Luke Lafreniere (2:31)

I highlighted one for you. I highlighted one that I'm legitimately excited about.

Linus Sebastian (2:34)

Where is your Now I gotta find this. Here it is. Tesla is poised to adopt apple carplay. Hooray. Two things I don't use.

Luke Lafreniere (3:07)

The show is brought to you today by Wooger, Squarespace, Proton and Flexispot alongside Our rap partner dBrand, our laptop partner Dell, and our chair partner. Nice try.

Linus Sebastian (3:22)

Secret Lab we were so close. We were so close.

Luke Lafreniere (3:25)

You were so close.

Linus Sebastian (3:26)

Did you notice it in your thing or how did you even notice?

Luke Lafreniere (3:29)

Don't even worry about it. I have my ways. Why don't we jump right into our first topic today, which is of course the biggest news in the techosphere right now. The fact that Google just, just randomly on a Thursday dropped the news that Airdrop is coming to the Pixel 10 family. For the uninitiated, Airdrop is an Apple feature that allows people to quickly share files, contacts and other media between Apple devices, including sharing across different people, not just the same user with multiple devices. So if Luke and I both had iPhones, we could just touch our tips together, you know, as friends are want to do.

Linus Sebastian (4:13)

Yeah, unlike normal, as long as we.

Luke Lafreniere (4:15)

Have our settings configured and then we can just form a direct connection and send files to each other. It's really nice, especially for things like ingesting video footage from an iPhone to a Mac computer. Oh yeah, Did I mention it's not just phones you can go to iPads and other other Apple devices as well. Now Android has had a competitor to this called Quick Share for quite a bit of time. It's gotten some updates over the years to compete with the Walled Garden, and you could kind of think of this as just an even fancier update, but it's kind of a bigger deal than that because whether you agree or disagree with the importance of things like iMessage, FaceTime, walled garden features like that, Airdrop is something that many people do feel is extremely important. Awesome. And really cool. Our title for this topic is actually really funny. The timing for this was hilarious. I don't know if you saw this on Twitter, but literally a week ago, Elijah was complaining about the Same switch to iOS app that I was having so much trouble with when I switched over to iPhone most recently because he just bought an iPhone. And the reason that he bought an iPhone, literally the reason was that he recently went to an event where he actually like, straight up missed out on making important contacts, making important connections, because people were just like, oh, sharing my contact with you is more work than just touching my phone to yours. Yeah, I'm good Now. The first thing I said to him was, I don't need the contact information of anyone who's that much of a shithead.

Linus Sebastian (6:11)

I've also like, but I've never heard of that, nor seen it, nor experienced it.

Luke Lafreniere (6:16)

You don't travel in the same circles as everyone else, necessarily.

Linus Sebastian (6:23)

That event that he was at I have been to before and was Invited to.

Luke Lafreniere (6:28)

It is a different year today and potentially a different generation of attendees by one. A different generation of attendees.

Linus Sebastian (6:38)

It was last year.

Luke Lafreniere (6:39)

No, I'm not, I'm not talking in terms of generation of the event. I'm talking, I'm talking the age group of attendees.

Linus Sebastian (6:46)

Fair enough. So I might have been to the.

Luke Lafreniere (6:47)

Event, but not and hung out with boomers.

Linus Sebastian (6:49)

Yeah. Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. So, anyway, I am definitely the type of person to get to an event like that, find the people that I actually want to hang out with, and then stand in a corner and just talk to them.

Luke Lafreniere (7:07)

Yeah. So I've been, I've been teasing him actually, a fair bit this week because right after he went through all the hassle of getting switched over to the iPhone and he was like, complaining to me about it. He's like, the thing. So. But I like, I'm doing it because I just, like, really need AirDrop, like, immediately Google dropped this news and I was like, ha ha. Now, I mean, meanwhile, I'm actually dailying the iPhone air. Anyway, just because I, you know, it's my, it's, it's my, it's my job to, to kind of know both of them. I actually have a lot of notes from this time around. IO, dude, iOS 26 is, like, kind of terrible. I, I, I'm, I'm, I just mean in terms of, like, bugginess.

Linus Sebastian (7:47)

I've heard in, in, to, you know, in iOS's defense, I've heard bad things about the Pixel. They're saying this is a pixel 10 thing that's coming right quick. Share. I've heard negative things about the Pixel 10 as well.

Luke Lafreniere (7:57)

I have had, I had. I. Honestly, my Pixel 9a was extremely buggy out of the gate. Oh, I don't really, I've generally heard.

Linus Sebastian (8:06)

Good things about Pixel 9.

Luke Lafreniere (8:07)

The 9a is the budget one. It has great battery life. That's like the killer app of that phone. It also has no camera bump. Those two things are keeping it, like, in my pocket. As you know. My, my one that I'm going to have like, some of my stuff that's a pain in the butt to migrate as I make my way through a number of devices that I want to be using over the next little bit. But there's definitely some bugginess and it can, it can be very frustrating. But, like, I am often running into issues with my AirPods on this.

Linus Sebastian (8:41)

Huh.

Luke Lafreniere (8:41)

I actually, I think I caught it on video where it's like my AirPods are showing up like they're Connected, they're the active device, but they're just not playing any audio and the only way to get them to work is to put them back in the case, pull them back out and connect them again. Which yeah, sure, turn it off and turn it back on. That's a totally valid troubleshooting step or whatever.

Linus Sebastian (9:01)

You'd think a first party device like that and like one of the most first popular versions of a first party device like ever would probably be fine.

Luke Lafreniere (9:10)

Now in fairness to Apple, it could be uh, cause I've, I've experienced this, I think exclusively with Plex. I don't use my AirPods to listen to music much and I don't use them for calls much. I use them predominantly to watch things on Plex. So it could just be that Plex is a steaming pile of garbage. So I can't blame Apple for it. But it just, it is an observation that I've had that it has not been a seamless experience with the AirPods. Um, anywho, I've been teasing Elijah about this this week because he literally did it for Nothing. The Pixel 10 family will now be able to use Quicksh to complete file transfers with Apple devices and their airdrop function. The Apple user will need to adjust their settings to make the device discoverable to anyone. But that's totally a thing because anytime you want to like we run into this on set all the time because we use iPhones for our teleprompter displays. So if you want to transfer to like, like the work account that you're isn't in your contacts and you're not friends with or whatever, that's actually like a normal step then is you need to just open it up to, to connect with anyone. So that's something that Apple people are totally used to doing. And then you can just adjust the time that it's open. So you said it's like 10 minutes or whatever and then it'll close back off. It's a pretty normal, pretty normal step. A Google spokesperson confirmed that this was not a collab with Apple, but rather we accomplished this through our own implementation. They also said, and this seems like they're trying to get out ahead of Apple, claiming that this is a giant security problem and it needs to be closed down because the only devices that are secure to transfer a file are Apple devices. So they said their implementation was thoroughly vetted by their own privacy and security teams and also they engaged a third party security firm to pen test the solution. Now the downer here and this actually kind of sucks is that this is not an Android feature. This is a Pixel OS feature and Pixel 10 specifically. And it has not been confirmed if it will be available across the rest of the Pixel lineup or across the rest of the Android ecosystem.

Linus Sebastian (11:20)

They have specifically said Pixel 10 family specifically specific exact wording. So to me that's a. It's not coming to other stuff, at least not right now.

Luke Lafreniere (11:30)

But Google does have a history of starting features on the Pixel lineup, on the latest pixels, having them make their way to other pixels, and then having them make them make their way to the broader ecosystem. But I also just kind of wonder if this feature is going to survive long enough to make it to those other devices. Because you've got to imagine, you've got to imagine that Apple's going to be finding ways to at the very least passively aggressively make this not as good of an experience easily.

Linus Sebastian (12:00)

Yeah, release updates every once in a while that just change things so enough that it won't work.

Luke Lafreniere (12:06)

Tim00x3 says but yeah, but what stops Apple from patching this out? I mean they didn't work with Apple on it and from a technical standpoint, very little, pretty much nothing stops Apple from patching it out. But from an antitrust standpoint and Apple has been under more scrutiny lately around the App Store potentially there, there could be reasons for them to not obviously publicly intentionally locked down the interoperability of their walled garden. With that said, in the US in particular, enforcement has been inconsistent across the various administrations and I would say the current one. It seems to have more to do with how ring shaped your lips are and less to do with your actual behavior as a company, whether you will be investigated or not.

Linus Sebastian (13:07)

Let's try to make them as flat and wide and not ring like as possible.

Luke Lafreniere (13:13)

Ah, good, you succeeded.

Linus Sebastian (13:15)

Thank you.

Luke Lafreniere (13:20)

Discussion Question Is this a good move or a bad move? I think it's. I think it's pretty sweet. However, you know, saying hey screw those guys with their walled garden ecosystem. We're gonna make our walled garden ecosystem compatible with theirs. Ahaha. Now freedom for all. Especially just our customers.

Linus Sebastian (13:41)

Just Pixel 10?

Luke Lafreniere (13:42)

Yeah, just Pixel 10. Like I. You're not quite Robinhood at that point Google, you're like. Who are you? At that point you're Robin Hood. If he only distributed the rich guy's wealth to his merry men, you know.

Linus Sebastian (14:04)

He'S just the king of the neighboring castle.

Luke Lafreniere (14:08)

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. It does kind of feel that way. Curveball question Elijah I. Elijah. Okay, that's not really a Question. Recently bought an iPhone for airdrop. Also not a question.

Dan (14:21)

Oh.

Luke Lafreniere (14:21)

So I accidentally told the story that he had in his questions at the beginning. It sparked a brief conversation. Writers meeting about should that be a video where Elijah talks through his phone choice and we go for the title of I bought an iPhone for no reason. This was a, this was a major mistake. Do you think the audience cares about others experiences with phones or should we keep doing Linus 30 day phone challenges? I think that especially given that Elijah was the host. Not, not, not the host host, but he was the, the interviewer, he was the tech support. He was the facilitator of the entire switch to Android and switch to iPhone challenge series. I think him doing a follow up where okay, I oversaw all of y' all switching devices.

Linus Sebastian (15:09)

I also made a decision.

Luke Lafreniere (15:10)

I'm getting in on the action. Here's why I did it. Google announcement, mic drop. This might have been a huge mistake. Am I sticking with it or not? Now that I've used it for a month, I think that's a great piece of content.

Linus Sebastian (15:23)

I think it's good. If you really. If it didn't feel like there was enough meat on the bone, which I think there might be, but if you didn't feel like there was, I think you could maybe check in with people that have switched within the last year and see how they're feeling about their devices at this point in time.

Luke Lafreniere (15:38)

I think that could be interesting because Yvonne said she was going to go back to her Android, but she actually hasn't bothered yet.

Linus Sebastian (15:44)

See, that's super interesting to me.

Luke Lafreniere (15:45)

I talked to her the other day about it.

Linus Sebastian (15:47)

I was like, these might even be two different videos.

Luke Lafreniere (15:48)

I was like, you're still on the iPhone? And she's like, yeah, it's a lot of work to switch devices and I find that I just can't care that much. I.

Linus Sebastian (15:58)

That is a take that does matter to me to be honest. Because if it's. If it's that.

Luke Lafreniere (16:04)

No, because the next thing she said was that if I was in office full time right Now, I would 100% be switching back because the productivity management tools are just plain better for her needs.

Linus Sebastian (16:20)

And Android.

Luke Lafreniere (16:21)

Yeah. And just like planning.

Linus Sebastian (16:23)

That's so interesting because I hear, I know you guys have your business calendar thing that you like a lot.

Luke Lafreniere (16:27)

Yeah, but there's business calendar is goaded.

Linus Sebastian (16:29)

There is people that feel equal but opposite about iPhone. Like the, the best flight tracking app as far as my understanding goes is iOS only.

Luke Lafreniere (16:36)

How much do you fly though?

Linus Sebastian (16:38)

No, I Know, I just. This is an argument that I hear from.

Luke Lafreniere (16:40)

I use my calendar every day. I use, I use a flight tracking app once every once in a while when I fly. Like, I don't, I don't know, man.

Linus Sebastian (16:49)

There's just, it's just like, yeah, iOS people say equal but opposite things, but I guess it, it kind of depends on which things you use all the time. Like, I know someone that flies, like, often very short flights, but like almost every week, really, sometimes within.

Luke Lafreniere (17:08)

We both know someone who flies that much.

Linus Sebastian (17:10)

No, I'm not talking about that guy, but I'm talking about. Yeah, a different guy. And flightly. People are saying flightly. That sounds right. Just like lives and dies by that app. Can we. What is that?

Dan (17:23)

That means that you might be me.

Linus Sebastian (17:25)

Whatever that just.

Luke Lafreniere (17:27)

Sorry.

Dan (17:27)

Sorry.

Luke Lafreniere (17:27)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (17:28)

Wow.

Luke Lafreniere (17:28)

It is me.

Linus Sebastian (17:29)

Wow. What a guy. Dude.

Luke Lafreniere (17:33)

Sorry.

Linus Sebastian (17:33)

What a guy.

Luke Lafreniere (17:35)

I.

Linus Sebastian (17:36)

All the iOS users in chat just got flagged.

Luke Lafreniere (17:39)

Yeah, it doesn't matter. I love that on Android, you can just drag down your volume button and mute your phone. You don't have to interact with the screen at all.

Linus Sebastian (17:49)

Wait, you can't do that? Why can't you do that?

Luke Lafreniere (17:52)

So what you can do is you can configure the action button for D and D. Okay. But I don't have mine configured for that because I have it configured to be a flashlight because I find that more useful more often.

Linus Sebastian (18:02)

That's pretty cool.

Luke Lafreniere (18:03)

Um, yeah, no, I, I find that.

Linus Sebastian (18:04)

Nukes your battery in your pocket often.

Luke Lafreniere (18:06)

I love that. Um, there's a setting for Atlanta. Stop being wrong. What are you talking about? Is there, is there a setting to turn down the volume and it will mute your ringer? Because I, I, I'd love for that to be a thing. Hold on. Let's see, let's see.

Linus Sebastian (18:20)

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Luke Lafreniere (18:21)

Sure. Let me, let me check, let me check. I'm checking, I'm checking. Part of my problem is that I'm switching devices all the time, so anything that's not default can be hard to. Hard to remember. Oh, yeah, Change with buttons. So it's, it's not the default, but yes, you. So, yes, you can hold it down and change your ringtone and alerts volume with buttons. Very nice. All right, cool. I still maintain the management on. It is much more intuitive on Android. Basically what happens is it controls whatever is going on now, and if nothing is going on now, it controls your ringer and notification volume. And then you can click a thing and then you get a full volume slider thing that comes out and you can adjust all your various volume sliders independently. One thing that you still definitely can't do on iOS, though, is set a different volume for your notification and your ringer, which I find pretty annoying because I don't always want my notifications to be loud, but sometimes I do want a phone call to be loud.

Linus Sebastian (19:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (19:24)

So whatever. Good job.

Linus Sebastian (19:29)

Good job, indeed. Next topic, maybe.

Luke Lafreniere (19:34)

Yeah. What else do you guys want to talk about?

Linus Sebastian (19:35)

Speaking of good job. This week's outage was brought to you by Cloudflare.

Luke Lafreniere (19:40)

Oh, why? Yeah. What?

Linus Sebastian (19:42)

Yay. We all saw it coming. Yay.

Luke Lafreniere (19:46)

Is it time for us to stop being so dependent on just like, Nope. A couple of companies to wear. Can't change anything to keep the entire Internet running.

Linus Sebastian (19:56)

They should merge.

Dan (19:58)

We need less.

Linus Sebastian (19:59)

I know, I know. A bunch of chat is like, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Good. That will not happen. I am sorry. They. The inertia is way too high. You can't unplug Cloudflare from the Internet right now. The tools to do the things that Cloudflare does outside, you're quite wrong, Luke. Yeah. Okay. Good luck. Go have fun. The tools to do the things that places like Cloudflare accomplishments on a mass scale for everyone are not good enough, to be honest. There is. There is certain things that can help you get away from it, and we use a lot of that. But just saying, like, oh, yeah, every single site you can unplug Cloudflare, they've done it a couple times recently. Yeah. Okay. I need you guys to consider the vastness of this. Unplug Cloudflare, Azure and AWS from the entire Internet and see what happens.

Luke Lafreniere (20:57)

What would even be less?

Linus Sebastian (20:57)

We just did. We just saw what happens.

Luke Lafreniere (21:00)

And that was like a regional outage for the AWS thing too. That was like one small part of aws. It wasn't even, and trust me, a.

Linus Sebastian (21:10)

Huge part of Floatplane's ethos is, like, using these platforms as little as possible. Yes. When the Cloudflare outage happened, stuff with Full Point went down. We lean on a lot of different Cloudflare things we do, but we try to make it as unpluggable and into something else as possible. Unplug and plug into something else is the important part of what I'm talking about. These types of systems, this decentralization, is how the Internet works right now in grand scale. The cost of doing it yourself, both in employees, in hardware and everything else, is very high. These companies are offering scale, they're offering expertise, they're offering resilience. All these different things. And there's a reason why so many people have flocked to them. And there's a reason why Put it in the cloud is a lot less popular than it used to be because they're strangling everyone with price and then people are trying to float back. But what's kind of winning right now, as it often does, is a hybrid model that's somewhere more in the middle. You have no cloud, Cloud comes in and everyone goes, oh my God, put everything in the cloud all the time.

Luke Lafreniere (22:16)

Then there's a little outage and they're like, wow, we can't do anything.

Linus Sebastian (22:19)

Oh my goodness.

Luke Lafreniere (22:20)

Also like getting all of our data out of our cloud storage is wildly expensive.

Linus Sebastian (22:24)

They crank the prices, everything goes crazy. And then you go, maybe somewhere in here Floatplane tries to do a bit of hybrid. Right now the deal we have with Cloudflare is very cost effective, so we are doing that. But we can try to work with other people and we can go with other companies. It doesn't just have to be three, but these types of like one company leans on other ones to get things done and is how the Internet works right now. And there's a reason why if, if you put all these three massive outages together, there's basically nothing left. There's a reason why that's the case. And just, just saying like, oh yeah, you can unplug it all and it's all going to magically work is just not true.

Luke Lafreniere (23:05)

Or it's not true now. Yeah, it could be true five years from now.

Linus Sebastian (23:09)

And it was true in the past.

Luke Lafreniere (23:11)

Yes. But right now, the way that it, the way that it works, if you want to have a website that like is reasonably reliable and doesn't just get like DDoS to high hell all the time, you're, you're basically using these services.

Linus Sebastian (23:25)

That point current paradigm of being DDoS to high hell all the time is like exactly what I'm talking about. This, the, the, the wall. Someone in full plane chat just worded it. Nope, I don't see it anymore. But the needing the resiliency to absorb a lot of this type of stuff was a massive problem back in the day. Oh yeah, sites would go down all.

Luke Lafreniere (23:50)

The time, dude, just stuff would go down all the time.

Linus Sebastian (23:54)

One vindictive customer would take down the site whenever.

Luke Lafreniere (23:59)

And the scale, the scale with which you can attack services now is only increasing.

Linus Sebastian (24:07)

Tons of houses in B.C. have like three gig Internet connections coming to their house up and down. Like my goodness, dude, hold on.

Luke Lafreniere (24:15)

Someone just Someone just sent me this. Apparently there's a. Hold on, hold on.

Linus Sebastian (24:21)

Also. Yeah, someone in full ping chat just said. Andre B. Just said. And what companies you lean on also lean on those companies as well. Yeah. Much like the stock market, which I think we're going to talk about a little bit later.

Luke Lafreniere (24:32)

A lot of this stuff, not financial advice.

Linus Sebastian (24:34)

A lot of this stuff intertwines, it flows together and it's crazy.

Luke Lafreniere (24:43)

Let me see if I can find this. Okay. Okay, I think I got it. I think I got it up. So this was sent to me earlier this week by Marty Karim, a staff signals engineer at Security Scorecard. We published research on a campaign we're calling Operation WRT Hug. So check, check this out, check this out. So it's an operation that's hijacking tens of thousands of older Asus WRT home and small office home office routers and using them as orb style relay infrastructure. So apparently there's a mesh of infected dad routers, they're calling them, spread across Taiwan, the U.S. russia, Southeast Asia and Europe. And these kinds of, this kind of no longer getting updates. Connected infrastructure, smart home devices, IoT devices that are all over the place, coupled with the enormous pipes that are available for like run of the mill residential connections, creates just an unfathomable, oh my goodness, unfathomable scale of, of. Of attack. If it, if it's used in a coordinated fashion, like you want, you want.

Linus Sebastian (26:07)

To take 500,000 IPS, hitting you for 15 terabits per second.

Luke Lafreniere (26:11)

Good luck.

Linus Sebastian (26:13)

Like, nah, bro. Like, it's crazy. So, and to be fair, people dealt with this stuff back in the day. They did, but their sights would just go down all the time.

Luke Lafreniere (26:22)

And so, and so the only solution that we've found so far, and I mean we collectively have found, is massive scale. And that's what Cloudflare did, is they built massive scale to absorb these attacks and turn that into their entire business model, knowing that this botnet or this, you know, web of zombie devices or whatever can't attack everyone at once. So as long as we're big enough to absorb, you know, one big attack, or as long as we're big enough to absorb it long enough that they run out of money. Because a lot of the time it's. This is not even like, like hackers. Thanks for link Handyman hackers doing this. A lot of the time this is just pay to play like bot attacks where they'll, where people will actually just rent someone's network.

Linus Sebastian (27:16)

Yeah. So. Yeah. So it's not Necessarily a hacker, like, deciding who the target is.

Luke Lafreniere (27:21)

It can be.

Linus Sebastian (27:22)

Totally can be.

Luke Lafreniere (27:22)

It can be.

Linus Sebastian (27:23)

But sometimes it's like you said, it's. It's paid for.

Luke Lafreniere (27:25)

It's DDoS as a service. It's like. It's amazing what an industry. Just like being in their do well can has turned into. I mean, really realistically has been forever. Long as the Internet's been a thing.

Linus Sebastian (27:37)

Yeah. So it's like. I don't know, man.

Luke Lafreniere (27:40)

We can't just rent a pone. Is that a thing? Charged nuclei or did you come up with that?

Linus Sebastian (27:45)

Super. Sounds like a thing.

Luke Lafreniere (27:46)

It's got to be a thing. Rent to. Rent to phone.

Linus Sebastian (27:49)

If it's not, I mean, I feel like it's. Okay, okay, okay.

Luke Lafreniere (27:54)

Helen Keller in floatplane chat says it is, but how would you have seen that?

Linus Sebastian (27:58)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (28:01)

How would you have ever heard of that? Okay, that's not funny. Shout out Helen Keller.

Linus Sebastian (28:08)

Oh, dang.

Luke Lafreniere (28:10)

Yeah. Why would you laugh at that? What's wrong with you? Actual socio. Socio. Sociopath. My lips are really sore today. I had a couple.

Linus Sebastian (28:21)

And your teeth are yellow.

Luke Lafreniere (28:22)

I had a couple really sleepless nights this week. And when I don't sleep well, I tend to get, like, mouth ulcers, not cold sores. That's a different thing. Mouth ulcers. And what happens is the brackets will, like, hook into them and, like, rip them up. And it's like, yeah, my lips are really, really swollen right now. What? What's funny? I want to know what's funny.

Linus Sebastian (28:48)

Nothing, man. Nothing, man. Anyways, all I'm saying is, like, it's. It's really not that simple. And I don't know what the future is gonna look like. You know, maybe we maybe weren't relying on these things. There is so much money behind the idea of keeping these things around that I'd be. I'd a little surprised if we were able to move past it. And ultimately, the uptime that most sites get from these things. And by these things, I'm generally referring. There are many others, but I'm generally referring to Azure, AWS, and Cloudflare. The uptime benefit that a lot of people have from working with these groups is so much higher than the impact when they go down. And I need you to listen to me when I say this. This part's very, very important.

Luke Lafreniere (29:35)

Are you laughing at them?

Linus Sebastian (29:37)

Nope.

Luke Lafreniere (29:38)

Making oral sex jokes about me?

Linus Sebastian (29:40)

Totally. Not at all.

Luke Lafreniere (29:41)

Because I'm not gonna take this. Okay? I'm not gonna have. I'm not gonna have a bunch of float goats. Okay. Talking to me about throat pain, the.

Linus Sebastian (30:00)

Thanks, Dan. What was I even saying? Oh, yeah, okay. The thing I need you to hear. This part's very important. When your service goes down, if you can go, yeah, but look, it's Azure or AWS or Cloudflare, and like, a third of the Internet is down. Almost everyone's gonna shrug it off. If your service goes down and you're hosting everything yourself, they're gonna be mad at you. Look terrible.

Luke Lafreniere (30:31)

They're gonna be mad at you. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (30:32)

Which one. Which one are you gonna choose? Is it getting blamed for everything and it actually being your fault all the time? Or is it being able to point at the big nebulous thing that no one's really gonna be able to go blame or do anything about anyways? A lot of IT professionals are going to pick the one where they can point at the giant company that just took down a third of the Internet anyways. So you are not alone. You will also have comments. If your system has comments or people talking about it, you'll have someone going, oh, my God, I can't believe this thing is down. And then there will be replies to it saying, oh, actually, it's just AWS being down.

Luke Lafreniere (31:08)

Parse me hard says, can confirm 30% of my customer base was down. So, so much easier to pass the buck.

Linus Sebastian (31:13)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (31:14)

Yep. Should we actually read through the topic that was prepared for us, by the.

Linus Sebastian (31:17)

Way, people resolve the drama for you, Jordan Block? Yes, we should, because I. It looks like he honestly did a fantastic job.

Luke Lafreniere (31:22)

Yeah. You just, like, started talking about it.

Linus Sebastian (31:23)

Sorry.

Luke Lafreniere (31:25)

So the thing we've been talking about for the last 15 minutes.

Linus Sebastian (31:28)

Yeah. This week's outage was brought to you by Cloudflare X, ChatGPT, Spotify and countless other sites and services, including Floatplane, were unavailable this week. Ours was only partially, which I think actually made people more confused. But, hey, it is what it is. We're unavailable this week after problems that infrastructure provider cloudflare. Cloudflare offers DDoS protection, bot mitigation, content delivery, and so much more. So much more. To more than 24 million active websites and services. Yeah, we can't just unplug it, I swear. It's estimated that at least 20% of the web uses Cloudflare infrastructure to some degree. The outage comes after outages on Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS platforms brought down large chunks of the Internet in the latter weeks of October. And then almost everyone I talked to was like, wouldn't it be crazy if Cloudflare went down too. And then it did.

Luke Lafreniere (32:23)

That was funny.

Linus Sebastian (32:24)

This week's outage was triggered by a permissions change that ultimately caused a database to output duplicate entries into what Cloudflare cause its feature file used by their bot management system. The feature file basically contains a list of traits used by the bot management systems machine learning model to make a prediction about whether a given request was automated or not. This file is refreshed every few minutes and is published to Cloudflare's entire network to ensure that they're able to quickly react to changing Internet conditions, including new types of bots and bot attacks. This thing is very important. The feature file is meant to contain a limited number of these features and the bot management system, like other modules, has a specific amount of memory pre allocated on Cloudflare's proxies for performance reasons. That makes sense, especially when you're at scale. The larger than expected feature file, however, caused the bot management system to go past this memory limit, causing the threads to panic and ultimately resulted in a 5x x error.

Luke Lafreniere (33:24)

You know, it's funny how like the more things change, the more things stay the same. It's like my, my friend in elementary school, dad was like hyper geeky guy and he had, he had this, he had this shirt that he was just like, you know, you know that shirt that's like so covered in coffee stains and like is full of holes, but you just still wear it all the time. Your favorite shirt.

Linus Sebastian (33:55)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (33:56)

So yeah, on the front it just said insufficient memory at this time. And it worked really well because he was just like, he was just kind of a space cadet. The kind of guy, like super, super nice guy. Super nice guy. Love him. But he was just, you know, he's just like, kind of like, Sorry, what were we talking about? Like just, you know, a guy who's relatable to me. I get, I get it, you know, I connect and I just, I thought it was funny at the time, like kind of, because, you know, memory overflow issues were not really as much of a thing because we had page files and stuff by the time I got into computers. And yet here we are all these years later and you know, oops, sorry, we overflowed our pre allocated memory. Sorry, Internet. See you later.

Linus Sebastian (34:46)

The whole Internet. Yeah, yeah. That impacted other systems that rely on the proxies and ultimately caused the outage. While the Cloudflare team responded within just four minutes of the errors occurring, it was ultimately about five and a half hours before things were back to normal. Not too surprising, mehdi Dowdy, CEO of Internet performance monitoring platform Catchpoint, told the Verge that the recent string of high profile outages should be a wake up call for companies. Everybody's putting all their eggs in one bat. Oh, this is. Sorry, this is a quote. Everybody's putting all their eggs in one basket and then they're surprised when there's a problem. Dowdy says it's on the company side to make sure that they have redundancy and resiliency. Sure. Sorry, bruh. I don't think pretty much anything's gonna change because of this. But. But good quote. As cause. I mean. Okay, we're gonna double all the costs anyways. As usual, Cloudflare's blog gives a ton of detail on exactly how this played out. And it's. Yeah. As per usual, it's really good. Check it out if you wanna learn more.

Luke Lafreniere (35:50)

That's weird. I thought when I collapse a topic, it collapses it on your screen too. I just collapsed to that topic.

Linus Sebastian (35:58)

That's weird.

Luke Lafreniere (35:59)

I did not know that. That didn't sync. Is that a new thing for Google Docs?

Linus Sebastian (36:03)

I don't.

Luke Lafreniere (36:04)

Speaking of new things for Google Docs, this isn't new, but do you guys remember when on touchscreen devices you could zoom Google Docs? Because I do. Can they just bring that back, please? I'd really love that. Thanks. If there's anyone from Google watching, that'd be super cool. What are we supposed to be doing, Dan? We've done two topics. He walked away.

Linus Sebastian (36:21)

He walked away.

Luke Lafreniere (36:22)

He's not even there. Chair stream, we have no producer.

Linus Sebastian (36:25)

Chair stream, we have no.

Luke Lafreniere (36:26)

We don't have to do. We have complete freedom to do anything we want. Watch this. I'm gonna. I'm gonna switch between all the different cameras. Yeah, let's go.

Linus Sebastian (36:38)

We're stupid. Okay, should we just do another topic?

Luke Lafreniere (36:48)

Why don't we do the bad news? Do you want to hear the bad news?

Linus Sebastian (36:52)

Yeah. Which one?

Luke Lafreniere (36:57)

Wait, no, no. We should do the CW announcements. Okay. So guys, it's been a pretty sick time to shop on lttstore.com and it's gonna be even sicker. So we still have our loot drop running right now. Holiday loot drop. I just chatted with Dave this morning and he confirmed that the way things are going right now. So I don't know if you remember this, but we advertised an approximate odds of winning that we were guessing at based on order quantities.

Linus Sebastian (37:43)

Does it say approximate?

Luke Lafreniere (37:44)

Yep. Approximately 1 in every 10 qualifying orders will be randomly selected as a winner. That's what we Said. Okay, it looks like assuming nothing goes absolutely bat crazy over the next little bit, we are going to meet that.

Linus Sebastian (37:59)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (37:59)

Yeah. So our concern was that we might have so many smaller orders that all the mail that. Yeah. That the. That the odds of winning would go down a lot.

Linus Sebastian (38:10)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (38:11)

But it looks like we are going to meet that so far.

Linus Sebastian (38:14)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (38:14)

So it's a 1 in 10 chance of getting a. What is it? I forget. It's a. It's a. I really want to get this right. Hold on. Here we go. Okay. Approximately one in every ten qualifying orders is expected to win a pair of Sennheiser HD 550 headphones. And approximately one in every hundred qualifying orders is expected to win an Asus Rog Xbox Ally X. So we have this promo running right now for orders over $100. Your order will be automatically entered into the holiday loot drop upon checkout. So in other news, we also have some products. Do you want to actually bring up the site so that I. Cause I can only. I did. I'm done once. Nice. What a guy. Luke, Laptop. Boom. Just like that. This week's drop is. Oh wait, no. We have other things running too. So in addition to the thermochromic jack. Okay, you know what, let's do the thermochromic jacket first. This is the only jacket that literally shows off how hot you are. The outer shell uses a heat reactive fabric that shifts from red when cool to yellow when it's warm. So you get kind of a. You get kind of. If you're. If you're warm, very warm, it'll pass through a little bit. But realistically what happens more often is if someone touches it. Like if you're, if you're, you know, you have your hand around someone and you have a hand on their shoulder or whatever, it leaves like cool handprints and stuff. It's pretty fun to play with. We have a heat gun, we have one of the jackets. We can play around with it a little bit. And as cool as it looks, it's functional too. It's built with a water resistant heat reactive shell. Water resistant. YKK zippers, Warm recycled insulation, water resistant. And an adjustable hood.

Linus Sebastian (40:11)

Does it go kind of reverse like if you're really hot and then you walk out into the rain, do you see like cold spots?

Luke Lafreniere (40:18)

You. Okay, so here's the thing.

Linus Sebastian (40:20)

I don't know how it works.

