the day. Modders were able to get 15 to 20% higher scores in 3Dmark over the stock 9070 with the unlocked BIOS. Naturally, this modification has its limitations. For example, it can't make up for the missing GPU cores and it also prevents the card from idling properly. And apparently there are some crashes. It says crashes aplenty. I've read that some users are not running into crashes and other users are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Personally, that's what I've read usually makes sense when you're unlocking any kind of anything on GPU depend on your card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the crash crashes aplenty. Here is probably that that's happening to a lot of users. But there is still a chance that you could get lucky and have a good card. I don't know if there's a way to detect with. With binning or anything at this time. I. I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

I doubt it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I doubt it as well. Not to mention that if you do this on a card with a dual bios.

[Linus Sebastian]

You end up getting bricked up without dual bios.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Without. Right, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense. You can just flip back to your original bios and if. If you don't have that option, it could be potentially challenging.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. This is not the first time this has been possible on an AMD card. It sure isn't. You could do this with the 6950 to 6970, the Vega 56 to 64 and the 5700 to the 5700X.

[Linus Sebastian]

It also used to be possible on Nvidia cards. There was a. What was that card? All copper MSI, I want to say.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was it four, seven cards in this? I thought the. The 290 or something had. Had something going on with this as well. There's been. There's been more than just those ones listed.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm fairly certain this was a really cool card. MSI had like a. Like a weird All Copper cooler, twin Frozer GTX465, many of which could be. They were numbered. It was a limited edition. Nvidia needed to just like get rid of some GPUs back when they were like, kind of cool and cowboy. And so they. These. They were 470s that didn't make the cut. But some of them had all the functional units and just were like. They didn't meet the power profile or whatever. And so MSI sold them as 465s and a lot of them could be flashed to 470 and they had this super swanky cooler.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's cool. It looks sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Bring back cards that look like that. Our discussion question is, would you recommend this? My answer is honestly, probably no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you have a dual BIOS and.

[Linus Sebastian]

They want to have some fun, Nothing to lose.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Go for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Without it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Little sketch. Unless you're willing to just like write the card off. Basically, I wouldn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

We need your help on a video source. One is for. This is the need for more positivity in my life. We're a little sick of the doom and gloom. We're not saying the doom and gloom isn't warranted. We're just saying we're sick of it. And we want to make a video highlighting some of your positive moves.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or some of the positive moves that traditionally greedy companies have made in the tech space. And we need your help to find the best examples. Some examples we came up with include the open sourcing of the Command and conquer games by EA Windows Defender, making antivirus subscriptions mostly A thing of the past. And Microsoft's accessibility initiatives, especially their Xbox controller controllers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They have multiple accessibility controllers now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let us know your favorite positive examples in the chat or by sending an email. Email. Wow. Huh. Let's go with maybe not that email. What's a better way to do this? Oh, wait, Dan can't create form threads right now.

[Dan]

You do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what? Someone on the subreddit make a thread and add things to that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can work on getting logged in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why don't we do that for. No, someone will do it. They'll be done by the time you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But there's going to be like a trillion of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not my problem. Whichever one is the one that wins. The one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry for mods.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, not the forum. The subreddit. Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

We don't care about them, do we? Well, the, well, they're unofficial.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Reddit will kind of sort itself out with upvotes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it'll probably be okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it should be fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you post on the one that doesn't win. Just migrate it over.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, do that. Cool. Anywho. So yeah, we should do that for ideas. Ideas for gaming experience at Whale Land too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you have things that you'd like, want to try, like, I don't know, I think it'd be cool to have like CRT versus oled.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like someone with Linus account added you and said I'll make a forum post.

[Dan]

That's not how we do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't log into that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We do that. That is really not how we do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You are not supposed to do that.

[Dan]

I'm going to change the password.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Anyway, our discussion question is can you think of any good guy moves? But I think we're just going to save it for the video. We'll let you guys. We'll let you guys kind of dump them in there. Let's go. Reddit karma fight says Fabian Elijah. Sign into your own account, for crying out loud. Or I won't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Tomorrow's video. He probably just forgot.

[Linus Sebastian]

I won't invite you to play tape to tape Alpha.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When is it coming?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They posted. The reason why I messaged you was they posted an announcement.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I, I, I read it as like this is available now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know they're being even with like the Alpha invitees. They're being supremely easy about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But basically this like sounds so cool. Hockey rogue, super violent hockey rogue light game that we've been really enjoying over the last little bit, it has their, like, they're like Alpha 2.0 coming very soon. I've got an invite. And it, like, dramatically expands the campaign. There's now, like, branching paths that you can take. I think they've added, like, fighting and a whole bunch of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

New nodes as far as my understanding goes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they've. They've nerfed a bunch of the stuff that, like, we acknowledged was broken. Like the spiked armor. Spiked armor makes it so that anyone who tries to body check you gets body checked themselves, and you just, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shrug it off, which is kind of dumb.

[Linus Sebastian]

So now it'll be like the dragon shout where they'll. Both of you will be hit. Okay, so there's a sacrificial element.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you were gonna be hit and now the other guy is also hit. Sounds good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then. Now you're both hit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there sounds more. And they're nerfing head redirect and, like, a bunch of other stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how they're gonna nerf it. I think they just need to remove it from the game.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll see. We'll see. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because even when it was completely functionally broken, it was still overpowered.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, I don't know. Are you still not caught up?

[Dan]

Good lord. Check the stats. Slowing down.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're doing a great job. You're doing a great job, sir.

