This Is An Emergency - WAN Show April 4, 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: The WAN Show – "This Is An Emergency" (April 4, 2025)

Released on April 5, 2025, "This Is An Emergency" is an engaging episode of The WAN Show, hosted by Linus Sebastian, Luke Lafreniere, and Dan. The trio delves into the latest happenings in the tech universe, covering topics from the Nintendo Switch 2 launch to unexpected April Fools' antics.

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1. Nintendo Switch 2 Launch

a. Initial Impressions

Before delving into the specifics, Linus and Luke share their initial thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement. Luke expresses enthusiasm for the launch titles, particularly Mario Kart World, while reserving excitement for its new features.

Luke Lafreniere [03:20]: "I thought the dock actually having performance implications like the dock having a fan in it, which could help keep the system cool, which could help keep performance high. Seems genuinely actually pretty cool."

b. Technical Specifications and Features

The discussion transitions to the rumored specs of the Switch 2, highlighting significant upgrades such as a semi-custom 5nm Tegra T239 chipset, 12GB of LPDDR5X memory, and a new Ampere GPU supporting RTX ray tracing and AI upscaling.

Linus Sebastian [04:46]: "We’re expecting a semi custom 5 nanometer variant of the Tegra T239... And of course gen 3 tensor cores that are going to enable AI upscaling."

c. Pricing Concerns

The Switch 2’s price tag of $450 sparks a debate on affordability and inflation. Linus draws parallels to past console pricing, noting that while rooted in historical context, it poses a significant burden for younger generations facing stagnant earnings.

Linus Sebastian [18:25]: "It's a lot. ... Now, with the younger generations’ earnings not advancing on pace with inflation, the Switch 2 looks perfectly reasonable compared to the Super Nintendo."

d. Subscription and Chat Features

A key point of contention is the Switch 2’s chat functionality being gated behind a Nintendo Online subscription. Both hosts express skepticism, suggesting that many users may continue using alternative platforms like Discord for in-game communication.

Luke Lafreniere [09:00]: "So, man, we're not quite there in terms of going through all the interesting stuff... you could still play games on your Switch because... why pay more for Nintendo Chat? That's crazy."

e. Pre-order Strategies and Scalping

Nintendo’s strategy to mitigate scalping by requiring 12 months of Nintendo Online subscription and 50 hours of gameplay prior to pre-order is dissected. The hosts weigh the effectiveness and fairness of such measures.

Linus Sebastian [12:30]: "They are saying, look, you've got to have a Nintendo online subscription for 12 months... you are a Nintendo gamer and also that you give Nintendo money on an ongoing basis."

f. Game Upgrades and Compatibility

The potential need for additional purchase of game upgrades for essential titles like Breath of the Wild is discussed, emphasizing the financial strain it may impose on dedicated gamers.

Linus Sebastian [37:50]: "They may have to buy upgrade packs for a game that I played as much as I needed to play seven years ago... If it's $20, that is way too much to spend on an upgrade."

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2. April Fools’ Antics: Purchasing a Fire Truck

In a bold April Fools' move, the team unexpectedly purchased a real fire truck, leading to a series of humorous and chaotic moments during the episode.

Linus Sebastian [32:53]: "I bought a Switch 2. I'm not gonna pay scalper prices. I won't do that because again, yeah, that's on principle. But I'm just gonna wait till it's in stock in a store and I'm gonna walk in and I'm gonna buy it."

The fire truck serves as both a comedic prop and a merchandising tool, with Linus and Luke navigating its functionalities live on the show. The segment is filled with slapstick humor, including attempts to maneuver within the truck and playful interactions.

Luke Lafreniere [25:06]: "And that's why I said it's pretty weird because you don't need Nintendo Switch Online, which is odd."

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3. Merchandise Messages and Sales

The episode highlights the overwhelming demand for their custom merchandise, particularly inspired by the April Fools' joke. T-shirts and water bottles were sold out rapidly, prompting the hosts to discuss restocking strategies.

Dan [55:59]: "Only a few months in, and we already sold out of the custom T-shirts."

Linus showcases the available merchandise, including the "thirst extinguisher" water bottles and commemorative fire trucks, while addressing the community's enthusiastic response.

Linus Sebastian [56:00]: "We sold an absolute butt ton of these."

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4. Impact of New US Tariffs

The introduction of sweeping new US tariffs under the plan dubbed "Liberation Day" is scrutinized for its potential repercussions on the tech industry. The tariffs target key manufacturing nations, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam, leading to anticipated price hikes for components essential to PC builders and tech enthusiasts.

Linus Sebastian [94:02]: "The current US administration has announced sweeping new tariffs under a plan dubbed Liberation Day... These new tariffs reach as high as 46%."

The hosts discuss strategies to mitigate these impacts, such as negotiating with suppliers and exploring localized fulfillment to keep prices as stable as possible.

Linus Sebastian [103:05]: "We're exploring new manufacturing locations and rapidly accelerating our efforts to explore localized fulfillment so we can get our products to you faster with lower shipping costs."

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5. LG TVs Losing Google Assistant

A significant update for LG OLED TV owners is the discontinuation of Google Assistant functionality as of May 1, 2025. The hosts explore the implications of this change, particularly for users who rely heavily on voice controls.

Linus Sebastian [86:12]: "If Bob’s organization is using Gmail, then the organization manages Bob’s encryption keys. So administrators with access to the keys can snoop on the communications at any time."

The conversation extends to broader concerns about software dependencies and the lack of ownership over certain tech features, raising questions about user autonomy and privacy.

Luke Lafreniere [98:43]: "Would you pay extra for a TV that is not subsidized by ads and telemetry being sent back to the manufacturer?"

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6. Concurrent Use of AMD and Nvidia GPUs

The possibility of using both AMD and Nvidia GPUs in a single setup through Lossless Scaling's dual GPU frame generation method is introduced. Reflecting on historical attempts, Linus expresses interest in exploring this configuration further in future episodes.

Dan [183:50]: "Wondering if you have any thoughts."

Linus Sebastian [183:59]: "We're gonna do a video on it. Just a matter of, like, when we can get it on the schedule."

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7. Personal Anecdotes and Memories

Throughout the episode, Linus and Luke reminisce about past projects and memorable moments, such as the implementation of a fire pole and their experiences at events like Computex.

Linus Sebastian [166:54]: "One of the points that was brought up by you, by Jake Tivy, by the audience, was that they didn’t think that these neveras were going to appreciate like many hypercars do."

These stories add a personal touch, illustrating the hosts' journey and growth within the tech community.

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8. Upcoming Projects and Announcements

The team teases future content, including a tour of an "Ultimate Land Gaming House" and exclusive merchandise collaborations with Floatplane. They also discuss the challenges and successes of their April Fools' videos, emphasizing the balance between creativity and fiscal responsibility.

Linus Sebastian [167:32]: "We made it back. Believe it or not, we are responsible adults running a responsible adult company making sure that the people who work on all these projects get paid."

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Conclusion

"This Is An Emergency" offers a blend of technical discussions, humorous interludes, and heartfelt anecdotes, encapsulating the dynamic energy of The WAN Show. From high-stakes tariffs to playful April Fools' pranks, Linus, Luke, and Dan navigate the complexities of the tech world with wit and insight, providing listeners with both information and entertainment.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Luke Lafreniere [03:20]: "I thought the dock actually having performance implications like the dock having a fan in it, which could help keep the system cool, which could help keep performance high. Seems genuinely actually pretty cool."

• Linus Sebastian [04:46]: "We’re expecting a semi custom 5 nanometer variant of the Tegra T239... And of course gen 3 tensor cores that are going to enable AI upscaling."

• Linus Sebastian [18:25]: "It's a lot. ... Now, with the younger generations’ earnings not advancing on pace with inflation, the Switch 2 looks perfectly reasonable compared to the Super Nintendo."

• Luke Lafreniere [09:00]: "So, man, we're not quite there in terms of going through all the interesting stuff... you could still play games on your Switch because... why pay more for Nintendo Chat? That's crazy."

• Linus Sebastian [37:50]: "They may have to buy upgrade packs for a game that I played as much as I needed to play seven years ago... If it's $20, that is way too much to spend on an upgrade."

• Linus Sebastian [94:02]: "The current US administration has announced sweeping new tariffs under a plan dubbed Liberation Day... These new tariffs reach as high as 46%."

• Linus Sebastian [103:05]: "We're exploring new manufacturing locations and rapidly accelerating our efforts to explore localized fulfillment so we can get our products to you faster with lower shipping costs."

• Luke Lafreniere [98:43]: "Would you pay extra for a TV that is not subsidized by ads and telemetry being sent back to the manufacturer?"

• Linus Sebastian [183:59]: "We're gonna do a video on it. Just a matter of, like, when we can get it on the schedule."

• Linus Sebastian [167:32]: "We made it back. Believe it or not, we are responsible adults running a responsible adult company making sure that the people who work on all these projects get paid."

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For more in-depth discussions and updates, tune into The WAN Show on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

The PC gave us computing power at home, the Internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now, generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast for Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'Re going to be talking about April Fools this year. It was an incredible effort from the entire team, especially one Mr. David Gautier. We're also going to be talking about the emergency for your wallet that is the Nintendo Switch 2 launch. $450 for a Nintendo console. Unheard of or is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're also gonna be talking about China mass producing coin sized nuclear batteries and something tariffs. Intel and TSMC working together. Joint partnership. Something. We'll talk about something else.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, and I just gotta find the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Squarespace Forum Notion, and of course our usual rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're. There's cushions in the front window.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Our chair partner, Secret Lab. Let's go. I'm just going to turn this off now before we. Where is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's probably easier if you open the door. Yeah, there you go. I was thinking you could do. I don't know if you'd want to, but you could do a mod where you swap in Secret Lab chairs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we could do that, but I think that's not going to be on the agenda for today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go ahead and jump right into our first topic, which I think has got to be the Nintendo Switch to launch. Now, obviously there's no way that you, Nintendo fanboy that you are, are going to be missing a Nintendo Direct, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

What were your impressions before they started talking about all the icky price details?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought it was pretty cool. I did skip through it. I didn't actually watch the whole thing. I thought the camera, it might get some use, but that doesn't seem like a huge killer feature to me. I think having chat, however, really bad sounding, I don't know if you notice that, but I think having chat built into the console is probably good. If they weren't going to try to do a partnership with like external chat programs like Discord or whatever else. The dock actually having performance implications like the dock having a fan in it, which could help keep the system cool, which could help keep performance high. Seems genuinely actually pretty cool. And the launch titles seem pretty strong. Mario Kart World I don't know how excited I am about like Free roam driving in Mario Kart. I don't know if I care about that at all, to be completely honest. But the game does look pretty cool. Seems like it support supports a lot of players. I like some of the new modes that they're talking about. And considering the Switch's Mario Kart was just a rehash of the Mario Kart from the Wii U, it's been kind of a hot minute since we've had an actually genuinely new Mario Kart game. So that's cool, that's exciting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, why don't we talk about the awkward details, actually? I mean, should we do a bit more of a roundup of everything that we know about the Switch 2 so far? Sure. Based on the rumored specs from earlier leaks, which still seem to probably be accurate, we're expecting a semi custom 5 nanometer variant of the Tegra T239. So eight arm cores, one of which is high performance, three of which are performance and four of which are efficiency cores. 100. Excuse me, 12 gigs of LPDDR 5X at 7,500 megatransfers per second. So that is fast memory. I was surprised to see how much local storage it's getting.256 gigs. Like typically, Nintendo has been very Apple like in their hardware or I shouldn't say typically. I mean the Wii U was a pretty decent little piece of kit for the price. Yeah, but the Switch, which is the most recent example, was ancient when it was released. Extremely ungenerous in terms of specifications. Whereas this time around 256 gigs of storage. And now that we've seen the sizes of some of these games, it looks like while you can expand it with a micro SD card, a lot of people probably won't need to, especially at the cost of the games. But we'll get to the cost of the games in a sec. The big highlight is of course the new Ampere GPU, 1536 CUDA cores, 12 SMS, 8th gen NVENC encoding hardware, RTX ray tracing support, and of course gen 3 tensor cores that are going to enable AI upscaling. I don't see anything about AI frame generation. Nvidia did say in a blog post that the Switch 2 has 10 times the graphics performance of the OG.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And there was a tweet from the head of DLSS about there being DLSS.