Luke Lafreniere (40:21)

You would have to because the insulation's on the inside.

Dan (40:25)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (40:26)

So your heat doesn't pass through it too much under normal circumstances.

Linus Sebastian (40:31)

Yeah, Sorry. I mean, like, say you're indoors somewhere.

Luke Lafreniere (40:35)

If you're an extremely warm running boy, you might be able to get it to turn yellow on the outside, but it'll mostly be in, like, the creases and stuff. So here, I'll put this on and I'll wear it for a while.

Linus Sebastian (40:47)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (40:47)

And then. And then you guys will see. It's mostly a party trick, though.

Linus Sebastian (40:51)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (40:52)

If we're like. I want to be honest with you guys. Right. It's mostly a party truck.

Linus Sebastian (40:55)

I was just. Basically, does it go in reverse? So when it's cold, if you apply heat, it turns pretty quick. Okay. All right, we're gonna try. Nice. Sweet. We have a heat gun and a water sprayer. I didn't know that.

Luke Lafreniere (41:08)

To be clear.

Linus Sebastian (41:09)

I knew we had the heat gun. I didn't know we had a spray bottle.

Luke Lafreniere (41:13)

Oh, shoot. What did I just do?

Linus Sebastian (41:16)

Oh, no, no.

Luke Lafreniere (41:17)

I just got the tag in the zipper.

Linus Sebastian (41:19)

Oh, I see.

Luke Lafreniere (41:22)

Oh, all right. I've actually been wearing this quite a bit over the last little bit. It's. It's just kind of like a. Here, hold on. It's kind of. Kind of a nice little. Nice little jacket. Adjustable hood. All right.

Linus Sebastian (41:47)

So it feels kind of in the current fashion because it feels kind of like early 2000s, which is popular with the youngins these days. Right? Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (41:57)

Yeah. It's almost like we have a fashion team.

Linus Sebastian (41:59)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (42:01)

We're also rolling into the cooler months with two fresh colorways of our blank long sleeve shirt. The deep red melange that I'm wearing, Linus cam. So you can kind of see it's a. It's a melange. And the black aqua melange that Luke is wearing. Perfect. Perfect for layering and styling during the fall season.

Linus Sebastian (42:22)

You should explain melange.

Luke Lafreniere (42:24)

Oh, it's basically. You have two different dyes, and the whole thing is woven together to make the fabric. So when you look at it really close, like Luke is doing over on his laptop there. There you go. That's a melange fabric. See that? Very nice. Very nice. You want to switch over to the blue aqua. You can shop the collection at LMG GG Longsleeve. And now's as good a time as any to stock up on our apparel with our Buy More, Save More apparel sale, which is running till November 26. The more you buy, the more you save up to 25% with five plus items. This has been an absolutely killer promo for the store. People are absolutely loving it. They're. They're loading up on a bunch of the apparel, it's.

Linus Sebastian (43:11)

I think it's cool because you can.

Luke Lafreniere (43:12)

Freaking awesome.

Linus Sebastian (43:12)

You can mix and match with, like. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's all clothing items, right?

Luke Lafreniere (43:17)

Pretty much. It's close. Even some even new stuff like wan hoodie and stuff like that. When hoodie.

Linus Sebastian (43:22)

See, if we go to here, you can see all the. Not necessarily all the white tags, but when it says buy more, save more, it's included in the thing.

Luke Lafreniere (43:29)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (43:29)

And it's like, it's a lot of stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (43:32)

Well, I know a big struggle for people with our store is compared to stores that just, like, do free shipping or, like, prime shipping or whatever else. I know that the shipping can be a real challenge, but if you're loading up on five things, then you're saving a bunch on the items themselves, then that can help to offset the shipping. So I think this is kind of helping people break through that friction, break through that kind of shipping barrier and try a bunch more of the stuff, which is pretty cool.

Linus Sebastian (43:58)

So if we had socks, you could do an entire outfit, because you can do pants. I mean, you could even do a hat. You can do pants, underwear, shirt. You can do all of those things.

Luke Lafreniere (44:09)

I am wearing nothing but LTT right now.

Linus Sebastian (44:13)

Including those.

Luke Lafreniere (44:15)

These. I don't.

Linus Sebastian (44:16)

Are you gonna show those?

Luke Lafreniere (44:17)

We're not. This is not the final design.

Linus Sebastian (44:19)

How long, dude?

Luke Lafreniere (44:20)

For socks? Yeah, soon.

Linus Sebastian (44:22)

I want to do a refresh of mine soon.

Luke Lafreniere (44:24)

The. Have you. Have you tried the prototypes? No, the most recent ones, they're like. Okay. Have we talked about the socks yet?

Linus Sebastian (44:36)

Quite a while ago, yes.

Luke Lafreniere (44:37)

Okay.

Linus Sebastian (44:39)

We talked about, like, we were talking about the different. Like, you want to, I don't know, weave or knit or something different amounts across the sock because of, like, zones, like where your toes are versus where your heel is, all this kind of stuff, and they need to be done differently. Blah, blah, blah. We talked about that on Wednesday.

Luke Lafreniere (44:55)

Jersil says you have, but not in depth detail. Okay. They are. They are going to be freaking awesome because for me, because they're going to be exactly what I want. Serve says, are they soft or are they more rough? I can't do soft socks. They're more of like a utility, like, durable, practical sock. So they're not going to be the softest sock in the world. They're a merino blend, so they have real wool in them, which means you're not gonna get like. Like a. Like a fleece feeling, like a super, super soft feeling from them. But, you know, I don't necessarily like too Much stretch or too much like softness in a sock? Because what I can, what I find is that it can make it so that your foot can move too much in your shoe and I can actually get blisters, especially when playing sports. So they're going to be super wicking, super antimicrobial thanks to a copper treatment that we're getting that's actually through a partner in Canada. Here they're going to be stretchy, but not too stretchy. They're going to have a variety of different weave styles. So there's going to be like more breathable ones on the top and more padded ones on the bottom. Like all the things you would expect from a super high end sock. I am like so excited. We're finally, we're finally doing it.

Linus Sebastian (46:31)

Chat is yelling at me to, when they come out, buy them before they sell out again.

Dan (46:37)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (46:37)

Because I never get anything off the store.

Luke Lafreniere (46:40)

I do feel like this is something that we are going to stock pretty heavy because we know, like, we've been talking about this project for like three or four years now or something like that. I think, I think this is going to be it. I think this is the last project that was assigned to Bridget when she started and I think she's going to be coming up on her five years not that long from now. Which, to be clear, is not because Bridget did a bad job at any stage. Bridget's amazing. Love working with Bridget. We actually did an AMD upgrade for her a little while ago. And even just like watching back the video of us, I was like, oh, that's so fun. I love hanging out with Bridget. Like, she, she's great and I'm just an extremely difficult customer when it comes to what I put on my feet. I can be kinda, I can be kind of sensory defensive and if I don't like something, it can be very binary. Yes, I like it. No, I don't like it. Get rid of it. And so, yeah, it can be, it can be pretty tough. And between her and Tatiana and the rest of the fashion team, they've like, I had given up. I told them forget it at a.

Linus Sebastian (48:06)

Number of points and they were just like, nah.

Luke Lafreniere (48:08)

And they're just like, no, we're gonna, we'll backburner it, but we're gonna keep trying.

Linus Sebastian (48:12)

What are your thoughts on sock warranty?

Luke Lafreniere (48:16)

So basically the question becomes, how much do you guys want to pay for it? Because there's no free lunch, right?

Linus Sebastian (48:27)

Nope.

Luke Lafreniere (48:28)

So if we do.

Linus Sebastian (48:29)

But if it's a high end sock, a decent amount of competitors have.

Luke Lafreniere (48:32)

I know.

Linus Sebastian (48:33)

High end.

Luke Lafreniere (48:33)

I know. So. So really what it comes down to is how we want to position it. Because what we could do is we could say, hey, this is a high end sock that is very competitive with other very high end socks, but our price is going to be more palatable and there's no warranty. But we're not going to do, like, the crazy warranty or.

Linus Sebastian (48:54)

Okay, not. No warranty. Hold on, relax.

Luke Lafreniere (48:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

Linus Sebastian (49:01)

I felt it coming.

Luke Lafreniere (49:02)

Or we bake it in. Because those are the only two options. And realistically, our model up until now has been that we bake it into everything, because that's the trust me, bro, guarantee. Because realistically, I don't really have a choice. Which is exactly the point that I was trying to make all those years ago. I don't really have a choice. And I was so validated by the way that people freaked out about it, because the second I even talked about not having a plan yet for how we were gonna do warranty for something, I got my head bit off.

Linus Sebastian (49:36)

On what, sorry?

Luke Lafreniere (49:36)

On the backpack.

Dan (49:37)

Mm.

Linus Sebastian (49:38)

The backpack timeline. You don't fully remember correctly. This has been broken down.

Luke Lafreniere (49:41)

But that was part of my point, was whether I like it or not, we don't. We don't have the option. Right, Right. Like, as long as. As long as I'm here, the PR damage of us not taking care of people, I do agree, is going to vastly outweigh any kind of benefit that we would get from not replacing your sock.

Linus Sebastian (50:03)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (50:04)

Like, it's not really a question.

Linus Sebastian (50:06)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (50:08)

I mean, do you disagree?

Linus Sebastian (50:09)

No, but I don't also disagree that you should have just done a warranty in the first place with the backpack.

Dan (50:14)

Sure.

Linus Sebastian (50:15)

But you should just figure out your correct stance. And if your stance is going to be that I'm going to replace it anyways, then you just give people the proper warranty then that says that.

Luke Lafreniere (50:21)

But here's. Well, hold on. But. Okay, so you're forgetting a detail, though, because our written warranty that people read about that they wanted so badly does not say that.

Linus Sebastian (50:33)

No, I know.

Luke Lafreniere (50:33)

Yeah, it doesn't say that.

Linus Sebastian (50:35)

Yeah. But if you're going to say that for the socks.

Luke Lafreniere (50:37)

So we're not going to say that for the socks, because no company would be crazy enough to do that.

Linus Sebastian (50:42)

They do.

Luke Lafreniere (50:42)

That was who.

Linus Sebastian (50:45)

I'm pretty. I know. Fjallraven does that with multiple things.

Luke Lafreniere (50:48)

Oh, I. No, no, I see what you mean.

Linus Sebastian (50:49)

Osprey does that with bags.

Luke Lafreniere (50:50)

Okay. Dark Soc. So. So there's multiple facets of this. Right. Because they might say that, but ultimately, what it comes down to, when it comes down to it, it's. It's their ability and their willingness to fulfill it.

Linus Sebastian (51:04)

I think a few of these companies have, like, long term examples of doing that over time, like all the ones that I named.

Luke Lafreniere (51:10)

And that's reputation. Yes, but these companies might not exist forever, for sure.

Linus Sebastian (51:14)

But I don't think that's a reason to not do it.

Luke Lafreniere (51:16)

And if they ever did make a serious strategic error in their products and they were ever unable to fulfill it, you simply, like, wouldn't get a replacement. Which is exactly what I was talking about when I was trying to figure out, okay, what would a system look like by which our commitment, whatever commitment it is that we make, could survive any event? Which was the whole point of what I was talking about, is whatever we lay down, whatever we lay down in writing, it should be something that we can actually commit to. And, you know, as a weird influencer company, rather than like a physical goods company that has 50 years of history or whatever to. To lean into or has, you know, is publicly held. Right. Like, if I die, the ownership of Linus Media Group all of a sudden becomes a major question.

Linus Sebastian (52:08)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (52:09)

And Linus Media groups legal obligations become a major question. Right. So the whole point of it was like, okay, what would that look like? As long as I'm here and as long as I'm breathing, then it would be crazy for us to not just take care of people. And if I'm not, what does that look like? And what people wanted was, hey, here's some platitudes. And so we gave it to them.

Linus Sebastian (52:36)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (52:37)

But at the end of the day, what our actions are, are the trust me, bro guarantee.

Linus Sebastian (52:41)

Yeah, but going above and beyond is good.

Luke Lafreniere (52:43)

Of course.

Linus Sebastian (52:44)

Right, of course. Should have never meant that you didn't have a warranty to begin with.

Luke Lafreniere (52:47)

And another detail that a lot of people miss is we never launched the product without a warranty in place.

Linus Sebastian (52:53)

I think we did.

Luke Lafreniere (52:53)

No, we didn't.

Linus Sebastian (52:54)

I'm pretty sure we did.

Luke Lafreniere (52:55)

I promise you.

Linus Sebastian (52:56)

Let me go try to find it.

Luke Lafreniere (52:58)

Nobody was. Nobody received a single backpack.

Linus Sebastian (53:01)

I think they did.

Luke Lafreniere (53:02)

Without a warranty.

Linus Sebastian (53:03)

Or maybe received it. Maybe we started sales before it was there.

Luke Lafreniere (53:06)

I think we started signups, but we never took money until we actually had the product in stock. So it's one of those things where it was a theoretical. It was a theoretical issue.

Linus Sebastian (53:20)

It's gonna take me a while to find it.

Luke Lafreniere (53:22)

Yeah, that's that's fine. The point is, for the socks, realistically, I don't know if we have, I don't know if we really have a choice. I think we pretty much have to kind of bake it in. Whether we explicitly include that in a warranty or not is what it kind of boils down to.

Linus Sebastian (53:47)

Got it.

Luke Lafreniere (53:48)

Does that kind of make sense? And that logic has always been consistent from day one of the store. The customer care team's instructions have always been within reason. Make it right. Take care. Take care of the customer.

Linus Sebastian (54:03)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (54:04)

And there are cases where they do say no because it's like not reasonable. But in most cases, if it is actually anything wrong with the product that you bought, then the instructions are take care of it. No, I'm not researching immortality. Ikea, cherry, Like what I. What do you expect in terms of like a sock warranty? That's another, that's another thing I'm kind of curious about.

Linus Sebastian (54:37)

I honestly, before I found like merino wool socks and companies like Icebreaker and Darn Tough that I don't know about Icebreaker's warranty, but honestly, Osprey, Darn Tough, all these different brands that have lifetime warranties, I never would have expected any of them existed. I'm very surprised that any of them exist. I'm not saying that they shouldn't. I'm just really surprised that they do. I assumed if you bought a wool sock and you put a hole in it 14 years later, that you put a hole in your sock and you should get a new sock. But that's apparently not a thing at a certain point, like someone in Chat even said they had a darn tough sock that was like five years old or something, got a hole in it, they shipped it to Darn Tough and got new socks back.

Luke Lafreniere (55:23)

Now my understanding of the Darn Tough warranty is that that's a one time thing per purchase. So even I have no idea. Yeah, even an unconditional warranty, that doesn't necessarily mean. Because I think, you know, that when I bought my whole wardrobe worth of Darn Tough socks, because I love Darn Tough socks. Regardless of whether we're going to sell our own or compete with them or whatever. Like if we could have partnered with Darn Tough and just, you know, rebranded Darn Tough, I'd have been down to do it. I love their product. It's a great product.

Linus Sebastian (55:55)

I remember. Did you guys try?

Luke Lafreniere (55:56)

We've reached out to them, but for, you know, one reason or another, that is no fault of theirs.

Linus Sebastian (56:01)

And no, I mean they don't need to.

Luke Lafreniere (56:02)

No fault of ours. Not every partnership makes sense. I'm not blaming anybody. But for whatever reason, you know, we didn't end up doing, we didn't end up partnering with them on it. Yeah, that's all I have to say about it. But if we could have, I would have. And just because we're going to make our product doesn't mean that I'm not going to, you know, honestly talk about another company's product that I also really think is very high quality. So yeah, Darn Tough makes a great product. My understanding is that it's, it's one time and if you, if you go into sort of the fine details of it, many warranties do have legal sort of get out of jail free verbiage. Verbiage in them. And you know, I like, I get that because I think I told you my, like my devious plan when I bought two weeks worth of darn tough socks was that they would be the last socks that I ever bought because I was just going to get like warranty claim socks for the rest of my life.

Linus Sebastian (57:08)

Rutherford the Brave in Full Plane Chat said, correct. You can only use it once per pair. I probably buy one to three pairs per year and replace one to two pairs every one to two years.

Luke Lafreniere (57:18)

All claims made in good faith will be considered.

Linus Sebastian (57:22)

So even what is that?

Dan (57:25)

That's them.

Luke Lafreniere (57:25)

That's darn tough.

Linus Sebastian (57:26)

Cool.

Luke Lafreniere (57:27)

So what people have to understand is that any warranty, it comes down to the company's willingness. Everyone bakes in. Because your lawyers will not allow you to write a warranty that says, I will be liable for every product I ship forever. No sane lawyer would ever allow you to write that into a written warranty. I was trying to figure out if there was a way that we could do it. People wanted something else. And that's valid.

Linus Sebastian (58:02)

Yeah. There's a thread on the forum that says that when we recount this, we get it slightly wrong. And they have Wayback Machines and archive today links and links to the WAN show and stuff. And there's a link to three different WAN shows, all of which are, well, okay, it's August 5th, August 12th and August 18th of three years ago, 2022. And on the Wayback Machine you can see an archive of the backpack page which has a add to cart for full price and the amount of backpacks that were remaining in the wave that we were shipping at the time from August 4, meaning they were on sale when we were still talking about having a warranty. So this is the August 4th wayback machine. 250 bucks add to cart. So it looks like it was. It does say backorder. This is a back order.

Luke Lafreniere (58:55)

This is the back. So. But for both screwdriver and backpack, we did kind of a weird thing where we. I think we.

Linus Sebastian (59:05)

Check out, but didn't.

Luke Lafreniere (59:06)

I'm trying to remember how we did it for backpack. So for screwdriver, what we did was we did an in person event where we launched it.

Linus Sebastian (59:13)

I.

Luke Lafreniere (59:14)

And then like a hundred people could buy it or something like that.

Linus Sebastian (59:17)

Fairly certain we did with a backpack.

Luke Lafreniere (59:18)

Like a thousand people could buy it.

Linus Sebastian (59:20)

You had a bunch there.

Luke Lafreniere (59:21)

Okay, so you know what? That's. That's true. Then I guess the people who bought it in person technically did buy it before we finalized.

Linus Sebastian (59:27)

But I think there's also this thing. Right. There's. Whatever this is.

Luke Lafreniere (59:31)

This is shipping yet. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (59:34)

Right. But that means they bought it.

Luke Lafreniere (59:36)

So they.

Linus Sebastian (59:36)

Yeah, they didn't receive it. But they bought it pre warranty.

Luke Lafreniere (59:39)

They gave us money.

Linus Sebastian (59:41)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (59:42)

Which was fully refundable. And we were pending figuring it out. Which I always said from the beginning, I said, we're going to figure it out.

Linus Sebastian (59:49)

I'm just saying. I'm just saying there's. I saw this thread forever.

Luke Lafreniere (59:52)

That's true.

Linus Sebastian (59:53)

From Flaming Otter on the forum and they did some good research and they. They linked the wayback machine archive.org and date stamped all these wan shows and all this kind of stuff. And I had. I had kind of forgotten the exact order of events. So I appreciated this was a correction. But yeah, so that's. We just. We end up circling this topic all the time. So I just want to make sure we're.

Luke Lafreniere (60:18)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (60:19)

Doing it right.

Luke Lafreniere (60:19)

So it was right of people to want something in writing. But my intention was never to screw anybody over. Even if I wanted to. The consequences would have outweighed the benefit.

Linus Sebastian (60:35)

No, I do agree. I think I've always agreed with that. Like, the audience would slaughter you.

Luke Lafreniere (60:40)

Well, they did. Right. Like, completely proved my point. My entire point was like, yeah, this is irrelevant. This is utterly irrelevant because if I ever f Ed anyone over, I would get raked.

Linus Sebastian (61:00)

Which is why, like, man, why didn't you just do it in the first place?

Luke Lafreniere (61:04)

I told you at the time for.

Linus Sebastian (61:06)

Such a bad reason.

Luke Lafreniere (61:08)

I didn't explain it very well. And it was. Hold on. It was an emotional reason.

Linus Sebastian (61:13)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (61:14)

Which is a bad reason. But it didn't come from a bad place.

Linus Sebastian (61:18)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (61:19)

I was trying to figure out. Okay, like, no, seriously, you know, because, you know, I think about like, you know, long term succession plan, legacy.

Linus Sebastian (61:28)

But this try to be a real company warranties, like if you. Look, I know what happens to a warranty if the company disappears.

Luke Lafreniere (61:34)

I wanted to do better.

Linus Sebastian (61:35)

Yeah, it's gone.

Luke Lafreniere (61:35)

Yeah, but like I was doing the.

Linus Sebastian (61:38)

Minimum first and then try to do better, literally.

Luke Lafreniere (61:41)

What? Like one of the conversations that I'd had with Yvonne beforehand, but I didn't want to talk about this because I didn't want to commit to it. I didn't want people to get this idea in their head. But I was like, okay, what if like in trust we have like funds set aside to lease space to like warehouse replacement parts, like after the company shuts down? I know it's insane, but that's what I was trying to figure out, if there was like a reasonable way to do it.

Linus Sebastian (62:06)

My only, my only point was that I think the timeline is slightly off. I think we should. I think we should. The. The chat is yelling at us to move on. I think, I think we should. The audience is guiding us onwards from this topic. We should, we should move. We should listen to them and move on. Heat gun. Already says heat gun.

Luke Lafreniere (62:24)

Oh, sure. Hit me. Not too close. It's a heat gun. It's like very hot. It has a. It has a lock. Yet you just move that down.

Linus Sebastian (62:32)

Just down.

Luke Lafreniere (62:33)

Yeah, Here we go. Hold on here. I have to.

Linus Sebastian (62:38)

I have to sort of working.

Luke Lafreniere (62:39)

I have to be here. What do you mean? Is it working? Yes, it's definitely working.

Dan (62:44)

Very close.

Linus Sebastian (62:45)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (62:46)

Why would you do that?

Linus Sebastian (62:51)

Look, you're happy now.

Luke Lafreniere (62:54)

I'm very happy right now. Oh, hold on. My hands, My hands aren't that warm. Are your hands warm?

Linus Sebastian (63:04)

Not really. It might work anyways.

Luke Lafreniere (63:06)

Hold on. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (63:08)

No, I think you're warmer.

Luke Lafreniere (63:09)

Yeah, I think I'm probably warmer.

Linus Sebastian (63:11)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (63:12)

Okay. If your hands are really warm, it happens pretty fast, but if you're like a cold hands kind of person, then it, then it can take a little while. There you go.

Linus Sebastian (63:22)

Anyway, it looks cool and I've seen it a few times. Like if you, if somebody like gives you a hug and you see the arms around the back.

Luke Lafreniere (63:28)

So here's the back just sitting against the chair. Like you end up with a little.

Linus Sebastian (63:31)

Bit of the hood. Yeah, it's heat trapped a little bit.

Luke Lafreniere (63:34)

Yeah. So it's like I said, it's more of a. It's more of like a, like a party trick and less of like it's gonna look like fire, you know, all the time or whatever. But it's. It's pretty Neat. It's a pretty neat party trick. Oh, right.

Linus Sebastian (63:49)

Spray the water.

Luke Lafreniere (63:50)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (63:50)

So we got to make a warm zone. Oh, sure.

Luke Lafreniere (63:53)

Yeah. Hit me. Oh, here, do this side.

Linus Sebastian (64:05)

Okay. Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (64:06)

Okay. Whoa.

Linus Sebastian (64:09)

Yeah. See, that's crazy. So if you come from, like, a really warm area and walk outside into the rain, it's going to look wild.

Luke Lafreniere (64:15)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (64:15)

I think that's awesome. That's actually really cool. I've never seen the reverse. I've only seen it heat up.

Luke Lafreniere (64:20)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (64:21)

That's sweet.

Luke Lafreniere (64:22)

I am, like, dying right now wearing this inside.

Dan (64:25)

It's.

Luke Lafreniere (64:26)

It's pretty warm. You can see the inside is.

Linus Sebastian (64:29)

Oh, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (64:29)

Turned yellow.

Linus Sebastian (64:30)

Yeah, yeah. Hug my. My. Like, hold my arms, and my hands are very cold.

Luke Lafreniere (64:36)

Oh, yeah. And in the sleeves, it tends to go like that in the. In the creases and stuff. So it's just. I don't know, it's just. It's kind of. It's kind of neat.

Linus Sebastian (64:44)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (64:44)

Basically, this is one of those garments where we didn't set out trying to make a jacket and then look for a material. We came across a cool material, and then we were like, very 3M style. Let's. Yeah, let's. Let's find something to make out of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, what are we supposed to be doing?

Linus Sebastian (65:04)

Merch messages.

Luke Lafreniere (65:05)

Oh, yeah. Want to hit me with a couple? Oh, wait, I should explain what they are. For those who are new to the show, merch messages are the way to interact. Not like just throwing money at your screen. No, you should throw money@lttstore.com. get great quality merchandise in return. And also, you can send a merch message to a producer Dan. Just whenever we're live, fill in this box in your cart. That's right. Cart, not checkout. And you can select a color, select if you want it to be your name or to be anonymous. And then producer Dan will either curate your merch message for me and Luke to respond, or he might. Oh, here, I'm going to. There we go. But sorry, press the wrong thing. Luke. Luke, Laptop. There we go. Wait, no. What did I want to do?

Linus Sebastian (65:50)

What are you doing?

Luke Lafreniere (65:51)

I was trying to point at this. There we go. He might just. He might reply to it. He might just pop your message up if it's like a hey, mom, or, you know, whatever, and we'll show you what it looks like. Dan, do you want to hit us with a couple of merge messages?

Dan (66:04)

Yeah, sure. I got a bunch coming in here. Hey, Litmus, Duke and Flan. Love the new energy in recent LTD videos. How has the shift impacted the creative process, slash morale for the team. And has it reinvigorated the fun of making content for you?

Luke Lafreniere (66:22)

Huh? I don't know. I think we're kind of just doing what we're doing. We're. I mean, if you're talking like, about the Valve videos specifically, like, we're pretty excited.

Linus Sebastian (66:32)

Awesome.

Luke Lafreniere (66:32)

Yeah, we're pretty excited about those. We're always happy when there's just, like, you know, cool, cool tech for us to talk about. That really does make our lives a lot easier. Other than that, I'm. I'm not. I'm not 100% sure to what you are referring. I don't know, sir. Yeah, we're.

Linus Sebastian (66:51)

I do really like it said the. The hisense video didn't get more views. I don't know what's going on with that. It feels weird. But that was a sweet video. The VAL videos were both awesome. There's been some really good stuff lately.

Luke Lafreniere (67:02)

I don't know, man.

Linus Sebastian (67:03)

YouTube views are so strange these days.

Luke Lafreniere (67:05)

It's really. It's really, really, really tough right now. Like, that Xbox might be cooked. One did like, banger numbers out of the gate. Like, as good as the one before it with the speaker. The speaker scam.

Linus Sebastian (67:19)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (67:20)

Yeah. But then just trailed off. The Linus went undercover to answer your tech questions, was doing really great, and then. Or, oh, wait, yeah, no, that one was doing really great and then trailed off and then I'm trying to think if there's one that, like, started out horrible, graphene OS started slow, and then you can see is now above average. So, like, the. The rhyme and reason to it all.

Linus Sebastian (67:49)

Is it's felt like more than ever before. The knobs are being, like, actively turned over time. And I mean that in both directions. Certain videos are just, like, really taking off in ways that you might not expect, and videos are just being crushed in ways you might not expect. It's.

Dan (68:04)

It's interesting and it's.

Luke Lafreniere (68:06)

It's always funny to see people, you know, talk about on the subreddit. It's. It's. It's become a bit of a pattern that the ones that are poor performers. I'm going back to your laptop.

Linus Sebastian (68:16)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (68:17)

The ones that are poor performers tend to be kind of like core audience, like. Like subreddit and forum user favorites. And what I kind of have to say to those folks is like, okay, do something about it, because we're getting crushed here on them. Like, the amount of positivity for this buyer DIY that is mostly hosted by Jordan where we finally do the lack rat behind this. So positive. People really like this videos bombing. It's dying.

Linus Sebastian (68:50)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (68:50)

It's like it's one of the worst performers out of the last few weeks. And that's not because Jordan did a bad job. It's because.

Linus Sebastian (68:59)

People are really positive.

Luke Lafreniere (69:00)

Yeah. Oh, it's low. It's like super positive. I think it basically just comes down to that. Some of the, some of the passion of this, of this hobby is, is getting hard right now with just like how expensive things are.

Linus Sebastian (69:16)

How expensive things are and how boring a lot of things are. Like, you see the valve content. People came. It's just like, oh, wow, there's really interesting hardware coming. Yeah, I will look at this.

Luke Lafreniere (69:26)

They're here for it. Okay, man. So here's a, here's a crazy thing. If the mainstream affordable tech is like not coming back, like you look at AMD's. AMD is talking about increasing pricing on their GPUs. They were down to MSRP for like two weeks.

Linus Sebastian (69:53)

I can't have that.

Luke Lafreniere (69:54)

Well, no, pump it up. I understand why they're doing it. Have you seen what's happened to DRAM pricing over the last few weeks? Like, it's not like it's that they don't make dram. They have to buy it. Same as I do. Same as you do. They have to buy DRAM from Samsung or SK Hynix or whoever the case may be. Micron, I don't buy my dram. I know you don't, but some people have to. So for the people who do. Right. That's a cost. That's a cost that went up a lot and you know, like, oh, they should just absorb it. Like that's, that's nice. That would be very generous of them. But that's not how.

Linus Sebastian (70:31)

Not going to be.

Luke Lafreniere (70:31)

That's not how corporations work.

Linus Sebastian (70:33)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (70:36)

So where was I going with this? Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. So, so prices are coming up. So, so here's an interesting. Here's. I don't think. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (70:51)

This is from Tech Spot.

Luke Lafreniere (70:52)

I don't know if the days of LTT doing, you know, 130 million views a month on building computers are coming back. And so with that in mind, like, you know, what do we, what do we make videos about?

Linus Sebastian (71:13)

I think there's like a opportunity to do things differently. Like I've been, I've been trying to get slightly louder and louder and louder over time about spinning up a labs channel at some point.

Luke Lafreniere (71:28)

I don't know if new channel is going to help us out because, like, that's. That it's not gonna.

Linus Sebastian (71:34)

We gotta figure out some of our production efficiency woes. Yes, I think it absolutely can and it should. We might need to change how. Like pipelines in the company. I have. Oh, man. I don't know if we want to talk about this or not. I have ideas on things. Like it might. It might not make as much sense to have these massive silos that have to try to lob things between each other all the time. It might make more sense to have like individual channels basically manage their own.

Luke Lafreniere (72:08)

Pipelines that creates its own set of inefficiencies.

Linus Sebastian (72:13)

Sure does.

Luke Lafreniere (72:13)

Which we have learned from experience.

Linus Sebastian (72:16)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (72:16)

And I won't say that the previous attempt at that was perfectly managed, but I. I can say that we. We gave it the old college try and it was not great. What was that for? I don't want to get into the specifics right now because it would.

Linus Sebastian (72:31)

Yeah, no, that's fair enough.

Luke Lafreniere (72:32)

Yep.

Linus Sebastian (72:33)

That's why this conversation could be hard, but yeah. Okay. It's not that I don't believe you. I just. I'm just not 100% sure what you're talking about.

Luke Lafreniere (72:41)

Like, here's a crazy thought. Here's a totally crazy thought. Like, we've talked about this offline, but.

Linus Sebastian (72:47)

Plane'S not sinking, guys. Relax.

Luke Lafreniere (72:49)

Yeah, we're okay. We're okay. We're. LMG has had to reinvent itself multiple times.

Linus Sebastian (72:55)

I think any company that has substantially existed on YouTube for this long will have reinvented itself a bunch of times. This is not like, chill.

Luke Lafreniere (73:04)

Yeah. It's not always in ways that are even necessarily obvious from the outside. But we've completely changed how we run our production many times. And so, you know, like, I think we've talked about this offline. We might have even mentioned this on WAN show before. But I came across recently that. And this is really stuck in my head because it completely shifted my view of how the consumer market works. But half of all consumer spending in the US is now the top 10% of earners. Have we talked about that on the show? Dan, do you remember? He doesn't pay attention. He just.

Dan (73:40)

I'm not sure. I don't think so.

Luke Lafreniere (73:43)

That. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Jerusalem says yes, we have that. Still. It's like still on my mind.

Linus Sebastian (73:50)

It's shocking. It's one of the facts that I've been telling more and more people lately. It's just weird. It does make a lot of. Of things make more sense.

Luke Lafreniere (74:00)

It really does.

Linus Sebastian (74:01)

But it is very weird.

Luke Lafreniere (74:02)

But, but it blows me away. So, so here's the thing. Like imagine because we used to make videos about high end GPUs all the time, right? We'd make a video about the, you know, 780, you know, or the, the 6, the, the GTX 680 or you know, whatever, right? Like about these high end GPUs. And remember a high end GPU used to be 500, 600, $700. And we'd get, you know, a million, 2 million. I think it really peaked around the RTX 30 series when I think the announcement for the RTX 30 series got like 3 plus or 4 million views or something like that.