[Dan]

I've been two hours.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the reason that he needs to do a great job is because we don't want you guys to get caught in the upcoming ship storm. We're doing free shipping on all orders. Over 150 US dollars right now. And it lttstore.com just head to lttstore.com click shop now and you will find. Oh, my goodness. Is that the MCM essential solution. For just US$79.99, you're gonna want to get yourself one of those. And hey, to make sure that you reach that $150 free worldwide shipping threshold, check out the commuter backpack. Maybe a precision multi pit screwdriver, bit set, A regular screwdriver, a stubby screwdriver that is totally adequately long enough. A regular backpack, a laptop bag, a tech sack. Oh, we got more magnetic cable, management scribe driver, bolt action pen, insulated water bottle, a northern lights desk pad. Available in any size you want as long as it's whatever size you want at the same price. Lots of other different mouse pads, desk pads. We've got the hooded task jacket. Ooh, our Blank T shirts, greensaver party shirt. Whoa. Look how cool these guys are. Love it. Lots. Lots of other apparel that you guys can check out. Oh, yeah, Floppy disk notebook. These are our top sellers, by the way. There are also other things on the store you could also buy, like home. Hold on. Where's that. Oh, all products. Where's the. Just our. Where's just all products? There's an all products, right? Oh, yeah. Dude, there's so much stuff. Oh, are we out of stock of this again? Oh, that thing is so cool. Well, the rain cover for the original backpack, we got that. We got. Oh, a when cork board, which you can put, like, stuff and things on. Oh, the notebook is really nice. Sarah was heavily involved in the design and implementation of that. Stick locks, dude. I've been. I've been traveling with a controller lately. Stick locks, good stuff. Lock your sticks. Oh, oh, okay. PTM7950 is out of stock. Darn it. What else we got? Oh, good. That sold out. Screwdriver, shaft extension. Hey, that's a good way to pad your cart for another 10 bucks if you. If you need to extend your shaft. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. We have our shape sorter toy. If you've got someone, you know who's having a baby or just had a baby and you need a little. A little gifteroo, it's like, very carefully engineered to make sure that they don't go in the wrong holes. And it's all tech themed, which is pretty cool. I think there's one or two that do go in the wrong holes, but they're hard. They're hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I remember correctly. It's one, and you have to really.

[Linus Sebastian]

Line up pajama pants. What else we got? Oh, look at the. Oh, no. The ABC plush characters are sold out. Don't forget to. You can load up on gift cards. That's. That's a thing you can do. ABCs of gaming, ever popular. Very well reviewed. All right, cool. I think that's. I think that's it. Manor store has a lot of stuff on it. I haven't actually looked at Reviews of ABCs of gaming in a while. Look at this. Look at this. Can anything. Can anything be that universally loved? Okay, what is this one star review? Let's see. Let's see. Still waiting to receive it. Okay, so someone didn't get it. That's the only thing that you could not love about the ABCs of Gaming Board book. So if you know anyone who's having a baby and they're gamer. This is a. This is a great little. Great little gift. Item ii. The QA team can't catch them all. The silly horse is in a wall. I will say it is a silly horse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is still. Still.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we even pointed out that it was like that and no one even trolled it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ruin. It's a good video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is a good video.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Check it out.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Okay. We're done chilling now, Dan.

[Dan]

Okay. Do you have any more topics for now?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, for now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Looks like a threat. What does merch message ascended mean? Curated. Oh, okay. Wow. You only curated nine. Wow, you're ruthless today. Yeah, it's like you want to go home and sleep or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's had to deal.

[Dan]

I don't do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's had to deal with air tape.

[Dan]

Say that word in public. Shut your mouth. It's like something that's not airtable. I don't have to think, oh, cry myself to sleep. I guess you want to switch after dark. Is that why you're antagonizing me about my job skills?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not trying to antagonize you. I'm just asking you if you're going to do your. What?

[Dan]

You don't say. Lus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look, I just. I got a lot of. I got a lot of stuff to sell here. Have I mentioned, by the way, on lttstore.com, we're doing the Shipstorm sale event. All you.

[Dan]

You can get this great hoodie that's probably not going to be able to be manufactured domestically ever again.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude, impossible. That would be like. Oh, my God. It would be like a 500 plus dollar hoodie. Easy. Like, easy. And people were already like, outraged that we would have the audacity to sell a $150 hoodie. It's like, you do realize the entire thing is embroidered, right? That is not a print. That is flipping expensive.

[Dan]

Internal too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, it goes all the way through. It's not like reversible or anything like that. I don't want to misrepresent it. It's meant to be viewed from the outside, but yes, it goes all the way through.

[Dan]

Like your skin.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, thank you, Dan. Let's put him away. Okay. What do you got for us?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Too much exposure.

[Dan]

I've been outside twice this week. It's not good for me. Linus, you make such a big deal about finding stuff from the office at the tech makeovers. Is that just for the LOLs, or are you legitimately calling out your people livid?

[Linus Sebastian]

Why not?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Both livid.

[Linus Sebastian]

I definitely, there are definitely cases where people really aren't supposed to have stuff and I really do find stuff that they're really not supposed to have and they really do need to bring it back. But in general I don't think that I am a particularly draconian Nazi like company owner. And if the occasional cable that especially because a lot of the time it's with people who kind of need to have stuff at their house to like do stuff off hours or you know, whatever else like if, if or that they brought home for a work from home station they just like kind of forgot about. I'm not the kind of person that's going to be like well that's, that's a citation. You know, like we can have a friendly conversation about how oh actually we updated that policy and you actually aren't really allowed to do that anymore and that's fine. And in the case of. I think Bridget actually probably broke the record for the most things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Makes sense though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean because she seems like such a thefty person or because she's the head of fashion and so as part of her job she actually brings home for feedback and wear testing and long term evaluation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot you want her to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I even told her this. I don't think it made it to on camera. But honestly I would have been more disappointed in her if she and her husband didn't wear our merchandise. Like I don't think you should force all the executives at Ford to drive Fords.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ideally you should be proud of what.

[Linus Sebastian]

You made but you'd be pretty damn excited if they chose to drive Ford.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was that a specific reference? Because the CEO doesn't drive a Ford.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, he doesn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You drive some Chinese make car. I don't remember which one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so like that's the thing is like if our, our products should be good enough that our everyone from our CEO to literally the. The person who just started their first day should be proud and comfortable to wear them and anything other than that is not good enough. So. So yeah, no, I told her I would have been. I would have been much more upset if she hadn't taken anything. She has one of the Lux backpack prototypes in a different color. She was like I can justify this. I can justify this. You took one, Yvonne took one and I took one for long term testing. I'm not done testing it. She's a hoot. Bridget.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Long form apple leather test or whatever. Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what else you got for.