[Linus Sebastian]

On the Switch, but not necessarily frame gen. No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I see what you mean.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's what I don't know. But what I will say is that I was looking as closely as I could considering that we were dealing with, you know, YouTube compression. Right. I was looking as closely at as I could at some of the gameplay footage and I didn't see personally any of the telltale signs of frame generation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Um, even though it'd be. It'd be pretty much impossible to tell how. What degree of AI upscaling they're doing if we're looking at performance upscaling or quality level upscaling. And I, I suspect that's going to vary depending on the title, especially for third party titles. Um, voice chat, man. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's good. I. I wish it was with third party providers, but I kind of understand from a family friendly standpoint that it might be more controllable if it's not.

[Linus Sebastian]

So tell me this. How do you feel about the fact that. And as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, it seems like the chat function doesn't work unless you have a subscription. So you hadn't caught that. Okay, I didn't either prior to our video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does that make sense? Is there any online multiplayer on the Switch without a subscription?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have to confess, I'm not sure. Never subscribed to Nintendo Online out of principle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me too. I didn't actually know that, but yeah, I haven't either.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, you need to have Nintendo Online.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So that, I mean, that kind of makes sense then. So if you're doing anything online, you're going to have a subscription anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no, no, no. It's worse than that. According to the mighty Reptar, it is free to all Nintendo Online subscribers for the first year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, chat's an additional.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then chat is apparently going to go behind a paywall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So then they're gon keep doing what everyone that I know has been doing, which is where you discord on your phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And just play games on your Switch. Because why pay more for Nintendo Chat? That's crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ooh, that's rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some people will do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, man, we're almost. We're not. We're not quite there in terms of going through all the interesting stuff, but we're getting lots of people discussing this in the. In the chat, so I want to talk about this as well. Wait, where'd it go? Oh, no, no. Where'd it go? Where'd it go?

[Luke Lafreniere]

People are asking where Dan is. Do you want to do the reveal now or should we do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I will do the review later, you guys. When we talk about merch messages, it's pretty cool though. When we talk about merch messages. Oh, shoot. Well, I missed it. Oh, yes. No, I remember. Okay. As someone who also. So my on principle for not subscribing to Nintendo Online because I'll subscribe to subscription services. I have subscriptions services. But for me, the one that really upset me and that made me unwilling to give them money for it was the fact that they lock my save game backups behind Nintendo Online. We are talking about a console that literally has a. Has an SD card slot in the front of it. There is absolutely no technological reason why I couldn't back up my save game data to the same physical media that I could easily put a game onto. You have got to be kidding me. And my understanding is that is still how it works. If that is not how it works anymore, then I would consider subscribing to Nintendo Online for some of the cool stuff that it has. But that is. That is completely, completely uncool for a device that A, you know, is not perfect, could fail. Right. And therefore could lose my save games. And B is portable and much more likely to be lost than something like a living room console.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there's a bunch of people posting corrections, but it's really not that different than what we said. They're saying important correction, questionable. Game chat is included in all Nintendo Online chat subscriptions and is free for.

[Linus Sebastian]

All users until March of 2026.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's. It's just free for a little bit longer than we said.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's still a pretty subscription.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is a good distinction. That is a good distinction. It is something that I actually missed in the initial with. I had other stuff to do that day, and I'm usually being briefed on like multiple things a day, so I missed that. That was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on. People are saying it's not extra on top. I don't get that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so it's included with Nintendo Online, but free for everyone for. Until March next year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But. So you can get live chat but not Nintendo Online. So you can't play games together, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to get Nintendo Online and they're. They're bundled. It sounds like they're just bundled. So speaking of Nintendo Online, what is your reason for not subscribing to Nintendo Online?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It feels a little ridiculous. To me. And I don't actually know what the current state of online multiplayer is on the other consoles. I have no interest in it in any of the other consoles at all. The only reason why I'd be interested in console games at this point is single player ones. But it feels ridiculous to me in 2025 to have to pay a subscription to be able to play any game online at all. Like that's enough of a line for me. And again, if I want something, I'll pay a subscription. The most interesting thing to me, I guess has been access to some of their games that they put on that service. But then I don't like paying subscriptions to access games either. I'd rather just buy it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so. So I don't know. Nintendo's strategy for combating scalpers involves gating pre orders to people who have 12 months of Nintendo online in their history.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is it actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you did not watch the direct.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I skimmed it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you missed a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't know that was a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so. And there's more. Hours of game and 50 hours of gameplay. They are prioritized but not necessarily gated guys. Basically, you know what that means, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So is this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Those are the guys who are going to get one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this pre orders directly from Nintendo?

[Linus Sebastian]

I believe they're game stores. Yep. Yep. So this is, this is pretty flipping wild. So this is pre orders on their website. So basically because they're. Okay, look, how is anybody else going to control scalpers from buying cartloads of these things? Like, we know we've all, we've all seen the pictures from previous console launches, from GPU launches. Right. We've seen the scalpers that have literally a palette of consoles in their living room. Right. So anything that's going out into the channel through Best Buy or through other retailers is going to be scalped. So the ones that Nintendo is controlling, they're basically saying, look, you've got to have a Nintendo online subscription for 12 months. You've got to have 50 gameplay hours before the launch here. And I don't remember if there was any, if there was any gameplay hours, like lifetime, I think, I'm not sure the time period for it. I think it's lifetime. Basically the idea is that you are a Nintendo gamer and also that you give Nintendo money on an ongoing basis.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to show one thing, final correction, because I did. It did sound like this, but I don't think this is what we said. Game chat is included with Nintendo Switch online membership. Like we said, Game Chat open access period until March 31, 2026. But it says game chat can be used without a Nintendo Switch Online membership during that time period.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Afterwards, a Nintendo Switch Online membership will be required to use game chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, yeah, you don't have to, which is really weird to me.

[Linus Sebastian]

So basically they will. They want to get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can play single player games together in chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess. Okay. Yeah, no, yeah, now I am.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's why I said it's. It's weird because you don't need Nintendo Switch Online, which is odd. So you can't play games together as far as my understanding goes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, there's game streaming, so it has a camera.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So you could show someone you playing your game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if you're on a trip and little man is playing a game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could, like, watch him play the game and talk to him.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess. I can't imagine that I would do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That for the four people that will do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, anyway, anyway, I was. I'm blessed. We're finally getting to this. What is your thought. What is your thought on the fact that you cannot pre order one that you are not a verified actual gamer in Nintendo's eyes for not buying Nintendo online?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I already. This is gonna sound like a hot take at first and then it's. It's not. But I already wasn't going to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My reason.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, hold on. We're gonna get to that in a sec then. So let's finish going through. Okay, sure. You know what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's way less of a hot take.

[Linus Sebastian]

Once you hear the whole thing. All right, hit me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Willow Video Games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isn't getting an initial shipment, as far.

[Linus Sebastian]

As my understanding goes, really nothing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're not prioritized because they're a single store and apparently. Okay, who's getting prioritized, at least in. In Canada, as far as my understanding goes, is the big places with multiple locations. Sure. So they, like, they might get a first shipment, but as of right now, they are confident that they're getting games, but they are not confident that they're getting consoles. And they were all apologetic and they were like, oh, like, sorry, you can go buy it somewhere else, I guess. And I was like, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because there's no way that you're buying a game console from somewhere other than Willow Video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So I'm just gonna wait until they have them and then I will buy one. Then I don't need it. Day one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will support the store that I want to support. I will support the like mom and Pop store that does cool stuff and has been doing cool stuff like the whole time I've been alive. I've been going to Willow since I was a small child so I'm not going to just go throw my money somewhere else because I can get a console a couple of weeks earlier See.

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought you were going to say that you are not going to buy a Switch 2 and that I would have been very surprised about. Even though I do think that there are a lot of good reasons not to buy a switch to this one surprised me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is a few. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Switch 2 is apparently going to be using something between a software emulator and hardware compatibility to play Switch 1 games. There are currently 141 Switch 1 games with known startup issues and 47 ones with in game issues on the new handheld. There are also games that will likely never work as the Joy Con 2 is a different shape than the original like Ring Fit and it doesn't include an IR motion camera for example. WarIowaWare move it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could you do the new standalone camera that they're selling? Ring Fit is probably screwed because the Ring doesn't mount the controllers like the new one does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ring Fit also looks like a mobile game from like the iPhone3, so I don't think it really matters on that one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, let's talk about the price. US$450.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a lot. It's interesting because if you look at Atrioc did this recently but if you if you look at the game prices Back to like Xbox360 era. Yeah the pricing inflationary wise as much as it sucks is technically below inflation rate.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's kind of inconsolable that it's as low as it as it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The console however is super not the switch 2 is notably more expensive than.

[Linus Sebastian]

The switch 1 then the switch 1.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, but not necessarily consoles in general.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have a hot take. Yeah, I want to talk about Switch 2 pricing because I think that Millennials be dangerous and Gen Z's you guys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Put the hot take lights on are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Having a bit of a well back in my day games used to cost six brown eggs and a bale of hay moment they did right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

True.

[Linus Sebastian]

When I was a kid, okay the Super Nintendo was $199. That is approximately $450 in today dollars. Now there is a big difference this time for these younger generations, earnings haven't advanced on pace, really have not with that inflationary jump that that that basically makes the Switch 2 look perfectly reasonable compared to the Super Ninja. I mean the NES back in the 1980s. I. What, what was the NES? Was the NES$200 as well? I believe so. Don't quote me on that, but I believe the nest was the ness was flipping expensive in then dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

179 USD on launch, but cost for inflation would be 523 USD.

[Linus Sebastian]

But honestly I think the inflation argument is really tough because you have to consider sort of the emotional side of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the inflation of what?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the inflation of what? Because when you talk about inflation there's a whole bunch of different factors and a lot of the things that get factored into the inflation calculation that we get when we look online impacts different people disproportionately. So I think what's hurting so much is that this impacts the younger generation harder because it is a more significant part of A their lifestyle and B their discretionary spending.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The lifestyle one is an interesting and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably accurate take because as an older millennial at this point I look at a console as a luxury item. I have never owned a PlayStation. Never. Even today I do not own a PlayStation. I have never owned an Xbox. When I was a kid, my friend had a nes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then I had a snes. So we'd go to his house to play. Then we started going to my house to play and he got an N64 for Christmas. So then we'd go play at his house. Unless you know, realistically we wanted to play one of something other than the like two game carts that he had for the N64. And then we'd go play, you know, some of my older SNES games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I cried when my dad gave us an Xbox for Christmas.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, when I was a kid, consoles were a luxury.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Item. Not everyone had one in my class, you know, and no one, not a single other kid I knew had two current gen consoles at the same time. And like a typical game library, a typical game library was like five games. If you were like doing pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. A lot of people had less.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if you had like 10 games, it was like ballin. Whoa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It made me question like what your parents did but work.

[Linus Sebastian]

But hold on. But, but here's another thing, here's another thing that's different. Back then we could go to the video store and rent and we could rent a game and I do it all the time for five bucks. Yeah, right. And you could, realistically, you know, because so many of the games were, let's be honest, pretty two dimensional experiences. Pun intended. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, we have a ding. I didn't actually know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you hear it?

[Dan]

I wasn't sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I heard it. I heard. I don't know if they did, but I.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could actually enjoy that game in a one week rental for that $5.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that was. Honestly, this is a slightly off topic thing. That was fun. It was kind of a challenge. Can I beat this game before I have to return it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was genuinely like kind of fun. I forgot about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I'm going to continue going back and forth in my attempt to sort of present both sides of this. Of this. I was going to say. I was trying to say argument, but outrage almost came out of my mouth. Both of which are true. It is an argument and it is outrageous. And let me, let me kind of, let me put it this way. Pound for pound, is gaming not just about the cheapest form of entertainment on the face of the earth? So here's some numbers that I ran before the show. Okay? If you bought a Switch for $300 and a library of ten $60 games, I'd say that's a pretty generous library. If you used that for even one hour per week for the eight years that the Nintendo Switch was Nintendo's current console, it would have cost you just over $2 an hour. Can you think of anything in your life that you actually pay for that is even close to that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. And I bet you, you were honestly really conservative with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what? Reworksman says reading is cheaper, especially with a library card. That's a good point and that's valid. What else?