Linus Sebastian (74:39)

Our 5090 review got over 3 million views.

Luke Lafreniere (74:44)

I'll get to that in a moment. All right. Because there's a big difference to me between like a spectacle product, like the biggest TV in the world consistently will get over 3 million views for us, but for a different reason than why, you know, a GTX 1650 review might get 3 million views. This is because everyone's kind of like, oh, this is an opportunity for me to see and vicariously experience it. Something that I would never see in person. And this is because I am deeply considering purchasing this thing and I need to know more about it.

Linus Sebastian (75:18)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (75:18)

Yeah. And what we have right now in between those two is an expanse of dead zone is, is what it feels like to me where you have these products that are neither affordable to that 90% of US consumers that are, that are making up half of spending and then you've got these like, these Halo products that are still interesting but, but you don't get very often, like if our channel was dependent on Nvidia to release a Halo GPU for every like banger hit on our channel, we would.

Linus Sebastian (75:56)

It might have been fine. When you and I first started doing computer stuff and it was like every seven months there was a flagship sometimes.

Luke Lafreniere (76:04)

Yeah, yeah. That was a wild time to be a computer enthusiast.

Linus Sebastian (76:07)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (76:08)

It's like you'd buy a new PC, see, you'd bring it home, you'd turn it on, fire up an Internet browser and find out it was obsolete. Like that, that was like, that was a meme.

Linus Sebastian (76:17)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (76:20)

And so, you know, here's a crazy idea. What if we just accept that a lot of our videos are going because we've avoided creating too many videos about high end stuff. Like you probably remember, I vowed not to, not to go 40 series, you know, because pricing was unreasonable. Clearly that changed nothing. Nvidia's GeForce sales go up like clockwork. More and more people are buying GeForce even though 90% of people who have half of the purchasing power are angry about GeForce pricing. Justifiably so because it's out of reach big time. But like what do we do? Do we segment our content? So do we have the videos that, that are designed for that 10% of the audience where we evaluate high end stuff knowing that only half a million people are going to watch it and then do we have content that we design around everyone else that's like, okay, here's the, you know, for, for you know, whatever. Steam machine versus DIY PC, you know, affordable Linux gaming PC which is the way to go. And we really like Hyper focus. Who the audience is for any given video.

Linus Sebastian (77:34)

I have a hot take.

Luke Lafreniere (77:35)

Yeah, hit me.

Linus Sebastian (77:36)

I think you're thinking about it too much and that you did this forever because we had extremely high end systems. We had your, like, what if you put a GPU from both vendors in your machine and ran Crossfire and SLI at the same time? What would happen? And going on at the same time as we had the compensator and scrapyard wars happening. We have always shown both sides of the coin.

Luke Lafreniere (78:05)

We have. But what I can tell you is.

Linus Sebastian (78:08)

That the one side is getting a lot less views these days. Okay, sure. I think you can still do it.

Luke Lafreniere (78:13)

Well, no, it's not, it's not just that. It's that. It's it. Well those. So those are both still doing fine though. The extremes are both still doing fine. It's the, it's the like, man. What, what would be like an equivalent. It's like the build guide. It's like the, it's like the Silent PC Build Guide. The $2,000 PC Build Guide that is, is, is in this sort of like even dead zone.

Linus Sebastian (78:39)

Like all msrp.

Luke Lafreniere (78:41)

This yeah, absolutely died. Now now this one, this one had a problem. The problem was that we shot this.

Linus Sebastian (78:53)

Ah, the very. All the comments about RAM prices.

Luke Lafreniere (78:56)

So RAM prices started to take off literally in the couple of weeks that this was sitting in editing. And that sucks because when we did the build it was like we were gonna be like on it. Like you remember talking about this on WAN show, right? Like we were gonna be on it. Highlighting finally some good news. Finally a freaking good time to be alive for people who like building their own PCs.

Linus Sebastian (79:24)

This is just a great shot. I got a. Hold on one sec. Wait for it, wait for it. When he puts the thing on the shelf and the piece of paper naturally falls. Fantastic.

Luke Lafreniere (79:34)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (79:34)

Cinematic masterpiece.

Luke Lafreniere (79:36)

Yeah. With that said. With that said, I still think that if you're somewhat shopping for a PC, this Black Friday could be a pretty good time to. To move. Even with RAM prices being as crappy as they are. Because it's only a matter of time before other components that use RAM, like GPUs, are also going to spike.

Linus Sebastian (80:01)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (80:02)

And storage is also apparently going to spike. So, yeah, watch out. But yeah, it's that, like, everyday. Like the very first PC build guide we did was a 1500 dollars PC build guide. And it's kind of crazy to think about that because that was over 10 years ago. And so, you know, with inflation or whatever, you would think I would be able to get a similar amount of interest in building a $2,000 PC today, but because the individual components feel so. Because some categories have come down, like, cases are kind of shockingly affordable these days. Like, man, it was, I think David's upgrade. We picked up this Chinese brand case that had, like, glass all over it and, like, came with a bunch of fans. And I'm like, looking at this thing, it was like $70 or something like that. I was like, this is. This is crazy, right? Like, you remember when the Corsair 900D came out, it was like $300, dude. You can get a case that may not have as much steel in it, but it's so much more featured today for literally like a quarter of the price. It's wild. But then people get this sticker shock of. They go to buy a freaking GPU or they don't realize that you can just buy a mainstream motherboard and they look at how much like a gamer, top of the line chipset motherboard costs, and they go, holy sh. T. This. Forget it. You know, I'm out. I'm out. And I think it just. It just takes some of the. It takes some of the. It takes some of the joy out.

Linus Sebastian (81:45)

Of it for sure. I know a lot of people that have effectively exited the hobby at this point, like, personally, because it's just like, man, I can't keep up. And it's, It's. It's not. Okay. It's obviously clearly both, but I think the bigger impact of it is not actually the price of computer components going up. I think it's the price of everything else going up and their income's not matching.

Luke Lafreniere (82:10)

That's right.

Linus Sebastian (82:11)

Because they're feeling squeezed on any form of extra. Extra hobbies, extra activities, eating over food, any form of anything is feeling squeezed it's not just their, their hobbies, their interest in computer stuff. It's a tough time.

Luke Lafreniere (82:32)

What is a channel? What does a channel look like that can kind of cater to the top of the K shaped economy and also the bottom of the K shaped economy? How do we design that channel?

Linus Sebastian (82:47)

I don't think it's that different.

Luke Lafreniere (82:50)

You think so?

Linus Sebastian (82:50)

I don't think it's that different. I think, I think you keep that in mind. I think you understand that the middle is like not that interesting. And just do both. Like I said, we would do insane Lambo builds back in the day and.

Luke Lafreniere (83:05)

Not literally Lamborghini, but like just fancy.

Linus Sebastian (83:09)

Things and then also would do scabrid wars and.

Luke Lafreniere (83:15)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (83:16)

Cheaper things like that.

Luke Lafreniere (83:20)

Oh. Yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. I think I.

Linus Sebastian (83:31)

This one, this, this video felt like it kind of rhymed. I haven't watched the it rhymed ads. Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (83:37)

If you go back and go forward again, it usually gets rid of it.

Linus Sebastian (83:41)

But do you remember this free or.

Luke Lafreniere (83:43)

Extremely cheap DIY PC test bench. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (83:48)

I haven't watched it yet, but you guys.

Luke Lafreniere (83:50)

A piece of wood, basically.

Linus Sebastian (83:52)

You, Basically you take a computer case and you.

Luke Lafreniere (83:55)

Oh, don't you. Yeah, right.

Linus Sebastian (83:57)

Turn it into a test bench by using wooden legs. Our videos used to be really short back then.

Luke Lafreniere (84:03)

I know.

Linus Sebastian (84:05)

I was like, wow, I'm at the end already. But yeah, it's. I saw you guys do the, like, I haven't watched it yet, but the server rack video. And I was like, huh, cool.

Luke Lafreniere (84:16)

Yeah. And I mean, maybe we just have to. Maybe part of it is because I know you and I have talked about like we, I think we need to get back to the daily schedule. I think to be part of people's daily routine.

Linus Sebastian (84:28)

I think that is an important part of Linus Tech Tips ethos is that it's been. When we were really hitting it, we were hitting it every day.

Luke Lafreniere (84:39)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (84:39)

You could, you could come to your computer after work and there would be an LTT video or at breakfast time or, you know, everybody had like their routine.

Luke Lafreniere (84:48)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (84:49)

I think we have to hit it every day. And there's, there's things that doesn't just mean like, you know, push the writers harder. There's like, we got to find ways to accomplish that.

Luke Lafreniere (85:01)

And a seven and a half minute video. It might be one of the ways to do that.

Linus Sebastian (85:06)

Yeah. I also talked to somebody, I was talking to a couple people about this, but let me, let me pitch it on WAN show and see why you don't like it. But I have my new idea for Short Circuit. And my new idea for Short Circuit, which I'm gonna need to chop around to a bunch of people, if it's even any good as an idea, stems off of a type of video that was your idea back in the day that we filmed. If I look up. Let me jump to here. GTX 980. Here we go. This video is a good example of it. So it starts off and you're hosting and you actually. I noticed this while I was talking to someone about this idea, but you actually, like, take it out of the box. There you go. It's not an unboxing, but let's use the framing of the video instead of the actuality of the video. But you started off, you're talking about the product. You look at the product, you're talking about how it's physically built. You're talking about the new cooler. It looks all cool and stuff. You talk about software features, you go through the IO, you do things that you might do. If this was a short circuit unboxing.

Luke Lafreniere (86:18)

Yep. Okay, well, I mean, that's LTT's origin, right? This is 11 years ago. So this is. This is not far after LTT was an unboxing channel.

Linus Sebastian (86:28)

Yes. This is us kind of like morphing, evolving. We're kind of in the middle. And so this is unboxing. And you've always said your name for Short circuit is Unboxing Plus. This video also had a plus.

Luke Lafreniere (86:40)

Yeah. With a little bit of performance testing.

Linus Sebastian (86:42)

Hello. What if we.

Luke Lafreniere (86:44)

No wars. What a shirt.

Linus Sebastian (86:49)

I don't think we had a. I noticed that too.

Luke Lafreniere (86:52)

Is that meant to be like Calvin and Hobbes looking font?

Linus Sebastian (86:55)

It's supposed to be Calvin and Hobbes, like cosplaying Star Wars. It's Calvin down there.

Luke Lafreniere (87:02)

Brilliant. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (87:03)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (87:04)

Anyway, though.

Linus Sebastian (87:05)

Yeah. So what if we kind of did it this way? So. Because there's been. I've heard a bunch of different complaints about Short Circuit. I finally shot one and experienced how it goes and stuff. And one of the, one of the things that I've heard is that it's like it's unboxing, but it's not necessarily the first unboxing.

Luke Lafreniere (87:22)

Like say for example, if someone unboxed it before and now it's in a power profile that you didn't expect it to be in.

Linus Sebastian (87:28)

You might have noticed the glowing yellow icon in the corner. But you know, that's fine. We can take the entire blame for that.

Luke Lafreniere (87:35)

I mean, yeah, we're not.

Linus Sebastian (87:38)

We could focus on the thing that we're trying to talk about, though. That would be good. So what if we did. Why are you so sensitive? This goes both ways, big guy. Okay, so what if we did an actual unboxing?

Luke Lafreniere (87:52)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (87:52)

So what if very shortly after it came in, you know, we got to give some time, Whether it's. It's bell or it's maybe someone from the last team or whatever, prepares some form of one pager document that doesn't yet have performance numbers in it, but it has, like, points that you should probably hit about this product and they. They still sit on the side. A lot of the shooting is the same. It just doesn't have the labs input yet. You do your unboxing and everything. And then one of the ways I was thinking about it is you, like, actually physically, like, toss the product off camera.

Luke Lafreniere (88:26)

You're not the first person to pitch this to me today.

Linus Sebastian (88:28)

And then, oh, today.

Luke Lafreniere (88:30)

And what I said to them is that that works great until. And I think this will happen on a not infrequent basis. Something about the initial unboxing and impressions conflicts with something in the. But we've actually tested it now, so how do we. How do we not waste the viewer's time sitting through mistaken impressions to get to the part where we correct it?

Linus Sebastian (88:55)

I don't know if that's going to happen too often. I do think you're right. It will happen. I think one of the parts of this that effectively needs to happen is that the first. I don't know the proper term for this, but when it's cut together before it's like properly edited, but they have the footage cut together, I think that should be output and handed over to the people in the lab. So while they're testing it, they can see what the person said. And then if minor corrections need to be made with like, you know, voice dub or whatever, it can be done.

Luke Lafreniere (89:27)

Anytime you have to go back and do a pickup. It is just devastating to the workflow because it's like.

Linus Sebastian (89:37)

I don't know how often that's gonna have to happen, though, because there are some things. An example that I'm assuming the other person I was talking to about this brought up was brightness. They're like, what if I like the brightness? But it turns out that the spec that they advertised was incredibly high knit. And then the labs finds that it's below the advertised spec.

Luke Lafreniere (89:59)

Yeah. Because there's so little content that will actually take advantage of a super high brightness display because it's just like, not Mastered for it. It's particularly becoming a thing with, like, newer films is many of them are mastered to such a low HDR brightness that they might as well not be HDR at all. And so, depending on the content that the host happens to find to watch, they might form a completely wrong impression of the brightness of the display. And it's one of those things where, in theory, yeah, you can have expert hosts who just won't do that, but that's not scalable. It's not that manageable. It's hard to train for every edge case.

Linus Sebastian (90:45)

And the audience might not agree, in my opinion, if someone's impression of the brightness is good.

Luke Lafreniere (90:52)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (90:52)

And then we test it and get a number that's like, not necessarily. I think the example that was given was it doesn't match the manufacturer's spec. Not necessarily that we found that it was bad. Yeah, but we found that it didn't match the manufacturers.

Luke Lafreniere (91:07)

I mean, I think a manufacturer falsely advertising their product is bad.

Linus Sebastian (91:11)

Right. But we still call that out in the video. But it can be, hey, the brightness of this device feels good. And it can be, hey, their spec doesn't match. That's bad. That both can be in the same video. I think.

Luke Lafreniere (91:24)

I think live together. I'm having a very hard time. I mean, I'm not saying. I'm not saying you don't know you're wrong. Right? Like, you might very well be right. I don't know. But I am having a very hard time imagining a world where I want to watch a video that contradicts itself. That doesn't just.

Linus Sebastian (91:42)

I don't think that's a contradiction.

Luke Lafreniere (91:43)

That doesn't just do the work ahead of time and then get alignment between the teams so that the message is consistent. And, like, I have no problem with a host saying, in fact, like, this is something that you would have seen me do in script review all the time back in the day. Like, if you were preparing a laptop or something like that, then I might say something in the video about. And coming around to the keyboard. Well, this is a bit of a mixed bag. Luke, who was the writer for this project, absolutely loved it. But here's the thing. And we'd get a B roll shot of my hand in Luke's hand. My hand's a little bit smaller than Luke's, and I actually found it pretty hard to reach the shift key, which for a grammar Nazi like myself, who cares about things like capitalization and punctuation, is a big problem like that. That's. That's exactly the kind of thing that I might write into a script. But that's tidy. It's in a nice little bow. It contains both perspectives, and I don't have to wait around to get the other perspective. And I've always preferred to. To. To wrap things in a tight bow. Or I shouldn't say always. I mean, going back. If you go back far enough, we would actually. I would say something that I think about the product and I would cut the camera and then we would come back and the camera would start rolling again. And I wouldn't edit anything and I'd say, oh, actually, I just looked it up on my phone and that's not right. The spec is actually this. Like, if we go back far enough, I basically did exactly what you're pitching.

Linus Sebastian (93:19)

No, it's different.

Luke Lafreniere (93:21)

Okay, a little different.

Linus Sebastian (93:22)

It's pretty different.

Luke Lafreniere (93:23)

I mean, it's. Here's my impression and here's what I think.

Linus Sebastian (93:27)

No, it's quite literally unboxing plus a thing. It's unboxing and impressions and experience, which is what unboxing means and the reason why it's so confusing to the entire audience. And then it adds on labs testing on the end instead of trying to mix it throughout. I understand the vision of the thing that you're talking about.

Luke Lafreniere (93:44)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (93:45)

I think it's just what I'm trying to accomplish is the path through our workplace right now for a thing that comes in for short circuit is very difficult. And this path is significantly simplified. And I think there is opportunity. I think there's potential that the audience really likes it in that structure. I also think there's potential that it just sucks.

Luke Lafreniere (94:07)

There's also.

Linus Sebastian (94:07)

I'm not trying to dismiss your. Your concern.

Luke Lafreniere (94:09)

There's also devices where it's really not simplified. Anything with battery testing should absolutely go through the lab first and should go abs nowhere near a set before it has been battery tested. Because you're just adding an enormous, potentially like, huge delay to. To the. To the time when you can film the first segment, like the impression segment, and when you can film the second one. So you've got. You'll have these projects that are just in production, limbo, waiting for the second part to be tested and then shot and then delivered to the editor. So why did you even bother to shoot this piece in the first place?

Linus Sebastian (94:47)

So part of the. This plan that I didn't explain was that it can sit in editing and in labs testing at the same time time. So that the hosted part, the probably more difficult part to edit the. Okay. The primarily primary hosted part, because the labs hosted part would be so short, could start editing while the labs is testing.

Luke Lafreniere (95:08)

So that's something that I've pitched many times. Like having editing the part of a video that the editors have already and then I'll deliver you the rest of the. Nobody likes it. Okay. I mean, I don't know. Imagine from like a development standpoint if someone was like, yeah, here's the first half of the project that I want done. It doesn't really matter. I guess you like could do that, but it's a lot easier. It's a lot easier if you have a full scoped out, you know, work order and you know exactly what it is that you're building. People generally like to have all of the Lego pieces come in the box rather than building half of the kit and then getting the rest of the pieces later and then putting them together at the end. In general, because there are aspects of the edit that do carry forward between the two parts. And it's not the kind of thing that I think nuts and bolts folks might necessarily consider. But okay, I want music that matches this tone. I want music that matches the tone of this, and I want them to kind of match the tone and transition well into each other. It's hard for me to do that when I don't have both pieces from the very start. And so look, I'm not saying no, I'm just saying that it's not that simple either.

Linus Sebastian (96:23)

No, I didn't think it was that simple. I'm trying to figure out how to solve for some of these things. You're talking about music. I wonder if we could almost have.

Luke Lafreniere (96:32)

I've pitched it.

Linus Sebastian (96:33)

What?

Luke Lafreniere (96:34)

Just a library of a finite number of tracks and they're just all in a folder and they're all, you know what, one transparia. And the thing is that that's the kind of cookie cutter thinking that people like you and I would look at and go, well, that just makes common sense. But it's also the kind of thing that the really audio visual creative folks who have driven a huge part of the advancements of our visual identity on our channel over the years would look at and go, well, yeah, no, that's not really how it works if you don't want things to start to feel samey and start to feel bland and boring.

Linus Sebastian (97:15)

It's an interesting thing though because like, I know of one successful channel and I'm not saying like, no, they're wrong, to be very clear. I just, I know one very successful Channel that I watch from time to time has a specific cadence to it. Someone will be talking in a particular style, and then they'll start talking in a different style. And when they. When they switch to that other style, the same track comes on every single time, multiple times in a video and every single video. And it works great.

Luke Lafreniere (97:46)

And that's a. But that's a stylistic thing.

Linus Sebastian (97:48)

It's a stylistic thing. What if the. The lab's backtrack was the same every time? Or what if there was, like, four, so that there's, like, a few things you could do with the previous one? I'm falling back the. To the same thing. Maybe they'd still hate it. Uh, I don't know. I. I think, like. Yeah, I don't want us to trench in on what we're doing because what we're doing is so incredibly heavy and slow. Um, and I'm not talking short circuit only. I'm talking practically everything.

Luke Lafreniere (98:16)

And TechLinked is still pretty lean. Fair. Yeah, TechLinked is lean. And like, some of the LTTs are. Are reasonably, reasonably lean. Like, looking. Looking back over the last little while, this video was. Was a really cool one. Unfortunately, it didn't perform that great.

Linus Sebastian (98:35)

The thumbnail is confusing.

Dan (98:38)

We've.

Luke Lafreniere (98:39)

It's gone through a few iterations. This is the best one we've got so far.

Linus Sebastian (98:42)

I don't know what to do to replace it. I have no ideas.

Luke Lafreniere (98:45)

Yeah, it is what it is at this point. It's. It's done what it's going to do. But anyway, the point is that this was a really cool video. This was not, like, a ridiculous amount of work. This was pretty close to what, like, our old productions might have been. We went into a cool place, we interviewed a cool guy, we tried out a cool product, and we said, peace out. See you later. So we do. We do do them sometimes, but I think we. We have a tendency to try to do it, to try to make a Michael Bay sequel every time. Like, one of the things that I've toyed with in my mind. Don't worry, I'm not going to do it. But one of the things I've toyed around with in my brain is, what if we just deleted the entire channel and then started over? Yeah, look, you're shaking your head.

Linus Sebastian (99:33)

I already told you, we're not pausing. I'm pausing. You can.

Luke Lafreniere (99:35)

I told you we're not going to do it. Because one of the. One of the things that, like, drives me nuts is we'll pitch a video and I'LL be like, samson's did it. Samson's did it. Except Simpsons is us. Like, we're up to almost seven.

Linus Sebastian (99:46)

Yeah, you need to just stop doing that. Just make it again.

Luke Lafreniere (99:50)

It's not that easy. Just do it.

Linus Sebastian (99:52)

No one cares. You release the video, like, nine years ago. You can release a new version of it now, and it's fine.

Luke Lafreniere (100:01)

That's also not necessarily even true. Like, we have had instances where we've done a similar video to what we've done in the past, and it will have extremely low momentum with our. With our core returning audience, which will create a death spiral of not promoting it to new.

Linus Sebastian (100:17)

How far back did you look?

Luke Lafreniere (100:19)

How far back did I look?

Linus Sebastian (100:20)

So this. This you're talking. Maybe you don't remember or whatever, but I'm gonna.

Luke Lafreniere (100:24)

I'll have to dig up a specific example for you. But there have been times when.

Linus Sebastian (100:27)

No, I believe you. There's been times. I'm just wondering, like.

Luke Lafreniere (100:30)

Like years ago, though. Like. Like it would have been a video from years prior.

Linus Sebastian (100:33)

Yeah, but how many years?

Luke Lafreniere (100:34)

I'd have to check.

Linus Sebastian (100:35)

It's like, there's. Our backlog is so deep. You could redo a video from a decade ago.

Luke Lafreniere (100:40)

Oh, I know.

Linus Sebastian (100:40)

Versus. You could redo a video from three.

Dan (100:42)

Years ago, re release it in HD and call it a remake.

Luke Lafreniere (100:45)

Here's an example. Here's an example. Thank you, Dan. I had missed Dan in this conversation.

Dan (100:50)

No, you didn't.

Luke Lafreniere (100:52)

Here's an example. So PC build in a fridge. Does it work? I did this 10 years ago. Do you think this video needs to be done again?

Linus Sebastian (101:03)

I don't know if it. I'm not saying it needs to be done again.

Luke Lafreniere (101:06)

Should it be done again? Could it be done again? Would it be done again? Could it be done again?

Linus Sebastian (101:13)

I really liked weird builds back when I was in the day. I still really liked the. The follow up on PC. The. The two parts of that got 1.3 million views. The comments on it are super, super positive. I really liked doing those types of things. I don't know if the current audience.

Luke Lafreniere (101:31)

They don't perform the way they used to.

Linus Sebastian (101:33)

I also sometimes wonder if that's almost like audience coaching. Like something that I think has been bad. Ooh, do I talk about this?

Luke Lafreniere (101:42)

Sure. I don't care. What's the worst that could happen? You could alienate the Land show viewership. You could destroy our relationship. I think you only live once.

Linus Sebastian (101:54)

Yeah, let's send it. I think the. And I. Oh, man. I word this. I think the. I am An LTT viewer. This is why has changed. And I know there's the whole, you know, I mean you guys are still doing some things like the sixteen hundred dollar all MSRP PC thing. Okay, cool.

Luke Lafreniere (102:21)

I think liquid metal killed my laptop. Now what is a pretty cool video.

Linus Sebastian (102:24)

Sure. I think however that like you know, the M5 MacBook is on short circuit.

Luke Lafreniere (102:33)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (102:33)

It's not on LTT if I am a. I watch LTT because I'm a tech person. I like the entertainment and I like keeping up with I like the entertainment. I like learning new things now and then and I like keeping up with what's happening in the tech world. The keeping up with what's happening in the tech world isn't really there anymore.

Luke Lafreniere (102:53)

No. I think it's moved over to techlinked in a big way when it comes to like news and announcements we didn't talk about. And I think that the product side has moved over to short circuit in a big way.

Linus Sebastian (103:03)

And I don't think, I think those things can still happen.

Luke Lafreniere (103:07)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (103:07)

But I think they can be different experiences.

Luke Lafreniere (103:09)

So that's what's, that's what kind of drives me crazy is like when we, when we broke out the additional channels, the idea always was that it would be. It was supposed to cover the same stuff but in a different style in a different way that is like non preventative in practice. It hasn't really worked out that way for both logistical and also nonsensical reasons. Like logistically we're not going to buy two Apple Vision Pros so only one team is going to get to look at it at a time. And if one team prepares both the short circuit and the ltt, it's going.

Linus Sebastian (103:50)

To end up feeling same.

Luke Lafreniere (103:50)

You can kind of run into trouble. And I think a great example of that is the Xbox Ally X where Plouffe did a wonderful job of this short circuit that got just over a hundred thousand views, making it one of the lowest performing in that cohort of video uploads. That's rough. Whereas the LTT video one banged did well, it didn't. It didn't bang the announcement one did the announcement one hit and then by the time the review went up, the momentum around the Xbox Ally X was a lot lower. The excitement was like way lower. Like I don't think that's going to happen with the Steam Machine.

Linus Sebastian (104:34)

Were you guys on launch?

Luke Lafreniere (104:35)

I think the. Yeah. Oh yeah. I think the Steam Machine is going to maintain that excitement and maintain that conversation and maintain that momentum. But what happened was because people. Plouffe was actually the writer for the LTT and because both he and I talked extensively about our experience using it.

Linus Sebastian (104:56)

You start to watch the Short Circuit after you've watched the LTT and you're like, I've already seen this story just.

Luke Lafreniere (105:01)

Because, and, and that's not because we're the same person or that we're like afraid to disagree with each other across our different channels or whatever. It's just because we're two kind of like minded dudes who kind of work at the same place, who kind of talked a lot about the devices and had an opportunity to cause he convinced me of some things that I didn't feel and I convinced him of some things that he didn't feel. And so our opinions ended up pretty close.

Linus Sebastian (105:25)

Here we go. Here we go. Okay. Yeah, with my setup for Short Circuit, you unbox it basically when it comes through the door.

Luke Lafreniere (105:34)

Yep.

Linus Sebastian (105:35)

If it's going to be labs tested, it's going to need to be labs tested for ltt, short circuit, whatever. Anyways, so it can go to labs for that and then it can go to the LTT team.

Luke Lafreniere (105:47)

So would you like to hear what the flow was supposed to be?

Linus Sebastian (105:50)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (105:50)

When we started the lab?

Linus Sebastian (105:51)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (105:52)

Every.

Linus Sebastian (105:53)

I genuinely don't know. So like.

Luke Lafreniere (105:55)

Yeah, well, because it hasn't been relevant because it was never really. It was never really. We never got anywhere near realizing this vision. So the vision was supposed to be that the procurement team would get one of everything. Like literally 11, 14, 100k, 14 100f CPU.

Linus Sebastian (106:18)

I do know this part.

Luke Lafreniere (106:19)

14, 200. Okay, that's not a CPU. Don't worry about it. The point is they would get one of everything. If it was, they'd get it literally everything. The reason that the lab is in the main inventory warehouse is because things were supposed to go straight from the procurement door to the lab. It was supposed to be tested before inventory intact even goes on a shelf. So we would test it, Lab would do some analysis. They would put up. So they would create a product page on the lab's website, add it to our comparison database and you know, do all of that stuff. And then in that process they would find diamonds in the rough or they would find market underperformers. And that would go into like, that would be flagged, I guess, you know, in airtable. We didn't have airtable yet, but currently now. Yeah, that would be flagged in airtable and it would automatically go over to writers meeting where we would once a week be going through. Okay. Here's products that could be that are interesting from both a standout and an underperforming perspective for potential feature on Short Circuit or ltt. As we scaled that up across more verticals, we were supposed to have additional channels that are completely dedicated to those individual product verticals. Cpu, gpu, monitor, power supply, you know, whatever PSU circuit is the first of. Not because we thought it would get the most views or because we thought it was worth putting the most research resources into, but because we thought it would be relatively simple to templatize the production of it. They're all the same shape and size.

Linus Sebastian (108:00)

Well established vertical for us at the time. And Lucas had a good grip on it.

Luke Lafreniere (108:04)

Exactly. So then from there the idea wasn't that Labs would go and have to do like a bunch of work for that short circuit or for that LTT to be made. The idea behind it was that they had already done the work for the. For the website and for Short Circuit, the host would simply pull up, you know it with aerosnap, they'd have the manufacturer website on the one side, they'd have the Labs article on the other side, they'd read through it and they would do their. An informed unboxing. I guess I don't think I've ever phrased it that way before. I've always kind of called it unboxing plus. But what it's supposed to be is an informed unboxing. And not just informed by the manufacturer, but informed by like some independently validated data. And then it just kind of. It kind of got confusing.

Linus Sebastian (108:59)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (109:00)

That vision is also like optimistic. Yes, I know. I mean. Oh, yeah, no, no, it's super wise. Oh, I know.

Linus Sebastian (109:14)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (109:15)

No, no, no, no, I know.

Linus Sebastian (109:16)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (109:16)

I know.

Linus Sebastian (109:17)

I was like bruh, years from that now.

Luke Lafreniere (109:21)

I mean, but I know. But I never said do it tomorrow.

Linus Sebastian (109:24)

Oh, no, yeah, for sure.

Luke Lafreniere (109:25)

You know, like it was that. But that was the ultimate.

Linus Sebastian (109:28)

I also think one of the kind of like flaws there, if I can poke at it a little bit. Sure is the currently most interesting products for people, as far as I can tell, are either, you know, mainline cpu, gpu.

Luke Lafreniere (109:45)

Cool.

Linus Sebastian (109:46)

We have a launch every two years, so whatever. Outside of that, it's phones, laptops, handhelds. It's extremely complicated. Yeah, fair enough. It's extremely complicated devices that include pretty much the entire testing suite and take a very long time to test. And I know you can say I want a lot of things to be super automated. Great. There are parts of this that are not really going to get there. No 100% display testing is going to be horrible forever.

Luke Lafreniere (110:15)

And I can tell you right now, like, that's a.

Linus Sebastian (110:17)

In regards to time and stuff, that's.

Luke Lafreniere (110:19)

A big part of the reason that I think we ultimately made the mistake. I mean, I don't think there's any way to sugarcoat it. Right. I think that's a big part of why we ultimately made the mistake of branching out into so many verticals at once. Because we recognized exactly that. That the direction we were going was these tightly integrated devices and recognized that if we didn't have a CPU test suite and a GPU test suite and a display test suite and a battery life testing suite, then we weren't going to be able to. We weren't going to be able to test anything that people would care about. We needed literally all of them. And that sucks.

Linus Sebastian (111:00)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (111:00)

But.

Linus Sebastian (111:01)

And it makes the lift of testing a lot of this stuff like you're talking.

Luke Lafreniere (111:04)

It's enormous.

Linus Sebastian (111:05)

Every single thing through the door when, when there's so many phones and laptops and things and there's so many of those that no one will ever care about, no matter what, does not matter. And yes, there will be diamonds in the rough, but you're digging through a lot of rough to find very small diamonds.

Luke Lafreniere (111:26)

Yeah. I mean, that was the, that was the hope it came from. I can tell you it came from a good place. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (111:34)

And I think we're. We've kind of. We've somewhat, you know, he's talking. This was the original direction. We've somewhat shifted now. We still have some of that identity and there's still some of that identity that we will be actualizing.

Luke Lafreniere (111:45)

And if we, and if we could do that in the longer term, I think there are verticals where it is.

Linus Sebastian (111:50)

Real with certain things. I do think it'll happen. We're not, we're not completely jumping off.

Luke Lafreniere (111:54)

I think we could have a database of every gpu. I don't, I don't, I don't think that's.

Linus Sebastian (111:58)

GPU is probably one of the ones that I think make more sense. CPU gets a little sketch when it comes to like bio settings and little weird other things that go on gpu. But like, I think we can also get there with cpu, to be clear.

Luke Lafreniere (112:10)

Yeah, I think so too.

Linus Sebastian (112:11)

Just a little further out, I think.

Dan (112:12)

I think.

Linus Sebastian (112:12)

But GPU I think is probably the first one that that vision could be realized with. Yeah, I think there's even other really cool things we could do with GPUs. Like, you've done. Talk about.

Luke Lafreniere (112:20)

I think power supply could be done. I think that it will be very challenging to parallelize the testing because unless we buy another power supply, I don't.