[Dan]

Me, Dan, why can't the free shipping be rounded? Or just let me round up. Everything is x99. So I ended up 4 cents short. So I dropped one order then picked another and then I was 10:04 short. Whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Explain it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Capitalism.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll explain it.

[Dan]

Gurn't you dart of the deal Because.

[Linus Sebastian]

I really need to not lose money egregiously on every transaction.

[Dan]

God, you really are a bad person.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, I know, I know. I have to pay. People like Bridget, I have, I have to pay. I have to pay.

[Dan]

We can blame Bridget because she keeps stealing all of your stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Eating into your bottom line.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's true. Do you have any idea how much a sample costs compared to like the mass production? Dude, I.

[Dan]

Not a joke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because so much of my wardrobe is early sample. Like the cargo pants I'm wearing right now. Check this out. Hold on here. Okay, watch, watch this water bottle is in the way. Okay so we got. Oh balls. Lttstore.com. okay, so I got my phone in here. Okay so. So normally right. I should be able to pull my phone out like this, right? Okay. But watch this, watch this. See my phone? Yeah, there. This one doesn't have the, the pocket sewn. The pocket bag sewn properly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the kind of stuff like travel.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the kind of stuff that we catch on pre production stuff. And because I wear test it myself, I A have the pleasure of making sure it doesn't make it to the finished product for you and B have the displeasure of because I don't like wasting and throwing things away. Continuing to have people with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Part of the whole joke is the biggest dealer of of company property is Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's not even close. Yeah, yeah, it's not even close.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's part of the whole thing is that it's, it's. Yeah. I think I've, I think I've caught a few moments when watching those when I see an actual amount of like what the heck. Usually you're just playing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It happens. That's why I said it's a, it's a little bit of both.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, so, so these cargo pants, like I, it's, it's so funny because I, I dress like just if he owns the company. Actually it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually it is. Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I dress like a just rando gamer, bro. For the most part. I wear T shirts, hoodies, you know, like I, I, this is, this is me. This is me. This is how I dress regardless of whether I worked here. But in terms of how much my wardrobe actually cost.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, absurd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could be buying all the designer labels because most of my stuff is like one offs.

[Dan]

Essentially you're wearing a $10,000 pair of pants. They're not even like sewn properly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not that much, but hundreds of dollars a lot.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if you have the, the pants and the socks and, I don't know, maybe some footwear someday.

[Dan]

This is why you walk into Tiffany in clothes you made yourself. Right? All of, all of my clothes are bespoke, you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, right, yeah. So man's a baller. It's, it's hilarious though, because I literally can be standing next to someone who's wearing the exact same clothing as me, but mine costs five to ten times.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As much and might be worse.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which if you think about it, which if you think about it, is kind of the whole thing. Right? Like, people will buy that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Plain white t shirt for 300 or whatever just so that they can know they did. So I'm like the stealthiest, like high end clothing wearer of all time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're a fashion bro.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently a streetwear icon, one would say.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. No one would say that.

[Dan]

It's a very good way. Like, that's a like life hack. If you want custom clothes, samples.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, God.

[Dan]

Commit a little fraud.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I don't even know if it counts as fraud. It's just using the system.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, you could, you could tell a factory that you have like an intent. They won't really do a ton of like real work for you if you don't prove that you are like actually capable of ordering mass production stuff. But they might, so they might make you want of something. You never know. You could repeat the grift at multiple factories. I'm not saying to do that. I don't, I don't advocate for wasting people's time, but conceivably, yeah, you could get something made one off. You could also just get stuff made one off overseas pretty easily, as long as you don't live in the US and it's going to get tariffed. Like, Yvonne had her wedding dress made one off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

She ended up having to get a second one because the first one was a disaster. But then that second is the second one one off. She ended up selling for so much more than what she paid that it covered the cost of both the first one and the second one, and both were one off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Were they from the same place?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I don't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That Makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So it took her two, two attempts to get a wedding dress that she could actually wear. It was beautiful though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's pretty sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. This is a little known fact, but you can actually find my. Our wedding video on YouTube. Yeah, we uploaded it. Not really sure how long I will leave it up. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've seen this, but it's been a long time.

[Dan]

I really hope it starts with the Windows Movie Maker.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is. Oh dude, this is some Windows Movie maker stuff, right?

[Dan]

Ironic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It wasn't Sony Vegas, was it?

[Dan]

Ironic.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it is Windows Movie Maker because that's what Yvonne knew how to use.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it was ironic.

[Linus Sebastian]

And she was the one, she was the one who made it. So she used whatever software she knew how to use.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is.

[Dan]

I mean that is so much better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is 2011. Like a lot of YouTube videos were.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, buddy. Oh good, the music's off. Because it is definitely some copyrighted music. Oh my goodness. Baby, does he look old enough to get married? No, to be honest, I don't really think so. I don't really think so. Pretty, pretty magic day. Pretty magic day, buddies. Let's go. Anyway, so that's up there. If you're a weird creep and you want to watch it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it like, how much does it bother you knowing that someone has that backed up on a server somewhere? Like an individual? Not Google?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it's. There's nothing. I like, I talk about this a lot when we, when we discuss like privacy topics where it's like, yeah, it's not too late for you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're compromised already.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can keep your, you can keep your personal information safe still. I am. Dude, I'm done.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've had that conversation with people too, because I'm cooked. I talk about caring about privacy and stuff a lot. And then people are like, but you're so public. I'm like, yeah, cuz I already lost.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That doesn't mean the war is over for everyone.

[Linus Sebastian]

I used to, I used to bother to change my phone number when it leaked. Yeah, I haven't bothered in years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That probably wasn't smart to say, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, it doesn't matter because I don't, I don't take calls.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I literally just don't answer calls, so it doesn't matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And also I just switched to a Pixel, which has that cool call screening feature. So I especially don't take calls.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I love that feature.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will never go to another Phone that doesn't have it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, don't be a fucking idiot and think you're going to like call me and I'm going to talk to you. That's like not how that works. You are literally spamming me and bothering me. That's. That's not how you start a. That's not how you kick off a relationship.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you just, if, if they don't make it through the call screen, you just block the number.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, exactly, obviously. And so it's one of those things where to me, like I, I just had a, I just had like sort of a, a reality check where I was like, oh, okay, well, yeah, this doesn't, this doesn't really matter. Whatever. Like, There was a YouTuber who was working on a like, like getting celebrity contact info video a while back. I wonder if that video ever came out. I don't know. Anyway, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was incredibly easy to get yours.