[Luke Lafreniere]

With a library card? Yes, if you're buying the books. Honestly, I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, if you're buying books, absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Depends. No, no, you can get decent deals and depending on the speed at which you read, no offense, for me, I suspect your cost per hour is pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been dedicating really hard reading like an hour a day, every day for a while now. And yeah, I, I'm getting a little faster, but I am still slow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, give me, give me something else. Give me something other than reading music.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But like, dang, I would never really want to do just that. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So here. Oh, this is hilarious. Top Gear 1224 says we going to talk about Smash Champs pricing. Actually, we are. Yeah, actually we are. Here, check this out. Check this out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's a good point.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is. Oh, Luke. Laptop. Whoops. Minus. What are you doing? We are gonna talk about that at Smash Champs. Okay, that's our badminton center. I regularly watch people discard a $3 badminton shuttle. That's about what a single, often badminton shuttle costs. And that's not even a high end one. They can go up to four plus Canadian dollars. Okay. I regularly watch people just throw it away because it isn't flying perfectly so that they continue. So they can continue their match. That's costing them between the four people on court, about $8.50 an hour, plus racket and shoes and other equipment costs, plus their club membership fee, plus gas money for travel. They don't question it because they see the work being put into it. They see the physical space being occupied. If we sub switch two numbers into my math before. Okay. And if we assume a shorter lifespan for the console, let's say it's only. Let's say we only get six years out of it. We end up with $4.32 per hour of entertainment and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but you're still going off of one hour a week, which I honestly think is really low.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know. Yeah, I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That assumes, like, low enough to throw it all off that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well. Yeah. But my point is that even if we say, well, Linus, your math is suspect. I feel like by saying you will use your switch just one hour per week. Yeah, I bet I can. I can pretty much defend against that. Because if you're not gonna use your switch an hour per week, why do you even care about any of this? Don't buy one like that. Just seems pretty obvious to me. Or. Or remember, guys, there's always another way. Okay, this was. This was a really. Yeah, this was a really, I don't know, interesting conversation for me. Frustrating conversation to me. I don't know how to describe the mixed emotions that I had. And I'm about to say something that'll probably cost me some money. All right. There was a thread on the forum recently asking why the heck it is that floatplane doesn't have regional pricing. Okay. Why? Why? We're asking a ludicrous sum of US$5 per month for people who live somewhere where that is a significant portion of their disposable income. Okay. What little disposable income they have. And I basically, I could have given them a long technical explanation about, you know, VPNs and gray market and the realities that our business runs on, you know, Western monies, not, you know, rubles or whatever. And so like it. It wouldn't even help our costs. Like, our costs are in Western monies and we don't operate at the kind of scale of someone like YouTube or Netflix. It just. I could have. I could have done a whole thing about that. But instead what I said was, why don't you subscribe to Floatplane for one month, download every video you want to watch, and then unsubscribe and then do it again next year? People.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We don't stop you from doing that.

[Linus Sebastian]

People gotta. People gotta get more creative. It's like, like, I don't understand why people are not thinking about, like, if you, if you can't. If something is not affordable. Okay, if you tell. If you told kid me, okay, I'm. I'm. I'm 14. I'm 15. Okay, you told kid me, hey, this new console is $450. I'm going to go, okay, what are the games I want to play? And I'm going to go, all right, can I still buy used games? Okay, I'm going to wait for. Usually it takes like a week or two because people will run out. People with more money than sense will run out and buy a game not having read a single review, not having watched any gameplay footage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Play it, not like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Play it, not like it, and they'll take it back to up. All right? That's their problem. That's not your problem. That's your benefit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you wait a little bit. You pick up a console used from someone who bought it and realized, oh, actually I don't use this that much. You wait a little bit. When you buy something secondhand, the worst of the depreciation curve that comes off by the. From the first owner. So you basically, you buy that console, you play those couple of games, you flip them. It didn't happen for free. Okay. You had to actually shell out that money. You had that cash tied up. It affects your cash flow and you might not get back exactly what you paid. But it's a Nintendo. You know for a fact that there isn't going to be a new one six months from now. So if you were to. If you were to buy one secondhand for, you know, two months in, you know, for a fact that you could hold on to it for a few months, play the games you want to play, and it'll probably cost you total somewhere in the neighborhood of like 50 to 75 bucks in depreciation on those purchases. Get creative.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't have much to add. Just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can also even, like, if you wait a little bit longer, you can wait till there's like cool models on the used market. Somebody mentioned like, oh, but GameStop isn't going to exist. It's like, okay, cool, cut out the middleman. Go to Facebook Marketplace.

[Linus Sebastian]

Go to Facebook Marketplace.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's not a stopper.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I know that, you know, not everyone has a super active Facebook Marketplace in their region or whatever else, but where there is something being bought and something being sold, there will be a platform.

[Luke Lafreniere]

KG4WWN, I think that's your name said that's a decent way to do it. But if everyone did it, the system would fail. Fun fact guaranteed. Not everyone will do it.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because not everyone is as smart as you. Or not everyone cares as much as you. Like, I remember. I remember. I'm not going to name names on this one, but I remember having this conversation with a relative of mine who, Who I grew up with. We grew up, not, like, desperately poor, but we grew up with, like, cutting coupons, washing eggs in our spare time, and running, like, a family, like, egg business on our hobby farm. Like, like being pretty scrappy, you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of benefit.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the end of the summer, we were. My parents are both teachers. Okay. So by the end of the summer, we're trying to figure out, like, okay, do we really need to. How to combine as many errands as possible into one car trip to town so that we don't have to fill the gas tank? Like, we're out of money. Okay. At the. At the end of August, beginning of September. So. So that's. That was my. That was my situation. And. Shoot. What did you say just before this? I forget. Right, right, right, right, right. A relative of mine. I remember having a conversation with a relative of mine who was, like, aggressively haggling at, like, a liquidation place or like a secondhand, like, a Value Village type of place. Like, they were trying to, like, get a deal on something. And I kind of went, I'll never be too good to shop at a dollar store. All right. Like, never.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. 100.

[Linus Sebastian]

But does someone else maybe need that. That marked down merchandise a little more than us? Like, do we need to. Do we need to grind them so hard? Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I feel this way. Oh, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'll tell you guys, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna buy Switch 2. I'm not gonna pay scalper prices. I won't do that because again, yeah, that's on principle. But I'm just gonna. I'm gonna wait till it's in stock in a store and I'm gonna walk in and I'm gonna buy it and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna worry about that. And if, you know, if my impulse purchase that I can afford benefits someone else later, then great. Someone at our Christmas party got my launch switch because I didn't need it anymore because I bought an OLED and I'm a big idiot and I didn't consider that I had a launch switch that was moddable. Realistically, I buy all my Nintendo games now anyway, so it didn't really matter. But still, but, but, but still, you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Know, now somebody has a moddable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dang it. I had a moddable one, but now someone else has a moddable one. And so no, not everyone is going to, not everyone is going to use these strategies. With that said, that's a really good point that if a, if a growing number, if a disproportionate number of people do use these strategies, it actually does have an impact on the secondhand market. And look no further than what happened to the auto market during COVID where used vehicles suddenly cost more than a new vehicle like that would. What was that? Also brace. That could be happening again. We're going to have a tariff conversation a little bit later. That's, that's the other part of the title of the show. We'll talk about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But people, people are also mentioning this in relation to the Switch because it was announced at whatever 450 or I think it was 499 with, with Mario Kart World.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But people are pointing out that Nintendo has already put out an announcement saying that I think they're not doing pre orders in the U.S. well, they're, they're.

[Linus Sebastian]

Their preorder date is delayed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

The launch date is not delayed, but the pre order date is delayed. And they were explicit that this is because of course their need to evaluate the situation around the tariffs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I'm not recommending you do this, but Canada isn't going to have tariffs on them. So it should probably still be about that price up here. And I think if something was used, you could bring it back over the border. It wouldn't be tariffed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, right. Like if, like if say for example, all of the packaging do it. Your own risk found its way into the, the dumpster behind the. Yeah, maybe Willow video where you bought.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It had some say. Yeah, maybe if you had some save games on it already or something, you could prove that you've used it before.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's pretty new anyway. Like, you know, you would have had to get it like somewhere kind of in the last little while. Window would look pretty new regardless, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean we would never, we would never live in says all strategies are valid until you get audited. What do you mean audited? No one audits. No one audits things you bought. That's because it's, it's. There's no taxation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not really suggesting anything. We're just saying it's, it's probably gonna be not as bad for. I mean it's still expensive, but it's not as bad for Canadians.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, Electrobot says, iirc, you do have to report that technically, legally. Of course you do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is not legal advice. No, this is not only not legal advice. This is not advice at all. Yeah, it's not advice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. All we're doing is pointing out that Canada is not tariffing them.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is true. Yeah, that is true. And, and, and if you didn't happen to live anywhere near the northern border, I don't, I doubt that Mexico has any tariffs on. Probably not the Switch to either. I have no idea what like Mexican Best Buy is. Yeah, but they might have something like that that would have a Nintendo Switch. So that's something. That is a thing. That is something. Anyway.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Game upgrades. Should we talk about that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's talk about game upgrades. This is another thing that. Oh man, I'm bummed about. So we talked about the sort of emulator element. See, I, I assumed and maybe this is just me being naive because I'm sure the software is so different. And by software I don't even just mean like the home screen looks different, you know, I mean like the, the driver level operation of this console is going to be so different. I'm sure that the software development kit is completely different. I'm sure all the developer tools are completely different. But I had kind of hoped that because it was arm, cpu, Nvidia gpu.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It would just direct.

[Linus Sebastian]

That you would basically just put your Switch 1 game in it and it would run at higher FPS.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's when I was skimming through the Direct. I thought that's what they meant was it would just work.

[Linus Sebastian]

So unfortunately that does not appear to be the way that things are going. Instead it looks like it'll be a mix. Some of them are going to just kind of work in the Switch two with minor changes. The only one that I really cared about, the only game where I ever really felt like the switches underpowered hardware dramatically impacted my gameplay experience was Breath of the Wild. I wanted Breath of the Wild at like at least rock solid 60. And once I found out about the 120Hz display, what I realistically wanted was between 60 and 120 with variable refresh rate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think there was a massive, massive boom in emulating right around Breath in the Wild. Because I don't think you were alone. A lot of people had issues with the performance of that game and a lot of people sought out other solutions.

[Linus Sebastian]

I still don't fully know exactly what the situation is with Breath of the Wild, so chat if you guys have more details than me. I think the rumor is that these upgrade packs are going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of oh, this is interesting speculation from. It doesn't actually say who the writer was for this project here, but listings for Switch 2 games are ranging from 70 to 90 USD. And so with that in mind, they're speculating that the upgrade packs could 20 or more US dollars or more. I hope it's less. I was hoping for like 10. I was hoping for 10, thinking probably 15. If it's 20, that is. That is way too much to spend on an upgrade for a game that realistically I played as much as I really needed to play seven years ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's an interesting, interesting question. Is the first version compatible? Because it might be. You just might not be able to run it at higher resolutions.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't want to run it at 30fps.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least it'll be a solid 30fps this time. But like, maybe there's FPS elements to it. I have to aim the bow and it would drop to like 17 frames per second. Like it's not obvious. Like, obviously I enjoyed the game. If I'm being honest, it's probably my favorite game ever. Right? Like, I love Zelda Breath of the Wild. I didn't get into Tears of the Kingdom because it just felt like Breath of the Wild again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you gonna buy an upgrade pack for your favorite game ever?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't want to play it again. I didn't even buy the dlc. If I wanted to play Breath of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Wild again, happy leaving it there.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd probably buy Tears of the King. Yeah, I felt I put a freaking ton of hours into it pretty good. Me too. But I got a little ways into it and I was like, I even bought it and I was just like, oh, this really feels like Breath of the Wild again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whereas Breath of the Wild was like just such a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

An outstanding Breath of the Wild and the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom will be free for Switch Online plus expansion pack subscribers, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but I don't have Switch online. Yeah, that means you pay for it in installments.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay. What else? What else we got to talk about here? You're going to buy Mario Kart World, obviously, right? So you buy it in the bundle. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Discussion question. What do you think of the pricing of the console and games? Okay, actually, I'm going to alter this one a little bit. How do you think Nintendo's new game pricing paradigm will. What shock waves do you think this will send throughout the rest of the gaming industry?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I immediately saw people talking about how stoked Rockstar must be with their like, very possibly $100 GTA 6 coming with this $90 shift for Nintendo, softening that blow from closer to a $20 jump to closer to a $10 jump. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we've been talking about this for a long time about how game prices are going to be cooking over the next little bit. There's been incredible inflation over the last few years and you know, it hits everything. So I'm not surprised it's going up in Canada. This is going to suck if the Canadian dollar is rough right now. Canadian average GDP per person has been like essentially flat for 10 years. Like, this is going to be very rough for any Canadians interested in buying Nintendo products. And Nintendo products sell, man. Like, regardless of economic situation, regardless of practically anything Nintendo products move.