Linus Sebastian (112:29)

Think it's ever going to be worth it, personally.

Luke Lafreniere (112:30)

We're. Well, we're effectively stuck at about one a week, so.

Linus Sebastian (112:35)

Well, part of that said, it's all Lucas, so we need someone else.

Luke Lafreniere (112:40)

I thought he told me that just running all the routines takes like days. And then if they fail, we have to do them again on another one. So it just like it takes about a week, he told me.

Linus Sebastian (112:52)

Sounds realistic. I haven't dove into that significantly because my bigger bottleneck has been just him as a person.

Luke Lafreniere (112:58)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (112:58)

Because he's great. So I need him doing other things as well. So we need like a mini Lucas who can do.

Luke Lafreniere (113:05)

Tordurk says just clone Lucas. Next problem. Where are we going to get enough biomass?

Linus Sebastian (113:10)

Well, yeah, and then you seen how.

Luke Lafreniere (113:11)

Tall this man is?

Linus Sebastian (113:12)

He doesn't fit inside. Inside the machine. It doesn't work, dude. We were. We were getting on a plane recently and when we were standing on the. Is it called, like. What is it called? The little bridge between the big bridge and the plane? The little bridge that has, like the netting on the side.

Luke Lafreniere (113:29)

Let's call it a little bridge with netting on the side.

Linus Sebastian (113:31)

The gangway. The jet bridge. Not the big jet bridge, though, just the little one that goes from the big jet bridge to the plane.

Luke Lafreniere (113:39)

We all know what you're talking about.

Linus Sebastian (113:40)

A specific name, whatever. Anyways, yeah, we're.

Luke Lafreniere (113:42)

The line of size bridge.

Linus Sebastian (113:43)

He was standing on that and his head was over the top of the plane.

Luke Lafreniere (113:48)

Yeah. I'm gonna pretend to be surprised, but this is someone for me to converse with. I literally need to, like, expose my jugular. It's literal submission.

Linus Sebastian (114:02)

Oh, no. Anyways, that's pretty epic.

Luke Lafreniere (114:08)

Anyway, I don't think anything is off the table in terms of, you know, how we can. How we can optimize the, you know, optimize our workflows and, and. And try to deliver, you know, the content. You guys want to watch, Right.

Linus Sebastian (114:22)

One of the things is, you know, in the. In the wake of things, we did a lot of process adding and I think we need to look at entire systems beginning to end and reevaluate how things flow through them with the idea of basically to a certain degree, and this is going to sound scary to people, but to a certain degree, like starting over with how things flow through the company. I'm not saying delete the channel. I'm not saying anything.

Luke Lafreniere (114:51)

No, I can do that. No, I actually have that power.

Linus Sebastian (114:53)

I would rather you just leave it and make LTT2 but that would also be incredibly stupid and you shouldn't do either of them. But why would you just is so dumb. Don't do that. But like. Yeah, because there's. There's so many process loops and like there will be you know with the MacBook video with the low power mode thing there was comments like it's okay, they'll add another process and catch this next time and it's like cool man.

Luke Lafreniere (115:20)

But also no, if anything I think we have like too many processes and.

Linus Sebastian (115:26)

I think we're at the point where we have so many processes that the fact that we have so many processes is starting to introduce errors however.

Luke Lafreniere (115:34)

So like that one was a pretty unique example actually because it's a MacBook so I don't daily drive Mac OS which we know but what was new about it? Very little of it was actually the Mac OS part. The new thing about it was that it had a new processor which I have. I'm perfectly comfortable talking about and so that's. And that. So that's a video where without the pre testing I would have had damn near nothing to say. Even like they didn't change the keyboard, they didn't change the display, they changed practically nothing on the machine other than what Labs tested.

Linus Sebastian (116:23)

I did. I did. So the only one I've done was the Apple Vision Pro. Yeah and I found that personally that's.

Luke Lafreniere (116:31)

A hyper experiential device though personally the.

Linus Sebastian (116:35)

One pager was not particularly useful.

Luke Lafreniere (116:37)

No, it wouldn't be.

Linus Sebastian (116:38)

I basically never looked at.

Luke Lafreniere (116:39)

However I can tell you you wouldn't have survived shooting the MacBook M5 without the one.

Linus Sebastian (116:46)

What I'm saying is there is an ignorance gap here because I haven't done so it's tough Labs heavy. One pager or a device like you're describing where the difference is almost purely performance.

Luke Lafreniere (116:57)

No, it's non cosmetic is a big part of the problem.

Linus Sebastian (117:01)

Sure, yeah yeah yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (117:01)

Like I can comment on you know transparent elements in the updated macOS a little bit.

Linus Sebastian (117:08)

Not much though is it acceptable? Yeah if that is just a bit of a weird video where the labs performance portion of that video is a lot longer.

Luke Lafreniere (117:19)

Every process unboxing one is shorter. That has like an exception path.

Linus Sebastian (117:23)

No, I don't think it's an exception path.

Luke Lafreniere (117:25)

You don't think so I think you.

Linus Sebastian (117:26)

And let me explain because I understand why you would say that that makes sense but Let me, let me kind of restart here for a second. So I don't think anything changes in the process, but if you just don't have a ton to say. Yeah, you open the laptop, say what you do have to say and then go. This is a mostly performance change. So good luck lab, and toss it off. And then we have a longer portion of the video. It doesn't actually change. It's not a process. Change doesn't change the flow. Everything happens exactly the same, but it's just, you know, if the important part is the performance, there's more lab stuff. Basically the lab section scales by how important the performance section of it is all the way down to zero. Because there are some devices that just don't get it because there is no performance aspect with some of the things on short circuit. And it can scale up if there's more. Not to 100.

Luke Lafreniere (118:24)

But then. Okay, hear me out. Why did we even bother to shoot with the host? Why doesn't labs just do the short circuit? That's his ultimate plan. He's taking over. He wants to be the L in lmg. No, this is me. This is. This is a coup. I finally figured it out. I'm on to you. You're about to coup me.

Linus Sebastian (118:48)

Yep. LMG. It's mine. LTT. It's mine. LTT store. It's mine. LTT labs.com. it's mine.

Luke Lafreniere (118:58)

That's why he named himself Luke.

Linus Sebastian (118:59)

It's all mine. No, I think it can scale and like. Okay, that is an interesting point. But.

Luke Lafreniere (119:13)

Like, here, let's have a look at the channel. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (119:15)

I don't want to make it where it's a process change, but I do wonder.

Luke Lafreniere (119:17)

This is one. This is one that should for sure.

Linus Sebastian (119:20)

Not be lab hosted.

Luke Lafreniere (119:22)

Well, okay, hold on, hold on a second. Because I.

Linus Sebastian (119:26)

There's so much subjective when it comes to mice.

Luke Lafreniere (119:28)

There is, but I would make the argument that the subjectivity only matters once this product surpasses a certain threshold of objective goodness. So a mouse is. A mouse can only be relevant at all if it's like not a complete. Because this is a gaming mouse. Remember, I'm specific. This is specifically a gaming mouse. So unless it's tracking is, you know, on par and latency is on par with the rest of the industry. And to be clear, this is a Pro X Superlight 2C. I'm sure it's fine, but if it isn't fine, then we basically need to establish that first.

Linus Sebastian (120:08)

There's a ton of startups in the, in the mice space.

Luke Lafreniere (120:10)

And then we can get into the. And then we can get into the subjectivity. Right? So. So sometimes, I guess the point I'm trying to make is sometimes the order of operations is not necessarily even the same, like a monitor. I think there's. I think there's a fair bit you can talk about. You can unbox it. You can talk about the size, the display technology. You can talk about if it has some cool aesthetic, sort of, you know, RGB on the back. Oh, oh, oh. We have the all transparent PC coming on ltt. Everything's clear. Old school. Acrylic case. Acrylic case. Power supply. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (120:47)

It's been a while.

Luke Lafreniere (120:47)

Water cooling, of course, with acrylic hardline tubing. A full acrylic desk made of, like, inch and a half thick.

Linus Sebastian (120:55)

And sometimes you go so far with things.

Luke Lafreniere (120:58)

We found a monitor. Did you need the desk with an acrylic back? We borrowed the desk. So it wasn't actually.

Linus Sebastian (121:07)

I wonder, with an acrylic back. Was that one of those, like, prison ones?

Luke Lafreniere (121:10)

No.

Dan (121:10)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (121:11)

It's just an Asus gaming monitor. They did one with an acrylic back. It looks so cool. Anyway, sorry, that is sick. Yeah. So, yeah, is there a cool aesthetic thing and then you can kind of hand over to labs, but, like, it just.

Linus Sebastian (121:22)

So what you're saying is right now that it doesn't seem like it works with every vertical? Because I want to keep working on this because we need to find more efficient ways to flow.

Luke Lafreniere (121:30)

But even this one's kind of tough, right? Because, okay, do I hand off to labs first before I game on it and give my impressions? And then do we come back to me, like, gaming on it, and I'm just, like, talking about how it, like, feels pretty good, man. Or do I game on it for a bit and then I hand it off to labs for their objective analysis? Either way, either order, we could end up with conflicting information, which I don't love. It's not clean.

Linus Sebastian (122:03)

I don't. Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (122:05)

And that's nothing against Plouffe. I mean, this man, he owns a display.

Linus Sebastian (122:09)

He does own a display.

Luke Lafreniere (122:10)

He does own a display.

Linus Sebastian (122:12)

And so I think he might own more than one.

Luke Lafreniere (122:15)

You know what we actually have. We have that video coming too.

Linus Sebastian (122:18)

He might have been lying to us because he said a display. Nick Plouffe, he's a man who owns.

Luke Lafreniere (122:22)

Displays, officially owns two displays. He bought one for $70 for whale land. And we did a full LTT on it. On his journey of discovering that he wants a monitor that's easier to Move.

Linus Sebastian (122:35)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (122:35)

And is better for lands it might not want to.

Linus Sebastian (122:38)

He might be sketched out on moving his nice one.

Luke Lafreniere (122:40)

And that, he found out, could be obtained for as little as US$70 for a perfectly cromulent gaming monitor.

Linus Sebastian (122:48)

Do you have one of those, those Roccat monitor carrying bags?

Luke Lafreniere (122:52)

No, but that sounds amazing.

Linus Sebastian (122:54)

Oh, I've got one at my desk.

Dan (122:56)

Oh, really?

Linus Sebastian (122:56)

Yeah, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (122:57)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (122:57)

It's not actually mine, it's technically Darius's, but I have one somewhere as well.

Luke Lafreniere (123:01)

Excellent. Yeah. Like, I don't know what, I don't know what you can say about a pair of headphones.

Linus Sebastian (123:09)

Honestly, I didn't want to bring it up because I'm trying to get this idea moving, but I saw that thumbnail and was like, yeah, but here's a thing, here's a thing. The headphones vertical. And I understand you're going to give pushback because you're like. That's right now. That's right. That person. That's an individual thing. That's not the whole. Those are all fair comments. Yeah, but we could have just the same person do the whole thing.

Luke Lafreniere (123:36)

I mean, that's. Yeah, but there are complications with that right now, Mr. Well, let's talk about that offline.

Linus Sebastian (123:43)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (123:43)

Yeah. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (123:44)

It might be even easier though. Okay, but, but totally we can talk about later and I understand.

Luke Lafreniere (123:51)

But like, like there's certain stuff that labs doesn't even need to touch. I don't need Labs to tell me about this phone controller. I'm just going to use it.

Linus Sebastian (123:59)

What? We could talk about input lacing. We could talk about.

Luke Lafreniere (124:04)

Yeah, but I don't care because if I'm seriously gaming, I'm not using a phone because I'm not a Gen Alpha.

Linus Sebastian (124:09)

Yeah, but that might be a problem. Your ability to relate to the young children.

Luke Lafreniere (124:15)

No, no, no.

Linus Sebastian (124:15)

Sixes and their sevens and you're honestly not even.

Luke Lafreniere (124:18)

You're not even wrong. Yeah, you're not even wrong because that.

Linus Sebastian (124:22)

Actually, I mean, that got more views than I expected.

Dan (124:24)

Yeah, I know, right?

Linus Sebastian (124:26)

It's kind of funky.

Luke Lafreniere (124:28)

I'm that good.

Linus Sebastian (124:32)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (124:34)

But where's my thing? Ah, let's go.

Linus Sebastian (124:37)

But there's just. There's a bunch of stuff and like. Okay, so I do. I do want to figure something out. I. I honestly like that there was holes poked in the idea, but it's, but it doesn't necessarily seem like it's completely gone. At least there's.

Luke Lafreniere (124:51)

You know what else is not completely gone? All the topics on the land show here.

Linus Sebastian (124:58)

But yeah, I think we got to get back to 6 on LTT. I think one of those ways is bringing back reviews.

Luke Lafreniere (125:04)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (125:04)

Maybe seven.

Luke Lafreniere (125:05)

It's officially not cool anymore.

Linus Sebastian (125:07)

Yeah, you're welcome. I think it's been not cool for like.

Luke Lafreniere (125:13)

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Dan (125:14)

Now this is a time to start using it then.

Luke Lafreniere (125:16)

But now the line. So it's officially not cool.

Linus Sebastian (125:20)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (125:21)

It wasn't official before.

Linus Sebastian (125:22)

Are your kids saying that now?

Luke Lafreniere (125:24)

No.

Linus Sebastian (125:24)

No. They don't care.

Luke Lafreniere (125:25)

No.

Linus Sebastian (125:26)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (125:29)

They're not really allowed, like social media apps, so.

Linus Sebastian (125:33)

Nice. Good. Yeah, awesome.

Luke Lafreniere (125:35)

They don't really like great parenting. See this crap?

Linus Sebastian (125:37)

I am being serious, just to be clear.

Luke Lafreniere (125:39)

Yeah, they'll pick it up occasionally at school and stuff.

Linus Sebastian (125:42)

Yeah, sure.

Luke Lafreniere (125:43)

Because there'll be other kids that are just scrolling brain rot.

Linus Sebastian (125:46)

Yeah, that sucks. All right.

Luke Lafreniere (125:51)

Float plane announcement is what the thing above Dan's monitor says.

Linus Sebastian (125:54)

Oh, fun.

Luke Lafreniere (125:56)

We know that you're hungry for the Linus Torvalds collab video to come out. It's going to take some time to cook, but what we can provide is some teasers from the day as well as some. Some footage snippets. This is one example that we have over on floatplane. LMG staff hangs out with Linus Torvalds after the shoot. If you want to get some idea of how cool other Linus is, literally no one dared. No one dared to press this button.

Linus Sebastian (126:31)

Really unnecessary to go do it right now, by the way. You really don't have to do that.

Luke Lafreniere (126:35)

They generally don't. The floatplane audience is like, actually not like ups. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Based. Thank you for that. Anyway, people are freaking loving it. So just again, I've talked about this already, but he was so generous with his time. He just hung around and chatted with our staff for basically as long as they wanted to chat with him. And it was. It was flipping awesome. It was such a cool experience for people. People here. Like, honestly, it was one of those things that makes me like, proud as an employer to even run a place that was cool enough to have a guest that was a big deal. Enough that people on our staff get this like one on one experience with him because he was willing to come to our building. You know, it's like, how incre. How insane is that? And I don't. He doesn't see it that way, I don't think. No, probably not at all. But I do. Yeah, it was amazing. Anyway, so that's. That's one of the floatplane exclusives that we have. We also have apparently the first 10 minutes of the Linus Torvald collab worked hard to get the first 10 minutes of our highly anticipated collab video. I don't know if I want to play this. Oh, whoa. There he is. Signing my copy of his autobiography, though, so that's pretty cool. Oh, so did we. Did we actually edit it? Oh, interesting. You know what? No audio. No audio. You're gonna have to subscribe to Float Plane.

Linus Sebastian (128:01)

That is intriguing. Wow.

Luke Lafreniere (128:23)

Oh, the. The awkward energy is high. Palpable.

Linus Sebastian (128:28)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (128:30)

Anyway, not only that, but we have both weekend videos uploaded to Float Plane, thanks to Plouf, who owns a display.

Linus Sebastian (128:37)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (128:37)

And our editors, Peter and Tyson. It says open the link and make it live on destream. How is Elijah? As brain rot as he is and as high functioning as he is, isn't this Sammy? Did I say Elijah? Sorry, I meant Sammy. Yeah, yeah. No, not. Not Elijah. Elijah's.

Linus Sebastian (128:55)

No, I know.

Luke Lafreniere (128:56)

Yeah, we understand why Elijah's the way he is with Sammy. It's confusing. Yeah. So, okay, here it is. Oh, yeah, here it is. Plouffe's second display that he owns.

Linus Sebastian (129:07)

That's actually awesome.

Luke Lafreniere (129:09)

I'm going to add that. Plouf owns a second display.

Linus Sebastian (129:14)

Yeah. Now he can't say that he owns a display. He has to say that he owns displays.

Luke Lafreniere (129:19)

Truly a great day for Canada and therefore the world. Okay. And it's live. Cool. So that's up. And so, yeah, we're trying to do a little bit more early access, which is kind of neat. Were also. Oh, this is going up.

Dan (129:38)

Oh.

Luke Lafreniere (129:41)

We'Re doing another deep fake and generated video. Video, which you know about because Nick from the lab has been deeply, pun intended, involved in the creation of this. Yeah, apparently that's also going up right now. Boom. And boom.

Linus Sebastian (130:02)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (130:03)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (130:03)

Some of that is wild.

Luke Lafreniere (130:06)

Oh, it's pretty cool. And if you, like, know me well, you know, you would look at it.

Linus Sebastian (130:11)

And you'd go, there's parts of it.

Luke Lafreniere (130:13)

That are close, but also that.

Linus Sebastian (130:15)

But yeah, you can tell. But you can tell. Like you said, if you. If you know people, like, man, people will send me clips of like, oh, my God, someone dubbed Linus's audio. It sounds just like him. It'll sound like, like a Boston accent to me. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This doesn't sound like Linus at all. But I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (130:34)

Oh, cool. I am logged into Twitter right now. Someone sent me. Someone sent me this. Oh. Because I probably logged in for the show at some point. No, no, I'm gonna bring it Up Nano Banana Pro. I haven't actually played around with this particular image editor, but someone just sent me a. A shot of me building a computer with Anne Hathaway.

Linus Sebastian (130:58)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (130:59)

That is surprisingly convincing. Like, this was one.

Linus Sebastian (131:04)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (131:04)

That. In this. At this size, when I first looked at it, like, initial glance, I went, I don't remember collabing with this person. I didn't actually recognize them as Anne Hathaway. Sure. But I was just like, that's weird. I don't remember. I don't remember that set. And I don't. Wait, no. Yeah. We've never made that shirt. Oh, this is AI. But it took me. It took me more than half a.

Linus Sebastian (131:28)

Second when I glanced over.

Luke Lafreniere (131:30)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (131:31)

I moved away from the mic. Sorry. When I glanced over, I first thought, like, really? He's gonna promote, like someone's tweet of a video collab? That's a weird way to do that. And then when I saw it over there, I was like, oh, yeah. It's just not real. You can kind of tell in your face. It's. It's pretty good.

Luke Lafreniere (131:45)

Yeah. You can kind of tell my teeth aren't right. But it's like. It's nailed. The earrings, it's nailed. The old hairstyle. It's the old. It's my younger Linus hairstyle on my older Linus face.

Linus Sebastian (131:57)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (131:58)

So there's little things like that, but the hands are pretty good. It even has my wedding band.

Linus Sebastian (132:04)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (132:05)

Which is pretty wild.

Linus Sebastian (132:06)

You would never wear an anti static strap.

Luke Lafreniere (132:09)

I have fake news. I have fake news. At times, the continuity of things is somewhat kind of believable in some cases. Like, that looks like a real tool.

Linus Sebastian (132:22)

What is that?

Luke Lafreniere (132:22)

Not one for building PCs, but a.

Linus Sebastian (132:24)

Tool of some sort of blue thing on the mat.

Luke Lafreniere (132:26)

I think that's a measuring tape.

Linus Sebastian (132:28)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (132:29)

It doesn't know what tools people use for building PCs. It doesn't know what exactly PC, like desktop PC cables look like. But this could look like an electronics cable of some sort. This too somewhat believable. It. It screwed up where GPUs go because they go more up here and less like right against the. The bottom grill of a PC.

Linus Sebastian (132:49)

Yeah, the case looks pretty good.

Luke Lafreniere (132:53)

The case looks pretty believable.

Linus Sebastian (132:56)

I can see the bottom of case looking like that.

Luke Lafreniere (132:58)

All the logos are pretty good. Pretty good for the most part. You know, this looks a little funky. It's trying to do shiny. And it doesn't really know. It doesn't really know how to handle the lighting.

Linus Sebastian (133:11)

To me, honestly, when you zoomed in There. It felt like they were trying to do like a wafer texture.

Luke Lafreniere (133:15)

Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah. The hands. The hands, though, they're not bad. This pinky looks a little off, but it also just looks like she could, like, kind of have it up here like that. Yeah, this is a little weird.

Linus Sebastian (133:29)

No, it's just squished against the fan.

Luke Lafreniere (133:31)

But not. Not that weird, man. Anyway, so the video is about following up the one we did five years ago where we deep faked me on short circuit and then made the LTT about how we did it. The main focus this time is, hey, that thing we did before, you can totally still do that, by the way. It's way easier. Like, way easier. And it's not necessarily easy to do what we did. Where I did. We end up using the clips where I juggle computers. I can't remember.

Linus Sebastian (134:14)

Oh, yeah. Those things might be a little bit more difficult. I've heard the argument of, like, doing this first frame, last frame thing isn't going to be viable. I think that is so completely wrong.

Luke Lafreniere (134:24)

What do you mean by viable?

Linus Sebastian (134:26)

I've heard an argument. Okay, so this idea is you get the first frame and the last frame, and then you can kind of gen the things between it.

Luke Lafreniere (134:33)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (134:34)

My argument is that I think the way a lot of this is going to be used is to change things that exist, which is exactly how that would work.

Luke Lafreniere (134:41)

Oh, oh. So when you say so people are saying it won't be viable to get a first frame and a last frame to make someone do something that they wouldn't do. No, I.

Linus Sebastian (134:51)

That is absolutely a thing.

Luke Lafreniere (134:52)

I totally agree. Especially because most of what it's being used for right now by scammers is to make people say something that they didn't say. Yeah. And if all you need is a frame of them sitting in a place with their mouth closed, you could even use the same frame for your first and last frame. So we did. We did end up. We did end up going full challenge. So it. We don't have to have the audio playing. But basically the first line is. My mom always told me that building a computer is not enough. You have to learn to juggle computers.

Linus Sebastian (135:21)

That's crazy. That's.

Luke Lafreniere (135:27)

That's why I take Linus pills.

Linus Sebastian (135:29)

And like, I can tell here for sure. But that's great. Like, you're. Yeah, the mouth was a little weird there. You morph here. In my opinion, it gets you confused. And like, you turn it to David right there, Right there, right at the end when you're walking through the door, you're like. Physiology changes.

Luke Lafreniere (135:43)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (135:45)

But this is crazy. Dude, that's crazy, man. That's actually nuts again. I can tell, but like. Oh, not by a ton. And if I wasn't really paying attention, if it was side monitor content, whatever, I might not really have noticed.

Luke Lafreniere (136:05)

That's what we're kind of hoping to get people with when. When this goes live on YouTube.

Linus Sebastian (136:09)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (136:09)

Is if they're not, like, really paying attention.

Linus Sebastian (136:12)

It's like, wait, what?

Luke Lafreniere (136:13)

Like. Yeah. And. And with the idea being that were kind of highlighting how, you know, how good it's gotten and also just again how easy it's gotten. The last say, the pass that this.

Linus Sebastian (136:30)

Isn'T very well done either. That can be made perfectly. I haven't seen one ever, so I don't necessarily agree.

Luke Lafreniere (136:38)

Perfectly.

Linus Sebastian (136:39)

Yeah, I don't. I don't agree with that.

Luke Lafreniere (136:41)

Yeah. I don't. I've never seen one done perfectly. I'd love to see it stay the path. If you want to go ahead and throw that in the chat. We. We'd love to check out. Yeah. You don't know when. You don't know what. But like, you need to give. You have to give an example. And remember, it's a lot simpler to do something where somebody's just sitting that might look so convincing that you would say, oh, yeah, that generated video looks. Looks perfect. But something where people move and interact with other objects and stuff.

Linus Sebastian (137:14)

Okay, well, it's the. It's the you can't prove me wrong argument.

Luke Lafreniere (137:20)

Yeah. That's not how that works. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

Linus Sebastian (137:23)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (137:23)

That's like a. That's a fundamental law of arguments.

Linus Sebastian (137:28)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (137:28)

Okay. Also in other news, we have. What is with all these floatplane exclusives? He has me announcing James's theater room is better than Linus's. Linus never invited me to a state room. That is so not true.

Linus Sebastian (137:43)

He never did.

Luke Lafreniere (137:43)

That is a hundred percent not true. The theater room was part of, like, lands and. And. And pool parties at my house.

Linus Sebastian (137:53)

Sammy wasn't invited.

Luke Lafreniere (137:54)

Sammy was 100 invited.

Linus Sebastian (137:56)

Never been invited. There was a. On the. There's a footnote on the invite that specifically said if your name is Sammy, you. You're not invited.

Dan (138:01)

Yeah, it was pretty explicit.

Luke Lafreniere (138:03)

Specifically not true.

Linus Sebastian (138:04)

It was pretty explicit.

Luke Lafreniere (138:05)

Yeah. Anyway, the handbook actually.

Dan (138:11)

Page four, subsection six.

Linus Sebastian (138:16)

See, Dan knows it off dome because he has to keep Sammy away from things all the time.

Luke Lafreniere (138:19)

Yeah.

Dan (138:20)

It's actually part of my responsibility.

Linus Sebastian (138:21)

It is. Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (138:22)

You guys are ridiculous in other floatplanes.

Dan (138:26)

Just like Sammy, if you let him in a theater room it gets ugly.

Luke Lafreniere (138:29)

In other floatplane news, we are going to be having a price increase on floatplane but the doc that I am.

Linus Sebastian (138:37)

Supposed to I can figure this out.

Dan (138:40)

I can share it for you if you want.

Luke Lafreniere (138:41)

I do not have access to so I would love to. I would love to walk you guys through how it's going to work, but I cannot. So in the meantime, why don't I run through our sponsors and we'll get to that in a moment. The show is brought to you today by Wooger. When you're the world renowned action star Linus Tech Wick, you know how much precision and immersion matters. Sure, you can have your monitors, your controller vibration, your nice speakers, but thanks to Woojer's Vest 4, you can now feel the action in your games. It's a high fidelity haptic vest that hooks up to any device via Bluetooth, a 3.5 millimeter jack, or USB C. And sound gets translated into a physical sensation. So when a grenade goes off in your favorite Keanu movie, you don't just hear it, you'll feel that impact in your chest. And it's not just generic vibrations with a 1 Hz to 250 Hz frequency range, a low bassy 30 Hz, it hits pretty different compared to a higher pitched frequency. Plus six transducers spaced around your torso give you 360 degrees of said immersion. It even lasts through long gaming sessions with its 10 hour battery life. So keep your hands off my dog and get your hands on a woojer4vest@woojer.com Wan the show is also brought to you by Squarespace. When you're building anything, whether it's a skyscraper or a side hustle, the right tools can be a game changer. And whether you're working in construction, video production or liposuction, I don't know where that one comes in. But whatever you're doing, it's important to have a website. Please tell me you don't have footage of liposuction. Don't show it. Thankfully, you can count on Squarespace to make a brand for your business. And now with their Design Intelligence tool, you can draft and design a personalized website with or without blueprints. Surely you want to get paid for your work too, so Squarespace lets you set up a payment system with just a few clicks, supporting major methods like Klarna, Ach, Debit, Apple Pay, and more. Once your site is up and running, their measurement tools break down A multitude of analytics to track your business's performance. We even use Squarespace to design our linusmediagroup.com website. So start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com wan. What was that? Footage of someone breaking into a place. Neat. All right. Luke, did you get the thing?

Linus Sebastian (141:31)

I did. You should be shared on it.

Luke Lafreniere (141:34)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (141:34)

You try to load again. If not, I can just like hand you my phone. But you should be shared on it.

Luke Lafreniere (141:38)

You just offer to handy me your phone?

Linus Sebastian (141:41)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (141:43)

Nice.

Linus Sebastian (141:45)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (141:47)

All right. We've talked about it, We've teased it. We're finally doing it. The price of a monthly floatplane subscription is going up. But before you freak out. Yeah. No, not for you. Floatplane subscribers, both OGs and current full rate subscribers, will be not affected by the price increase as long as they do not cancel and resubscribe. So how's this going to work? If you are a new or returning subscriber, the new prices will be $7.99 US for the Supporter tier and 12 US$99 for the Supporter plus tier, effective December 31st. That's right. If you are a subscriber before December 31st, you can lock in at our legacy rates of 5 and $10 for the two tiers respectively. So you can go to LMG GG Floatplane right now to sign up.

Linus Sebastian (142:52)

One quick sec. Katos already pointed this out. We only talk about monthly prices here. There will be yearly ones as well.

Luke Lafreniere (142:58)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (142:59)

Yes. You are still grandfathered. If you're on the yearly plan, it'll. It'll be okay.

Luke Lafreniere (143:03)

Yeah. Yeah. It's not. You don't have to switch to a monthly plan.

Linus Sebastian (143:06)

No, no, no.

Luke Lafreniere (143:07)

And our. Our yearly rates are just derived from our monthly rates.

Linus Sebastian (143:11)

Yep.

Luke Lafreniere (143:12)

So it'll be fine.

Linus Sebastian (143:13)

Well, I think it's. I don't want to say anything. You guys technically set the prices on full plane. It's up to the creator to set the prices. But I think what you guys did was 10 months. Effectively.

Luke Lafreniere (143:25)

I think so.

Linus Sebastian (143:25)

Yeah. So like a $10 tier right now is a hundred dollars for the. The year because it's. It's factored at 10 months, so it's not times 12. It's times 10.

Luke Lafreniere (143:33)

I don't know for sure that it'll be that way because I actually know what the annual rate is, but probably. Yeah. Okay. Why? Well, there are three reasons. One was we took so long to do this because we had to wait until we had a clear roadmap for what float plane would look like in 2026 and beyond. You've seen some hints of it like early access for big series like Scrapyard wars and Secret Shopper. You've seen Black Friday Cyber Monday early access to deals. You've seen exciting floatplane exclusives like the Jimmy Fallon vlog, the why Is Wan Late series, not to mention our themed weeks like Luke Week two, which is coming in December. And now we're ready to bring more features such as early access for some LTT videos as well as badges. We do have more features in development, but we'll publicly announce them when they are closer to completion. Reason number the second for why now. We wanted to time the announcement so that folks could join at the old pricing during the best time to get deals on stuff. Black Friday Cyber Monday. This gives new subscribers early access to LTT store deals on November 27th. Oh, did I just announce when our Black Friday deals are going live?

Linus Sebastian (144:39)

I guess.

Luke Lafreniere (144:40)

I guess I did.

Linus Sebastian (144:40)

I didn't write this.

Luke Lafreniere (144:42)

Alongside the four amazing Linus Torvalds exclusives that we have up right now on floatplane, including the first 10 minutes of the main video. If you've been on the fence for a while, we wanted to give you one more opportunity to get in at the best possible time and price. Reason number three for why we're doing this, creating videos and running a hosting platform. They don't have the same costs yesteryear and this year. And neither do some of the major investments that we're making into content in the coming year. Like the Tech House and one other quite large one that we have not announced yet.

Linus Sebastian (145:20)

Some other time.

Luke Lafreniere (145:21)

Some other time. Not today.

Linus Sebastian (145:24)

But as. As we're sticking to. I'm gonna insert here. Go slightly off script. Sorry, Sammy. Don't forget, I got this. We're all good.

Luke Lafreniere (145:29)

Nice. I love off script Land show. Yeah, brace yourself, Dan.

Linus Sebastian (145:34)

Yeah, no, it'll be fine.

Luke Lafreniere (145:35)

We.

Linus Sebastian (145:36)

We committed a long time ago to not increase the prices on people that were sticking around. And that includes the OG tier, which is not getting affected by this at all in any way.

Luke Lafreniere (145:46)

So. Hold on. I don't know that for sure. We have allowed OGs to unsubscribe and resubscribe at the OG rate in the past.

Linus Sebastian (145:55)

We have.

Luke Lafreniere (145:56)

I don't know if that is the case anymore, so I'm going to have to get you guys an answer.

Linus Sebastian (145:59)

They can be separate.

Luke Lafreniere (146:01)

They can be separate.

Linus Sebastian (146:03)

So it depends on the.

Luke Lafreniere (146:04)

Oh, I know they can, but I don't know if we are. I don't know if we're committed have we committed to that? I. Oh, I actually don't know.

Linus Sebastian (146:12)

I don't technically know, but we should not change it if we committed to it.

Luke Lafreniere (146:16)

So yeah, we need to figure out if we've committed to it. But I didn't see it messaged clearly in here, so I was leaving it intentionally ambiguous for now while I go back.