[Linus Sebastian]

They were like, oh, yeah, well, they, they saw me in person. They were like, hey, can I get your phone number? I was like, I mean, sure, it's nothing special. You could get it like, easy. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, oh, well, you could just go and like rocket Reach and like look it up. I think their subscription's like $5 or something like that. He's like, whoa, why are you telling people that? I'm like, dude, it's not a secret. You literally just. You could like Google like frickin Bill Gates phone number and you can like look it up like Space gamer said.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, what can my Pixel do? The best feature that Pixel has, and some other phones have this as far as my understanding goes. But the best feature that the Pixel has in my opinion is call screening. And when someone calls you, there will be a little button there that says screen call. And if you press it, it will answer the call, but it's a Google voice. And the Google voice says, oh. The person that you are calling to reach has a call screening feature.

[Linus Sebastian]

State your name and your business, say.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who you are and what you want, and then it will output their answer through transcribed text so you can read it without answering the call. And then if you don't like it, you just click hang up. And then you have never actually answered the call and then you just block them. Or what happens most of the time is it's like a call center or something like that. They hit the call screening, they hang up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You never have to deal with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Asks, is Linus a celebrity? I told him No, I, I was like, I don't think I count. So maybe that's why you guys never saw that video. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, the spam calling is insane. I, I get spam calls all the time and I don't, and it doesn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Even matter if you, you've leaked your number. It matters because so many numbers are recycled now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it matters. Whatever happened to whoever had your number before? Realistically, Like I, there's one person who has one of my old numbers who apparently gets really mad at people if they call them. If he's a tech guy, then he should have updated his contact list properly. Like, if they apparently, like chewed out someone that called him. I was like, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, nice. That's a, that's definitely necessary.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's definitely constructive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For sure, sure. Good job.

[Dan]

All right, Dan Linus, you're into Japanese style RPGs. A true man of culture. What do you feel are the primary hurdles for the genre to overcome becoming mainstream? Are these hurdles for gamers or developers?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, with how I, man, I would make the argument that A, they are mainstream and B, they are as mainstream as anything will ever be ever again in gaming. Gaming has become this fragmented collection of sub, sub, sub, sub genres to the point where you could play, you could, you could play, you could spend all of your off work off sleep time for an entire year just playing video games. And if you played them through to completion every time, you could probably not touch 10% of the sub genres out there. So with that in mind, I, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, I, I don't think it needs to hit me.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's something for everyone and I think it's about as mainstream as anything will ever be again. If that, if you kind of, if that kind of makes sense. Like, I don't think anything's mainstream. I don't think we're ever gonna have fortnight. Like, what would I, Yeah, those are kids specific, though. Like, can we get something for nice, not kids specific. Okay. Minecraft is not in terms of the cultural impact though. I wanted to go back farther.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fortnite was everyone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, hold on, hold on. Can I go back farther? I wanted to go back farther. I don't think we're gonna have like a, like a Tetris where literally an entire generation of gamers has absolutely played that game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, maybe it's because they bundled it with the Game Boy Nintendo. Weird how there's a pattern of this being successful. It's really frustrating and I'm sure I'M a hundred percent sure people have seen this with me, you, this company as a whole. Whatever. It's really frustrating when you see another group, another person or the company, whatever, fumble something that would seem so obvious from the outside.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Ninjaman Away says excuse the fuck out of you. Minecraft is not kid specific. Sorry, I misphrased that. What I meant was that it was generationally not far enough back that literally, like everyone in that entire cohort played it. There were lots of people that would have considered themselves, you know, not going to play Minecraft and just would have never touched it. I never got into it until my kids got me, me into it. And I didn't even really get into it, but like, I could like know how to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think you can do Tetris again because there are too many games.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. That was exactly the point I was trying to make. And Minecraft wouldn't have made that point for me, for Fortnite wouldn't have made that point for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's the same thing with music, in my opinion. I don't think you can be the Beatles again. Yeah, I don't think that could happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't. I don't think so either. I don't think anyone can have the cultural impact of Elvis Presley again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah.

[Dan]

Since Nvidia no longer supports game Stream on the shield, is there a good alternative to stream from a PC to a TV in another room without running additional cables besides existing network?

[Linus Sebastian]

Moonlight. Steam Link.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Steam Link. A lot of these will have apps for. Well, no, the TV will have an app.

[Dan]

Oh, what if you don't have a TV?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wasn't the question to do with TVs?

[Dan]

What if there's a dumb TV or you have a projector.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A laptop?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you could still run. You could still run Steam Link on the shield.

[Dan]

That.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a solvable problem.

[Dan]

This is mainly for Luke, but have you guys heard about the 4K77, 4K80 and 4K83 projects where they restored the original Star wars theatrical releases pre special editions. They are a great watch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why was this mainly for me?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, I'm down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love it. I'm excited. But this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, we have owed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have not heard of this. What is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's up?

[Linus Sebastian]

We still haven't done our Star wars stream.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was it again?

[Linus Sebastian]

We promised to do it like 10 years ago. We were gonna just like watch Star wars and dunk on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It the prequels Right. Or was it all of it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think. I don't remember. I think it was all of it. I think we were supposed to watch all nine movies with commentary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do we. How do we do it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, sorry. Sunshine is apparently a good alternative to Moonlight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude. Doing it with this.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, because the whole point of it was that we were gonna dunk on it and, like, talk about all the stuff that's stupid about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't think this, like, changes the plot or anything. It's just like a.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not a fan edit. It's the real deal. Start to finish, warts and all. Not as pristine as De Specialized, but totally authentic. Oh, interesting. Where do you get it? Is it, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's like, the original cut, so, like, Han shoots Greedo and stuff, right? I'm assuming.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would hope so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's the point is it's like the original cut, but. But really nice. I could be wrong. That's the. That's what I got from it so far, though, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. Where do you get them? Is this just, like, a torrent thing or is it like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know. The. The Reddit thread doesn't actually say anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a sample of the opening scene.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we're not going to be watching that on stream.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can find it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Original trilogy dot com. Something, something, something. Should Disney do the right thing and release a 4k version? I thought that was part of their deal with Lucas, though, that they could. Couldn't do it. Like, they would only ever release the garbage versions, and then they would. I guess part of the deal was also to make the new stuff more garbage than before. I will do my best to keep the page up to date. Here's a forum thing. Yeah, I don't know, man. I. I have no idea, like, where to get this stuff. All right, well, anyway, so is watching the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The no DNR version of 4K77 just, like, watching the film in theaters in 19? Not 100%, no, but pretty close is their answer.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, I'm down, I'm down, I'm down. What do we do? Do we just put, like, a timestamp on screen and then they can't see or hear the movie?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think you'd have to, like. And we'd have to just talk over it and not pause it. So you would just, like, it would be like a Watch along.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's very like Mystery Science Theater or 3000, but except you don't actually see the movie, so you have to. Yeah, yeah. That could be sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