[Linus Sebastian]

We did an episode of Setup, Dr. Where we, we did a setup, we cured the setup of a viewer and they literally have a collection of Nintendo Switch games that is like an entire wall, like an entire bookshelf. Like I think they said they had almost every game or something like that. And I'm looking at this going like 1002-003004-00000, 2000. Like, like the amount of money in it is wild. Like in Canadian dollars, which by the way, are what we earn. Right? Like, we are. We don't really earn proportionally more Canadian dollars compared to US dollars. Like in Canadian dollars, a Nintendo game is like $90 already. And that stings us almost as hard. Not quite, but almost as hard as a US$90 game would sting a US buyer. Welcome to the party.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's tough. It's tough. Yeah. So like the same thing that I said last time is, honestly, I understand it. Games have not really tracked inflation super hard. I think there's arguments for games being behind inflation, but then there's very, very, very strong counter arguments for. Yeah, but back then you used to get the whole damn game now you have to buy DLC or there's skins that aren't included when you're like oh, but skins are just cosmetics.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't forget about your subscription to play online.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's rough and stupid as well. But back in my day there, there wasn't skins for cosmetics and fully paid games. It was just like League of Legends and there used to be like quest chains and content that you would do and the reward was those cool looking things or whatever else. So there's, there's content that is missing from your game. You are not getting a complete game if the game includes paid skins in my opinion. So yeah, that's, that's rough and there's a certain amount of like, will the market bear it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dyslexic stoner for 240 brings up a really good point here that I had actually meant to discuss earlier. Game devs are going to have to decide if they want margins or high player counts. And this was something that I had wanted to include in the discussion around how the fact that you know how the SNES was the same price when I was a kid as the Switch 2 is today when you account for inflation. But, but the gaming industry is way bigger orders of magnitude larger than what it was when I was a kid and games were for kids and game consoles were, were luxurious, incredible presents for children from their parents. You know, like it wasn't. And we, and we didn't have, there was no phone, right. So, so I didn't get a phone. So that would be the equivalent, right. Like you know your, you know, like kind of cheapo Android phone that your parents might give you when you're 10. And don't kid yourself, a lot of my kids friends have phones by about, by about 10. If they get one of those, well they would get no game console. You know, like, like, like that was what we got instead of having a phone or an iPad or whatever else. So if they want, if they, if they want the volumes that they have enjoyed over the last 10 years, they may not see them. And in that sense, even if the switch 2 ends up being a very profitable generation for Nintendo, it may not go anywhere near their podium in terms of the volume of game consoles sold. Like if you look at Nintendo's most sold consoles, what was it? Some DS of some form or other.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so is their top one, if I recall correctly, that was really affordable? Super affordable.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. To your point on it being like presents for kids. Up until the Switch, most Nintendo consoles came out in like September or November, close to holiday season.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then the original Switch came out in March because now people just buy consoles all year round. But I remember when I was a kid, it was, it was just Christmas that everybody got consoles.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. It was a Christmas present and. Or nothing else. So I think I've told the story before about how my Super Nintendo was actually stolen before it was given to me. So my aunt got me the bundle with the two controllers and Super Mario World and. But it was actually she was robbed like in the week before Christmas and she moved heaven and earth to try to find me another one and couldn't get like the bundle one. And so it was funny because I still remember this. She apologized to me on Christmas morning that it wasn't like the one that I could play with my friends. But dude, I was just so stoked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To have a Super Nintendo at all. Like, I was like, what are you even talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can share the controller around. Who cares?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, this is so cool. Don't worry. No, no. My aunt, she. She found me a Nintendo. I don't know how she did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She did.

[Linus Sebastian]

I had one on Christmas morning. It just didn't have two controllers and I don't, I don't think it had, did it have Super Mario World? It definitely didn't have two controllers. There were two versions of the, of the console. Oh, dude, my aunt's amazing. She's. She is one of the closest members of my extended family. She, she comes over every week, spends a ton of time with our kids. She is actually. If I wasn't married to Yvonne, I would say my aunt is the best lady in the entire, in the entire world. She's incredible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

D. Hollinger said, I'm gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're number one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm going to point out again that game devs make less.

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, you know what? My mother in law is actually amazing too. Words that have never been said before in that order.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's true. Unless you're like at practically Gunpowder Gilmore.

[Linus Sebastian]

D. Yes, this is the ant that gives me art. Like that Yoda, that weird Yoda that's in my gaming room. And yes, this is the one that makes me borscht.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, D. Hollinger, I'm going to point out again that most game devs make less with fewer benefits than non gaming counterparts too. Also, AAA companies may need to go back to making AA games instead of triple A games that cost more to make the Blockbuster Movie. I have thoughts on this one. A lot of the game devs making less with Fewer benefits is because it's in a lot of ways, in my opinion, a predatory industry where people want to work. People say they want to make games from when they are very young. And it is a dream and an aspiration. So gaming companies kind of abuse them. Also gaming companies needing to go from AAA to double A. I don't know. There's good games out there that sure sell a heck of a lot and there's a lot of trash games out there.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, yeah, maybe make better games. Aaa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe if you're making quadruple A games that just suck, they're not gonna sell at all. And maybe if you just made the game that everyone on the freaking planet asked you to make and then sold it, people would be really happy with that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which specifically and would have bought it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

About Skull and Bones. Oh, they called it a quadruple A game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no, no. I mean. Oh, you mean if they had just made it like Assassin's Creed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just make Black Flag. But take the Assassin's Creed part out. Because no one cared about the Assassin's Creed part. Even I was a huge Assassin's Creed fan.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did not care about the Assassin's Creed part. I never beat Black Flag.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I played the heck out of that game. The worst part of that game is all of the Assassin parts that you have to do until you get your boat. When you get your boat, the game is amazing. Just make that like, my God, not listening to fans. Making huge giant art pieces that. That no one wants. Focusing on the wrong things. Not making games actually fun. Like. Anyways, there's a reason why certain companies in the gaming space are struggling. And there's a reason why other games in the. In the gaming. Sorry. Other companies in the gaming industry thriving right now. And a lot of them are newer, a lot of them are offshoots. You. You can't look at the gaming industry and say that it's necessarily doing super poorly when we had massive, like, huge profits. Huge profits and huge cultural moments. Like Helldivers was. Helldivers changed how people communicated on the Internet for a substantial period of time. Like, people were, like, oddly patriotic because of a video game for, like, months.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Baldur's Gate 3 was enormous. There's still these huge, crazy launches.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And not always. Not always, like, triple A games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, neither of those are technically triple A.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, fall guys. Okay, it was a little longer ago, but. Jude, that explit pal world.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But the common. Yeah, the common thread here is that they're fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of Triple A Games just like genuinely aren't that fun anymore. It's like. That's the problem. The problem, my opinion isn't the fact that, that they're Triple A games. The fact is that they're not just fun, they're missing the core component of what a game is supposed to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. DME95 says Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is amazing and came from a smaller studio that got its original start on Kickstarter of all places.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Anyways, I think devs being paid less on average in the gaming industry is not necessarily a reflection of the cost of a game cart.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you've also talked about how you think that there's something of a great reset happening in the game industry right now where talented people are losing their jobs not because they've done a bad job, but because companies do company layoff things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's amazing games with great sales and great reviews that are having their entire teams get laid off.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then those people are going to go and they're going to, they're going to, they're going to start up, they're going to do indie solo games or whether they start small studios, some of those are going to make it to market and those people are going to reap the rewards and their companies are going to grow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then what I'm seeing as AAA games failing is less AAA games failing and it's more giant old behemoth slow bad companies starting to take it on the chin. Because you're seeing games like, like Baldur's Gate 3 is not a Triple A game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, right, right, right, right. I mean, Triple A in terms of the quality.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exactly. But if you look at it in the way that almost everyone would ignorantly evaluate games as Triple A or Single A or whatever, without being in the industry, everyone's going to think it's a Triple A game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It looks great. The stories, incredibly voice acting. The voice acting is amazing. All these things that you would expect from a Triple A game are in Baldur's Gate 3. I understand there isn't a ton of modes and stuff for Helldivers, but I bet you most people would look at Helldivers and think of it as a Triple A release.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it absolutely wasn't. So like it's, it's. It's more the type of company that's failing in my mind instead of the type of game.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Athos asks you, would Breath of the Wild be a AAA game?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember. I don't remember the Exact defining features, but I think it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would think so. I mean it's to me, like, is it. Is it well defined? Because I'm sure Nintendo spent the money on sold consoles like it, or was expected to. I would say there's kind of part of. Part of being AAA is like an expectation of performance in the market.

[Luke Lafreniere]

AAA refers to high budget blockbuster titles with extensive resources, while Double A represents games that fall between indie and AAA in terms of budget and resources. So that's why I would say like Larian Studios and Arrowhead. So Baldur's Gate 3 and Helldivers are in the Double A category. They're not an indie game. It's not two to five devs, but it's also not EA Games or Ubisoft or Bethesda or whatever making it. So. Yeah, I would think that Breath of the Wild, I wasn't sure because it was like first party to the manufacturer of a console. I wasn't sure what that meant, but that absolutely falls under it. Based on this definition at least.

[Linus Sebastian]

Makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, should we move on from the Nintendo Switch? Oh, okay. Dan wants us to do merch messages. Sure.

[Dan]

Only if you want. Or you can do another topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Should we get the. Should we get the tariff stuff talked about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can. That's a decently sized topic though, I think, isn't it?

[Dan]

We might as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's more just us kind of talking through. It's. It's more of like a. Oh, no, it's a pretty heavy statement. Or it's a. It's a. Okay, let's do the LTT store side and then we'll get into a little bit. No. Okay, yeah, let's just do merch messages. Okay, fine, guy, let's talk about what the heck a merch message is. So we don't do twitch bits. We don't do super chats. We do merge messages. Those are the way to interact with the show live. We love interacting with you guys. And we have some special stuff that you guys can check out on the store today. Unfortunately, demand for the firewall department T shirts that we had for April Fools this year was much greater than we anticipated. And I've had quite a few people ask me how the heck it is that you can be sold out of a custom print to order T shirt. And the answer is when you run out of the blanks that it goes on is how that happens. So unfortunately, we don't have those. But what we do have is the custom water bottles. And you can see those Here in the front of the fire truck. Yes. Thank you, Luke. Do we have a. No, we have. We have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we just got the one cam. We got the one cam today, so the thirst extinguisher. Fire truck here. We'll just go. Linus laptop. Boom. There we go. Hey, I know why I clicked the wrong thing earlier when I was trying to show my laptop.

[Dan]

Me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why am I in the driver's seat? I'm on the wrong side of the Wanchu. Wait, no, I'm not on the wrong side of the Wanchu. Am I not?

[Dan]

No. Yeah, you're backwards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah, I'm backwards.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Do you want to flip the laptops around?

[Linus Sebastian]

What the heck? No, I'm over it, but it feels weird. The whole thing has felt really weird, and I've been trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

[Dan]

We had so many discussions about what side are you going sitting on. No, that's backwards. No, the lights go this side. No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How did the.

[Dan]

Linus should be driving.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How did the. Oh. Because Linus should be driving.

[Dan]

Because Linus should be driving.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus doesn't have a Class 3 license.

[Dan]

It should be sitting on the right. It doesn't matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You said, well, we should have got my brother to show up and we should have done wan show on the road and just like, driven around.