Linus Sebastian (146:23)

Yeah, we shouldn't change how we treat OGs. Why? No annual plan for the OGs.

Luke Lafreniere (146:31)

There are complications there and it's already discounted, so it's already cheaper than.

Linus Sebastian (146:37)

Well, okay. But that's not entirely. There are reasons why it might be better for it. Like people have pointed out, for the OG tier, you could do a 12 month yearly plan so that they don't get the discount for the yearly. But it's still better for certain people in certain areas because getting dinged for currency conversions and certain other things might be really beneficial. It's also technically beneficial for us.

Luke Lafreniere (147:01)

Oh, I know it's beneficial for us.

Linus Sebastian (147:03)

Because we would get a significant amount of payment processor charges.

Luke Lafreniere (147:06)

But I thought there was a technical reason why it was really challenging.

Linus Sebastian (147:08)

There is. That might be no longer a thing fairly soon. I don't know. We're planning on looking at payments again soon here.

Luke Lafreniere (147:17)

This is great. Ed Zeam says every OG is now going back through hours of WAN shows for proof. Yeah. So if we. If we committed to that in the past. We're not.

Linus Sebastian (147:25)

We're not messing with. We're not going to. Yeah. We're not going to change how we treat.

Luke Lafreniere (147:29)

And we're not messing with anyone who is already subscribed. You will not get a price increase.

Linus Sebastian (147:34)

And to be clear, on a technical level, because of technical errors that might result in cancellations and stuff. Like, if you run into a problem, just contact support.

Luke Lafreniere (147:45)

Yep. Anyway, carrying on. We've kept our prices steady for a really long time. I think the last time we increased them was. Shoot. I think that was in an earlier version of the draft. For this.

Linus Sebastian (147:57)

I want.

Luke Lafreniere (147:58)

I don't remember. So I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna say anything. No, I think. I think it was 2018. Was that the last time we increased pricing? I don't remember. Don't worry about it. Anyway, we've kept our pricing steady for a long time while our costs have risen, but at some point we're shooting ourselves in the foot if we don't try to catch up. And looking at other paid subscription platforms like Patreon, we don't feel that the new rates are out of line with all that Said all of that. Said, we know that times are tough for many people out there right now and we are always consistent in telling people choose yourself over our extra content. Okay, Priorities. Food on the table, roof over the head. Cool. LMG extras and merch in that order. We also plan on uploading this segment to our clips channel. LMG clips. Was the plan for this to be a video. Well, anyway, thank you. Oh right. I guess I just did it it. Thank you to everyone for supporting Floatplane and the rest of the LMG team. If you guys want to subscribe, it's a great time. LMG GG/ floatplane Dart24 said yes.

Linus Sebastian (149:04)

You said OG could unsubscribe and resub at OG tier. We'll figure that out. I'm pretty sure we figure it out. I think we might have put a fixed grace period on it. Like it might be like three months or something. But either way we're not going to take anything back from the OG tier.

Luke Lafreniere (149:18)

It's not how we roll.

Linus Sebastian (149:19)

It's not going to happen.

Luke Lafreniere (149:20)

That's not the trust me bro guarantee.

Linus Sebastian (149:23)

And we have, we have been dealing with it that way. So I think it makes sense to keep it going that way. I don't know if it's like literally forever, but it might be. This one might not operate that way.

Luke Lafreniere (149:36)

This one explicitly does not.

Linus Sebastian (149:38)

Yeah, okay.

Luke Lafreniere (149:38)

If you are subscribed at a five dollar tier right now, the OG tier.

Linus Sebastian (149:41)

Is a special thing.

Luke Lafreniere (149:42)

You are locking that in and you don't, you don't resubscribe at that tier. It is new. If you are a new subscriber after December 31st or a returning subscriber, it will be at the new rate that I know for sure.

Linus Sebastian (149:55)

There's some people asking what the OG tier is or how you even get it and whatever.

Luke Lafreniere (149:59)

So the way you got it was by subscribing to Floatplane on the LTT.

Linus Sebastian (150:04)

Forum and then transferring over. This part was actually important because you had to transfer over to the Floatplane site before a certain date. The window was pretty big.

Luke Lafreniere (150:14)

And because Floatplane was technically a separate legal entity and run through a different payment processor, we couldn't just migrate it automatically. So in order to reduce the amount of attrition from asking people to like re input their payment methods and sign up on a new website and just.

Linus Sebastian (150:35)

Purely thanking people for dealing with it when it was in the state it was on the forum.

Luke Lafreniere (150:40)

Yeah, we made it very affordable.

Linus Sebastian (150:44)

Yeah, yeah, we get OG badges. The, the badges stuff is a feature that the Floatplane team is making. It will appear in a variety of ways throughout the platform chat and comments and how it gets managed is a little bit currently still up in the air. It's a feature that's coming. It's. You're, you know, you're not going to be able to display an infinite amount of badges so we're have to decide how many you can show it up of time. There might be a difference between that number for. For live or comments or something. Not necessarily sure. You might get badges for a variety of different things. We'll probably go with the classic like has been subscribed for X number of months scaling badge that like changes based on how many months that is. There will probably be an OG badge. It would make sense if you got different badges for being around at certain times potentially or whatever. There's lots of examples of how this is handed all throughout handled all throughout the Internet. So we will, we will learn from those. But yeah, badges are. Badges are coming.

Luke Lafreniere (151:50)

NinjaManaway has a really good question. Will we still be able to temporarily change plans for one of the events you ran? You had to go to a higher tier for the behind the scenes and event footage. Is that still an option? I don't want to give you an answer for that right now. We need to figure that out because I'm. I'm not sure, like at your locked in rate kind of thing.

Linus Sebastian (152:11)

Yeah, the way. Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (152:13)

I don't think we should give an answer on that today. I should check with Colton.

Linus Sebastian (152:16)

I have a strong idea of how that would work, but I will refrain until we figure it out.

Luke Lafreniere (152:21)

Yeah, that's a great. That's a really great question though.

Linus Sebastian (152:24)

It is a great question.

Luke Lafreniere (152:25)

Yep. Rip vessel by East 1. Rip vessel indeed. Still wear my vessel shirt every once in a while. Oh, wait, no. I'm thinking of my jibo shirt. I used to have my vessel shirt in my. In my pj.

Linus Sebastian (152:39)

My vessel shirt is lost. It makes me very sad. But I still have my vessel toque, dude.

Luke Lafreniere (152:43)

I. Okay. That's why I had vessel in the mind. I wore my vessel toque a week ago.

Linus Sebastian (152:47)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (152:47)

Yeah. We went to see this like Christmas lights display at Bear Creek park and I was wearing my vessel toque. I was like, yo, this is so cool. And nobody knows. All right. Something that's not as cool. We have an update on Rebels attempted collaboration with Core Devices AKA Pebble. So there's some, there's some, some smartwatch drama. Pebble, the once discontinued. Well first acquired by Google or acquired by. Acquired by Fitbit which was then acquired by Google, I think is how it went. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, but ultimately Discontinued the once discontinued fan favorite Smartwatch seemed to be thriving after its revival until a rift opened between Core Devices, the new hardware company that's led by pebble founder Eric Medicovsky, and Rebl, the volunteer nonprofit that has kept Pebble's cloud services, app store and developer ecosystem alive since 2018. Just weeks ago, the two groups publicly announced a partnership. Core would build a modern app store portal or a modern app store front end for its new watches. Rebel would continue running the backend services and developer portal, and together they would support the entire ecosystem, old and new. But that agreement quickly fell apart over who should control the roughly 13,000 legacy apps and watch faces that were originally uploaded to Pebble Store before the company shut down. Rebel says that Core demanded unrestricted rights to the entire data set, potentially allowing Core to build a closed core only app store and leave the nonprofit that maintains the platform behind. And they also claim that after delaying a scheduled meeting, Eric scraped their servers in violation of a previous agreement about data access. Core, meanwhile, disputes this claim. They argue that the apps were created by individual developers, not by rubble, and that they shouldn't be locked behind any one organization. After Pebble's collapse, Eric says the goal is a neutral public archive, ideally on something like archive.org so that the ecosystem can't be held hostage by a single gatekeeper. After the scraping accusation, Eric claims that he built a web app to allow him an easier time browsing watch faces, only showing screenshots and allowing him to click on them. Apparently it did not download any data. I don't think, you know, I don't have personal relationships with any of the people involved in this. I had one quick call with Eric when he said that they were bringing it back and I was I in contact with anyone from Rebel? I don't know, but I thought the project was super cool. So other than that I I Other than thinking it's super cool, I I don't really have a major horse in this race between the two of them. But the race that I do have a horse in is that overall I think pebble and the mission is super cool. I think the Rebel group is super cool. The way that they maintained this and made these devices usable for folks when official support was dropped by Google. I think that's all super cool. I would like to ask Plead, even in the nicest way that I possibly can for y' all to Please find a way to get along because I think y' all are really great and hopefully this is a misunderstanding. I actually have my new pebble right here that I have just been kind of dragging my butt on getting installed and getting on my wrist. But I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it this weekend and I want to feel good about it. I want to feel good about supporting these devices. It's going to be sick. And please, please all be chill and. And get along. Is Dan the one leaving a comment asking about the. The. Those questions people had? Dan, is that what you're doing?

Dan (157:04)

Pardon?

Luke Lafreniere (157:04)

On the float plane pricing. You highlighted the float plane price increase announcement.

Dan (157:08)

Oh, I was just striking it through because we finished it.

Luke Lafreniere (157:11)

Oh, neat. Okay, well, I'm gonna leave a comment.

Linus Sebastian (157:15)

Yeah, cool. I can do the next topic if you want to do that.

Luke Lafreniere (157:18)

Let me find one.

Linus Sebastian (157:21)

Microsoft will appeal a ruling against them in the UK Microsoft will appeal to the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal for a ruling against Microsoft which states that consumers are allowed to resell licenses such as Windows or Office license licenses. This ruling came into effect in 2021 when a UK based business named Value Licensing sued Microsoft over the ability to redistribute licensed products from them. The. The case is far from over as Microsoft continues to battle this decision. But if Microsoft loses, it will have to pay £270 million. Wow. Okay. Yeah, we did the same thing in damages to Value Licensing.

Luke Lafreniere (158:05)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (158:05)

Crazy discussion question for a company that seems to be okay with how much people pirate slash, get Windows licenses free anyways. Except for apparently.

Luke Lafreniere (158:13)

Hold on.

Linus Sebastian (158:13)

Actually, no, they just closed the loophole.

Luke Lafreniere (158:15)

Recent news.

Linus Sebastian (158:16)

Yeah, yeah, that's like maybe the next topic actually. Yeah, it could be why is Microsoft putting so much effort into this? Maybe because they're pulling back on it.

Luke Lafreniere (158:26)

Yeah, it seems like they're getting less chill about people just running the software and activating it with a tool that they quickly grabbed on GitHub or realistically, not even a tool. It's just a command you run. So speaking of which, this is. Well, no, I want to talk about this. The reason that I highlighted this was this could be a game changer. No, no, this. The thing you just said.

Linus Sebastian (158:55)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (158:56)

Like this could be. This could be. This could be wild. Maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but is this basically the. The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal? Is this. Is this basically them saying that as a consumer I should be able to resell software that I only. That I only licensed because that changes everything? Would that apply to Steam games? Why not? That could be huge and very excite console console games.

Linus Sebastian (159:44)

It's interesting. It's very interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (159:47)

Like we should be able to. Exactly. NM White in floatplane chat. I believe that if I bought a copy of Doom Eternal and I'm done with it, I should be able to sell it. And it's about time. It's about time that some legal was really lucky. Yeah, it's. It's empty. It's about time that some legal entity agreed with that.

Dan (160:14)

And.

Luke Lafreniere (160:15)

And the way that software companies have always hid from this is that it's a license. You didn't purchase it, you licensed it. Well, so what? Now they're gonna license it? I'm done licensing it. Now, am I. Am I missing something here? Or is this. Is this potentially a crack in the armor that could be crowbarred into and wedged open here? Yeah, yeah. Pankratz in chat. David Pankratz brings up that physical copies of games were also licensed, weren't they?

Linus Sebastian (160:55)

I think it was a license to the. The software that was on the physical copy. Yeah, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (161:00)

And yet those could be sold.

Linus Sebastian (161:04)

Yeah, man. The ramifications of this on the gaming industry will be if this happens. The ramifications of this, mostly on the gaming industry will be really interesting and potentially, like, extremely destructive. But we'll see. We'll see how that goes. I do wonder how much this would turn into. People might not want to hear this. I think this would turn into a lot of perverse incentives for developers.

Luke Lafreniere (161:39)

Subscriptions.

Linus Sebastian (161:40)

Do subscriptions, live service things. Paid, timed access. Like, maybe you can play part of a game, but the really good part is only accessible if you pay for a certain period of time. It'll effectively, like, put in a token, like an old arcade machine, like there is. Because honestly, if you like this, this would also create a weird incentive for gamers. Because you talked about Doom Eternal, Right? So what if you book two days off of work, you buy Doom Eternal, you beat the whole thing immediately and put it up on the market for $5 less than the full price. There is no degradation in quality in your version of the license. Yeah, because like, if you're buying.

Luke Lafreniere (162:26)

Here's a crazy idea. What if you commercialized the idea? What if you got a small storefront and you put little boxes on all of the shelves, Right. And in each of them you had some kind of physical representation of the game. No, hear me out. This is a crazy business model. You could even say it's a blockbuster business model. Okay? People come through the door, they can browse they can browse all the available games. They bring them up to the counter. You temporarily sell them the game license, you know, so you take like. You take like.

Linus Sebastian (162:58)

There is extremely massive differences between.

Luke Lafreniere (163:00)

Damn it. What is the word I'm looking. What is the word I'm looking for here? Take a collateral. You take the full cost of the game for collateral. And then when they're done with them, when they're done with it, you give them back everything. But I don't know, like a reasonable, like maybe like $5 or something like that. And you buy it back from them.

Linus Sebastian (163:16)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (163:17)

What would prevent that? If we could transfer licenses, we could go back to video game rentals.

Linus Sebastian (163:25)

Except it's all digital.

Luke Lafreniere (163:27)

Yeah, but you could still do it.

Linus Sebastian (163:28)

I'm not saying you couldn't do it. I'm saying. I'm talking about the destruction of the debt. Not destruction. The damage or change. Significant change on the video game industry and.

Luke Lafreniere (163:38)

Oh, yeah.

Linus Sebastian (163:39)

And how people.

Luke Lafreniere (163:40)

No, I'm just. I'm just showing you how that would, like, it would escalate. It would go back to the old days.

Linus Sebastian (163:45)

You could literally rent a game.

Luke Lafreniere (163:46)

You could literally rent a game.

Linus Sebastian (163:47)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (163:48)

And it would all it would take.

Linus Sebastian (163:49)

I didn't even think how this would function digitally. You could absolutely rent a game.

Luke Lafreniere (163:52)

And how trendy would that video game rental store be? How many TikToks would there be if they did it up nice and they had like physical.

Linus Sebastian (164:02)

You don't even have to do a physical version.

Luke Lafreniere (164:03)

No, no, no. But it doesn't matter.

Linus Sebastian (164:05)

The physical version would fail to the digital version immediately.

Luke Lafreniere (164:08)

It's not about fail or not fail. It's about how trendy and cool would it be.

Linus Sebastian (164:12)

I think it'd be trendy and cool for like two weeks.

Luke Lafreniere (164:15)

Dude, you're talking to a world that has re embraced vinyl records. Stop.

Linus Sebastian (164:20)

Yeah. And Willow Video does exist.

Luke Lafreniere (164:22)

Yeah, of course it does.

Linus Sebastian (164:23)

I think it was Pankratz pointed out. But there's only one, I think.

Luke Lafreniere (164:28)

Yeah, but.

Linus Sebastian (164:28)

And I love it and I shout it out all the time and I. Yeah, hopefully they keep doing well.

Luke Lafreniere (164:35)

I think it. I. I think that someone who makes it like crazy trendy and cool to go there and has like, like, you know, a gotcha, like, claw machine thing with a bunch of cool video with a bunch of stupid, like, amiibos in it and stuff and, like, makes it a whole experience. Dude, I think it would absolutely slap in the right market. Like, I think somewhere, like, I'm trying to figure out.

Linus Sebastian (164:59)

Every time I've been to Willow lately, there's a lot of people in there.

Dan (165:01)

I'm trying to figure out where sick.

Luke Lafreniere (165:03)

Because like in Japan the whole like digital licensing thing is just not as cool. Like I don't think you could make it trendy there. Trying to think like where this like kind of physical representation of the digital licenses that we have in stock could like kind of work. And maybe it's dumb, maybe it wouldn't work, but I just, I could see it. I could see people making TikToks about it.

Linus Sebastian (165:23)

You could rent.

Luke Lafreniere (165:24)

I'm at the video game rental store.

Linus Sebastian (165:26)

If you could rent computer games, I feel like people around here would do it. I think so.

Luke Lafreniere (165:34)

So Denoli says with current Steam refund policy you can rent any Steam game for two hours for free. That's true, but that's totally different because what you would do when you rented a game back when we were the youngins is you'd rent it for a period of time that you decide on. So you would rent it for one day and that was cheaper or you'd rent it. A two day rental was more expensive and then a one week rental was like you're kind of dumb, you should probably just buy it. So what you would do is after school on Friday you would go rent it and then as long as you had it back in the drop off box by Sunday night, then you had, as long as you didn't feel like sleeping on Friday or Saturday night you had like, you know, 48 whole hours to play the whole game and experience everything. What a, what a time to be alive.

Linus Sebastian (166:28)

It was fun. But yeah, I think honestly I support the, the freedom behind the idea wholeheartedly.

Luke Lafreniere (166:38)

I just don't know if I'm reading too much into this.

Linus Sebastian (166:41)

I think it would be, I think the ultimate result on how the gaming industry operates would probably be a negative for most people. I don't necessarily think.

Luke Lafreniere (166:52)

Are we headed that way anyway?

Linus Sebastian (166:55)

Yeah, that's a good argument. It's a good argument but like, look at Claire Obscure. It's doing super well right now. It's up for like a ton of awards. It's a single player game. I haven't played it myself but as far as my understanding goes, it's a single player game. I don't know how long it takes to play, but there's a huge incentive to just blast through it before the normies with jobs are able to buy it for the weekend and play and then resell your key. And that is a significant portion of sales kept away. And I understand this is the thing you can do with physical games. The scale of it was nowhere near the same because you could just have another digital storefront or maybe a place like Steam just builds it into the platform the same way that they do with Steam trading cards and everything else. And then they take another little skim off the top just like a reselling store.

Luke Lafreniere (167:48)

I'll have to pee if you fill that though. So it's a double edged sword.

Linus Sebastian (167:53)

Just like a, just like a, a Gamestop or whatever would they. They're going to take some off the top and then it's going to resell. But that resell is not going to ping back to the developer of the game. It's just going to ping back to Valve. Unless already makes 10 quad billion dollars per employee.

Luke Lafreniere (168:11)

Unless Valve went Good guy and did share it with the developer. Which they could. They do. Yeah, I know they do have that power. They've done Good guy stuff before.

Linus Sebastian (168:21)

Maybe they'll share a little percentage. But it's not a full fat sale. Like it would be other.

Luke Lafreniere (168:26)

What if they took 30% then would you be okay with it? What if they just took their 30% again being, being an enabler.

Linus Sebastian (168:34)

It's still a reduction in sale for the developer.

Luke Lafreniere (168:36)

Oh yeah, probably. I mean here's the thing though. I mean let's come, let's come back to talking about sock warranties again because everyone was enjoying that so much. A big part of why that works. Like do you think that darn tough could survive if literally everyone wore their socks for 10 years and then got a warranty refund? I can give you the answer. The answer is no. Like it's not.

Linus Sebastian (168:56)

Yeah, but it's not viable game sales do like let's start really high. It just released and go boom.

Luke Lafreniere (169:05)

This is this, well, sort of a cyberpunk. So I, Okay, I don't want to be that guy who's like exception kind.

Linus Sebastian (169:12)

Of being that guy.

Luke Lafreniere (169:13)

Okay, I realized it. I realized it and I don't want to be that guy.

Linus Sebastian (169:19)

But I, because you're not wrong.

Luke Lafreniere (169:20)

But I do think that a single player experience, I do think it's a reasonably close analog to something. Okay, no, they've added a lot of content. Okay, okay, that's fair. That's fair.

Linus Sebastian (169:31)

Not that they did and they did.

Luke Lafreniere (169:32)

That's fair. How many times do I have to say how many times do I have to say I'm being that guy for basically years. How many times do I have to say I'm being that guy? Okay, I, I, I own it.

Linus Sebastian (169:42)

I don't know, I'd really like to hear from someone who's like actually in the industry what they think about this because I'm very much taking an outside view.

Luke Lafreniere (169:50)

Well, we're taking a consumer view, right?

Linus Sebastian (169:53)

Well, I'm trying to not is basically what I'm doing. I'm trying to like as a consumer, yeah, dude, I bought it. Screw off. I should be able to resell it totally. Then I'm trying to step back for a second and be like, what does this do incentive wise? And that's a dangerous thing to do because if you do that every time, you just live in a horrible corporate omega corporate world where everything is bent over for companies, you know. So I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to be careful. But I'm wondering like if this happens, what does that, what, what do we see in the gaming industry 10 years from now, if this happens, what types of games are developed? What are the incentives for the developers to make them? And you know what, Maybe someone like the BG3 devs are just chatted out of their minds and don't care at all. But I, I do think this would change things like you said. Are those things already happening anyways? Is it even relevant? I don't know. I'm not sure. I do also wonder, would this disproportionately hurt small devs?

Luke Lafreniere (170:53)

Oh, I think that's very possible.

Linus Sebastian (170:56)

Think that it probably would.

Luke Lafreniere (170:58)

I'm trying to find something right now. Mechanic. I'm searching on the. I'm searching on the subreddit. Why is it. No, not all time. The past week.

Dan (171:10)

Here.

Luke Lafreniere (171:10)

Here we go. Here we go. So what the point I was trying to make with the socks is that. Let's bring it back to the socks again. The point that I was trying to make with it is that most people won't do that. Even if they do have the warranty. Most people won't bother. And this is a. Oh, my whole.

Linus Sebastian (171:28)

Problem with it is that it's too easy. That's my whole point with the brick and mortars. If I can just go on Steam and if I, if I go on Steam and right click on the game and click sell at market rate and it's just done. It's way too easy. This is my whole point with the reason. The fact that it's digital, it's online, is the gap.

Luke Lafreniere (171:45)

So if it was the physical store that you had to come into.

Linus Sebastian (171:48)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (171:49)

Would you be more supportive of it?

Linus Sebastian (171:50)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (171:51)

So you just think it needs, like it needs friction?

Linus Sebastian (171:54)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (171:55)

Okay. I think that's fair.

Linus Sebastian (171:58)

And I don't, I don't know how.

Luke Lafreniere (171:59)

You solve for that because, yeah, everyone has kind of a different perspective on.

Linus Sebastian (172:04)

This was a really interesting post.

Luke Lafreniere (172:05)

Feeling like they've gotten their money's worth. So this guy posted that it's broken, but he's not mad. He's actually stoked, which is like kind of wild to think about.

Linus Sebastian (172:18)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (172:18)

But if you scroll down to one of his replies to someone, where's the. Is it the op tag? Ah, yeah, here we go. Well, yeah, like, I'm not mad. In my 10 years as a mechanic, I've used all brands of ratcheting screwdrivers, including a $200 competitor. None of them last more than six to 10 months. Three years and still semi usable is absolutely impressive. And so this is the kind of person that, you know, I would hope that these game developers would have backing their product. I would hope, right. Someone that played the game, enjoyed the crap out of it, and went, you know what, I could trade this in, but I'm gonna keep it and I'm gonna just leave them with all of my money. Because it was not, it was not this guy's intention to contact support at all. Like, he wasn't. It wasn't one of those posts where someone's like, my thing broke. What do you guys think? Should I contact support? And then people are like, yes, obviously. What are you even posting about it for here? Like, this thread did not have that tones.

Linus Sebastian (173:23)

Saw the picture. I thought it was just another one of those. And then I reread the title like three times and was like, huh? And then clicked on the thread and thought it was really cool.

Luke Lafreniere (173:33)

Yeah, no, buddy's not, he's not mad at all.

Linus Sebastian (173:36)

Yeah, we just have a lot of those threads.

Luke Lafreniere (173:39)

Yeah. I mean, not that many. For how many screwdrivers we've sold.

Linus Sebastian (173:44)

No, for sure. I mean, for literally any product or any situation ever.

Luke Lafreniere (173:49)

Yep. But yeah, so I would just, I would like to think that even if they had a policy that enabled people to resell, or even if Costco had a return policy that allowed you to warranty anything, I would hope that people would also just like kind of have the good faith, common sense to not bring back a 20 year old poster.

Linus Sebastian (174:11)

This is a whole thing. People absolutely do that. People the heck out of Costco.

Luke Lafreniere (174:15)

And then you have to. To bake it into your margins and then everybody pays for it. Yeah, I know. This is why you like what you call high trust societies.

Linus Sebastian (174:24)

Yes. Fantastic. Yeah, the best.

Luke Lafreniere (174:29)

Yeah. So based we have, we talked about that on wan show at all. I don't know, just like the experience of, of going to a family mart in, you know, Taipei or in Japan and walking through the door and seeing someone's MacBook sitting on the little like round coffee table that's near the entrance while the owner of said MacBook is off grabbing a snack so that they can go pay for it and then sit and use their laptop and enjoy their snack or their drink and marveling that that would never happen at home.

Linus Sebastian (175:06)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (175:07)

That MacBook would be gone. And.

Linus Sebastian (175:15)

It's so cool.

Luke Lafreniere (175:16)

Yeah. I wish that I lived somewhere like that sometimes.

Linus Sebastian (175:21)

And I don't think, you know, we are far from the furthest from that.

Luke Lafreniere (175:25)

Oh yeah, 100%. I like, I just leave my badminton bag on a bench and I'll walk like six quarts away.

Linus Sebastian (175:31)

Even the fact that in most situations if there's someone sitting there, you can ask them, hey, do you mind watching my stuff? And that is actually fine.

Luke Lafreniere (175:40)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (175:41)

Is like pretty great to be completely honest, compared to like a lot of places. So like it's, we're doing all right, but it's, it's Taiwan, Japan. There's certain places that are another level and it's, it feels really cool to be there and partake in that.

Luke Lafreniere (176:00)

And there's different ways of achieving that. Like, I remember, I remember accidentally leaving my wallet. It was either my wallet or my phone. It was something very valuable and important and I was very distressed to not have it. And I left it in a cab in Singapore. And Yvonne's family member who lives there, basically with 100% confidence, said, you will get it back. And I was like, there's no way. The cabbie's just going to say they don't have it. They're going to like, they'll just like take the money out first and then return it to me. And he was like, no, you will get it back. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. Very, very recently prior I had lost like a hundreds of dollars coat. You and I both have like a similar coat story where we once treated ourselves to a nice overcoat and then immediately lost it. I left it in a cab in, in Vegas and. But he was just like, yeah, yeah, it wasn't there. Wasn't there. And like, sure, yeah, okay. I had it back within like 90 minutes because they went back to the dispatch, found it and like we're basically like, like waiting for my call to, to tell me that they had it. And when, when I visited Singapore. I've been there twice now. Well, if I've been there twice, the second time, we didn't. We. Man. I was over. Yeah, I was over in Southeast Asia recently. Did we go to Singapore? Yvonne's Singapore family, which is why I was confused. We saw her family that lives there, but we didn't go there. So. Yeah, when I went to Singapore, the one time, I almost got, like, kind of like a Stepford Wives kind of vibe.

Linus Sebastian (177:41)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (177:41)

Like, everything is too perfect. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (177:45)

I've never been to Singapore.

Luke Lafreniere (177:48)

And, like, you guys can let me know if you think maybe I was just. And maybe. Maybe I was biased by just knowing that they can. They, like, come down hard on stuff. But I just. I don't know. I just got this kind of, like. I got this kind of weird. I got this kind of weird vibe. Yeah. I mean, at Zame Says. I mean, you weren't. Not biased. I mean. Yeah, that's. That's fair enough. It's Hurley time. Says, I was there 20 years ago. I got the same kind of vibe. Yeah. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (178:23)

I have no idea what. I just know, like, in.

Dan (178:27)

In.

Linus Sebastian (178:27)

In Taiwan, for example, I will be downtown Taipei and walk down small, weird alleyways between buildings and feel a relatively deep sense of comfort. And knowing that, like, I might exit this alleyway to a. A park with little ladies doing tai chi at one in the morning for some reason, and they will all feel safe and comfortable. It's not just me, for whatever reason.

Luke Lafreniere (179:04)

And to be clear, we're not saying they don't have any crime.

Linus Sebastian (179:06)

No.

Luke Lafreniere (179:06)

They don't have any mental illness or people who, you know, do.

Linus Sebastian (179:09)

All of that stuff exists everywhere in the world.

Luke Lafreniere (179:13)

People are. People are messy creatures, and it doesn't matter, you know, what country they live in or. Or the color of their skin or whatever else. People are messy. But I do think that there are different approaches to society building, some of which create a higher trust society and some of which create a lower trust society. And those are definitely a couple places that have stood out to me as feeling very high trust.

Linus Sebastian (179:37)

Yeah. And, like, gold balls in floatplane chat said Luke must be a giant over there. Right. But, like, bullets and knives don't care.

Luke Lafreniere (179:46)

It's true.

Linus Sebastian (179:47)

So. So, like, you. You shouldn't be overconfident in your, like, size when it comes to getting jumped in an alley.

Luke Lafreniere (179:55)

Like, even. Even, like, a baton. I would be. I would be a lot. I'd be a lot less scared of Luke if I had, like, a nightstick. Like, honestly.

Linus Sebastian (180:04)

Break a bone.

Luke Lafreniere (180:05)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (180:05)

Quick with those.

Luke Lafreniere (180:06)

Anytime you put anything anywhere near me, it would be like whack it with that.

Linus Sebastian (180:10)

And that paired with the badminton skills, like huge.

Luke Lafreniere (180:15)

If he, if he knows how to fight, then I'm done. Because he'll close the distance.

Dan (180:20)

Right?

Luke Lafreniere (180:21)

But if he doesn't, just size is not enough. Right? Like it's, it's amazing what a difference just a small, hard, heavy object can make. And so yeah, don't be. Stop.

Linus Sebastian (180:37)

Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that.

Luke Lafreniere (180:41)

Small, hard and heavy.

Linus Sebastian (180:44)

Dense man. It's dense.

Dan (180:51)

You can hit me with your thick stick, little man.

Luke Lafreniere (180:56)

The point is just that him feeling safe is not just about him being sort of large for over there.

Linus Sebastian (181:06)

Yeah, it was because there was a very high level of confidence, not in myself, but in the society that I was in.

Luke Lafreniere (181:13)

I also feel really safe there. And I'm not Luke's size. So make of that what you will. All right Microsoft has killed another Windows activation workaround While they're weathering backlash over recent agentic OS endeavors. Windows has shut down a Windows activation workaround by pushing back in changes that broke KMS 38 based activations, which used the mass grave popularized method that let users keep Windows and Office running indefinitely without actually paying for them. Users on these fake installs noticed deactivations right after their devices grabbed the latest extended security update. Even people who did buy Windows weren't spared, with Some Business Windows 10 users who installed this week's update finding their systems rolling back to the previous build after rebooting, silently failing to apply the patch at all. That probably wasn't intended.

Linus Sebastian (182:06)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (182:07)

In other news, Microsoft heard that the public is not interested in Windows becoming an agentic os, but they think they can change the public's mind by talking about it more in a support article. The article explains how secure AI agent workspaces will give agents access to shared folders and allow them to work in the background for you completing tasks while you do other, I don't know, like human things. Scroll TikTok Wow. What is it going to be doing?

Linus Sebastian (182:39)

What is that?

Luke Lafreniere (182:40)

What do they think it's going to be doing?

Linus Sebastian (182:42)

I don't know. But the funny part is that a version of this completely controlled by the user with with user dials and knobs of being able to control what it can access and what it can do and all that kind of stuff in Linux could actually be super sick. I don't trust Microsoft to do it properly at all and wouldn't want to touch it at all. It reminds me a lot of Recall, which is like clearly and obviously.

Luke Lafreniere (183:09)

You did not do that.

Dan (183:10)

Right?

Linus Sebastian (183:10)

Did I not?

Luke Lafreniere (183:11)

No.

Linus Sebastian (183:11)

Did I lift it too early?

Luke Lafreniere (183:14)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (183:14)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (183:15)

Nice. You're not the only one who feels that way. An intrepid writer from the Verge took one for the team and spent a week trying to interact with Copilot the way Microsoft seems to want us to and found that Copilot made his and this is a direct quote, computer feel incompetent.

Linus Sebastian (183:35)

I didn't know that was. That's fantastic.