We could even just like have like a. We could even have just like. And how would we do this? So we could make it so that it's like kind of intended for you to watch on PC and we like leave a little spot in the corner in our framing where you can kind of like put the movie or maybe to put us or something. I don't know. You'd have to. Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I don't think there's going to be a lot of us to like, see.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Maybe we won't have to do anything like that. Yeah. Watch party. Let's go. Okay.

[Dan]

Hi, Wanshaw. Maybe a weird question, but why does my package.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, boy.

[Dan]

Go to the US first and then to Germany where it gets transferred to another company to reach South America?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, what a great question. So it goes to the US first because we use a shipping consolidator called Wismo. Because if we actually ship using Canadian couriers from a Canadian address literally anywhere, it costs way more for in many cases, not even a better experience. Shipping from Canada sucks bananas.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

As for why it goes to Germany and then gets transferred to another company to reach South. That's why South America, that is because there's major hubs where they consolidate shipments. And the math behind it is far more complicated than I will ever understand. But that's the most efficient way to do it. Apparently is stupid. Yeah.

[Dan]

Doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

It seems awfully ridiculous. But that is not uncommon.

[Dan]

It also does make sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Josh Craft 3D asks, Will tariffs affect Wismo? Of course. And someone asks, does that mean everyone will get American terrorists? No. We won't be able to ship through the US Anymore. So we have a lot of stuff to figure out on our side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or hear me out. Hear me out if you don't want to get caught in the ship storm. We are doing an incredible promo on lttstore right now where you can get free shipping on all orders over $150. All you got to do is go to lttstore.com and click shop. Now look at this great deal on the MCM Essential Solution. Just $79.99 for all of this cable managing goodness. And to make sure you top up your cart to reach that free worldwide shipping threshold, you could pick up a commuter backpack or a screwdriver or a different Backpack or a tech sack or all any of these great items. We've got pens, we've got. Oh, look at that framework, embroidered hoodie, just like producer Dan wears. Look at him go. All right, Dan, hit me.

[Dan]

Sure. Now that you've seen someone do the land Gaming house better than you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Do you think you can revisit it for a budget? Even if it's Steam remote streaming to tablets? I don't know, maybe a contest.

[Linus Sebastian]

And part of what makes, part of what makes his house work so well is that it wasn't done on a budget. And I think if you were to do it on a budget, like, you could, you could do it, but by the time you're spending that kind of money, you would have been better off doing it a different way. Like if I was going to put tablets on a bunch of stations, like what? Sorry, why? Right. Because I'm spending hundreds of dollars now for what, a tiny screen? Well, why don't I just get. Well, I could get a Raspberry PI, I guess then I could get a big screen also. Then I would get a. Yeah, like, realistically, if you have the budget to do like, like a. You know, how many stations were in the basement? Was it. Was it 6 and 6 or 8 and 8? I can't. I can't remember. I think it was 12. I think it was 12 in the basement. And the DDR things like, if you have that kind of space. Guys, let's be real. The money for like a computer and a monitor. You got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, here. That's true. There's places where space is not that expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like where, like space. That is a house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

With like, you know, presumably nicely run wiring. Like, by the time you bring in a contractor to run a bunch of like. I mean, sure, we could do like the dirt version of it where you just like put ethernet cables everywhere. But I don't, I don't know if there's a ton of value in it because at the end of the day.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You still need a bunch of people are saying, Texas, what?

[Linus Sebastian]

I will say GPU horsepower to run it. And GPUs are going to be the single most expensive component of the whole thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Alabama, Georgia. There's a lot of places in the States where you can get a relatively large house for not that much money.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also a lot of places outside of North America where it's possible.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, Japan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, well, technicalities.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. If you want to go to rural Japan, Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, you can get pretty darn close to big cities. You can get closer to We Are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Than to Vancouver, assuming they want you there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That might. Might be a part of the hurdles. Yeah, that's why I did the technicality. Hands.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, you know what? It is kind of a cool idea to do, like, the janky version of it, but take a router to your hardwood. Oof.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, I think Dennis already did that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke got him.

[Dan]

What a dick. I'm just gonna let you two sit with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I won't.

[Dan]

I buy TVs with composite still for old consoles, but the resolution and technical issues make it flaky. Any recommendation for upscaling early 2000 consoles, or should I just emulate it if I own games?

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, well, there's two answers. Number one is absolutely, there are recommendations for upscaling, selling early 2000s consoles. What you want is one of these. Oh, my God. The reason it's so expensive is because it uses an fpga. So these are extremely expensive processors and also work costs money. But this is a great way to take retro consoles and with no perceptible latency, upscale them as beautifully as possible to a modern TV with an HDMI input. As for your other question, should you just emulate? That depends. If you are a purist and you want it to look as close to the original experience as possible, then no, you shouldn't emulate. But I would emulate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's also another very expensive option which is analog.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. You could just buy consoles that run those old cartridges but have an HDMI output.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they have an N64 now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it out?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's out of stock.

[Linus Sebastian]

But no, no, it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it's shipping in. Yeah, July.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. That's not out. Then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The sales went live, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's what I'm saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The greatest multiplayer system of all time. Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there's arguments that could be made for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really? You would argue that over?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It depends on how much you value.