[Dan]

Hold on, I can fix this.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't, don't. No, no, don't do it. Anyway, the point is, the thirst extinguisher is I. I think the creator warehouse team absolutely outdid themselves here. Thirst tips. Hold bottle upright. Unscrew and remove cap from spout. Lift to mouth and tilt slowly to drink. Drink until thirst is extinguished. Warning. Do not drop. This thing is so cool. I absolutely love it. I think they did an amazing job of it. Here's our maintenance records. Now, a lot of you seem a little confused about what the heck was the April fool this year? The April Fool's joke is that there was no April Fool's joke this year. We did buy a fire truck. We are sitting in it right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's not a green screen. Look, I can open the door.

[Dan]

I wonder if I could grab Andrew's camera and do you a tour or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

We didn't rent it. We didn't fake anything. Absolutely everything you saw in the April Fool's video was real. You know, the April fool this year was. If you don't believe that this is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Real, then you're an April Fool.

[Linus Sebastian]

We got you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we. We were discussing before the show that the audio is actually surprisingly good in here. It's like a relatively small and padded, like, room. It's probably better than the WAN set. And we were discussing about which was cheaper.

[Dan]

I think we should just use this for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And, I don't know, forever after.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, just use it from now on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We maybe should have just bought a fire truck to begin with.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, you're gonna have to hold your questions about the April Fools video. I got a lot of people that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This changes everything, because they just assumed everything was fake.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you're fools.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. Yeah. Merch messages. Merch messages. Buy a thirst extinguisher. Dan, do you want to. Oh, yeah, right. How to leave a merge message. So you go on lttstore.com where we've got. Wait, what is this? Click here to call the LTT firewall department. Sorry, what is this? Click here to call the LTT firewall department.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, guys. Okay. Top Gear said no. The April Fools. That you guys never bothered to idle up the fire engine and use full pressure or flow through the nozzle. Please have Luke's brother show you how to do that. The. The point of that whole section was them just kind of, like, fumbling around having fun. I thought it was fun watching you guys do stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't expect you to do it perfectly.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're gonna figure stuff out later. Even trip dog.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, so head to LTT store, add something to your cart. Say, for example, the commuter backpack whale of a surprise.

[Dan]

Oh, there's something behind Luke, I believe.

[Linus Sebastian]

What is this? Have you this weekend only offer end Sunday, April 6th at 11:59pm Pacific Time.

[Dan]

There's a commuter backpack behind you, Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you get. You get.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nobody consults me on our promos anymore.

[Dan]

This is pretty special promo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, It's a commuter backpack loop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, do you.

[Dan]

I believe. Oh, there's some one in three chances. It should be in the document.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you buy a commuter bag and a whale inside your backpack, some will be either, if you're lucky, inside your backpack. Wait, but no, because you buy the whale, right?

[Dan]

Yes, I believe they're together. Is it not in the dock?

[Linus Sebastian]

Inside your backpack will be either a whale or one of three signed fire trucks by me. And.

[Dan]

Oh, there is a Sharpie in the center there. Okay, guys. To sign the fire trucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

All three of the fire trucks are there. So these are the ones that were in the silly Unboxing at the beginning of the April Fool's video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got it. So wait. Okay, so you buy the commuter pack. That's all you buy.

[Linus Sebastian]

And a whale.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You buy the whale.

[Linus Sebastian]

You buy the whale, and you might get a whale or you might get a signed fire truck.

[Dan]

Arthur's in here, so let's see what he says.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you get the whale for free.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like, why would you buy the whale and then maybe get another whale?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, you don't maybe get another whale. Oh, for the love of God, Luke. You get the whale. The whale and the whale will be in your backpack or a fire truck because they're gonna pack the whale you bought in the back anyway. The point is, it's free anyway, so you don't have to pay for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You get the whale for free when you add both the commuter and the whale to your cart.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. So either way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you guarantee you get the whale.

[Linus Sebastian]

You get a backpack, then inside will be either a whale or one of three signed fire trucks. It would really help if I just read the doc for this. The point is crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Go to lttstore.com, find something cool, add it to your cart, and there will be a box to leave a merch message. It'll go Producer Dan, who we are revealing once and for all. Look at that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's in the back of the fire truck on the top of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Turn on the lights. Turn on the lights. Oh, I'll turn on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you have to climb up to where Dan is.

[Dan]

Yeah, it's pretty high up. Actually, I got a light here. It's on the scissor lift, and. Yeah, this is pretty. It's pretty cool. There you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go.

[Dan]

Real fire truck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan on the back of the fire truck. Let's go. We can leave these on for a little bit. As long as we're not on public roads. Apparently, we are allowed to have the lights on.

[Dan]

You're also not allowed to drain the battery or you will.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. I'll face the wrath of Jamie. Yes, that makes sense.

[Dan]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm definitely not allowed to start the engine because we are very much indoors.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Dan]

What about the horn?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can do it. You can do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

You ready, Dan? You should really plug your ears, Dan.

[Dan]

Gonna do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Headphones on.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. You got headphones on.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everyone ready?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, there's more.

[Dan]

Oh, God.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Where is it? Hold on, hold on. It's over there. Okay, Luke's. Luke's got the Other thing. Dan? Yeah? You're really gonna want your. Your stuff covered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, God.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, here we go. The knob on the left. Yeah, keep going.

[Dan]

Oh, my good God. Real fire truck.

[Linus Sebastian]

For those of you wondering, yes, it is street legal here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The only thing we have to do is cover the emergency lights and not turn that on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but it can be mounted.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that wild or what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just can't turn it on.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is flip. I got to get my Class 3 license if I want to drive it, which my understanding is actually a pretty short course. But other than that, it is a real fire truck that we actually bought, and that's the April Fool. But absolutely none of it was fake.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I sent my brother a video of it, and he said it's, like, quite legit, like the brand and all that type of stuff. Apparently it's, like, very good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no, it's like, it's a real fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not only is it real, it's a good one.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's only not in service today. It's only has 30,000 kilometers on it. Yeah, that's. That's like less than. That's just over 20,000 miles. Like, the only reason it's not in service today is because it's so old. It aged out of active service.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of fire truck stuff is idle time. Not necessarily the mileage still.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's still nothing. Like people were saying that typically retired ones will have 100 plus kilometers on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, they do still drive, for sure. You answer a lot of calls and stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. We had a concept for the April Fools that we would, like, pretend it was fake. Like, we'd pretend we were trying to fake it so everything would, like, be green screened until all of a sudden we, like, interact with the truck and people, like, no way. But then that ended.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Take too long to build up too much work. I think the final video is really good.

[Linus Sebastian]

The final video was really good. My kids watched it last night and they, like. They and Yvonne, like, laughed multiple times. And, yeah, it felt pretty good. There's been videos that, like, I've watched with my kids, and I'm like, oh, this is actually a boring video. But no, the. The April Fools this year was outstanding. Sorry, we'll. We'll get to talking about it a little bit later. But first, Dan, you want to show us how merch messages work. So they send them in the cart, they place their order, and they go to producer Dan. Right, right. And producer Dan is on fire. If you look carefully, you can see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There'S a fire light in the back so extra.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love it.

[Dan]

Got a couple questions here about the April Fool's merch question for the peepers. Were there any legal concerns regarding the water bottle given its similarity to emergency safety devices?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things can be red and white.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I am, I am. I'm not always a person who has the most faith in human humans to be not stupid is a way I would put it. I sincerely do not know any single living, breathing human being in my life that would mistake that for an actual fire extinguisher. I think we're going to be okay, everyone.

[Dan]

Hopefully. And I got a second one here about that. Hey, LMG Foolies. The 2026 calendar truly surprised me. What's been your favorite project over the years? And what's the most embarrassing thing you've done for a project?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness. I mean there's definitely stuff that didn't feel that embarrassing back when we did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's like pretty embarrassing now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, definitely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Think of some channel super funds like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, this Computex trip was brutal because I was desperately trying to figure out how to get anybody to watch any of this content that WD sponsored. And nothing against Western Digital, they make good products. They seem like a pretty stand up company. But the only way that we could cover the costs to go to Computex that first year was to do a video on the show floor in WD's booth every day of the show. So we were trying to find, desperately trying to find a way to make one booth interesting over and over and over again. And when we announced that we were going to Computex, we did this unhinged nonsense that I was just trying to do anything that I could to figure out how I could have the retention not be absolutely trash. I'm playing with cars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What am I doing is an axe on the ground.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm a grown man wearing a dress and a Superman cape and I'm playing with cars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think there's an axe on the ground.

[Linus Sebastian]

What was I thinking? I made some kind of promise.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you in the shower in this video?

[Linus Sebastian]

And I was like, we'll do stuff. When you watch the videos, you can unlock more prizes, right? That was WD's idea was the more views we got or something because I told them we're not going to get any views on this. I was like, I need to turn this off. I was like, the more views that we get, the, the, the, the more prizes that will do for your audience or something like that. I was like, oh my God. That's not gonna work at all. No, that's like actually stupid. But look, never say that. Oh, whoops. Never say that. I'm not committed, you know. So here were the gear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know why I think the videos. Yeah, you got in the shower. Yeah, I remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm in the shower with an axe and a Superman suit. What is even happening right now? I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The videos are better back then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they sure were.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's more production quality.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, definitely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And writing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. That if I was to ever go back and just like purge weird stuff that I've done over the years. That would be one of the videos. That would be one of them, yes. Wow, this. Wow, this is terrible. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You derailed them too hard. Next one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, One more, Dan.

[Dan]

All right, let's see what else we got here. Let's go back to the top. Hey, ldl. This past Valentine's Day, my partner surprised me with both a spicy outfit and a scribe driver pen tucked in her hair. What is the nerdiest romantic thing that you or your partner has done?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For Christmas a few years ago, Emma, my. My partner got me a like, clearly from like Value Village or something leather satchel bag thing. And it was completely full. And when I opened it, it was the. It was what you might expect a Pokemon professor would have in a leather satchel bag. So there was like little samples like from. From like, you know, I don't know, different Pokemon stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bulbasaur Leaf.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There was. Yeah, there was a book with like notes that she wrote that like mimic like the types of things that might be in there. There was. There's like all this different type of stuff. And it was a full actual kit. It was super, super cool. I still have it.

[Linus Sebastian]

The. I'd say. I'd say like one of the, you know, moment I knew moments with Yvonne was actually. No, I'm going to go with a different one. I'm going to go with when Yvonne bought me an air conditioner, a window mounted air conditioner unit for my birthday, knowing that I was going to immediately disassemble it and use it to submersion. Sub zero. Cool. I was going to submerse the evaporator side into a windshield de icer and then pump the fluid around to my CPU so that I could go sub 0 24. 7 that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, how can you not know that she's the one in that moment? KG4WWN and floatplane chat says it's kind of ironic to Decry weirdness and childishness of. Childishness of prior videos while sitting in the fire truck you bought.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look different level.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. We're childish on a completely different level now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can afford way better childish toys. I actually am going to. On one of the toys that I bought. I am actually dying in this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, those aren't. Those aren't known for their cooling properties.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nope. I'll be right back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sounds good. Next topic. Do we talk about the fire truck? Do we fully go through this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fire truck. April Fools. Except not really. We really bought a real fire truck. For real. Wow. What a. What a. That is the sentence. While it was definitely less work and money than the Langley house video last year. Really was less money. Interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, easy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Getting this whole project figured out was still a pain. Figuring out transport, we couldn't drive it until inspections.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So we had to haul it back here. There's actually a really good float plane exclusive that you guys can check out. LMG GG floatplane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a great exclusive actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also insurance. Who was selling it Insurance, which we don't have yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. That's why it just sits in the warehouse for now or in the parking lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And permits for the hydrant. Those all took a long time to figure out. Shout out to Dylan for the hard work. Especially driving all the way up there in like ridiculous cold again. It's a great. It's a great exclusive. We got lucky when the fire inspector came by so we could pick his brain. Originally we wanted to use a city hydrant, but we would have needed permits for both of the hydrant and just for filming. Even though we're on our own property. Apparently the dead bird was 100 real and not scripted. Yeah, we.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude, that was. That was. That was. I. I think. Yeah. I think it's in the final edit. I. I am not. I'm not gonna shy away from that. I have a necrophobia thing. I. I don't. I don't even think that's an embarrassing thing to admit. Like, if it was necrophobia.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like a survival.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty embarrassing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Necrophobia. I don't think that's that embarrassing. I do not like dead things. I'm not into it. I don't think they're cool. I don't like touching them. I don't like looking at them. I'm not into. Again, that's like. One of my most traumatic childhood experiences was when I had to bury a fawn that my Dog killed. Like, I was not. I was not into that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not even a little.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people, it doesn't bother them and that I'm not. I'm not judging or anything. I'm not saying everyone should be the same way. I'm just saying I'm not into it. So when I encounter, you know, unexpected mummified squirrel, when I'm crawling around in my attic, when I encounter unexpected tailpipe dead bird when I am poking around at my new fire truck, I'm not into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, that was very real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently we almost got used fire gear for Linus, but apparently that is a cancer risk.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Because they're chock full of carcinogens.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So what is that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Been in fires. Maybe it's less used. I don't know. It seems pretty used.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seems pretty used.