Luke Lafreniere (183:38)

And yet we are being warned that one of the things it is competent enough to do is install malware. As Microsoft's own article states that these kinds of agents would still be vulnerable to malicious prompts that may be embedded in emails, documents or web pages. So our discussion question we're going to bring Dan in for this one is where in an operating system do you think an AI agent could be helpful to you? Imagine what you want your AI agent to do.

Dan (184:10)

Navigate the two separate settings menus that where are.

Luke Lafreniere (184:16)

That's actually very funny.

Dan (184:19)

It's also kind of serious. Like sometimes I want to adjust the settings on my computer. I would like to just have it do that.

Luke Lafreniere (184:26)

But the second they give the agent that kind of system level access, then it's extremely. Then it's extremely dangerous. Yeah.

Dan (184:33)

Hey, can you switch it to output 5, 6 on the headphone mix for me, please? It's not coming through Chrome properly.

Luke Lafreniere (184:39)

That sounds great.

Dan (184:40)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (184:40)

But there's no way that we could allow an incompetently managed agent that level of access.

Linus Sebastian (184:46)

Hell yeah. Yeah, there's. I think there's stuff like that.

Dan (184:49)

That's my comment.

Linus Sebastian (184:49)

Well, I think one of the primary ways that AI stuff is currently used is search. So using it for like really advanced search and search related tasks would be fine. Like, hey, find all the videos on my S drive that have this type of content in them and move them into this folder. I want to start editing a video based on that soon.

Luke Lafreniere (185:12)

One of the things that I'd love an agentic OS to do is for me to be able to just say I need to be in Los Angeles for a collab on December 9th. Find me the travel arrangements that have me there for the least amount of time because I need to get back to my family for my daughter's something or whatever. But the problem with mine is that I don't need my OS to do that. Well, actually there's two problems with mine. Problem number one is that I don't need my OS to do that. That could be you have an llv. What? Sorry?

Linus Sebastian (185:49)

Large language. Vance.

Luke Lafreniere (185:51)

Well, no, no, no, that's not, that's actually not one of the problems I was going to bring up. I don't need an app to do that because my browser should do that.

Linus Sebastian (186:00)

Or an app.

Luke Lafreniere (186:01)

Or an app. I don't need my OS to do that.

Linus Sebastian (186:03)

That's just the wackiness of modern computing, which is that it's like all in the browser.

Luke Lafreniere (186:07)

Yeah, I don't need my operating system. Sorry, I said I don't need my app to do that. I misspoke. I don't need my operating system to do that. The other issue is that that use case only works if I put absolutely everything into my phone, which I will just never be disciplined enough to do because it can only know my schedule if I tell it everything.

Linus Sebastian (186:31)

And your access.

Luke Lafreniere (186:33)

I don't even want to live my life that scheduled.

Linus Sebastian (186:35)

It's gonna need to know where you're going to be on that day as well. Which is why you're saying you need the schedule.

Luke Lafreniere (186:41)

Like should I schedule time when I'm reading a book? Like what, like what is it? Who, like who actually has their calendar filled out with enough detail that they would be able to say make me a hair appointment. And it probably wouldn't double book with something else that you might want to do. And I'm sure there's people out there that, that can function like that, but there is no way that I could because there's always something. I'm gonna get home, I'm gonna think I have a gap. And I'm gonna be like, we're out of cat food.

Linus Sebastian (187:12)

Get crazy too.

Luke Lafreniere (187:14)

Yeah, we're out of kitty food. I gotta go get some cat food food. And then it's just like, well, yeah, no, well, I, I, now I can't make it to this thing. Like, like am I supposed to schedule time to potentially maybe shop for a random house goods that I need? Like, come on.

Linus Sebastian (187:32)

And what was the, what was the, what's the joke? What am I missing? What's the.

Dan (187:36)

Oh, cuz I do that.

Linus Sebastian (187:37)

You do what?

Dan (187:38)

Put everything in the calendar. Oh, like everything. But again, ADHD copy.

Linus Sebastian (187:46)

I tell people all the time if they ask me to like have a meeting or shoot a thing or do whatever, if it's, if it's work related at all. I tell them every single time, like, you got to put that on calendar. It will not exist and I will not show up.

Dan (187:59)

I should set up a macro that's just like my calendar is public.

Linus Sebastian (188:02)

Book me that's a. Oh, I see what you mean. There's a. There's a function in Google Calendar now to like send someone a link where they can book on your calendar.

Dan (188:12)

I have that enabled too. But they, I mean it's nice they ask. It's better if they just do it.

Luke Lafreniere (188:19)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (188:19)

I don't even always agree because like I'll have sections of my calendar where that's where I don't know that something's gonna happen there.

Dan (188:28)

Book fake meanings.

Linus Sebastian (188:29)

Yeah, I've done that before. Yeah, I like need to blank out.

Dan (188:33)

A spot, just set it as busy and deprive it.

Linus Sebastian (188:37)

Yeah, it works. I guess I have done that before anyways.

Luke Lafreniere (188:42)

I mean, I guess the. The ultimate goal. Right. Because the other part. So aside from not being disciplined enough, I just don't want absolutely everything that I do and every person that I see or talk to necessarily in my phone. But their ultimate goal is obviously to have the microphone on all the time so that it just kind of already has the context of everything that I ever do and everywhere I ever want to be.

Linus Sebastian (189:07)

I just, you know, I tried talking to Wendell in what I'm guessing was 2015, maybe 2016, nice solid year, about building.

Luke Lafreniere (189:20)

I remember predicting the future that year.

Linus Sebastian (189:23)

Do you?

Luke Lafreniere (189:24)

Oh yeah. What?

Linus Sebastian (189:26)

What did you say?

Luke Lafreniere (189:27)

We both did.

Linus Sebastian (189:28)

What did we say?

Luke Lafreniere (189:29)

We predicted the same future.

Linus Sebastian (189:31)

Oh yeah, I remember. Okay. That was a good enough tip. I was working with him on this idea where I wanted to do at the time. I think my plan was like Dragon Naturally speaking or whatever that program was. I wanted to have that constantly running and writing to like some document.

Luke Lafreniere (189:53)

I remember you talking about this.

Linus Sebastian (189:54)

Yeah. Then I wanted to scan the document for keywords and then have home automations work off of the keywords and then have microphones distributed through my whole. Your basement of the house you were renting me at the time.

Luke Lafreniere (190:10)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (190:11)

And then basically have it always listening, but always entirely local. And I didn't even want this computer exposed to the Internet. I wanted it air gapped. Like there's no way this is only my stuff. And it like auto deletes, whatever, does all these different types of things, but running different home automations off of. Off of that.

Luke Lafreniere (190:29)

What did you want it to do?

Linus Sebastian (190:30)

I don't remember. I just. I think I just wanted to make it work.

Luke Lafreniere (190:33)

Okay. Yeah, okay, that's fair enough. Because that seems like a lot of why people bother to do home automation stuff is just for like the fun of it.

Linus Sebastian (190:40)

Yeah, I don't remember. I think I had some more specific Things.

Luke Lafreniere (190:45)

But.

Linus Sebastian (190:47)

Yeah. And he kind of. It was possible and he talked me through some of the problems that it would have and things like that. And then I didn't end up doing it for a variety of reasons, but. Oh, a constant stream of dragon dictation would have been messy. Yeah, he pointed that out. Yeah, it would be. People are saying home assistant does that now. Wendell has a video on it that's really interesting. I didn't actually know I was going to say we should look into doing.

Luke Lafreniere (191:14)

Something like that now for the tech house. We will.

Linus Sebastian (191:17)

Cool.

Luke Lafreniere (191:17)

Yeah, we actually.

Linus Sebastian (191:20)

What video is that?

Luke Lafreniere (191:22)

There's a guy working on a thing that could be a more elegant way of implementing that that I'm not at liberty to discuss yet. Oh, but we are maybe gonna like, I don't know, feature that thing because I would makes it to market.

Linus Sebastian (191:38)

I would love something like that. It can't touch the Internet at all.

Luke Lafreniere (191:42)

Yeah, that's like his whole jam.

Linus Sebastian (191:45)

Fantastic.

Luke Lafreniere (191:46)

Yeah. Super, super cool.

Linus Sebastian (191:47)

Because I, I love like. I've been to a few people's places recently that have like an Alexa set up or whatever thing and they tie some automations to it and it's really cool. But I'm not putting that in my house.

Luke Lafreniere (192:04)

Yep. So I hear you. Our next topic. Or wait, what are we supposed to be doing when after dark? How the heck are we supposed to transition to when and after dark? We still have like five.

Dan (192:15)

We have been live three and a half hours.

Luke Lafreniere (192:17)

You've been live for three and a half hours.

Dan (192:19)

That is also correct.

Luke Lafreniere (192:21)

Boom. Roasted.

Linus Sebastian (192:26)

Should we blast through some stuff? I think we have some topics in here we can go through quickly.

Luke Lafreniere (192:30)

I mean. Or we have some topics that are pretty big and important that we could get to.

Linus Sebastian (192:34)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (192:35)

What the flock.

Dan (192:37)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (192:38)

Oh, wow. We do still have that topic. Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (192:40)

YouTuber Ben Jordan has released a video demonstrating some serious security and privacy concerns with Flock Safety's license plate cameras and their public safety technology ecosystem. Flock Safety is an American manufacturer and operator of automatic license plate readers, ALPRs, video surveillance and gunfire locator systems. With more than 80,000 of their cameras deployed in the US flock operates many of these systems under contract for thousands of police departments, plus other agencies, neighborhood associations and private property owners. The video builds on a white paper from independent security researcher John Gaines documenting more than 50 vulnerabilities in Flock safety systems. The video reports that multiple Flock Safety accounts belonging to public safety authorities were found for sale on the Dark Web and notes that Flock does not require two factor authentication for some of their Police department clients. It gets better. Researchers found that by pressing the button on a Flock camera in a particular pattern, you can enable a wireless access point on the device. After connecting to that access point, an attacker can send a command to enable ADB and then connect directly to the Flock device, allowing them to access all its data, allowing them to install their own software and just generally use the device however they want.

Linus Sebastian (194:24)

You know, there's a lot of different. This is a completely unrelated note, but there's been a lot of different sites that have started track traffic, different movement of like ice vehicles and police activity and stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (194:37)

It would be a real shame if.

Linus Sebastian (194:39)

It just worked the opposite way that they had intended for it to work anyway.

Luke Lafreniere (194:45)

If connecting to that access point is too much effort, Gaines also created a tool to make it even easier for anyone to gain full control of one of these cameras. Gaines says the longest part actually is waiting for the access point to turn on. Realistically about five seconds. And it's not just the cameras. If you're trying to take over one of Flock's AI compute boxes. So that's an edge processing device that's used as part of their license plate recognition system. You don't even need to go to the trouble of turning on that access point. The device's USB C port is just sitting there waiting for something to be plugged in. And gain says you can just plug in a rubber ducky and walk away. So a rubber ducky is a USB device that pretends to be a keyboard and then sends pre programmed keystrokes to the target device. We did a video about them a few years ago. They're super cool. And then once you have access, you can literally do anything you want on the device, including editing or outright replacing footage. It gets better. Flock's apps are installed on their devices with debugging enabled.

Linus Sebastian (195:53)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (195:53)

Which, among other shenanigans, means that execution can be paused mid run and memory can be accessed and modified, which yada yada yada, leads to remote code execution with root privileges. Researchers also found that Flock cameras had a concerning level of hard coded data, including a list of preferred wi fi networks.

Linus Sebastian (196:18)

Oh, that's awesome.

Luke Lafreniere (196:19)

So by setting up dummy access points with those network names and then blocking access to cellular data, researchers were able to trick Flock cameras into connecting to the dummy networks and then routing their traffic through them.

Linus Sebastian (196:34)

Sick.

Luke Lafreniere (196:35)

Analyzing the traffic with the usual tools, researchers found additional credentials being sent in clear text.

Linus Sebastian (196:42)

Beautiful.

Luke Lafreniere (196:43)

Absolute cinema.

Linus Sebastian (196:45)

Some of this stuff. I wonder if it's like intentional.

Luke Lafreniere (196:50)

Like the developers working for Flock are just like, yeah, this kind of statewide surveillance is f ed. Let's make sure this stuff sucks.

Linus Sebastian (196:58)

Like is that one could hope. I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (197:00)

I doubt it. Yeah, never attribute.

Linus Sebastian (197:03)

I doubt it too.

Luke Lafreniere (197:04)

You know, whatever. That could be adequately explained by stupidity.

Linus Sebastian (197:07)

I hope there's at least one if.

Luke Lafreniere (197:10)

You want to go with a real old school attack. Researchers also found considerable RF signal leakage coming from newer Flock cameras and discovered that it was possible to use a modern version of a Tempest attack to see the live view of the camera by simply isolating and decoding the camera data stream from the leaking RF signals. Dan, I've seen the comments. I know that there's a Toucan somewhere in the frame, but my ability to can has been lost on this wear and show. I can't anymore. He's going to have to go.

Linus Sebastian (197:54)

Where is he?

Luke Lafreniere (197:55)

I don't know. I haven't been able to find him. Oh sir. Ability Toucan. Farewell for the rest of this wan show because I do not have the ability to can anymore. Because I can't. And I'm not done yet. The problems aren't just in their hardware. Researchers also found an exposed API key on a Flock demo site that shows some of the things that public safety agencies are storing in ArcGIS, a popular geographic information system which by the way was recently found to be compromised by a Chinese state sponsored hacking group.

Linus Sebastian (198:36)

Of course it was.

Luke Lafreniere (198:37)

This means that any and all data that agencies are tracking in ArcGIS may be compromised, including personal information of officers and agents, live locations of patrol cars and suspect vehicles, and any other vehicle seen on one of Flock's cameras, and so on and so forth. Believe it or not, we're not done yet. Or well, we're done, but that's still just the tip of the iceberg. Go check out the video, Dan. If you want to drop it in all the chats from Ben Jordan or check out John Gaines white paper, both are excellent. US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representative Raja oh Raja of Illinois have requested that the FTC open an investigation of Flock Safety's cybersecurity practices. And if you want to see if any of these systems are being used near you, you can check out the EFF's Atlas of Surveillance. Who could have possibly seen this coming?

Linus Sebastian (199:39)

I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (199:40)

Not Flock. Not with their army of cameras.

Linus Sebastian (199:43)

I do. I am wondering. So. So Ben. Ben is also the person who did the whole I saved a PNG to a bird thing. I know Diamond Dave pointed this out, but I was Just kind of putting that together myself as well. Save a PNG to a bird flock. What's going on here? Ben has an. Has an interesting interest in birds. All bird related.

Luke Lafreniere (200:06)

Okay.

Dan (200:07)

He's trying to tell us.

Linus Sebastian (200:08)

He is trying to tell us something.

Dan (200:10)

Are the power lines actually how they charge?

Linus Sebastian (200:13)

The birds are surveillances. I think what's happening.

Dan (200:15)

I think they aren't real.

Linus Sebastian (200:16)

Yeah, they might not be real.

Dan (200:18)

Wake up.

Luke Lafreniere (200:23)

If I take off my headphones, do I not have to listen to you people? No, I can.

Dan (200:27)

You can probably not hear me very well.

Luke Lafreniere (200:29)

Yeah, I can hear you just fine.

Linus Sebastian (200:30)

Ben. Stuff is awesome.

Luke Lafreniere (200:32)

Well, that's disappointing.

Linus Sebastian (200:34)

Very, very cool video.

Luke Lafreniere (200:36)

Birds are the government. Stop it. Stop it.

Dan (200:38)

Maybe they are. That's why they've been. That's why they won't move to underground power lines.

Luke Lafreniere (200:43)

I think the government.

Dan (200:44)

They won't have any better to charge.

Luke Lafreniere (200:46)

No, the government would run better if it was birds.

Dan (200:49)

How do you know it's not? Have you ever seen them?

Luke Lafreniere (200:53)

A bird?

Dan (200:55)

Yeah. You can't prove that.

Linus Sebastian (200:56)

No, he means the government.

Dan (200:57)

Oh, the government. Same thing.

Luke Lafreniere (200:59)

Have I ever seen the same thing? Have I ever seen the government?

Dan (201:03)

Do you see what I mean?

Luke Lafreniere (201:04)

Could Mark Carney. Theoretically, he's AI influencer. I've never seen him in person.

Linus Sebastian (201:11)

I haven't either.

Dan (201:12)

That's a good take.

Linus Sebastian (201:15)

None of us have seen him in person.

Luke Lafreniere (201:17)

Yeah, I mean, we live in the. In the.

Linus Sebastian (201:19)

Here's a fun question. Who's going to be the first vtuber president?

Luke Lafreniere (201:26)

If I hadn't already lost my ability to Ken, that would have done it. Miku for President.

Linus Sebastian (201:33)

Oh man. Okay. Anyways, continuing onwards.

Luke Lafreniere (201:37)

I mean, at least Hatsune Miku wouldn't have started a feud with China. I'm just saying. I'm just saying.

Linus Sebastian (201:46)

Would they have tariffed Canada though? We'll never know.

Dan (201:50)

Talking of wars with China, do you want to do the other two sponsors?

Luke Lafreniere (201:54)

Oh, sure. What does that have to do with our sponsors?

Dan (201:56)

Oh, okay, demonetizing.

Luke Lafreniere (201:58)

How about no? How about like a really privacy oriented sponsor like Proton? You wouldn't leave the front door of your house unlocked and open for unsavory types who just let themselves in. That's a window, not a door. But sure, who cares? So why would you treat your emails like a house with a Revolving door? With ProtonMail, your inbox is protected with end to end and zero access encryption, meaning only you can read your messages. Not advertisers, not hackers, not even Proton. Once you're in, Protonmail goes to work guarding your privacy with automatic encryption between Proton users, phishing protection and tracker blocking that stops companies from spying on you. They have an easy switch tool making migration of emails, contacts and calendars from Google and other providers easy, and you can try it out totally for free. Just make an account, give it a shot for a few months and see if you like it. Proton is confident that you will check out ProtonMail for free today or save up to 38% on their plans at Proton Me. Wan Proton Me. The show is also brought to you by Flexispot. Making YouTube videos for a living was definitely a chaotic choice, and it comes with its own unique pressures. Tight deadlines, heavy equipment and endless multitasking can make any workspace feel unstable. Was this the part where we're supposed to see the TV fall? Oh no. Okay, it's looping. Doesn't matter. The point is, you know what won't break under pressure? Our sponsor Flexispot's E7 plus standing desk. If you've ever had to stick a piece of cardboard under a desk leg just to keep it steady, you know how awful a wobbly workspace can be. Flexispot's legs are made of automotive grade steel and they can support 440 pounds while lifting or 540 pounds while they are static. The desk adjusts from 27.6 inches nice to 35.4 inches. So whether you're a little Linus or a tall Luke, the E7 plus has your back. Everything comes with a 15 year warranty and 30 days of free returns, so there's no need to fret about buyer's remorse. Check out Flexispot's Black Friday sale with our link and use code LTT10 to get 10% off all orders over $500. We'll have that linked in the video description all right, Dan, that's all you've got?

Dan (204:18)

That's the rest of my cards.

Luke Lafreniere (204:20)

We have so many more topics, dude.

Dan (204:22)

Then have fun. Good luck.

Luke Lafreniere (204:24)

Massimo has been awarded 634 million over Apple patent infringement. Last week, Apple lost a federal jury trial in California over the use of blood oxygen monitoring technology. In 2023, the US International Trade Commission ruled in Masimo's favor, which then banned Apple from importing Apple watches that had that technology. Earlier this year, Apple implemented a workaround to bring back the monitoring function by having the user's iPhone measure and calculate blood oxygen oxygen data. Masimo is now suing U.S. customs and Border Protection over allowing Apple to do this. Masimo has also accused Apple of poaching its employees like their Chief Medical Officer Apple says they disagree with the verdict and will appeal. Can we talk about, can we talk about the concept of poaching? You can't own people. If someone's willing to pay someone more, then isn't that just like the free market? Am I, am I missing something here? Like, I do understand that people can be privy to trade secrets and there can be, there can be instances of corporate espionage where someone explicitly, specifically gains a position in order to get access to data and bring it back somewhere else.

Linus Sebastian (205:37)

I think there's also, where's the line here? You could attack another company by constantly depleting them of human resources.

Dan (205:44)

That could be anti competitive and then firing them immediately.

Luke Lafreniere (205:47)

Well, no, if you hire them forever, then isn't it fine?

Dan (205:52)

What if you just poached all their employees and then fired them after two months?

Linus Sebastian (205:55)

Well, no, I'm not saying it's a problem for the, the individuals involved being poached. I'm saying like if you're trying to operate as a business and another company.

Dan (206:05)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (206:06)

What if like, oh my.

Dan (206:07)

Are we saying that is the attack if you take all their good employees.

Linus Sebastian (206:10)

This is a fascinating idea. You don't have hiring at all. You have a competitor and you just trust their hiring process and then just offer anyone that gets hired there slightly more. Save your money on the hiring process.

Dan (206:25)

Your, your, your job, your job board is their LinkedIn. Yeah, that one looks nice. How much you make? I'll add 5%, 10%, 20.

Linus Sebastian (206:34)

It's like their hiring process is probably pretty rigorous.

Luke Lafreniere (206:37)

I mean, I'm sure people have thought of this.

Linus Sebastian (206:38)

We'll take them.

Luke Lafreniere (206:39)

I mean that was basically the entire developer circle jerk in Silicon Valley for.

Linus Sebastian (206:44)

I think so. I mean, and there, this is, this is where I think mostly the term poaching comes from. It's not hiring one person. It's trying to like take an entire team. As far as my understanding goes, like I know old school Silicon Valley, there was conversations about poaching when like, yeah, a company would want to spin up an arm of its own company, would take an entire team. So you take a whole business unit out.

Luke Lafreniere (207:06)

Yeah, See that's where I kind of. Because on the one hand, like I can completely see multiple facets or multiple angles of this, like from a worker angle. Anything that restricts my mobility is bull.

Linus Sebastian (207:24)

Oh, I don't think there should be restrictions put on it.

Luke Lafreniere (207:26)

Well, but, but I would say, I would say I would feel as a worker that my mobility is restricted if you're employing me today. And Dan could Potentially be punished for poaching me. Wait, I say that restricts my mobility. Well, they're. They are suing.

Linus Sebastian (207:46)

No, they accused them of it. Are they suing them for it? I don't think you can sue someone for poaching.

Luke Lafreniere (207:50)

Oh, okay. I. Okay, in that case. You know what, I misread this. I thought, I thought that there was some kind of implication that poaching was somehow like not allowed.

Linus Sebastian (207:58)

I think it's like a gentlemanly can suit someone. Oh, can you? Nope. It's typically basis for a loss if the Poach employee non competes, non solicitation. If the employee had a fiduciary obligation to the former company.

Luke Lafreniere (208:16)

Oh.

Linus Sebastian (208:17)

If the Poach employee has access to valuable or confidential information.

Luke Lafreniere (208:20)

Okay, so again, okay then. Yeah, so. Okay. No, I'm going to come back to what I was saying. So who, what employee? Name an employee at Line of State Media Group that doesn't have access to any valuable or confidential information. That's so broad.

Linus Sebastian (208:32)

But any employee anywhere for any company. Technically, but it would have to be utilizable by the company that they're going to.

Dan (208:41)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (208:41)

But I mean, I mean if I got hired, that's literally the definition of relevant experience.

Linus Sebastian (208:47)

Almost a big difference between experience and information.

Luke Lafreniere (208:50)

Sure. But you gain a lot of information through experience and you gain a lot of experience through the utilization of information.

Linus Sebastian (208:56)

There's a, there's a different. The type of information is important.

Luke Lafreniere (208:59)

And I'm not trying to form a nuanced take right now.

Linus Sebastian (209:02)

I hear what you say.

Luke Lafreniere (209:02)

I'm trying to see it from one perspective.

Linus Sebastian (209:04)

I don't know how to define it, but there's a, there's a, there's a dividing line type of information.

Luke Lafreniere (209:09)

There's definitely multiple definitions, IP information. So definition number one is as a worker, As a worker bee who's doing my bee work.

Linus Sebastian (209:18)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (209:18)

Fuck anything that limits my mobility.

Linus Sebastian (209:20)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (209:21)

And if there's any kind of restriction that prevents Dan over here from hiring me for more than you're willing to pay me, then basically that. Yeah, so I can see that perspective 100%.

Linus Sebastian (209:33)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (209:33)

I can also see the perspective of like let's say a startup, right. A smaller entity going like, well hold on, this is bull spit. Because a company like, and I don't want to pick on anyone specific, so let's just say one of the magnificent, however many of them there are, you know, one of these like giant mega cap, hundreds of billions or even like trillions of dollars valuation companies having just enough money to buy the earth and all the heavens just coming in and strategically making it impossible for my company to function by. By effectively, like. Yeah, just. Just kneecapping my ability to function by just hiring away. Absolutely everyone effectively does happen, which, which is not anything that they've done wrong from like the workers perspective, but from an antitrust and maintaining a true free market perspective, I could see being an actual problem.

Linus Sebastian (210:41)

Yeah, I don't know how to deal with that.

Luke Lafreniere (210:43)

I don't know how to deal with that.

Linus Sebastian (210:44)

I don't think you can. I don't think you can write a law that stops that from happening that doesn't end up with an outsized negative effect on the employees in this situation.

Luke Lafreniere (210:57)

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Linus Sebastian (210:59)

If you try to write a law that would cover that, it would unquestionably be abused in. In highly corporate favor. It would just end up being bad. There's a lot of cases like this. Right. And I like, pretty much guarantee you that that has happened.

Luke Lafreniere (211:17)

Oh yeah.

Linus Sebastian (211:18)

I mean, there's just nothing you can do about it. Like someone, someone in chat point. I'm flipping topics slightly. Someone in chat pointed out, like, information that we could have that could be used by an outside group. Could be like a customer list. But one of the problems with something like a customer list, well, that is you're getting sued on both ends. The employee that left with that and then gave it over would be individually sued. And if the company that received it didn't immediately get rid of it and then go after the employee and like, basically fire them if they, if they took that information and used it, you could also just sue them. Like, that's actually just super not okay. But mostly for like the privacy of the user list reasons.

Luke Lafreniere (211:58)

But what if it wasn't a user list? What if it was my relationship list? Then where's the line between a user.

Linus Sebastian (212:05)

List that one is interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (212:07)

That's in a database, and a relationship list that's in my phone, which is also a database.

Dan (212:12)

Linus, you went to that factory tour and they made you blur that machine. I just memorized the name and model of that machine. I'm going to a similar. I'm going to a similar company. Like from my last job, I took knowledge of what I did there and I apply it here.

Linus Sebastian (212:29)

But knowledge of how to do a skill is not the thing that we're.

Luke Lafreniere (212:32)

Talking about, but knowledge of a piece of information.

Dan (212:34)

My industry, you know, I mean, knowledge.

Linus Sebastian (212:37)

Of how to do skill is.

Dan (212:38)

It does not apply software, hardware, what did. What should we buy? It would have to be like, is that not knowledge? Right, Like. And where does that blur? If I just memorize the phone numbers in the contact list. Is that. Is that knowledge? I literally know what machine we do lithography with. You should buy that one. I didn't take a list. It's just. That was the one that we used. I know that. Pay me half a million a year, please.

Luke Lafreniere (213:05)

Nicholas Cage says a tiktoker just got sued and. And lost. Or the. The Tick Tocker. Who? A Tick Tocker got sued and lost for stealing someone's husband. If you can win that case, surely you could win a case against this. Now, I think it was. It was less about the actual, like, adultery and more about the Tick Tocker posting publicly about it and humiliating the wife. Okay, yeah, is my understanding of that, but I. It was an interesting head.

Linus Sebastian (213:33)

Still don't know how that works, to be honest.

Dan (213:35)

Isn't kidnapping just like actually a crime?

Luke Lafreniere (213:37)

Oh, wait.

Linus Sebastian (213:38)

You physically stole my husband.

Luke Lafreniere (213:40)

Sorry.

Dan (213:40)

That's why I laughed, because that's kind of mean.

Luke Lafreniere (213:42)

Etzem says it's a specific Georgia law and it is about the infidelity. You've got to be kidding me.

Dan (213:48)

That makes so much sense.

Luke Lafreniere (213:49)

You can be sued for being a husband stealer in that is a Wild Place. Got to be kidding me.

Linus Sebastian (213:54)

Wow.

Luke Lafreniere (213:54)

Dis Breeze says it's a pretty poorly executed court case. You've got to be kidding me. Oh, Nicolas Cage says North America. North Carolina. Well, hold on. Ikea Cherry says Georgia. Husband poaching. Okay, come on, chat. Now you're just confusing me. Okay.

Linus Sebastian (214:18)

We should move on. I don't. I don't know if any of us knows relationship secrets.

Luke Lafreniere (214:25)

I see myself as more of a sunny side up husband.

Linus Sebastian (214:31)

Scrambled eggs.

Dan (214:35)

I actually poached. Are you gonna have an egg pun?

Linus Sebastian (214:43)

He did one.

Dan (214:44)

Did you?

Linus Sebastian (214:45)

I. Not really. I said scrambled. It's not very good. I wanted you to give the ding to him, not me.

Dan (214:58)

Yeah, sorry, bypassed.

Linus Sebastian (214:59)

I do not share in the reverberations.

Luke Lafreniere (215:02)

This is exciting.

Linus Sebastian (215:05)

I. Is it?

Luke Lafreniere (215:08)

Yeah, because. And I'll explain why. Actually, I'll explain why after.

Linus Sebastian (215:13)

All.

Luke Lafreniere (215:14)

Right. First I'll talk about it. Tesla is apparently considering integrating Apple CarPlay. This is not confirmed, but unintentionally on reports call for wireless connectivity and it would be displayed within a windowed environment in the Tesla infotainment system. And this reconsideration of implementing CarPlay appears to be driven. Pun intended. Thank you, new probationary writer by Apple abandoning plans to create its own electric car. But this is just another little tidbit CarPlay and Android Auto are considered essential by at least one third or more of potential buyers. I am one of them. I consider those things essential. And let me explain why are you.

Linus Sebastian (215:58)

A potential buyer of a Tesla?

Luke Lafreniere (215:59)

I am excited about this. At any stage in Tesla's journey from where they were to where they are today, I have never been open to driving one and not driving one, but yeah, driving one. Well, okay, see, it's complicated. I bought one because my in laws chose a Model Y when I told them they could have a car and so I bought them a Model Y. So I've bought a Tesla, but I would never buy one for myself.

Linus Sebastian (216:32)

They had to go to you for.

Luke Lafreniere (216:33)

Approval and a major. Sorry.

Linus Sebastian (216:34)

You said that they could have a car.

Luke Lafreniere (216:36)

Well, I paid for it.

Linus Sebastian (216:37)

I know, I'm just messing. The wording of it was funny. They came to me and I told them they could have a car, I guess.

Luke Lafreniere (216:44)

What? No, it wasn't like that.

Linus Sebastian (216:46)

I know. It just.

Luke Lafreniere (216:47)

They did a lot of childcare for us over the years. They were, they were hugely supportive and are a huge part of how Yvonne and I were able to be as successful as we were. They let us live there rent free for years while we went.

Linus Sebastian (217:01)

No, it's sick. I thought it was cool.

Luke Lafreniere (217:02)

And while we saved up to buy our first house together. So basically I was just paying them back. Yeah, like.

Linus Sebastian (217:08)

Yeah, which is sick. I just.

Luke Lafreniere (217:10)

The way you worded it. So. So anyway, a major part of why I wouldn't consider a Tesla is the locked down proprietary nature of their infotainment system. Sure, because the writing was on the wall the day they locked it down. They were going to control every aspect of this, of the software of this car and the software of this car was going to control every aspect of the hardware. And so it was a matter of time. We've talked about this many times over the years. Before everything would be a flipping subscription or an unlock or a fee or whatever the case may be. And I'm not into that. I already have something with a bunch of subscriptions, including a wireless data subscription, and I would like to simply plug it into my car so that I don't have two of those things in my life because one is enough. And a major concern that I had about Tesla's success was that they were having all of this success with this locked down infotainment system. My lips really hurt. Don't laugh at me. That's so mean.

Linus Sebastian (218:20)

I wasn't even going to until you said so. I was doing fine.

Luke Lafreniere (218:24)

The reason that I lisped there was because this one like caught on the thing. Yeah, it's really painful right now. They're like super swollen today. Back of my throat swollen too. But that's a separate issue. The point is it's been a major concern for me that Tesla has managed to be so successful having broken from the rest of the crowd in allowing this and that they've become sort of. That they had become anyway this like leader in electrification and in car software. And you can actually see their influence. That's what I was worried about. In the same way that even as a non iPhone user, I get concerned when Apple does something that is unfriendly to interoperability between devices or that is not consumer friendly. I get concerned by that because as Apple does, the industry tends to, to follow.

Linus Sebastian (219:22)

Do you think that is still true? I absolutely agree that it was and.

Luke Lafreniere (219:25)

For many years Tesla was undisputably a leader in car software. I don't know that Rivian would have had the, would have had the stones to say no CarPlay, no Android Auto if Tesla hadn't shown that there was a major customer base that was willing to overlook it.

Linus Sebastian (219:49)

So.

Luke Lafreniere (219:49)

Sorry, what were you going to ask?