[Linus Sebastian]

Twisted metal like Tekken, like, I don't know, man. PlayStation, the greatest multiplayer system of all time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, 007, Mario Kart, Smash Bros.

[Linus Sebastian]

Double 7 is un. Being playable if you've touched a modern control scheme and you try to go back to it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but we're talking. You have to. You have to look at it in the time that it was released.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, if you. If you make a statement like greatest of all time, you can't be like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, you definitely still Have.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you kind of can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, you absolutely have to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or else it would like, always be the most modern thing. That's. Yeah, that's ridiculous, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man. Like, that's a bold claim. That's a bold claim.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mario Party N64 Mario Party was insane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I, I can't even think of a modern Mario Party that released afterwards that I liked. And Mario Party 64, they just make them worse. Yeah, they're all awful.

[Linus Sebastian]

No Guitar Hero. Like, I'm just. I, I Greatest of all time. I. That's tough. You've named like three games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was the first console to have four control controller ports?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think the SNES supported Multi Tap. There was like three games with the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crazy adapter and there was like no games.

[Linus Sebastian]

PS1 had a multi tap that like actually had games that support people buy it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did it really like exist?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I think making it physically part of the console counts for more in my opinion. Nest had an adapter. I'm not. Yeah, I don't mean the adapters though. I really don't think the adapters count. They're like really hard to find now because basically none of them existed.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man. Like. And it apparently worked for. Oh, I don't know if it was a different version. This is just Wikipedia. Multi Tap is a peripheral for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 that can be used to plug in up to four controllers and memory cards at the same time in a single controller port. With a second multi tap, up to eight controllers and memory cards could be plugged in at once.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really rare, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think it were rare.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they were.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean my friend had one like. I don't know. Yeah, we played Poi Poi. We could play Poi Poi with up to here. Check this out. This game's actually like legit. It's kind of like. Did you ever see four was first.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Out of the box and I. Someone in full punch out said that. I think that is true. I'm not 100 certain and I think that's why they're giving it this title is it's the. The first one with four out of the box. I guess I think that's a pretty big deal.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like PS1 supported 8, so I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Guess Get Wrecked people didn't have the multit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Check this out. Remember that game Bomb Squad that we played on like Android? This is like Bomb Squad but like where every, every item is like six polygons. So yeah, you could Pick each other up and throw each other. There's. There's bombs. There's. You can, like, pick up logs and huck them at each other. It's pretty fun, actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Looks more entertaining than most phone games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Boy. Boy. Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

10 seconds. I found one on shopgoodwill.com for a multitap people. Really? Maybe I'm just doing a terrible job of explaining my stances today, but people really don't get it. I'm not talking about now.

[Linus Sebastian]

How's it feel to be me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Deeply. Not the point, like, at all. What I'm talking about is he had a friend that had it when he was growing up. I had no one that I knew that had a PlayStation. Had one. I bet you most people that owned PlayStations back then didn't even know they exist. Existed. That's my point. Anyways, it's fine. I didn't say I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't say I know. I knew. I'm doing it for you. I'm feeding on his salt today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Somebody fought a techie and float plane chats that I didn't know they existed. Like, come on, come on.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, hit us, Dan.

[Dan]

Hello, Linus. Lail Development. Moving to a new place. And I'm treating myself to this MCM bundle, which you can get for half off on lttstore.com and save the shipping if you buy over $150.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go.

[Dan]

Question for Luke. I tend to have my hobbies tied around my line of work. CS +AI. Do you face this issue?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't mind it that much. I. I was told my whole life growing up that don't do what you love because you're blah, blah, blah, you won't be able to enjoy it anymore. And.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I mean, I think you did find that to a degree with game streaming. You got pretty demotivated about game streaming after a while. It didn't make you not enjoy gaming, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it didn't at all. And I mostly got demotivated because the environment that I was in was not conducive to it. So I was weighing on other people. Like, if I game stream right now, I am annoying someone.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'll be annoying me because you're supposed to be working on wan show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I'm gonna. I'm gonna open up a browser game. No.

[Dan]

Runescape.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So it's. It's like I would. There have been many times where I would like. I would like to stream what I'm playing Right now, and it's just like. Yeah, it's just gonna annoy someone. I don't want to bother. But I. I do want to return to it eventually. It probably won't be anytime soon, so don't get excited.

[Linus Sebastian]

But maybe I should just get set up so that I could stream in the basement because I almost never game upstairs anymore because, like, my kids are usually down in the basement and stuff. I just get a webcam because, like, I have my nice streaming setup and it's like great for calls and like, I have that road mic that's like this long. You've seen my desk. But honestly, it's not the most comfortable for gaming. And if I have anyone in person with me, it's not that great. You know what I really need to do is I need to set it up so that I can like multiplayer game in my theater. There's no reason not to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can't you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, no, I totally get. Well, I don't have a headset in there and like, I don't like. It's not. I don't have a computer in there right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude. Playing Anno on. Didn't we talk about it? I think we've talked about this before.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have never played Animal on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Playing Animal on there would be so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually be so sick. When we're doing our tape to tape runs. Why am I sitting at my desk?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Honestly? Yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kind of like, what am I doing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would prefer that he solves that before he tries to. Like, I think Linus's Landhouse is fine. The fact that someone else has a cooler one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. No, I wasn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't upset in any way. I don't. If I want to do like a 20 plus person land, we'll do it. Smash champs. Like that. I got a plan for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have options. But those types of things I think would be cool to solve. Making streaming less of a chore is a cool idea. And then. Yeah, being able to play tape to tape or anno or whatever from the theater room.