[Linus Sebastian]

I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You just get over it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because it seems pretty used.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just put on whatever they handed me, so maybe they killed me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The helmet seems pretty used.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the helmet's definitely used. But I'd be less worried about a helmet absorbing carcinogens.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Anyways, truck specs, it's a 1993 hub pumper with some HME parts and an 8.3 Cummings diesel engine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get that G out of there. Who's memeing on this? David said Cummings, I know in the video just about died. Look, he is an expert on lots of things. Diesel engines. Apparently not one of them. That's fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I tried to continue it, but. Yeah, it's Cummins. Small T shirts and thirst quenchers are still available on lttstore.com. all the other ones sold out.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna buy shirts for my brother's whole fire hall and I couldn't. Look, I can't even buy our own products.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you want from me? I'm sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I tried to do it quickly. I checked on April 1st.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sorry. That our graphics design team. Okay. Is too talented.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that the stuff they make.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe they should calm down. Maybe they should relax.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sorry. It sells too well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe they should do worse jobs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Oh, if you want some more trucking fire content, check out Floatplane, where we had three exclusives this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We have the driving up to get it, which is actually really interesting. And then there's some of the, like, writers meetings which were kind of cool. If you want to see some behind the scenes on like, how video ideation happens.

[Linus Sebastian]

Getting the fire truck. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool. You actually get to like sit in writers meeting while we talk about how we talk about things in writers meeting. I haven't seen this yet. How much of this photo shoot ended up in the thing? Oh, okay, okay. We got Sammy doing burpees. What is he like trying to get in shape for the. For the shoot?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I felt so awkward during this. You can tell? Yeah, like a hundred percent. Yeah, that is exactly how awkward I felt. There was zero acting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, man. I was sitting in labs when you guys are doing that. I didn't realize that was actually a calendar shoot. I thought you guys were just trying to get like B roll and just took forever with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bartland says, my wife was actually angry you made something so very me. I'm an IT guy of 20 plus years and a retired firefighter. Yeah, we. That's the demographic we're going for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Even got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

What else we got? Oh, my goodness. There's so many exclusives. 20 plus minute vlog of getting the truck. Short but informative. 7 minute writers meeting and a 70 plus minute behind the scenes of the entire shoot. Everything from the full short circuit clip. Oh, yeah. The fake unboxing of the fire truck. I didn't think they were gonna use that. To Linus's pants getting stolen. To all the alternative takes for the skit bits. Most, if not everything we just talked about is in the video. And yes, even the bird and the spark, which happen minutes between each other. Those are in there. So I've had a few people asking. I think the first one to ask in floatplane chat. Nope, I don't see it. I had notes. I didn't put it in there. Was the spark real and candid? The spark was 100% real and 100% candid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What spark?

[Linus Sebastian]

I pick up the thing and I'm like, oh, gee, I wonder what this thing's for. Better connect the thing to the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, Yeah, I took the thing. We faked that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I took the lead and I just like touched it to the head of a bolt and it was 600 volt DC. Yeah, I did not know that that was a thing. Nobody told me that was a thing. That is probably the closest I've come to being grievously harmed on set.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suggested in a long time, at a minimum 10 to 15 times that we involve my brother with this project in some way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but that would have been less.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fun to drive the truck to help inform whatever. And I think there was like you and David trying to explore like how truck work was genuinely really entertaining to watch. So I think it worked out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I had no, I had no doubt. I'm just saying, dude, I had no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's been people that chat like, where.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where was Luke's brother?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm like, he would have, he could have been here.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure we'll chat with him at some point about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, probably.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is my fire truck now. There's. There's no time pressure. Yeah. So if we want a cool PC with it or we want it guy, guys, feel free. That would be another good thing for merch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, if you want to filter merch messages that have like legitimately good ideas for fire truck videos, I send those over to David or something. Like we're looking. We're open to ideas here. Guys, we got a fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want Alex to try to come up with some automatic anti fire protection system for a computer. And I want you guys to put.

[Linus Sebastian]

Electrical fires with water. But. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It doesn't have to be the computer that's on fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So then my idea is that we go to the, the training field and we actually light a mini house on fire. And you have to put the fire out with the fire truck and then go see if Alex's creation survived. That's. I want that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We are working on an AI turret unrelated project. So we could buy the turret. Apparently it's a couple grand. And then we could like computer control the fire turret.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. AIs coming for like software developers and writers and artists and stuff. What about firefighters? Do you want your life in the hands of an AI program?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my God. We should put. Before we light the house on fire, we should put some mannequins in the windows and stuff. Just like put some streaming cameras in there. Like some low cost streaming cameras.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Watch them get decked and just like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Watch them get like absolutely obliterated. Get their like heads knocked off by the fire hose.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get one of those like Boston Dynamics dogs to just like bite and haul out the thing and drag it along the ground.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nobody's there to carry them out. Amazing.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, yeah, let us know if you have any good ideas. Guys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really, I'm trying to find any way to shoehorn lighting a small house on fire and having you guys put it out. That's why I came up with the like, Alex builds some fire self defense system for a computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll consider it. It might be too challenging getting like servos that are big enough to move a firefighting turret. I don't know. But anyway, our discussion questions here. Did you have fun making the video? Absolutely. It was a blast. The intro for today's WAN show was an absolute blast to make, even though I didn't know about it until I watched it right before we started. If you look carefully, it's just the. My parts of it are just spliced together with new stuff from Luke from the April Fools video. And there's one shot that has both of us in it that they apparently used a body double for. Nobody, like, asked me if I wanted to do it. They were just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You weren't here when we were doing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know where you were, but yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And our other discussion question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we used Thomas.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Did you have fun making the video? And David, who, who worked on our April Fools again, an absolute rock star. He's like the king of April fools at this point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, he killed it last year. He killed it this year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I had fun, but I need 364 days before I'm ready to make another one. This is a joke, but not really. I'm so tired. Artie apparently has a merch message update down below. Huh? Where is it? In the middle. How am I supposed to know what the update is?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you please sign? The fire trucks live already messed up discount codes actually automatically.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. The discount codes weren't applying, but we will resolve any carts where the whales were added at full price, so don't worry about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We got. Where's the. I don't see the Sharpie, though.

[Dan]

Just in front of the.

[Linus Sebastian]

I see it.

[Dan]

Okay, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And where are all the trucks? I know one of them is.

[Dan]

I think they're all.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're all behind you. Super ergonomic. There are definitely disadvantages to this set. It's not a flawless system. Dan should be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my goodness. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's, like, right behind you. You know how you've been working on your shoulder flexibility?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we're putting that to the test.

[Dan]

I could climb down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, don't do that.

[Dan]

Very easy.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think that would be best.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Where should. Where should we sign these things? Gotta sign. Sign our fire trucks here. Fire rescue. Okay, well, first things first. Engine one. You gotta be kidding me. It's a completely different engine here. Okay. Okay. And then. Yeah, sure. I'll. I'll send it here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you gonna number them all? Because they're all engine one. So you're gonna make them engine one, two, three. To, like, serialize them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I think that's pretty smart. That was not the direction that I went with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. What did you do? Where'd you even go? Oh, nice. That's legit.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you serializing them now, or should I do it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, I'm serializing them. I got you. I got you. So we got engine 69, engine 169, engine 269. Okay. And there's a chance that these will be in your order of the commuter bag, which includes a free whale plushie. Oh, right, right, right. I guess you need the Sharpie. That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I think it. Oh, my goodness. Luke, your toy fire truck is going off. I will see your toy fire truck, and I will raise you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he didn't do the siren. Oh, he might be. He might be. Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

One real fire truck.

[Dan]

You see? We can even shake it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Real fire truck.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is a real fire truck. What are we supposed to be doing right now?

[Dan]

Dan, I think you started another topic, and now you can do another topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, let's do a topic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did we finish the fire truck topic?

[Dan]

Yeah, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so. Yes, yes, we did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think. I think so. Good job, everyone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Remember when I asked the audience if I should buy this car? No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's do a real topic. Okay. LG TVs are going to be losing Google Assistant on May 1st. Currently, if you have an LG OLED TV connected to the Internet, you can access the Google Assistant by linking to your account and using the microphone built into the remote. However, this appears to be going away as a Google Assistant service termination pop up has started appearing on LG TVs noting that the change will take place effective May 1, 2025. I, David Pankratz, who is helper for the writing team, saw this pop up on my TV at home just last night. Basic voice controls will still be available, serviced through LG's Think app. Samsung also lost Google Assistant functionality back in March of 2024. And our discussion question is basically not a question, is that this blows. And when you buy a connected product, there appears to be simply no guarantee whatsoever that the advertised feature set will remain throughout the entire lifetime of the product. And there appears to be absolutely no recourse for customers whatsoever or compensation given to these customers. And I just don't really understand how. How this works. You know, like, if I. If I sold you a backpack, let's say, and I said it has two layers in the bottom. And then hypothetically, let's say you found out that it didn't. Are you not owed at the very least some compensation? I thought so. Which is why we offer people gift cards or a refund. So where is my gift card? Where is my refund? This is not the product you sold me. And you know what? For most people, it might not be materially different, but I was looking at discussions about this online and someone brought up a really good point. They have relatives that have physical disabilities that make it very challenging to operate their TV with a remote. And they extensively used voice controls. Well, so much for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think it comes down to that software is you don't. You don't own that portion of it. So they can say whatever you want. You numbered two of them 169.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the other one is. That's a two.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's a two.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a two. It's a really narrow two.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a two.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's a two. It's got a little thing at the top and a little thing on the bottom. It's a two. Well, I didn't have a lot of space, Luke. I couldn't draw a big loopy two. Were you a loopy two kid? Yeah, with the loop. Yeah, I was a loopy. I was a loopy 2 kid too. Yeah. So in summary, that sucks. LG do better now. We should probably. Okay, let's do. I'll do another quick one. This is not really like news news, but I saw it for the first time. I thought it was cool. There's a company mass producing coin sized nuclear batteries in China. The company Beta Volt showed off a nuclear battery using a combination of fourth generation diamond semiconductor and a radioactive isotope of nickel. Nickel 63. That could power a device. A low power device mind you. It does up to 100 microwatts at 3 volts. Okay. Power a device for up to 50 years and measures just 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters. With a larger 1 watt version expected in 2025. The nickel eventually decays into non radioactive copper. Popular Mechanics reported last week that the batteries are now in mass production and will be used for medical and aerospace devices and could even be used in future smartphones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have to get the power output up a fair amount, But I mean, 1.

[Linus Sebastian]

Watt is pretty good. If we're. If we're able to do 1 watt today, maybe we can do more watts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. Things advance like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, this sounds crazy. Small nuclear batteries have been used in space travel since the 1960s and there were even nuclear powered pacemakers. In the 1970s, Jordan made a mock up of how small this thing is. It is under the light control panel.

[Dan]

The thing in the middle, it should be just right there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wow. That's how small this battery is. That's wild.