Linus Sebastian (219:52)

I wasn't going to. I was. Do you think there's still a thought leader in the space at this point?

Luke Lafreniere (219:58)

I still think that their software experience is ahead of where many other North American brands are. I think that, you know, GM is like trying to build an infotainment solution into their cars that will rival Tesla. I remember having just the stick who like I, I probably, I probably gave the guy a look unintentionally. But when we were shopping for Yvonne's new car and we were at the, and we were at the dealership and the guy goes like. And yeah, compared to yours which uses the like couple years older system, the new one is so much more responsive. Look at this. I was like, that's still leggy as like come on man. There's like 10 year old Teslas that are more responsive than this. You got to be kidding me. Anyway, rep havoc in floatplane chats. Tesla news is so damn boring then you aren't paying attention to it.

Linus Sebastian (220:49)

It's not. Yeah, this is not Tesla news.

Luke Lafreniere (220:52)

This is news about a potential shift in the mentality as GM is going in the direction, explicitly going in the direction of reducing their interoperability with your device that you can plug in to have all your maps and stuff and moving toward explicitly doing that so that they can move toward more subscription revenue. Tesla, who has Been a leader in the space of in car software. Whether you like them or not. Okay, doesn't matter. The point is they have been an industry leader and are apparently considering integrating Apple CarPlay. This is a big deal because competition is good. That's why it's not about Tesla News. You've got to, I don't know, you've see the bigger picture here. The bigger picture is any player who goes, oh yeah, there is simply no technological reason why I couldn't just run Android Auto or CarPlay within a window and maintain my infotainment system and give the user a choice. Every one of them that does that puts pressure on everyone else who locks things down and tries to turn your entire life into a fucking subscription. It's good. That's why it matters. Xeno98 says not Android Auto. Yeah, I'd be obviously bummed if it stayed that way, but. But I do suspect that CarPlay would simply be what would come first and Android Auto would come later. Porsche did that. It was CarPlay only for years. And then they actually backported Android Auto into those cars later on after the fact. And I think the reason that they prioritized Android Auto is a very similar reason to why Tesla would prioritize Android Auto. And I think that the Tesla and Apple customer base is probably a very large overlapping Venn diagram. They have very similar sort of styles, very similar approach. Tesla obviously emulated a lot of Apple's image in creating their products and in creating their brand.

Linus Sebastian (223:04)

How do you know how much it costs for a manufacturer? When I was googling this, I could only find aftermarket stuff or options sometimes. But do you know how much it costs on the manufacturer's end to add, you know, CarPlay and Android Auto?

Luke Lafreniere (223:21)

I don't think. My understanding is it doesn't cost anything. My understanding is that Google. I don't know about Apple, but on the Google side my understanding is that it is so beneficial from an ecosystem and data collection standpoint that they will basically like help you do it. Is my understanding. But I could be wrong about that.

Linus Sebastian (223:37)

Yeah, I don't know. Interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (223:42)

Oh yeah. Hey, Samsung fridges display ads. Now.

Linus Sebastian (223:51)

That's the worst. I will not buy.

Luke Lafreniere (223:53)

Imagine getting an Apple ad on your Samsung fridge and that being the least unnatural thing about this whole experience.

Linus Sebastian (224:03)

Yeah, I'm not buying a fridge with a screen.

Luke Lafreniere (224:07)

Our. Our discussion question is who could have seen this coming?

Linus Sebastian (224:12)

Everyone. It's a slash S. I know, I know, I know.

Luke Lafreniere (224:18)

That was it. That's kind of all I have to say. About that man, there's been so many points when I would have lost sir ability to camp.

Linus Sebastian (224:26)

Well maybe to give you something back. I don't, I don't think it's in our some good news doc but oh, Floating Chat reminded me of it the Libra pods thing. Oh yeah, whatever it's called.

Luke Lafreniere (224:37)

So it's cool.

Linus Sebastian (224:39)

Have you used it?

Luke Lafreniere (224:40)

No, because it requires a rooted phone. At least for now is my understanding. So it's pretty cool. It unlocks some of the functions that Apple that Apple locks by changing your device identification like your device ID essentially to Apple. So spoof being an Apple device. So this if nothing else what this does is it proves that there is no technological reason that Apple couldn't allow these functions to exist on Android but that they explicitly block them through allowing them only like allow listing them on Apple devices and then not allowing it on anything that isn't a vendor ID Apple Wild.

Linus Sebastian (225:32)

Yeah interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (225:34)

Seriously, like I mean I love my AirPods I really really do. We have a video coming. Full review AirPods Pro 3s long term review. I love AirPods. I hate being a second class citizen because I don't own enough Apple products. So I daily drove them for part of it with an iPhone after I switched to the iPhone air and then I daily drove it for part of it with an Android phone. So I kind of had both experiences while I was using. And there's a lot of really great features that are exclusive to AirPods that are paired to an iPhone which makes the price of the AirPods Pro 3 is not $250 but starting at $800 and that would be with an iPhone whatever the E1 is 16E I think is their like most budget iPhone and not not cheap anymore. This is cool.

Linus Sebastian (226:29)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (226:31)

Wait, where'd it go? Actually this is both a couple cool things. The Google Play Store will be flagging apps with high battery usage. App developers that plan on publishing through the Google Play Store will have until March 1, 2026 to update their apps to comply with a new Android vitals metric called excessive partial wake locks. This will allow the Play Store to flag apps that have high background activity that may cause battery draining. I love this. See this? This is how you add value to the user to give your marketplace a reason to exist. Not just by locking developers and locking users into just one app marketplace. This is a high, this is a competitive market non antitrust way to differentiate your marketplace. And this would would make me even if I had the choice to use multiple marketplaces whether it's on iOS or whether it's on Android. This would make me more likely to want to use the first party one and not just because you've locked me in so that you can get your 30% cut or whatever. I really like this. I think it's super cool. And this one is no notes, but just the UK is apparently banning reselling tickets for profit.

Linus Sebastian (227:41)

Sick.

Luke Lafreniere (227:42)

I love it. Can we all just love this?

Linus Sebastian (227:46)

Yeah. I don't think you're adding any, you know, benefit to society by doing that, so. Sounds good.

Luke Lafreniere (227:53)

Yeah. Like seriously though, I I don't think Taylor Swift wants her tickets marked up by third party sellers. It's not like she gets more money for it. Like this is great.

Linus Sebastian (228:08)

If you can't make it to a concert or whatever and you want to flip your tickets, that should absolutely be allowed.

Luke Lafreniere (228:12)

Yeah, whatever. But you do it for face value.

Linus Sebastian (228:13)

Yeah, sure.

Luke Lafreniere (228:14)

That simple.

Linus Sebastian (228:15)

Sweet.

Luke Lafreniere (228:18)

Love it.

Linus Sebastian (228:19)

I wonder if there's going to be a horrible workaround. Like I wonder if you could do it but have fees.

Luke Lafreniere (228:26)

There's always a workaround.

Linus Sebastian (228:28)

You can buy this ticket. It's at face value. There's also a thousand dollars of fees.

Luke Lafreniere (228:34)

Quattro Forte says Taylor does. I really don't think she does. I don't think she. I don't. I think she wants you to pay more. Yes, but to her, not to a scalper.

Linus Sebastian (228:42)

Yeah, for sure.

Luke Lafreniere (228:44)

HP and Dell have decided that laptop buyers don't need hevc support Some Dell and HP laptop owners are discovering that their machines can't play content encoded with HEVC or H265, in spite of their CPUs definitely having integrated decoding support. The codec has been supported by Intel CPUs since the sixth generation of their Core processors launched in 2015 and AMD around the same time. For some reason, both manufacturers have disabled this feature on some of their most popular or some of their popular business laptops. HP discloses that the feature is disabled on the data sheets for the impacted machines, while Dell seemingly only mentions it on a general support page about 4K video playback, where they note that HEVC content is only available on laptops with an optional discrete GPU, with an integrated 4K display, with Dolby Vision or with a Cyberlink Blu Ray Player. What year is it? When reached for comment, neither company would state why they've chosen to disable the feature, and both suggested the purchase of a third party software solution. A comment on the hardware subreddit suggests that the change may be in response to an upcoming in increase in licensing Costs from a reasonable $0.20 per laptop to a clearly profiteering $0.24 per laptop. In all seriousness, though, I mean, this is a big part of why H265HEVC was such a cluster bomb. There were multiple parties involved in IP ownership of part of it, which made the licensing of it just a complete disaster. Long live H264, I guess.

Linus Sebastian (230:30)

Yeah. After dark.

Luke Lafreniere (230:33)

And maybe even longer live AV1. Yeah, yeah, let's go. Let's go.

Linus Sebastian (230:38)

Time. I like AV1.

Luke Lafreniere (230:41)

There we go. Yeah, we're going after dark. Is that. Is that it for our topics this week? I mean, we do technically have other things without notes.

Linus Sebastian (230:46)

What do we.

Luke Lafreniere (230:47)

We could talk about what I'm doing this weekend.

Linus Sebastian (230:49)

Oh, what are you doing this week?

Luke Lafreniere (230:50)

We could talk about. Is the bubble popping?

Linus Sebastian (230:53)

What's the. Should we.

Luke Lafreniere (230:55)

Should we. Is the AI bubble popping? You see what happened to Bitcoin this week?

Linus Sebastian (231:00)

See what happened to Nvidia this week?

Luke Lafreniere (231:03)

Yeah. In spite of their earnings beat, like.

Linus Sebastian (231:09)

Well, yeah, there was some things on the earnings call to. Mr. Big A has a good video on it. But there's things on the earnings call that upon further investigation did not seem as good as.

Luke Lafreniere (231:21)

Was it the whole circular money thing.

Linus Sebastian (231:23)

There's. Yeah, there's a lot of accounts receivable chill in there. There's a lot of inventory chill in there, which is a. Interesting situation to be in. There was a comparison drawn between Cisco at the hike of the dot com bubble and Nvidia now where their accounts receivable are super inflated. Their inventory is super inflated.

Luke Lafreniere (231:48)

Yeah. How can you have both high inventory and high ar.

Linus Sebastian (231:52)

Interesting spot, but. Yeah, don't listen to me. Go watch Big A video because I might be misquoting.

Luke Lafreniere (232:02)

Well, no, wait, no, hold on. Yeah, because if you have big accounts receivable, then you should be shipping inventory. Right. Is sort of the problem.

Linus Sebastian (232:09)

Ideally. Or they're producing at a high amount of peratrio strikes again. It does good stuff. Maybe that stuff that you sold a bit ago. The really, really high accounts receivable could mean that you're doing a lot of business. It could also mean that the partners that you're working with are having a hard time paying their bills, which is a bad sign. And if you have a bunch of inventory and you have a bunch of that, that could mean that your cycle is just really fast and you need to stock up inventory to slap at a data center or whatever. It could also mean that you have a bunch of people that bought things and are struggling to pay for them. And you're expecting a lot more orders to come in, and those ones aren't coming in. And both of those things are happening at the same time. So if a lot of inventory stocking up, you have a lot of people not paying for the stuff that you already moved. There's a lot of different things that it could mean. It doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it doesn't necessarily mean good.

Luke Lafreniere (233:12)

Not financial advice. No. Yeah, I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, I'm just. I want to throw that out there. Not financial advice. Neither of us are zero. Zero Nvidia investment.

Linus Sebastian (233:24)

Zero Nvidia investment.

Luke Lafreniere (233:25)

I'm. I'm zero Nvidia Not. Not because I think they're like a, you know, like, bad investment. I just. I don't invest in Nvidia.

Linus Sebastian (233:33)

People have clearly made a lot of money off of it.

Luke Lafreniere (233:35)

Yeah. And I wish them. I wish them. I wish them well. I. I hope that there are many leather jackets in their futures.

Linus Sebastian (233:45)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (233:48)

Maybe even leather jackets in their options.

Linus Sebastian (233:53)

That's pretty good. It was. That was pretty good.

Luke Lafreniere (233:58)

Sorry, it hurts. Yeah. So meanwhile, this. That's been interesting to watch over the last.

Linus Sebastian (234:08)

The bitcoin month.

Luke Lafreniere (234:11)

Yeah. Like, is the. Is. Is the bubble popping now? Like, is it happening? Like, everyone. Everyone with sort of any kind of connection to reality knows we're in a bubble.

Linus Sebastian (234:22)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (234:22)

It's just that you can't know when it will pop until it has already popped. And in this case, I can't even tell, like, if this is a. If this is a. A blip or if this is a real. If there's a real pop. Because, I mean, here, like, you know, bitcoin's a perfect example of just this, like, volatility. Like this. And this don't look markedly different. They look a little different, but, like, you know, okay, this was a popped bubble, I'd say. I'd say this. Oh, man, the way that this is accelerating. Okay. It does look bad.

Linus Sebastian (234:55)

Yeah, it's pretty.

Luke Lafreniere (234:57)

Oh, she's spicy. She's spicy.

Linus Sebastian (234:59)

Did you see my Oracle one?

Luke Lafreniere (235:01)

Bring it up, bring it up, bring it up.

Linus Sebastian (235:03)

Oracle. Five days, 9%.

Luke Lafreniere (235:06)

Let's see. Five years.

Linus Sebastian (235:08)

Oh, yeah, that's a good. Wait.

Luke Lafreniere (235:09)

To the right, to the right, to the right. Whoosh. Okay, is this it? Is it time?

Linus Sebastian (235:18)

I think the most. To me, a very interesting part of this is a lot of people have been pointing at OpenAI.

Luke Lafreniere (235:24)

Yeah. Not financial advice.

Linus Sebastian (235:25)

That's going to be the one that is the most interesting. But OpenAI is not public.

Dan (235:30)

Right.

Linus Sebastian (235:31)

So you can't see it.

Luke Lafreniere (235:32)

That's like saying, you know, Space SpaceX is going to be the bellwether for when the, you know, trillionaire space exploration bubble pops or whatever. What a bubble?

Dan (235:44)

Oh, no, the four people it's gonna.

Linus Sebastian (235:46)

Affect that bubble is very well protected.

Luke Lafreniere (235:49)

Bezos in shambles.

Dan (235:51)

What is he gonna do this summer? I have to go back to Italy.

Luke Lafreniere (235:57)

Yeah. How's everyone else doing? You got. You got Nvidia.

Linus Sebastian (236:00)

Yeah, I can grab that one up there. Down.

Luke Lafreniere (236:02)

Yeah, I just. I just want to see the shape, you know, I want to see the shape.

Dan (236:05)

Check out Roblox.

Linus Sebastian (236:06)

Okay. Five days. This is their five days.

Luke Lafreniere (236:12)

Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's been a pretty volatile five days. Yep. The five years. I want to see the five years. Let's see the shape. Whoosh. Okay. Okay. So that doesn't.

Linus Sebastian (236:23)

Not a massive fall yet.

Luke Lafreniere (236:24)

Yeah. It doesn't look markedly worse than things we've seen before.

Linus Sebastian (236:28)

12, 66%. But yeah, the five days is down about four.

Luke Lafreniere (236:35)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (236:35)

Not as bad as Oracle.

Luke Lafreniere (236:37)

Why do you want me to look at Roblox, Dan? Do you.

Dan (236:39)

Do you would be very surprised.

Luke Lafreniere (236:43)

Roblox. Why is Roblox crashing?

Linus Sebastian (236:46)

Yeah, what happened?

Luke Lafreniere (236:49)

Yeah, why is Roblox falling off?

Linus Sebastian (236:52)

Look at the one month.

Dan (236:53)

Everybody forgets about roblox. Not financial advice.

Linus Sebastian (236:56)

Look at one month.

Luke Lafreniere (236:57)

Oh, well, I mean, I'm. I'm looking at five years, 30%. What?

Linus Sebastian (237:03)

What?

Luke Lafreniere (237:03)

What? Okay, explain yourself.

Linus Sebastian (237:05)

Can you.

Luke Lafreniere (237:05)

Yeah, yeah. Why did you bring up Roblox?

Dan (237:07)

I mean, I can't because. Not financial advice. But it is a tech stock. If you want to think about it like that. It's very interesting as a. As a something to look at, I guess.

Luke Lafreniere (237:21)

You're being so vague. We understand it's not financial advice. I know what the you're talking about.

Dan (237:27)

It's included in a lot of managed EFT portfolios and other stuff like that. I as one of a. Like a very big indicator on. On that kind of like tech portfolio stuff. Roblox is absolutely massive. It's also, you know, played by I don't know how many people these days.

Linus Sebastian (237:45)

A lot of it's fake.

Dan (237:47)

And so to see it also dipping is quite interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (237:53)

I see.

Dan (237:53)

I don't know if it's. If it's just like a market correction.

Luke Lafreniere (237:57)

Or if this is like if this is it or if this is it.

Dan (238:02)

It's very easy to be all doomer about it. Yeah, I think, I think obviously everything's.

Luke Lafreniere (238:07)

On sale right now and not financial advice.

Linus Sebastian (238:12)

And you gotta keep saying that parachutes.

Dan (238:14)

Are not.

Linus Sebastian (238:16)

You want to see another interesting one? I'm pretty sure I got this from Mr. Atriok as well.

Luke Lafreniere (238:21)

I don't think parachutes work that great from a building anyway, so. Exactly.

Linus Sebastian (238:26)

Google's one month.

Luke Lafreniere (238:27)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (238:28)

Up 18.6%. Google's five day, up 4.6%. One day, up 3.33%.

Luke Lafreniere (238:34)

So Google's still on a tear. I mean, I got to feel like part of that has got to be that Berkshire just like bought a ton of it. And not even just them soaking up so much of the available stock, but also just when Berkshire does something, they tend to be trendsetters. So I don't even. Not financial advice.

Linus Sebastian (238:57)

None of this is financial advice. But it is also just interesting.

Luke Lafreniere (239:02)

Zelm says they're doing buybacks. I don't know that I've not followed what Google's been doing lately. Microsoft's apparently down 7%. Man, this is. What. What a. What was it? I wasn't there. I wasn't old enough. What? What? What was it like to live through the dot com crash?

Linus Sebastian (239:29)

Yeah, I don't know.

Luke Lafreniere (239:30)

I don't know. Like, neither. Neither of us were there. But it feels like this is our generation's dot com crash to go along with our generation's Covid crash to go along with our generation's 2008 financial crisis.

Linus Sebastian (239:41)

Here's a fun question. What if we have a 2026 financial crisis because of the housing market and an AI bubble crash at the same time? What if we doubled it and gave it to ourselves?

Dan (239:59)

Some idea. And then Covid too.

Luke Lafreniere (240:02)

And also like out of control national debt. Oh, don't forget about that. Potential crisis, military actions.

Dan (240:10)

We've got some of those.

Luke Lafreniere (240:11)

Oh, yeah, right, that.

Linus Sebastian (240:12)

Yes, a few of those.

Dan (240:13)

This is gonna be fun, I think. Are we approaching the great Filter? Is that what the ultimate interesting times are? May you live through interesting times. It's just like, oh my God, may.

Linus Sebastian (240:26)

You survive the filter.

Dan (240:27)

We are so special.

Luke Lafreniere (240:28)

Okay, here we go. Hear me out, hear me out. Ammunition.

Linus Sebastian (240:36)

Uncanned food.

Luke Lafreniere (240:40)

Do you think even.

Linus Sebastian (240:41)

Well, I mean. Okay, hold on.

Luke Lafreniere (240:43)

Not financial advice.

Dan (240:45)

This is why we're saying Linus Town the whole time is to protect us from the climate wars.

Luke Lafreniere (240:49)

Yeah. Well, where's the town gonna be, Dan?

Dan (240:53)

In the desert of most of Canada.

Luke Lafreniere (241:03)

What are you typing? Good news.

Linus Sebastian (241:05)

Yeah, A lot. A lot of the. A lot of the military ones are not doing too bad.

Dan (241:14)

Great.

Luke Lafreniere (241:16)

Okay, Hear me out, Hear me out.

Linus Sebastian (241:19)

Oh, boy.

Luke Lafreniere (241:21)

Tech yacht or tech plane. So when goes down, you're gonna outrun.

Linus Sebastian (241:26)

The sun, like that crappy moon. I don't even remember the name of that movie. Tech Lunar Base, I'm super down. Tech Lunar Base, I'm down. Ship me to the moon, dude. Let's go.

Luke Lafreniere (241:46)

Yeah, okay. Do you think even I bet you.

Linus Sebastian (241:48)

CW engineering could make bang in body armor.

Luke Lafreniere (241:51)

Do you think even gold will be worth anything in the next major, like, societal meltdown? Will the oldest currency survive?

Linus Sebastian (242:00)

What level of societal meltdown are you talking about?

Luke Lafreniere (242:03)

I don't know. Whatever's coming.

Linus Sebastian (242:05)

Okay, but you're talking.

Luke Lafreniere (242:07)

You said we're going full prepper. Both of us.

Linus Sebastian (242:10)

We're gonna go full prepper.

Luke Lafreniere (242:11)

We're going full prepper. Yeah. Like will it be literally water, ammunition, food?

Linus Sebastian (242:17)

I think it's that Wikipedia drive dense period of time.

Luke Lafreniere (242:23)

Hold on. I actually liked Dan's answer. Did you just say downloading the entirety.

Dan (242:26)

Of Wikipedia it's gonna be food, guns, and then Wikipedia.

Linus Sebastian (242:31)

Let's, let's do some self revealing stuff right now. I have a decent amount of Wikipedia stuff on my phone.

Luke Lafreniere (242:36)

Knowledge is great because they can't just kill you and take it. Whereas they hard drive, they can kill you and take your stockpile of whatever. Well, no, but if it's encrypted. If you're literally the only one. Actually, no, even then they can just like put a gun to your head and tell you they'll pull the trigger if you don't unlock it. But then if, but then if you don't unlock it, then they can't pull the trigger if they want the knowledge. So it's, it's, it's better than, you know, a bunch of bananas in terms of keeping you alive. Yeah, yeah.

Linus Sebastian (243:09)

I mean, I guess so, but yeah, I think that would be a condensed period of time. And then you're going to want to start like making things again.

Luke Lafreniere (243:16)

And you'll probably want currency again because currency, it turns out, is like pretty useful.

Linus Sebastian (243:21)

Trade is like a pretty neat idea.

Luke Lafreniere (243:22)

And carrying around like cans of food is actually not convenient.

Dan (243:26)

I think the new currency should just be like little USB flash drives with the entirety of Wikipedia on them. And that is like your new currency in the after the apocalypse.

Luke Lafreniere (243:37)

That's really specific.

Dan (243:39)

I mean, knowledge is power.

Luke Lafreniere (243:40)

But why would you give, why would you want to give people the entirety of Wikipedia?

Linus Sebastian (243:44)

I will give you 12 knowledge for your cow, please.

Dan (243:48)

This one has pictures. I added classical literature pictures to it. Oh.

Linus Sebastian (244:00)

Then you have the like illicit ones.

Luke Lafreniere (244:01)

Can we get, yeah, some dirty Chaucer poems or something.

Dan (244:05)

This one has the pelvic pelvic bones, structure.

Linus Sebastian (244:10)

That's it. Knowledge of. From when people were clean.

Dan (244:13)

I've got dentistry from 1805.

Luke Lafreniere (244:17)

Porn would probably be pretty big.

Dan (244:20)

Yeah, here's. Here's the. Here's the model that just came out. It's like. Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (244:26)

Oh, a 3D printer.

Luke Lafreniere (244:28)

Oh, 3D printer would be huge.

Linus Sebastian (244:29)

And a bunch of filament.

Luke Lafreniere (244:31)

Yeah, filament. You'd have to stock up filament, but there is that.

Linus Sebastian (244:34)

Like, I don't know how good it is, but I've seen those people that, like, shred the plastic bottles and make filament out of that. I don't know if it's good.

Luke Lafreniere (244:40)

We're doing a video on that.

Linus Sebastian (244:41)

Oh, cool.

Luke Lafreniere (244:42)

Like, what you can do with, like, reclaim. Both reclaimed, like 3D printer poops. And also making things out of, like, other stuff.

Linus Sebastian (244:51)

That's really cool.

Luke Lafreniere (244:52)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (244:53)

One of.

Luke Lafreniere (244:54)

One of the new guys is kind of exploring, you know, that we're just kind of doing our typical LTT kind of shallow dive into all the kind of cool stuff that's going on in that space right now. It's going to be really good. What else? What else would there be? Spools of filament become the new caps. How will the sock warranty work, though? Asks Andre B. In this apocalypse?

Linus Sebastian (245:21)

Yeah, dude. How have you not planned for this?

Dan (245:24)

It's in person.

Linus Sebastian (245:24)

Do you not have a continuation plan for actual apocalypse?

Luke Lafreniere (245:29)

I am not.

Linus Sebastian (245:29)

What if I'm a raider?

Luke Lafreniere (245:31)

Trust me, bro. It's pronounced radist.

Linus Sebastian (245:35)

I'm running through the wastes and I, you know, step on a spike and we have to amputate my foot. But I wish to give my sock to someone else. You have no sock license. That doesn't allow it to be guarantee. And I want to get a new sock. How does this work?

Luke Lafreniere (245:56)

I think. Whoops. What am I doing right now?

Linus Sebastian (245:58)

How do I contact ltt store support?

Luke Lafreniere (246:03)

Carrier pigeon.

Linus Sebastian (246:04)

Is it a bird calling? Yeah.

Dan (246:08)

How are we gonna charge them? Otherwise we'll lose our government.

Luke Lafreniere (246:18)

All right, I'm not ready to go prepper yet, but. No.

Linus Sebastian (246:23)

I have some very minor stuff. I bought a relatively small case of MREs, but that wasn't even government collapse stuff, right? That was just like, earthquake. What if the power's out for three days?

Luke Lafreniere (246:41)

Not smart.

Linus Sebastian (246:42)

Yeah, I don't know. It's. And there's like, a little bit of water because there was. Our building's been pretty okay for a while, but there was, like, a lot of problems for a long time. And there was a serious thing where, like, if these levels of problems that we're having start splitting into electrical as well, like the food in the fridge is going to spoil. And then it would be kind of nice if we could exist at home and have food at that time.

Luke Lafreniere (247:07)

SJW5135 says LTT bug out bag.

Linus Sebastian (247:13)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (247:13)

That'd be kind of sick. It could have a spot for all the USB drives of Knowledge.

Dan (247:20)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (247:21)

Like.

Dan (247:21)

Like you've got that cell phone pocket in your. In your jacket. It's just got like a couple things for USB drives of Wikipedia.

Luke Lafreniere (247:29)

Heck yeah.

Dan (247:32)

All right.

Luke Lafreniere (247:32)

Our other topic that's left before after dark is what I'm doing this weekend.

Linus Sebastian (247:36)

Yeah, what are you doing this weekend?

Luke Lafreniere (247:37)

I am finally getting my air brake certification.

Linus Sebastian (247:41)

Oh.

Luke Lafreniere (247:44)

Which will allow me to daily drive my fire truck that I purchased many moons ago.

Linus Sebastian (247:49)

I can't wait till you park it in front of your neighbor's place.

Dan (247:53)

Didn't I hear that the service people were like, upset because normally, you know, it doesn't see 6km between regular services.

Luke Lafreniere (248:03)

Really?

Dan (248:04)

Something like that. Well, you had to go get serviced.

Luke Lafreniere (248:07)

Regularly because how regular?

Dan (248:08)

It's a. It's a fire truck.

Luke Lafreniere (248:10)

Well, yeah, it's fire. Yeah.

Dan (248:12)

It's like yearly service quality fire truck has to be done. It's had like 7 kilometers since that service.

Luke Lafreniere (248:19)

Oh, so they were upset about that.

Dan (248:21)

They were confused.

Luke Lafreniere (248:22)

Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, it's been parked.

Linus Sebastian (248:25)

Okay, I understand. I thought it was like Dan was talking about the other way around.

Luke Lafreniere (248:29)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Linus Sebastian (248:30)

I misinterpreted that.

Dan (248:31)

Oh, no, no.

Linus Sebastian (248:31)

I thought you were saying it needs service every seven kilometers. I was like, no, no. So confused.

Dan (248:37)

All right, I finally lost it.

Luke Lafreniere (248:39)

While you guys get started, I'm going to run to the washroom. Not having another one of these did not prevent that.

Dan (248:44)

He could have been hydrated the whole time.

Linus Sebastian (248:46)

He could have.

Luke Lafreniere (248:47)

Damn it.

Dan (248:48)

I guess we're going into After Dark then.

Linus Sebastian (248:50)

Yes.

Dan (248:52)

I have a couple in here for you. Moving on that we can look at. I keep opening the wrong app on my phone. After Dark. Google search, Luke. Question for Luke. And maybe Linus.

Linus Sebastian (249:10)

Oh.

Dan (249:11)

How do you see AI Genuinely enhancing player experiences in games? And where could it start to go wrong if studios fall into the usual nigification pattern?

Linus Sebastian (249:24)

It's kind of tough because there's like, there's. There's been examples of how it could be used in single player games already. I mean, there's Skyrim mods, right, that have like, AI followers. You could have AI Lydia or whatever. In my opinion, like, playing something Like Baldur's Gate. I don't think I even want that. I want the word by word tailored experience that they were able to deliver to me.

Luke Lafreniere (249:59)

Okay.

Linus Sebastian (250:01)

Wait, they can't even see it. Nothing happened. But yeah, I kind of want the tailored experience that they can give to me. I do think there will be scenarios where having the dynamicism of something like an AI follower thing would be great. Like, I've had this vision for a, a squad combat game where you're like a squad leader to a certain degree and you can communicate with your team through your microphone on your computer, but it's a single player game and they can communicate back and it's not just simple commands like stack up. Like you could, you could do more complicated things and they might actually be able to understand and react properly and converse with you and things like that. It could be very, very interesting. There are definitely opportunities where it could be really cool. I don't remember the second part of the question. There was two parts, I swear.

Dan (250:59)

Where can it start to go wrong if it falls into the usual injuredification pattern?

Linus Sebastian (251:03)

Oh yeah, a lot of those AI character mods for Skyrim are kind of junk. I think they, I mean, you've all conversed with AI for too long before it can really go weird. Yeah, it can get really weird. It can get really outside of the game.

Dan (251:23)

I, I, yeah, I'd love to see it more in the, like interacting with commands rather than like it being the intention for the story.

Linus Sebastian (251:34)

Yeah, like I, I, I, I really like that squad combat idea like I mentioned. But yeah, I don't, I don't want, I don't think I want to be able to ask Lydia about quantum physics and have her be like, oh, yes, that thing. That hasn't been, I can totally answer that.

Dan (251:53)

I know what toilet paper is.

Linus Sebastian (251:54)

Yeah. And there's, there's no real way with the current systems that we have to actually ensure that that's not going to become a problem. I can pretty much guarantee you that it will be a little bit whack.

Luke Lafreniere (252:11)

So I have a not answer, but at least response on the whole. How are we handling people who move between float plane tiers? Sammy said this was an edge case we didn't consider. Colton and I will discuss on Thursday with a plan, but the focus will be to do what's best for the customer. So that's not an answer, that's not a commitment, but it is a attitude.

Dan (252:34)

Up next.

Linus Sebastian (252:35)

And a dev change. Very cool.

Dan (252:38)

Hello. Have you, have you found the refrigerant for your super cooler machine yet. If not, I have priced out how much it would cost for me. Licensed EPA 608 and buy it £2,610, £15. Your needs.

Luke Lafreniere (252:57)

Oh, interesting. I don't know that for sure, but Dan, can you mark that? And it's actually Elijah who is following up that project. I think we have a technician coming in next week to do an assessment of the machine. We managed to get in touch with the same guy who decommissioned it.

Linus Sebastian (253:17)

Yeah, that's crazy.

Luke Lafreniere (253:18)

Which is pretty, pretty beneficial when it comes to machines of that sort of temperamentality and complexity. So he apparently said that when it was decommissioned, it was working. And considering how long it's been, it looks like it's in great shape. From an initial just glance. As we dig deeper, we could find stuff. But yeah, I am hopeful that we will return it to working order. I am not very hopeful that it will.

Linus Sebastian (253:58)

Serve us make any sense.

Luke Lafreniere (254:00)

Yep, we'll get to that later. We'll get to that in the video.

Linus Sebastian (254:03)

Oh, I think there's even. Yeah, sure.

Dan (254:07)

All right, next up, good evening, Disneyland resort.

Luke Lafreniere (254:12)

I don't know.

Dan (254:12)

People try. In catching up with previous WAN shows, I've learned of Linus's love of Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.

Luke Lafreniere (254:22)

There was red and yellow and green and orange and violet and pink and. No, I can't.

Dan (254:28)

You cannot.

Linus Sebastian (254:29)

Accurate up till there.

Luke Lafreniere (254:30)

The very beginning was nice.

Dan (254:32)

Linus, can you name all the colors in order? He could not.

Luke Lafreniere (254:35)

Because it starts to have a whole bunch of, like, other ones. Like ochre and, like, coat colors in order. Song lyrics. Hold on. Red and yellow and green and brown. Oh, no, I was totally wrong. I got the first three. Did I say red, yellow, green?