[Linus Sebastian]

I finally have a computer in this there. I just. I. Okay. What I wanted to do was. I wanted to do something that was like almost entirely passive because I have that perforated drawer thing and then I have fans at the top. And I wanted to. I wanted to do like a whole thing where it was like convection cooled or something. And I just. It's not. It hasn't been a priority. On the video side, and I haven't gotten around to it personally. So I just haven't had a computer in there the whole time. And the idea was that I would share my computer across it, but then with the multiple monitors plugged in and. And which one is your primary monitor and your secondary and your tertiary and not in Windows, not being able to change those assignments and like, the whole thing, it's been kind of a pain in the butt. And Wendell's KVM was theoretically a perfect solution for it. But then I was having trouble with the USB extensions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The long story short is I just need to put a stupid computer in there. And Falcon Northwest, we have a review coming of their Tiki.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you putting that in there?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Oh, they sent over their Tiki and what they wanted to send us was not actually the Tiki, but I said I want the Tiki because I think it's a really good match for the 5090, which is what they have in it because it actually blows right through.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is pretty cool because it doesn't share any of that heat with the other components. Like we observed in our review of the RTX 5090, where it like heats up your CPU and RAM and stuff. But they were like, okay, we'll send you the Tiki because that's what you guys want. And like, realistically, if we can, like, be the first system review on LTT in like, two years, then I guess, because it's a super cool system. So Jake's working on the review of that, but what we really wanted to send was the frag box. So we'll send you one, but, like, can you just try it? And I was like, okay, so I don't know. I don't know when they need it back or whatever, but for now it's in my house. And speaking of stealing things from work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had an idea and I put.

[Linus Sebastian]

It in the theater room. And our next tape to tape run, I'm gonna be. You can. You can come over. You can sit in the theater room with me, but I'm gonna be in the theater room.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sweet. Sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's no. There's no way around it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had an idea. You might like it. It's very Linus beneficial. It doesn't do literally anything for me, but I think you'll like it. I think it's a decent idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know that I'm gonna be kind of vague, but I think you'll get it. You Know that thing that we're specking? You called me about it. You're like, I don't know about these specs. They're a little much. When's the last time you called me?

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it like a gaming plane?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. That's funny though. We talked about it in text. No, try to think of the phone call. I try to be vague. In the other building.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gaming jet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, again, we talked about that in text. Okay, you call me about it this week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, okay, a jet for gaming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I can just say it. I don't know if I need to.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we're thinking about making a home theater set.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, God, don't talk about that. I'm kidding. Yes, we are working on one of the, like, original lab things that we were supposed to have, which is a light controlled environment that we could also use for not only just testing displays, like in general, because it's light controlled, but also we could use for, like, setting up big TVs and projectors so that we're not always using my theater room at home for testing stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This has noticeable negatives. I just want to be very clear. But there is one really major positive, so I'm throwing it out there. All right. What if we just recreated your home theater room so that, okay, anything that you liked in there, you would know exactly what it was. Like. We could have that cubby. If something fit in there and you liked it, you could just take it home. No, the TV would mount perhaps perfectly. Everything would be exact. You could. You could cheat in certain ways. Like, I think this was James Tribe's idea. But you could make the wall behind the TV a fake wall and just have a mount there. So we could have more space back there and stuff. But other than that, things would sound mostly correct.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things would look mostly correct. Things would fit mostly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cat likes this. Oh, come on, you guys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Alfred's gonna kill me. Because they don't have as much filming areas on the sides which they want. Wanted. Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll think about it. I'll think about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe you could just make it similar.

[Linus Sebastian]

It would be better if it was bigger. Honestly, I wanted to make my theater room bigger because the seating is a little bit cramped. Like, when we really, like, have it packed with people, it's. I wish it was probably about one seat wider. Like, I'm not saying. Oh, you know. Oh, yes, my. My personal theater room is not big enough. Like, I'm not. I'M not. But I would have preferred there is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A, there is a mild amount of lack of prime seats.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And, and, and so if you're all like huddled around like playing an eight player game together, it's, it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a few people that don't have great seats.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And, and I, what I, what I would have wanted is to have a larger screen and like a 21 by 9 modular display. In the long term, I would have loved to use like modular panels to have a 21 by 9 display. That have been my ideal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to temper people's expectations. Mawson said, nope, do it right.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're not going to do it like, right, right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'll be like, right, right is actually kind of crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It involves like, like a room within a room and like suspended floor and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like you're spending incredible amounts of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know how forever our current facilities are. They're really not ideal. The team doesn't love being separated between the two buildings down the street and stuff like that. Yeah, we haven't found an alternative. Like we kind of four. We found a really nice building a while back, but when we surveyed the team, the attrition was unacceptable. We would have lost not only a huge portion of our team, but we would have lost key members that I think you guys would have been very, very disappointed in us for not doing everything we could to retain and so asking for all these stars to align something that is large enough to accommodate us, affordable enough that we can trade our current holdings for it. Because I don't realistically want to put a ton more money into lower mainland real estate and also is in approximately the same location. So we aren't over people who literally picked up their lives and moved them and put down routes to be near Linus Media Group and affiliated companies. Like, it just hasn't happened and it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gonna be tough to happen. But.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if something were to come up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We would like to take that up.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't want to spend a quarter million dollars on this room that we are literally gonna bulldoze. Because looking at the way it has to be constructed, it's not modular. It can't be like taken apart and reused. I want to be in a position where it's like, okay, everyone grab your go bag, let's go. Which it obviously wouldn't be quite like, but no. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Oh, oh, yeah, Dan's there, doesn't know.

[Dan]

Knows a guy and narcissist I've noticed that the MCM goes on promo a lot. Does that mean it's not moving as fast as you'd hoped? I would hate to see it discontinued.

[Linus Sebastian]

If it's a slow mover, MCM's great. It's just something that people love. And we do promos sometimes on things that people love. I mean, we promo the screwdriver. We sell anywhere from like 50 to 150 screwdrivers a day. It's a great business for us. And MCM is also a great business for us. We have new products coming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's also, it's a line of products, Right. So if you, if you buy in and you make your desk super nice, you might be inspired in the future to make your home theater room super nice or something like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, inside baseball talk. You're going to buy this. You could get a good deal on this. Now you're in the eco ecosystem, right. So if you want one more, you know, power brick adapter or you want a couple more of the, the, the little keyhole adapters for power strips and stuff like that, well, you're going to come back, you're gonna pay full pop for them unless you can be super patient and, and, you know, wait for a promo again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So one of those things where we gotta, you gotta get people to actually, like, try it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we want you to try it because when you try it, you're gonna love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then we got you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's a really great product. And the only way for someone to try to undercut it would be to just make no margin on it because what makes it good is the cost of the materials. So you can't make a knockoff one without cheaping out on the magnets. And then your product will suck. So we have a pretty good functionality moat around it where there's just really not much point in someone competing with it because they're either going to have to spend a bunch of money on neodymium in order to match the functionality of it, or if they don't care about that, then they're going to be. Or if they want like a crappier one, then they're going to be up against people just 3D printing their own and like hot gluing magnets into them, which is basically zero cost. So there's not really room to. Well, I shouldn't say that because I'm sure someone's going to be like. And I took that personally, and like, try and compete with it or whatever. But it's very difficult to create a new value proposition for a product that is like this. But I don't know like this.