[Dan]

It's like a key cap size almost.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It kind of helps that we don't have a separate cam for this because you can tell it's. It's like it's in my fingers there. Yeah, it's really small. Well, yeah, it's really small. It's like a key cap.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is. Yeah. It's pretty close to a keycap.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now it's time for a super cool word from our sponsors like Squarespace. Before your boss fires you, why not fire yourself up and turn your creative side hustle into a business? With our sponsor, Squarespace, you can create a stunning portfolio to showcase your work. Like this fire truck photo shoot. Squarespace is an all in one platform that helps fire your site up in minutes. It also lets you manage everything in one place, from booking photo shoots to invoicing clients and even lighting up your marketing efforts. With their beautiful layouts and styling options, building a site is as simple as dragging and dropping. No coding experience required. Just pick a design that fits your needs and it will look great on any device. And with support for all major credit cards and popular payment methods, selling your products is like turning on the fire hose. Powerful and impactful. Plus, their new AI tools can help you generate content or brainstorm ideas. If your firetruck calendar isn't exactly selling like hotcakes. So start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by visiting squarespace.com Wan the show is also brought to you by. Thorum Is an onion ring the best ring you've ever had? Don't worry, our sponsor Thorum has something better. They hand make wedding bands from unique materials like meteorite, whiskey barrels, dinosaur fossils, and even World War II rifle stocks. Every ring ships within one business day and comes with a free Thorum activity band made of silicone and a beautiful wooden ring box. Not only is your future Beyonce going to say yes, but over 10,000 customers have left five star reviews after putting a ring on it. Now Thorium has expanded into minimalist watches featuring meteorite, Hawaiian koa wood, and California redwood so your wrist doesn't feel left out. Plus, they offer a lifetime warranty and free worldwide shipping. Whether you need a wedding ring, an anniversary ring, or you just want a ring that Looks awesome. Head over to thorium.com and use code WAN to get 20% off a truly unique ring. Finally, the show is brought to you by Notion. Your work life is a mess, like the back of a desk with zero cable management. But our sponsor, Notion, keeps everything organized so you're not stuck untangling the chaos. Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects into one space that is simple and beautifully designed. It's the place to connect teams so you're always on the same page. And the fully integrated Notion AI assistant helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger, doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds. You can even automate tedious tasks like summarizing meeting notes or getting insights from PDFs and images. With Notion, you don't need to bounce between six different apps. It's seamlessly integrated with Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, and more. Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, helping teams stay on the same page by reducing emails, cutting unnecessary meetings, saving time searching for work, and lowering costs spent on extra tools. So try Notion for [e-mail]. wanna. That's all lowercase letters. Notion.com. when to try the powerful and easy to use Notion. All right, what do you want to talk about? Now we can do anything we want. All the obligatory stuff is out of the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'd put the siren back on if I could do anything I wanted. What do we got here?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Why is it so hard to read?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you're supposed to engage the power before you, like, as you get in.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Do you think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the horn. I thought you said siren.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pump faked. We do the siren, too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, don't do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you want to go on the. Do you want to go on the radio? Where's the. There.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that works Here. Yeah, you gotta set it to radio, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's. Man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Mr. Besser. Mr. Besser.

[Dan]

What? I can't hear anything now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know how much of that they can make out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. Incredible. All right. Okay. What do we got here? Stone Monarch asks, did I miss the tariff tips? Should we do it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We can do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's talk about. Yeah, let's talk about tariffs. US Administration tariffs spark incoming price pains. Who could have seen this coming? The current US administration has announced sweeping new tariffs under a plan dubbed Liberation Day, including a baseline 10% tariff on everything imported to the US plus reciprocal tariffs based on how each country allegedly treats US exporters these new tariffs reach as high as 46%. Among those hit hardest, PC builders and tech buyers, countries like China, 34%, Taiwan, 32%, South Korea, 25%, and Vietnam, 46%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And some other kind of hilarious countries.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are all major sources of SSDs, RAM, GPUs, PC cases, laptops, and basically everything in your rig. Boutique builders like Maingear and Falcon Northwest are already warning of 20 to 25% price hikes. These companies build PCs in the US but rely almost exclusively on parts from Asia. Parts that I'm sorry, but the cold hard truth is that nobody is going to be making in North America anytime soon. Shortages are already reappearing as suppliers scramble to relocate their production. Even GPUs, which were already a pricing mess, are taking a hit. GPU manufacturing lines in China are being paused to shift production to countries that now also have high tariffs. So there's seemingly nowhere left to hide. Semiconductors are seemingly exempt, but the machines that are needed to make them and products that those semiconductors are pre installed in are not. Meaning that we could see higher fab costs down the road, especially if companies want to expand outside the U.S. so how were these tariffs calculated? Economist James Surowiecki sure says that it appears that the White House simply divided the U.S. trade deficit by each country's exports to the U.S. for example, the United States imports 28 billion from Indonesia and exports 10 billion equals 64% tariff. That is like, that is like if I asked my kids to figure it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, you can ask ChatGPT and then it gives you a pretty similar thing. But if, if, if, if you're trying to balance trade deficits, like, okay, fair enough. But they said that these were tariffs and these were reciprocal because there was tariffs there. And that's just flat out not true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but also there's, you know, there's nuance. You know, say, for example, I mean, wow, okay. All right, so that's something that people are gonna need to deal with. Dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cambodia getting hit with the old 97%.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sheesh.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, yeah, I mean, I guess the good thing about this is that a lot of people who hadn't figured it out before are kind of figure well as, as the youth say, finding out now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right? Yes, there's, there's an interesting political thing with this. Have you looked at the actual chart itself and the countries listed on it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I know I haven't. I've seen recreations of the rates. Like, I've looked at tables of it, but no, I haven't looked at the exact chart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fourth country on the list is Taiwan specifically named.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's interesting. It's actually very interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's cool, in my opinion.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I think I've been pretty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Upfront that I think we both have. I just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Taiwan's a country.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm surprised, I'll say that much.

[Linus Sebastian]

Taiwan has its own federal government. I mean, I Is that they could be invaded by another country, that sovereign government could be replaced. But if you, like, have your own federal government, you, like, you know our country, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Someone in chat. I haven't verified, but someone in chat said it also includes several uninhabited islands. Yeah, I saw that. I heard that it includes a country of 3,000 people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It includes at least one, like, island that literally doesn't export anything to the US What.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is. Which one?

[Linus Sebastian]

I forget. It's some, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I've heard people say that, but I haven't. I haven't, like, looked into these things, but yeah, pretty great. Pretty great. I don't see Canada here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can. You'll find Canada eventually. Yeah. There are some countries that curiously dodged tariffs, so that was interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's weird that it's in no order. Like, it's. It's not in a. It doesn't. It's not an alphabetical order. It's not in, like, size of the tariffs order. It's not in size of the reciprocal tariffs order. It's just. It's just seems to be totally random. Yeah. I only have a picture of two of them. Canada is not included in that list. It has separate tariffs. Ah, very cool. Very good. Very nice. Very demure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. Well, yeah. Good luck, everybody. So let's talk about LTT store. I have. This is scripted from Taran, so I'm not gonna deviate too much from it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently a US Military base is in the list of terrorists. Sorry, that's really funny. Okay, we can keep going.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unless you're just joining the show. You've probably heard about the broad tariffs. I think the original draft of this said, unless you've been living under a rock. I see someone's done another pass. Anyway, you've probably heard about the broad tariffs that have already come into effect or will on May 2. We've seen some questions about what this will mean for pricing on lttstore.com. well, the team has been working diligently behind the scenes basically, since last November to minimize the total costs to our customers, who we recognize are not the people that we are at Trade war with and I'm going to share some of these initiatives with you, including one, offsetting some of the cost of tariffs by negotiating with our suppliers to help ensure that we are getting the best costs possible so that we can keep our prices reasonable for you. Number two, exploring new manufacturing locations though as we just discussed recently, where now I don't know. Okay, sure. Number three, rolling out Canadian pricing for Canadian customers soon. TM working on it because in the past there's been really no point because our costs are in USD because that's traditionally been the international currency of international trade and our pricing has been derived from our costs plus some markup. So there was really not much point in us having a CAD price. But now our pricing in USD is going to be derived from our cost in USD plus pardon my French bull, tariffs plus our margin so they no longer get to be equivalent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some of the delay, I'm just adding here, some of the delay there is. We never expected this. So a lot of the things that we built for the store were built expecting one store to exist. So like some of our stuff needs to be adapted to be able to support more than one store which is maybe useful in the future, I don't know. But work that needs to be done.

[Linus Sebastian]

And number four is that we are rapidly accelerating our efforts to explore localized fulfillment so we can get our products to you faster with lower shipping costs. This will be a phased approach.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's going to take time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unfortunately, none of these things is a magic bullet. We're going to do our best to hold existing prices on whatever we can afford. But customers should expect that costs will go up as we approach May 2nd. We will do everything in our power to minimize the impact of the tariffs on what you pay for your products. But this tariff situation is tough. It's tough on us. We don't want to raise prices and it's tough on you. You do not want to pay higher prices. The one thing that we can always control and that we will continue to control is that we will provide our customers with excellent high quality products and with outstanding trust me bro support. And we'll do that no matter what external forces arise. So that's how do returns work. That's all I have to say about that. We'll probably just end up eating some stuff there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, look, I never actually thought about this before but yeah, if you, if you buy something, get it tariffed on the way in. I'm sure you don't get a refund. For your tariff when you return it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

We've never had to deal with this. Like, that's the thing. And I, I'm not necessarily convinced that the, the effort is being made to staff the organization, the government organizations that are supposed to be dealing with all of this to make the experience smooth and fast. I, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Will float plane pricing be going up as well? I don't think there's a.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have no plans to alter anything about float plane pricing. Like, like I said, look, we are not one of those kinds of companies that looks for inflation in a headline or, you know, or takes a global emergency like Covid and uses it as an opportunity to raise our pricing. Like, I see a ton of criticism all the time of how expensive our products are. For crying out loud, find me another merch store that sells high quality printed t shirts for 20 bucks. Show me another creator who sells that for 20 bucks that matches our quality. The quality is outstanding, as proven by Project Farm. Right. Like it. It is. We, we do try our best. We have to make money. That's how we survive. That's how we make the content that you guys enjoy. That's how we pay the people you like. You know, like, we have to make money. Right. But we're not, we're not predatory. We're not trying to be unreasonable or anything. So we're not going to say like, oh, there's, there's tariffs and general uncertainty. So we're going to jack up float plane pricing. I have telegraphed already in the past that we are going to have to increase float plane pricing at some point. But we're not going to claim that it's because of this. It's just because, hey, we haven't touched pricing in eight years. Something like that. Yeah. And we have a lot more resources that go into floatplane now. We have dedicated people that work on nothing but floatplane now. So. And I mean on the content side, like the LTT side, I don't mean on the floatplane media side. We always had dedicated people there. And I mean that in both senses. The floatplane team is incredible. Very dedicated. Where was it, where was I going with that? Right. So, yeah, we're not gonna like make excuses and just like jack up prices. That's not our way. But there, there will be an impact. Like if, if our cost on something to deliver it to you goes up by, you know, tens of percent, I don't have that kind of margin to just absorb it on everything. And I don't think it's reasonable to say, oh, well, you know, Linus, you should just, you should just eat it. You should just make nothing on this. Why? What did I do such that I should do that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

And are you okay telling everyone that works here that they don't get raises because we're making literally nothing?

[Linus Sebastian]

Wouldn't even just be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If we're making literally nothing, then people are getting fired.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that wouldn't be fired. So there's an important distinction between fired and laid off. Fired is dismissed for lack of performance. Laid off is dismissed for lack of work for the company to do for you. So I would consider that to be more of a layoff than a termination.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Couple questions. People outside of the US Or Canada are wondering if anything's going to happen to their pricing.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, like I said, we're not looking for excuses to jack up pricing and we don't expect, you know, our European customers to subsidize the business that will inevitably be reduced to our, to our, to our friends down south. And I and I mean that, right? Like there's a lot of Canadians that are, you know, all very, you know, America or whatever. Right? But I'm not. We, we have many people who we consider to be friends of, of ourselves, whether that's personally, we have, we have friends of our business, you know, the people who, whose help who have supported us for all these years. Right. Like we are. We are. We have absolutely, we bear no ill will to the American people who have done absolutely nothing and quite frankly will be the ones suffering the brunt of a lot of this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's gonna be rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like we're not looking to add insult to injury for y'all, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We just also have to survive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Survive with our Scenic mode on Vizio.

[Linus Sebastian]

TV's users report this is so upsetting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Inter Vizio TV user reports scenic Mode intersperses relaxing ambient content interspersed with political ads. What Last week, Reddit user Double Jumps claimed if I leave my Vizio TV idle, it plays calming nature videos, calming music, and then loops a message from the Trump admin telling illegal immigrants to get out over and over and over again. Link to Reddit post with the ad in question. Double Jumps followed it up with I left it on to see if it would do it again and it played the whole video again after about 20 minutes, just the once. This time, this behavior comes out of Scenic Mode, a feature that displays relaxing ambient content when your TV is idle for for a period of time. Scenic Mode is free but supported by ads with no option TVs are so crap these days.