Linus Sebastian (254:52)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (254:52)

And yellow and green. Yeah, I think I got that. And brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and cream and crimson and silver and rose, azure, lemon, gray, purple, white, pink, orange and blue. Apparently.

Dan (255:05)

That is obscene.

Linus Sebastian (255:11)

Nice. Nice cool coat.

Dan (255:13)

Heck, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (255:14)

Such a great musical.

Dan (255:16)

Howdy, dll and chat. Now that the holidays are upon us, what are some of yalls family holiday? Family traditions that are specifically yours that no other friends or family do. Thanks and happy holidays, y'.

Luke Lafreniere (255:31)

All.

Linus Sebastian (255:36)

I've kind of won. I don't know if this counts because I don't know that no one else does it. But we are on purpose. Extremely slow doing presence, like, very much on purpose. You essentially generally go. You go one person at a time. Unless there's mirror gifts. Like, if people are receiving the same thing, they receive them at the same time. But other than that, you go one person at a time. The idea is that they open it. There's often, like, an opportunity for the person who gave the gift to, like, talk about it or why they might have thought it was good for them or whatever. They'll like, pass it around. People can check it out. You, like, experience it for a moment, and then you move on to the next one. It's not the, like, frenzy. Open up everything super fast. There's none of that. There's often even selecting it. Like, it'll often be, you know, you're not allowed to pick one that you gave someone. You're not allowed to pick something for yourself, and you can go up and pick it. But now that there's little ones, like, we try to get them to do it. In the past, we'd try to get, like, Chloe the dog to, like, mom tried to train her to, like, go grab presents.

Luke Lafreniere (256:44)

That sounds like such a your mom thing to do.

Linus Sebastian (256:46)

Yeah. And yeah, it's like a whole thing. It takes all day. But it's cool. I like it a lot. Personally. It is a very defended tradition.

Luke Lafreniere (257:07)

Dumb question. You're on speaker on wan show.

Linus Sebastian (257:11)

That's not a question.

Luke Lafreniere (257:12)

What are some of yalls? Nice. What are some of yalls? Family holiday traditions that are specifically yours and no other friends and family. Do we really, like, have a lot of, like, traditions? I don't really feel like we do. I'm kind of at a loss here.

Dan (257:27)

Well, we put up those Christmas lights.

Luke Lafreniere (257:29)

All around our family room.

Dan (257:31)

I don't think.

Luke Lafreniere (257:31)

I don't think putting up Christmas lights is a. No, no.

Dan (257:35)

Like that. That is a very normal thing to.

Luke Lafreniere (257:37)

Put on your roof or like, on a Christmas tree. But decorating the couch and the fireplace with Christmas lights is kind of different. Yeah, I don't know if it is. Okay.

Dan (257:46)

Fireplace, no. Couch. Kind of weird.

Linus Sebastian (257:49)

Okay, well, I play super normal couch.

Luke Lafreniere (257:52)

I do always put them on the couch.

Dan (257:53)

Couch is not okay.

Luke Lafreniere (257:55)

So. Well, I can explain why. So one of the things that was really cool for me as a kid, even once I knew that. That Santa wasn't real, is that my parents would deck out the living room. So Santa didn't just leave presents for our family. Santa also decorated our living room. Oh. So we will put up our tree, which often isn't even in our living room right now. It goes in just our foyer. So when you walk in, there's like, a Christmas tree. But we don't do, like, Christmas morning there, so we don't do our gift exchange there. So we don't have. So that's in the living room. So before the kids or after the kids go to bed, we'll do, like, the usual normal stuff. So we do. Sometimes we forget to do the plate with the cookies and the carrots or whatever for the reindeer. But what we've always consistently remembered to do is the note. And then also Santa puts up a bunch of Christmas lights in our living room so that when you come into the room, it's like, very Christmas in that room. And it wasn't when you went to bed. So I guess. I guess that's kind of different. Yeah, I didn't really think of that.

Linus Sebastian (259:06)

That's cool.

Dan (259:06)

That's nice.

Linus Sebastian (259:07)

Yeah, I like that.

Luke Lafreniere (259:10)

Yeah. You always wanted it to be like a magical feeling when they walked in.

Linus Sebastian (259:15)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (259:19)

Yeah. I can't really think of anything else. Now I get an apology. Right?

Dan (259:22)

Because you said no.

Luke Lafreniere (259:24)

I said no to what?

Linus Sebastian (259:25)

Special.

Luke Lafreniere (259:27)

You said that wasn't special. You said I was wrong. Well. Well, no, no.

Dan (259:31)

I just mean I called your tradition weird, which makes it unique.

Luke Lafreniere (259:37)

Okay, Well, I mean, I just don't think nobody else does that. Surely somebody else. Surely somebody else does.

Dan (259:42)

I. I googled Christmas lights on couch. Zero results.

Luke Lafreniere (259:46)

Okay. Thank you for that, Dan.

Linus Sebastian (259:47)

Whoville living rooms and Whoville couches, and not even they did no.

Dan (259:52)

Okay, well, you are unique.

Luke Lafreniere (259:54)

All right. I'm officially a snowflake. Okay, thanks for thinking of that, Vaughn.

Dan (259:58)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (259:59)

See you tonight.

Linus Sebastian (260:00)

No apologies, though.

Luke Lafreniere (260:01)

Oh, yes. I'm very sorry. Well, I mean, it was. It was. It ended up being my thing that I called not special. So it's not like I dissed her. Oh, my gosh. But I'm sorry. How about this? I'm sorry for disagreeing with you.

Linus Sebastian (260:15)

Wow.

Dan (260:18)

I'm sorry you got your feelings hurt.

Luke Lafreniere (260:19)

I'll see you in a bit. And I'll see the couch, too. Bye.

Linus Sebastian (260:21)

Yeah, I think you will.

Luke Lafreniere (260:22)

Can you put some Christmas lights on it for me?

Dan (260:24)

All right, Vance. Whatever. Up next. Different. Different. Vance. How about. How about another one?

Luke Lafreniere (260:33)

Yeah, hit me.

Dan (260:34)

Wrapped up my first internship and realized for the first time that, quote, unquote, being a good employee is a skill you need to learn and isn't taught in the school. Other than the basics, how do I be a good employee?

Luke Lafreniere (260:54)

I feel like this will always come across kind of abrasive coming from me, because it's been 14 years since I've been an employee. I feel like this is One of those ones where I obviously have thoughts on what I felt made me a good employee, you know, when I was at ncix, I obviously have thoughts on what makes a good employee here. I think there's a lot of different ways that you can approach this. I think you can approach it from like an attitude and culture and fit standpoint. I think that you can get away with a lot in terms of like financial value that you bring to a business. If you like, just bring a super cantu attitude and you, you know, make the place a great place to work for other members of the team. I think in the same way you can get away with being kind of a dour head if you deliver like huge financial gains for the company. But like, in terms of like, like skills that you need to learn that aren't taught in school. Like, I'm. I don't know, how do you, how do you be a good employee? Yeah. Okay. Pancraz is in the chat. He says give a crap about what you do.

Linus Sebastian (262:08)

Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it. That's.

Luke Lafreniere (262:10)

Oh, God, that's.

Linus Sebastian (262:12)

The culture side is like almost most important in my opinion. You can be extremely good at something, but if you're like a toxic, no one's going to want to work with you and you're going to end up creating a space that is bad and is not very productive and doesn't work very well. So like that. And that doesn't mean don't speak up. This conversation often gets conflated. You should absolutely speak up when you know the time is right. If something is bad, you should bring it up. Ideally you bring it up and raise potential solutions. Even if you don't necessarily think they're going to happen. Even if you don't necessarily think they're possible. Just like show that you cared enough to try to think about helping to solve the problem. And if you do have a really good solution, then even better. But if you just complain all the time and are a downer to like be around, that's not helpful.

Luke Lafreniere (263:14)

I mean, it's a lot of the things that make you a good person kind of relationship.

Linus Sebastian (263:20)

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. Honestly, it's exactly the same skills.

Luke Lafreniere (263:23)

I'd say being a good employee is the same as being a good friend, is the same as being a good spouse is the same as being a good parent is the same as being a good boss.

Linus Sebastian (263:32)

And I think that's true if the person you're working for isn't a dinkhole.

Luke Lafreniere (263:36)

As well, yeah, that's a major factor is like it takes two to tango. And I mean that in both a positive and a negative way. Like it takes. It takes two people to have a conflict and it takes two people to have a harmonious relationship. If someone else is engaging in bad faith, then no amount of use being a positive contributing member of the team who cares about what you do and does all these things that we're saying, no amount of it is going to help and you just need to get.

Linus Sebastian (263:58)

The out of there or a negative one.

Luke Lafreniere (264:00)

And sometimes, and sometimes, honestly that need to just get out is not even necessarily because the other person was a bad person. Sometimes people just are abrasive to each.

Linus Sebastian (264:10)

Other or aren't compatible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (264:13)

And so, you know, we're not trying.

Linus Sebastian (264:14)

To not fit in that workspace.

Luke Lafreniere (264:16)

We're not trying to judge every situation here at all. Just kind of trying to. You asked for the basics.

Linus Sebastian (264:22)

Yeah. And it effectually effectively comes down to like be good in the relationship or exit. Yeah.

Dan (264:31)

This one is mostly for Linus. Does your son regret choosing the Switch 2 over any of the computer handhelds since the video?

Luke Lafreniere (264:38)

I asked him this two days ago. I asked like, hey, are you using your Switch too much? And he said no, I actually have not been using it that much because part of the deal for this was to help him. Part of the idea was that it was a gift, obviously very extravagant gift, very learning moment, privileged gift. But I also think that even in the context of a gift, you can still learn lessons about money management. And what I offered him was a choice of like a hype device, knowing that there's going to be an overtime cost associated with it, of very expensive first party titles. Or the uncertain device that at the time the Rog Xbox Ally X was not announced even yet. Or sort of the devil you know, which is actually more expensive up front. But that's my burden. But you'll have more affordable games. But these are games that you could have just played on your desktop PC anyway. So he had kind of these three choices. And so I resolved when he made the choice of the Switch 2 that I wasn't going to buy games for him. So he has Mario Kart and he has Remastered, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, because I wanted those for myself, even though I haven't ended up really playing any of them. But other than that, I'm not just going to run out and buy games for it. And so we own Aces, we own whatever the Fitness one is, Ring Fit, we Own Ring Fit Adventure, but other than that. So, yeah, he can just play some Switch games that we own and then those three remastered and new console titles. And so, yeah, he hasn't really been using it. I didn't actually specifically ask him if he regretted it. He. He didn't bring that up on his own. But I do know that he hasn't been using the switch too much.

Dan (266:34)

Hey, Dynast, Duke and Dan. I recently purchased some somewhat large plastic bins and was surprised by the market price at the size. What is something you thought was inexpensive until you went to buy it?

Luke Lafreniere (266:47)

Oh, my God. Plastic bins.

Dan (266:48)

100%.

Linus Sebastian (266:49)

I was just gonna say, hell yeah. Garbage cans. What the hell are you talking about? Why is it so freaking expensive? Garbage cans are nuts. I don't get it.

Dan (267:03)

When I became an adult cheese, I.

Luke Lafreniere (267:06)

Had no idea how much utensils cost until the first time I bought them. I. I was just like, this is insane, because I. I don't know that my family had ever bought them. We always just had a whole drawer of, like, mismatched, random stuff. So when Yvonne and I, you know, moved out and were adulting for the first time, I wanted matching cutlery. That was just something that felt like a we've made it thing to have to me because I'd never had it in my entire life. And I found out how much matching cutlery cost, I was like, the. This is ridiculous.

Linus Sebastian (267:36)

People can call me cheap. Again, I've never done it.

Luke Lafreniere (267:40)

Yeah, I. I don't blame you. Even Ikea, it's cheap and those ones suck. Yeah, like, they're just. They're not like, it's like, what mouth is this for? Do Swedish mouths really look like this? Like, I don't understand it.

Dan (267:52)

I get made fun of my spoons.

Linus Sebastian (267:56)

I. Yeah, I. I remember the garbage can thing. I remember, like, Emma wanted to buy one. I think I saw the price and, like, scoffed and was just like, ugh. She's not, like, valuing the dollar.

Luke Lafreniere (268:10)

You know, she hasn't shopped enough.

Linus Sebastian (268:12)

And I went to go look into it. I went to, like, Canadian Tire or something to buy a garbage can. I just. I think I was there for like an hour. They have, like, half an aisle of garbage can options. My brain was just exploding that I was like, there's no way. Like, this is insane. I must have done something wrong. Maybe I would. Is this the wrong place? Let me look at stuff online. Like, did they put the can in the wrong spot? There's no. It's a garbage can. Why does it cost like $200.

Dan (268:38)

Am I in the lawnmower section? Did they swap them?

Linus Sebastian (268:41)

What is happening right now? It just makes no sense. And it's not like fancy.

Luke Lafreniere (268:48)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (268:48)

Like, and I don't think this. I don't know, but I don't think this is like a super fancy brand or anything. It's a Home Depot. All these different places. Simple human garbage can. $240. What are we talking about?

Dan (269:02)

Metal cube.

Linus Sebastian (269:03)

Why? Oh my goodness, the pop ups. Holy.

Luke Lafreniere (269:08)

Anyways, tape is wildly expensive to me. Like masking tape.

Linus Sebastian (269:12)

Okay.

Luke Lafreniere (269:13)

It's a roll of paper.

Linus Sebastian (269:15)

Yeah.

Luke Lafreniere (269:15)

Like, have you seen how much a roll of masking tape costs?

Linus Sebastian (269:17)

No.

Luke Lafreniere (269:18)

Yeah. It's like, I think last time I was at Home Depot was like seven or eight dollars or something like that. Like, what the heck? When I was running my painting business, they were like a buck 52 bucks, like depending on the thickness. I feel like there's a lot of stuff that's like that these days though.

Linus Sebastian (269:36)

What are you guys talking about?

Luke Lafreniere (269:37)

Talking about. What are people talking about? Ram. Yeah, yeah, Ram, definitely. That.

Dan (269:47)

Might be cheaper to use it to buy your food at this point. Eat your food, Daniel.

Luke Lafreniere (269:52)

It's late.

Dan (269:53)

I'm sorry. Get some DDR4. My spaghetti.

Luke Lafreniere (269:58)

Okay, so part of my problem, part of my problem is that I was, I was not looking at bulk packs. So here you go. Here's like, here's like some painter's blue, right? $10.37 each. What the f is going on here? You can get cheaper ones just like the horrible contractor grade, like beige masking tape is cheap. But the like, the good stuff for like cutting paint lines is not. The cheaper green one in a bulk pack is still. What is this a six pack for? So that's like still $4 each, which is just. Yeah. More than, more than double what I used to pay for it back when I was a painter. Which I realized was sort of a hot minute ago. This is like old man yells at clouds level at this point. But I mean literally. It was a merge message. Somebody asked. I'm not bringing it up out of nowhere.

Dan (270:53)

Hi, Lil Lee Luton. Thoughts on companies requiring all employees to learn about agentic AI? I get learning about the uses and risks of agentic AI. What about requiring all know how to develop one?

Luke Lafreniere (271:12)

Is anyone actually requiring anyone to know how to develop one? That doesn't sound right. Requiring them to use it. I, I do. I have heard of.

Dan (271:24)

What about like maybe, maybe a little bit more loose terms like setting one up to do an agent style task.

Luke Lafreniere (271:31)

That they would have for their workflow. Okay, I see what you mean.

Linus Sebastian (271:33)

That sounds like you're just following up on training.

Luke Lafreniere (271:35)

Yeah, professional development. I think it's. I think that as long as they're not forced to actually use it, if it doesn't make sense for them, then that's probably fine. I mean, I don't really mind a company investing in professional development for the people who work there. And I don't see this as really any different from doing a workshop on, like, getting along with different personality types or any other skill.

Linus Sebastian (272:00)

I feel like I need more details.

Dan (272:04)

Hi, lld, this is Chloe from Malaysia. I'm buying these for my boyfriend for Christmas.

Linus Sebastian (272:11)

Nice.

Dan (272:11)

Question for Linus. Where is your family from originally? My boyfriend's Last name is Sebastian2.

Luke Lafreniere (272:17)

Ah, okay. So I actually get into this.

Linus Sebastian (272:20)

Your boyfriend's getting some.

Luke Lafreniere (272:21)

Wow. You got a backpack. All black, silver shaft backpack, tech sack and screwdriver.

Linus Sebastian (272:27)

So that's a pretty good Christmas.

Dan (272:29)

Hopefully he doesn't watch her. Spoilers. Chloe from an Asia who had Anonymous as their name.

Luke Lafreniere (272:36)

Oh, yeah, what's up with that? Chloe from Malaysia whose boyfriend's last name is Sebastian.

Linus Sebastian (272:41)

Not so smart specific. Maybe we shouldn't have said the stuff.

Luke Lafreniere (272:46)

I mean, she's the one who put it in there. I don't make the rules.

Dan (272:50)

No, I mean, we don't have their last name. Yeah, that's why it's Anonymous.

Luke Lafreniere (272:55)

One last name.

Dan (272:56)

Yes.

Luke Lafreniere (272:57)

And they're not married, they're boyfriends. So presumably her last name is not Sebastian yet.

Dan (273:03)

They're going to after they open their presents. It might be Chloe Sebastian.

Luke Lafreniere (273:07)

Yeah, I know, right?

Dan (273:07)

Damn good presentation.

Luke Lafreniere (273:09)

So we're actually going to cover this in the Linus Torvalds collab. But throughout the video, kind of like, you know how I like to point out things I have in common with Taylor Swift. So I played that game with Mr. Torvalds. Throughout our build, things that we have in common is at some point in our lives or other, we've been observed. We've observed that we have rather prominent human beings. We both obviously have the name Linus. That was one. And also we both have kind of bullsh t made up last names. Huh. His last name is not like a real last name. A member of his family kind of arbitrarily assigned it to themselves.

Linus Sebastian (273:56)

And is that not where they all kind of came from?

Luke Lafreniere (273:59)

And that's where they all came. Well, oh, sure. I mean, at some point, but like, it's. There's no linear.

Linus Sebastian (274:05)

Iceland. Iceland actually has a structure for it. It's your dad's name plus son, I think. But most places are pretty random.

Luke Lafreniere (274:15)

But you're a la Frenier and there's like a lineage there. There's like, you have like, there's that.

Linus Sebastian (274:19)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (274:20)

There's people named Lafreniere and there is some, some probability that you are related to them in some way.

Linus Sebastian (274:26)

Sure.

Luke Lafreniere (274:26)

Whereas with Torvalds, apparently It is a 100% I am related to this person because that lineage only goes back to like his grandparent.

Linus Sebastian (274:36)

Oh, this is like very recent.

Luke Lafreniere (274:37)

Very recent.

Linus Sebastian (274:38)

Okay, I understand.

Luke Lafreniere (274:39)

And then. So mine is also, I don't know, is also made up last name. My, My mom changed her last name as part of some sort of reasoning that she had for it. And then when she married my dad, he took her name actually. And so that name was passed to me. And so I am, I am a second generation Sebastian as a last name. So it has nothing to do with where my family's from originally. As for where my family's from originally, on the one side, Canada, Canadian Mutt. On that side, just, I don't know. I'm pretty sure my great grandmother had a dowry that involved livestock.

Linus Sebastian (275:26)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (275:27)

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, just. Yeah, Canadian mix. There may be some Canadian, like native in there somewhere. Not enough for any kind of status or anything. Who knows? Complete mix. And then the other side, and this is awkward, is I'm a quarter Russian and a quarter Ukrainian, so.

Linus Sebastian (275:48)

Nice.

Luke Lafreniere (275:49)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (275:49)

So you have some internal conflict going on.

Dan (275:51)

Yeah, we.

Luke Lafreniere (275:52)

Half of me has been at war for the last few years. It's been rough. It's been rough.

Dan (276:03)

Up next. Hello, lldp. Sure. Thoughts on data center sprawl?

Luke Lafreniere (276:10)

Oh, hold on. Corey G asks, did Linus do a test kit? No. So everything that I just said might be complete nonsense because I'm counting on my family to have told me because there is no way that I would do one of those ancestry tests.

Linus Sebastian (276:22)

Nice.

Dan (276:25)

Hello, lldp. Thoughts on the new data center sprawl? Just came back from Indiana, helping the data center team there. And locals are not jazzed about giant data centers plopped in the middle of farmland.

Luke Lafreniere (276:37)

Understandable. Understandable. I don't, I don't understand how the. It's so funny because there was a lot of like, hand wringing over how electric vehicles were going to overburden the grid. But like, this is, this is on a completely different level. And in some cases, like, like you said, like in the, in the middle of nowhere sometimes because they're just looking for basically as far As I can tell anywhere where there's power and then putting down these giant facilities that realistically don't employ that many people, which kind of blows. Even though there's like, like high tech, you know, industry moving in and then just like sucking up all the power, I, yeah, 100% or, or in some cases just like expelling emissions. You know, I feel like, I feel like this how I feel like taxes, you know, I, I pay my taxes. I pay a lot of taxes. I don't mind as long as that's being used for something useful. Like I, we have an AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade coming up. I don't, I don't, I don't know if we've talked about this, but one of, one of our team members was actually diagnosed with stage three cancer a little while ago. And I shouldn't say a little while ago, it was quite a while ago now and we finally got to do their AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade because they're finally back to work and feeling up to, you know, being on camera and, and it was, it was a really exciting like really happy AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade. And you know, one of the, one of the things that I take a lot of, you know, pride in both personally and this, this may be very surprising to some of the people watching who are from, you know, other parts of the world. But as a Canadian as well, something that I take a lot of national pride in is our socialized healthcare. It is not perfect. And that is the very first thing that I will say about it.

Linus Sebastian (278:49)

I don't know of one that is.

Luke Lafreniere (278:51)

I don't know of any healthcare system that is perfect and neither is ours. But what I do know is that our team member was diagnosed with stage three cancer and was able to be treated without out of pocket expense for the most part. And like, you know, there was some things, especially incidental things and you know, I also take great pride. So he mentioned that, and this is all on camera, this is all coming. But he mentioned that there was like an anti nausea medication that was $50 a pill or something like that. And I was like, oh. But like, sorry, was that out of pocket? And he goes, well it was 90% covered by LMG's coverage. And I'm like, and I only needed like a dozen of them. And I was like okay, okay, okay, okay. You know what, that's, that's good to know. So like are there still costs? Yes, let me repeat. I pay a lot of taxes. We pay for it all. But you know, when I, when I see it in action. I don't mind that. I don't like to see it wasted. And a lot of it does get wasted.

Linus Sebastian (279:55)

There's a ton of that.

Luke Lafreniere (279:56)

Yeah. There's a ton of waste and I hate that.

Linus Sebastian (279:58)

But I also don't know of a system that doesn't have a ton of waste.

Luke Lafreniere (280:01)

Yeah. So I guess I have the same thoughts on data centers. Right. Like if it's doing something really useful and benefiting humanity. We're doing aerodynamics research for a new generation of more efficient vehicles. Vehicles. Or we're doing whatever.

Dan (280:12)

Right.

Luke Lafreniere (280:12)

Like, sure, yeah. I'm super into it. We're. I don't know, we're generating seahorse emojis. I. I guess I'm not as. I'm not as jazzed on what they're doing right now. Yeah. So.

Linus Sebastian (280:22)

Yeah, dude.

Luke Lafreniere (280:23)

So my feelings are mixed. My feelings are mixed.

Linus Sebastian (280:25)

Let's go.

Dan (280:30)

Honestly, how has Apple escaped prosecution? The browser lock in alone with Safari on iOS fundamentally destroyed web apps for over a decade. They make 90s Microsoft look like petty shoplifters.

Linus Sebastian (280:45)

There's a lot of that.

Dan (280:46)

Microsoft has a dollar sign in the middle of it. Even though the S also kind of looks like a dollar sign.

Luke Lafreniere (280:53)

I don't know either. I haven't been able to figure it out. And it seems like I felt like alongside many of you, sort of like the emperor has no clothes for a long time. Like when the whole epic lawsuit thing happened, I was like, oh, yes, this is very obvious. Surely this will be very obvious to everyone that this is. This is antitrust and this is non competitive behavior.

Linus Sebastian (281:17)

Dive in front of the billionaire.

Luke Lafreniere (281:20)

People would do anything to shield the trillion dollar company from criticism. And I don't understand it. If something is bad when Microsoft does it, then it's bad when Apple does it. It's that simple. And we can't let our tribalism and our loyalties get in the way of that. But we do. We allow it. And I. I don't get it. I don't get it either. I'm sorry, I got nothing.

Dan (281:46)

I could use some more abrasion resistance. Slash, rip. Stop. Stuff for hiking and fishing. Are there any Niko fabric items in the works? Don't know what that is.

Luke Lafreniere (281:59)

Niko. I' ma look it up. Just because I don't know the terminology doesn't necessarily mean we aren't doing anything with it. Okay. High performance lubricants. That's. Oh my. That's a result.

Dan (282:14)

Nylon, cotton.

Luke Lafreniere (282:17)

Oh, not that I know of right now. Yeah, let's Go with. Let's go with a. Not that I know of right now. Sorry. But hey, enjoy your screensaver party shirt. G'. Day. L. D. I. I assume that's a lowercase L. It's an I.

Dan (282:42)

You can't prove it.

Luke Lafreniere (282:44)

I mean, I can do something. Yeah. Oh, you know what? No, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can analyze this. Hold on a second.

Linus Sebastian (282:53)

You can. There's an L in thermal. Later on in the same sentence, you can see a lowercase l. The.

Luke Lafreniere (282:59)

That's not going to help us. How's that going to help us?

Linus Sebastian (283:03)

Because it looks the same.

Luke Lafreniere (283:06)

Well, yeah, but so does the top.

Linus Sebastian (283:08)

Height of the L. And the D is higher. As far as I can tell is.

Dan (283:12)

Hold on, I'm going to. I'm going to copy paste.

Luke Lafreniere (283:14)

No, no, you have to copy paste it into Google Docs and then do the case change thing.

Dan (283:18)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. I put it in font checker. It is a lowercase L. Called it. Look at you this. He does words professionally, I believe.

Luke Lafreniere (283:31)

I think I am the lowercase L, I assume because I'm small L. Sure. I think that was. I think that was the idea. Big L, D and small L. Currently.

Dan (283:40)

Working on a cubesat thermal management systems for my degree.

Luke Lafreniere (283:44)

Wait, how come he gets to be Big D? I want to be Big D. No.

Dan (283:52)

We all know I don't have to.

Luke Lafreniere (283:53)

Be Little Pee Pee.

Dan (283:54)

We all know you're Big D.

Linus Sebastian (283:57)

No.

Luke Lafreniere (283:58)

Yeah, no, we don't.

Dan (283:59)

All right, sorry, I was giving you a narcissist control. Currently working on a cubesat thermal management systems for my degree. What do you see as a big challenge in tech progress? For example, transistor density, size, thermal power requirements, etc.

Luke Lafreniere (284:17)

Yes.

Linus Sebastian (284:21)

It'S an annoying answer, but a very good one.

Luke Lafreniere (284:24)

Those are all big problems. I mean, transistor sizes have been. Yet another video that we have coming is going to. It's going to be about how GPU prices are not Nvidia's fault, at least not entirely. And it's going to be a piece on like, hey, yes, Nvidia has contributed in these ways, but also, have you heard of a little company called tsmc? Here is what we can glean from publicly available information about how their actions have impacted Nvidia's profitability and Nvidia's costs. And if you thought that they were the big bad, well, guess what? But you're wrong, because there's another monopoly above them called asml. Let's talk about them. It's gonna Be cool. Yeah, it'll be chill.

Dan (285:25)

Hello. Dll question for Luke. If you couldn't keep any birds, would you keep any other pet?

Linus Sebastian (285:32)

What do you think? How is this a what?

Luke Lafreniere (285:35)

Hmm?

Dan (285:36)

You gonna finally let us know?

Luke Lafreniere (285:38)

No, he wouldn't. What, he'd have a dog?

Linus Sebastian (285:40)

Yeah.

Dan (285:42)

Only one?

Linus Sebastian (285:44)

Oh, that's a good question.

Luke Lafreniere (285:45)

No, there's no way you do two dogs.

Dan (285:47)

What about two? What about two really small dogs that you could like?

Luke Lafreniere (285:50)

Yeah, he'd want to combine them. He'd want a big good answer.

Dan (285:54)

I will continue working here. Okay, next merch message. Hello, Linus, Luke and Dan. I got my, my Wen hoodie today and I'm absolutely loving it. Heck yeah. With hbc, I believe that's the Hudson's Bay company in liquidation. Would you be willing to license the HBC pattern for clothing and accessory products?

Luke Lafreniere (286:14)

There is no way I'd be able to afford it. There's no way.

Dan (286:19)

Trek Bark has to be like millions.

Luke Lafreniere (286:22)

I have been very, very lucky, very blessed. I've worked a lot and I've managed to, as Luke puts it, become quite wealthy guy.

Linus Sebastian (286:34)

I'll never forget that comment.

Luke Lafreniere (286:38)

I will never. You just like drop that. However, in the grand scheme of things, like I still come to work every day. I am not like a. Own global brands level of, of you.

Linus Sebastian (286:58)

Can do that and be quite wealthy.

Luke Lafreniere (287:00)

I could do which what you're describing. Oh, like come to work every day.

Linus Sebastian (287:05)

Not own global brands.

Luke Lafreniere (287:06)

Oh yeah, no, that's not that level. I'm like not even close to even being able to. To make any kind of reasonable offer. Like it's not even.

Linus Sebastian (287:16)

Yeah, yeah. That's a crazy thing. That might be difficult for non Canadians to understand, but if you look it up, it's like a thing. What I was going to say. There's this whole thing I heard about. I don't know if this is legit or not, but like on average the wealthiest person in like middle sized towns is the person who owns the concrete plant.

Luke Lafreniere (287:37)

Really? The concrete.

Linus Sebastian (287:40)

Because like oftentimes those places metal too, right? Yeah, it's stuff like that. It's like local supplies for building.

Dan (287:47)

Because every building's got to have concrete.

Luke Lafreniere (287:51)

You can't ship it very far.

Linus Sebastian (287:53)

Just the one company.

Dan (287:54)

Yeah. Can't get it from China, you can't.

Linus Sebastian (287:56)

Get it from the next state price gouge pretty hard. And if there's any interest in the town growing, then they're probably gonna use you and it goes into freaking everything.

Dan (288:06)

And you already have to exist because you need to buy the aggregates in just obscene quantities of scale. Who's gonna start up a concrete business and buy an entire train of rocks? Do you know? Right, right.

Luke Lafreniere (288:17)

Yeah.

Dan (288:18)

To be competitive.

Luke Lafreniere (288:19)

Yeah. The moat is just the sheer volume of stuff that you have to build.

Dan (288:23)

And it has to be.

Linus Sebastian (288:24)

You will have pre existing relationships now with everyone who builds things.

Luke Lafreniere (288:28)

Literally everyone.

Linus Sebastian (288:28)

Yeah.

Dan (288:29)

And you can't keep it. It doesn't keep. You know, you gotta, you gotta make it and send it in a truck. Crazy.

Linus Sebastian (288:36)

It's. It's like, it's interesting. I think glass is another one. Like basically all like big building materials that shipping is super annoying for.

Dan (288:46)

Believe it or not. Like Styrofoam. Unbelievably expensive ships just because it's large.

Luke Lafreniere (288:54)

PC archive in floatplane chat says I live by a concrete factory in southern Indiana in a tiny town. They have their own railroad.

Dan (289:05)

Exactly. I wasn't joking about buying a train of rocks.

Linus Sebastian (289:12)

Yeah.

Dan (289:12)

Because it has to be specific rocks. That's why you can't like build skyscrapers in, in like Dubai. Very well. Because it's desert sand and it has to be river sand.

Luke Lafreniere (289:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Dan (289:21)

And like I need like quarter inch.

Luke Lafreniere (289:23)

Clear crush blood sand.

Dan (289:26)

Yeah, sure.

Linus Sebastian (289:27)

Like it's wild.

Dan (289:30)

And you got to grease palms for the illegal sand trade because they dig up rivers that they're not allowed to so they can get the sand for the concrete and there's like murder and stuff. Do you not know about the.

Luke Lafreniere (289:40)

This. Oh, it's crazy.

Dan (289:41)

No. Blood sand is like not even a joke.

Luke Lafreniere (289:43)

Yeah.

Linus Sebastian (289:43)

Why this?

Dan (289:44)

Dude?

Luke Lafreniere (289:46)

There's a global shortage of sand.

Linus Sebastian (289:48)

I have heard of that.

Luke Lafreniere (289:49)

And, and so, and so there's like illegal sand mining because it's got to be like smooth.

Dan (289:56)

It can't be.

Luke Lafreniere (289:57)

No, no. It has to be jagged.

Dan (289:58)

It has to be jagged.

Luke Lafreniere (289:59)

It can't be rounded.

Dan (290:00)

The wind in the desert like smooths it out and so it just falls apart and it's useless.

Luke Lafreniere (290:05)

Yeah.

Dan (290:06)

Crazy.

Luke Lafreniere (290:06)

And it's expensive to make sand because.

Dan (290:10)