[Dan]

Last thought I've got for you today. What's the best way to clean my old desk pad? Post scriptum. I already got a new one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I always put mine in the washing machine cold.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even though you're not supposed to, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'Re not supposed to. But I've always had good luck with it. But what I think you're supposed to do is just use like a wetted cloth and wipe it or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is. That is. I believe that is what you're supposed to do. I've done that and it doesn't work as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

So make of that what you will.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's. It's getting to be a thing for me because I got a. I got a walking pad and I've been doing that, that walking at home and I am already a sweaty boy. And then I walk on the walking pad at like three and a half miles an hour hour for like a couple hours. And then I need to wash my desk pad nice. And when I do that, I put it in the washing machine. So it is what it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should do a walking land show. See if I can keep up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure you could.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm doing it right now. Prove I'm not walking under here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't. I can't. It's impossible. What walking pad do you have? I don't remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did a bunch of research. I bought it. It's not actually something I like care about or interested in, but I made sure that I got one that seemed good and it seems good. My only problem is I'm a big boy and it's kind of narrow, so I end up doing a bit of like a. Almost like a catwalk.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have to like cross my feet.

[Linus Sebastian]

In a little bit to get that hip sway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Which is not awesome. But I don't think there's much wider ones that don't end up getting like, like really bulky. And one of the nice things about the one that I have is when I fold it up because it folds, which is nice, and I roll it away. It can fit under a chair that is in our little area. So it gets to like kind of get put away, which is nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just like this one because they referred to you as Big L. Like the big L you took before the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You should have lost as well. We should have us both. Losing would have been completely, completely Fine. You winning.

[Dan]

I think you both should have lost because you delayed title thumbnail. Even more to have your petty squabble outside about Luke's car parked illegally and offensive to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I didn't even realize.

[Linus Sebastian]

Go ahead, Dan. Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My bad.

[Dan]

Second last one I've got dear Big L, Big D and Little L listening from Osaka, Japan. As a wannabe business owner, what point did you realize your business was going to be viable long term? Gaming, dirigible, hot air balloon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Win. Okay, never for that second thing. And as for realizing the business was gonna be viable long term, I mean, it depends what you mean by long term. Like, so few companies last a hundred years. As for like, oh, man, when did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We were pretty confident we were gonna make it from the start. Cause we were. You bought the channel. You bought the channel for a dollar. After that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no, I wasn't at all. I know I talked a good game, but I was not sure. I. I mean, I was in pretty confident anyway. I was in desperation survival mode.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I knew more numbers than I was supposed to and I was pretty confident.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably until we paid off this building. I was probably in like frantic survival mode.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but I like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not. That's not viable long term.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For me it is.

[Dan]

Luke and I have the same stress disorder. Oh, my God, is everything gonna implode now? I'm finally comfortable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I start to shut down and, like, things suck and I get depressed.

[Dan]

I don't like hearing words back at me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, anyway, we need therapy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm good.

[Dan]

Yeah, me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think when we paid off off this building, I felt like it was going to be viable long term. Even then, we were still like, so much at the mercy of YouTube back then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And when I felt properly diversified enough that we could lose any individual business unit, like, not just lose any one sponsor, but, like, lose any business unit and still limp along was probably when we launched Backpack and Screwdriver. Because all of a sudden the merch business could sustain the YouTube business even if, like, sponsorships dried up or if Adsense went away or if affiliate revenue went away. And in the same way the YouTube business could continue to support the merch business if, you know, they had a couple of flops or they had a bad year or whatever else. Like, it felt with the left hand and the right hand helping each other balance out. I think was when I like, really felt like, okay, yeah, like lmg, Floatplane Creator, Warehouse Smash Chance, you know, BC ltd, whatever the Holdco Umbrella Corporation is like, that's when I really felt like, okay, no, this is like a real org. Just like I felt like this is a real end of the wan show. Wait, I was wrong though, because I haven't told the people about the incredible ship storm promo. Running on lttstore.com free shipping. Free shipping, my friends. On all orders over 150 US dollars. That's worldwide. Offer end Saturday, April 19th at 11:59pm Pacific time. Oh, and would you look at this. The MTM essential solution is just US$79.99. And to top it up, look at this cute little animation. Just add things to your cart and the bar fills up till you reach free worldwide shipping. You could get a commuter backpack, a precision multi pit screwdriver, any kind of screwdriver, driver or backpack or bag. We've got all kinds of great apparel that you can wear on your top of your body and on your bottom of your body and on your. On your head or your face. And you can add it to your cart and you can take it home. Look at this hooded task jacket. You too could look like this, man. Wow, look at that. Incredible. See you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bye. And I'm completely sure of that.

[Dan]

Are you?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What are you guys meaning?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It works right now?

[Dan]

Yeah. They're total overlays.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Wow, there's so many.

[Dan]

Apparently it has a warning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

How long are these going to go for?

[Dan]

About two minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Two more minutes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Two minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good lord. All right, well, what are your plans this weekend?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm going to see the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you're going to see the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, probably not the one that you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Think then the practical thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no, no, no. Oh, Completely unrelated to all that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gaming jet.

[Dan]

Which one?

[Linus Sebastian]

Minecraft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wouldn't go. I would go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cat's guessing Minecraft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no. Have you figured it out yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

A relative?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Might also go see the. The original thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you should go see that thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're trying to figure out. Ever seen anything m. Schedule is really tough right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe not forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not for long.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go. Let's go. Feel is crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're very, very close. Like genuine.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's pretty sad that this might be like the last time this year that we make money on the store selling to certain countries.

[Dan]

It was nice working for.