[Linus Sebastian]

Luke, you thought you were jumping into a topic that would be, like, happy, didn't you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

To be completely honest, you were excited for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just read Scenic Mode. I didn't read the rest of it. Oh, man. Oh, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got. You got Bamboozled.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is brutal. Scenic Mode is free, as it should be, but supported by ads, which is ridiculous. With no option to turn the ad content off, which is ridiculous. Settings exist to turn off sound in Scenic Mode or to disable Scenic Mode completely Bamboozled. Yeah. You have the option to turn off this thing that is totally free but supported by ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that is so funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ars Technica reports that they were unable to replicate this particular ad internally and had not seen other reports of Vizio TV owners seeing it. Okay. Vizio has had ties to political ads in the past. In a Vizio case study, they state Vizio recently worked with a political candidate on an ad campaign that combined CTV ads with our household Connect Omnichannel feature. Omni Channel feature to reach potential voters both on their TV sets and on other opted in devices like laptop computers, mobile phones, and tablets.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so they. They clearly do work with political advertisers. So our discussion question is, would you pay extra for a TV that is not subsidized by ads and telemetry being sent back to the manufacturer? I mean, it's such a hypothetical question because they all do. If you want a high quality set, like high image quality, that's what you're getting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

With that said, you know what? My TCL tv, because it's a China model, doesn't serve me anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's no ad servers.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I don't think. I've never seen an ad on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have it configured to go straight to my. My usual source because I use an avr and all my sources go into that. And then just one connection goes. So it just goes straight to input 2.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You had to individually import that, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the new bougie thing for TV owners is to individually import them from China so you don't get ads.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or from some other region that won't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have ad servers for North America.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Ahead of the curve.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's kind of sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

And drive around in your fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my goodness. This is so ridiculous. I mean, we're gonna have to maybe. We're gonna have to maybe revisit piehole. Just kind of see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

See what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is genuinely absurd. Like, I can't Stand this like we're shoving ads into everything. The fact that Windows has ads is offensive to me. The fact that a TV can just force it down your throat is absurd. Like this is not. And like there's. The problem is there's, there isn't a capitalistic answer here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can't vote with your wallet and buy one that doesn't have.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can. Stone Monarch says you can get business grade TVs that sense. Some of them, like digital signage are different, but you can apparently get business grade TVs that are just consumer ones without the smart garbage. But they cost a lot more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think that's the right message.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, yeah, giving them way more money is not going to send the right message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, but it's also, I don't think it's necessarily going to like, I think their analytics would not report, hey, users didn't want to buy the ad supported ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, not even a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're not going to get the right answer from this. So that the whole voting with your wallet thing, you're not casting a vote by doing that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're getting the result you want.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're giving like companies that screwed you more money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's not no ad tax, it's business tax. Business things just cost more money because they know that businesses will pay for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Man. Brutal. Silver Sonic says don't connect your TV to WI fi actually. Oh, okay. We have, we're announcing a partnership with someone at some point and as some part of it I talk about how I like my Nvidia Shield Pro and the reason that I like it is that I use that instead of my TVs smart interface because especially because my TV doesn't have one properly because it's a Chinese TV. So it has all these like Chinese streaming services and I don't think it's like Netflix certified and stuff like that. So I use my, I use my Shield Pro and yeah, that's a really good point because if you have a third party Android box connected to your tv, there's absolutely no reason that I can think of that you would need your TV connected to the network. And then if it's not connected to the network then your G2G so that you know there you could do that. You shouldn't have to do that. You should be able to get updates and stuff. Sorry, what? Nerd. Okay, what else we got?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gmail gets end to end encryption, but not really. On Tuesday, Google announced that end to end encryption messages were coming to Gmail. For business users, by definition, end to end encryption means Alice can send a message to Bob. With the encryption and decryption happening on their end user devices, no one else should be able to decrypt the communications even if the communications are routed through their systems. Google's in this case, but that is not the case with Google's implementation. If Bob's organization is using Gmail, then the organization manages Bob's encryption keys. So administrators with access to the keys can snoop on the communications at any time. That's okay. I see. That's probably a good thing as far as organizations are concerned. Needed that little caveat there on the end. But users should be aware that their messages are not private and I think that's a fair statement.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's a question for you. Do the users of corporate provided communications platforms think I'm Alicia finish. That their communications are private?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

100%.

[Dan]

It.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I said that like I couldn't believe it. But I do know that we've done some investigations in the past where thankfully messages were sent that were very helpful in exonerating the company. Yeah, I'll put it that way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I mean there's lots.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I'm gonna ask again, really, Would someone really be on like their corporate chat?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thank you know what I'll say for, for people that think they're like in the know on this as well. Something that I'll point out that people still, even people that think they're in the know on this sometimes find surprising is like in Slack or teams you can message yourself that's still on the company program.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well yeah, people think wow, this is crazy. I expect I 100% expect my communication to be private within my organization only be viewable by the individuals that they are addressed to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why would you expect that?

[Dan]

I gotta go delete some files.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Smarten up. And it like, you know, you might be at an organization where you feel like you can trust the administrators to a certain degree and blah blah blah blah, bloop. But that doesn't change the fact that it could be looked into. Right. Like we, we did something. I don't remember what it was. Dan might remember we did something security wise not that long ago where we could see more activity of users on the network here at work. Was that ninja Dan?

[Dan]

I believe it was ninja and it was quite draconian.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. So we started seeing the things that we could do and sent out a company wide notice informing people that these things were possible. But we didn't have the intent of doing Them. But we, despite not having the intent of doing them, we wanted to inform everyone that they were possible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To kind of wake people up to the idea of like, this isn't your device unique username.

[Linus Sebastian]

This isn't your network unique username says Linus. I imagine there are some legal exceptions, but you know what? Why? What? Like. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's black and white. Right. If there is some legal reason that the company might need to access your communications, say for example, if you were terminated and maliciously refused to give up information that the company needed to continue to operate. Like there was. There was that thing recently where Buddy sabotaged the systems before he left a company or something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's happened a few times, yeah. The kill switch one. Is that what you're talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyway, the point is there could be some reason that the company could need to go into your communications and have a valid reason for needing to access it. It. So they can. That's it. It's black and white. If there is any reason why they would need to be able to access it at all, and they are able to for any reason, then they are able to. So all I. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying if that's right. I'm not saying if that's reasonable. I'm saying that that is. And that's what it is. So it's something that you should definitely be aware of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stop using your corporate stuff for things that are private matters.

[Linus Sebastian]

I 100% use my corporate email for everything.

[Dan]

Enter corporate computer company.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's a little different.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do too.

[Linus Sebastian]

I own the company.

[Dan]

But we'll have receipts, Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if I do, we're gonna put it out, boys.

[Dan]

Dad, I'm already deaf. Now it's fine. I love this thing. Oh, man. You're a strange person. And it's great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Speaking of strange. Is it that strange? It's not that strange. Intel and TSMC reportedly reach a preliminary agreement to form joint chipmaking venture. On April 3, intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture operating Intel's fabs in the U.S. tSMC will take a 20% stake in the new company. The White House and Commerce Department officials have been pressing TSMC and Intel to make some sort of deal to help resolve the long running crisis at Intel. I think also largely because the US wants to domesticate chip manufacturing, but okay. Intel reported a net loss for 2024 of $18.8 billion. Its first loss since 1986. And boy howdy, is it a big one. Last month, TSMC reportedly approached Nvidia. Amd. Reportedly is a very key word here. Approached Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom to take stakes in a joint venture operating Intel's factories. Later, Nvidia and a TSMC board member denied these discussions. That's why I said reportedly. Also last month, TSMC said at a press event that it plans to make a fresh $100 billion investment in the US that involves building five additional chip facilities. This all comes very shortly after intel appointed former board member Lit Bhutan. There's your name in front of it as its CEO in March 2025.

[Linus Sebastian]

So our discussion question is who can save us from a TSMC monopoly on high performance chip production if TSMC literally has a 20% stake in the company that operates the fabs for their only reasonable competitor?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, especially with the changes to American political global approach, or however you want to call that, it is ridiculously in Taiwan's best interest to death grip that monopoly as hard as they can. So I suspect they will be doing so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Painocat says I lost a ton based on Linus's totally great investment advice on Intel. First of all, I do not give investment advice and I never have. Second of all, I said that if, if I was interested in it, it would be a very long term.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I remember that. Very specifically. Your form of long term might be different, but with my extremely ignorant stance on stock trading, this is not long form yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

In the long term, China will invade Taiwan. When that happens, any fab that is not on the island of Taiwan, any fab operator who does not have their, their key fabs on the island of Taiwan is going to benefit. I'd love to be wrong. I would love very much to be wrong, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that that is not going to happen at some point. Okay, none of that is investment advice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that it?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Wait, maybe your car.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The car.

[Linus Sebastian]

The car. That's it. That's the last one we have. No, no, we have some announcements, Luke. Oh, we have some good news, some bad news. Oh, and then some good news for you. Good news number one. Remember those tall blank T shirts you've been asking for?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, I do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, they're back, baby. They're in stock. They're the same comfy, long lasting blend as our regular T shirts, but a little longer for the more vertically gifted out there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I already bought five.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have both long sleeve and short sleeve T shirts back in stock. You can get them now at LMG GG Tall T. I didn't even wait.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To try to get a request in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look how tall it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I was warned that we were going to sold out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who tucked?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because we have already tall tea. Let's go. We have already sold out. Sold. Not sold out. We have already sold very many of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Without even announcing it on WAN show, we sold an absolute butt ton of these.

[Dan]

I told you you would.

[Linus Sebastian]

The bad news, we sold out of Sarah's latest floatplane exclusive T shirt. Were you able to grab one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

The second good news, we restocked, baby.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You restocked?

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're a new LTT floatplane subscriber, we do a stream every few months where Sarah designs an exclusive T shirt. Live with chat. This one sold out way faster than we thought it would. So we had to bring them back. And this time we set one aside for you. Luke, check the glove box.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, nice. Oh, wait, there's one for you too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, nice. Thank you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a poster. Wait, there's two posters.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. There's lots of stuff in there. I did not know that was happening. I'm gonna put my stuff. Okay. There we go. We don't really have a way to show this to you closer, but basically it's very cool. Very cool. Print. If you want to check out all of the Streams with Sarah collection items here, I'm just gonna show them the digital version of this. It's LMG GG slash Streams with Sarah. And we've got T shirt print number three. How cute is this? Dorky dinos.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, it's so cute.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I went to go get it. My size was sold out.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then we've also got our wall art. Subscribe to LTT on floatplane. Sign into floatplane to authenticate your account to unlock this item. So cute. Cool. Everyone on floatplane uses Firefox. That's why there's a a legally distinct fox with fire coming off of it on there. Anyway, guys, check it out. Also, the last thing on our announcement section is just want to shout out Yvonne's cousin. I told him I'd mention his new resort on WAN show when I got back home. Yeah, I just, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll totally, I'll totally talk about it on WAN show when I talk about my trip to Bali. And then I just 100% didn't. So sorry, Robin. Yeah. Lyris kangoo. It's super nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It looks really nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's super nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some of these Photos are wicked.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, did you click the link or something?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, so it's got like a little courtyard here and then these are the units. Do they have one of the rooftop things? At least some of the units have their own little pool, which is pretty cool. Yeah, here's the view. So like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where is this?

[Linus Sebastian]

This is in Bali. Oh, yeah, buddy. So that's one of the places that I went on my trip. The island of Bali. Okay, cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's it. That's all we have to do. So now we've flipped over to after dark mode. Oh, no, we haven't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your car.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Do you remember us talking about a particularly ridiculous car that caught my eye back in the day?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you genuinely asking if I remember or if they remember you? Yes, I do.

[Linus Sebastian]

You remember?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I remember this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so it's a pretty. It's a pretty cool car if you're into, you know, soulless EVs that go really fast in a straight line. And I have no idea what the actual driving dynamics are like, but it's the RIMAC nevera which made headlines for being a, I believe, the first. First, like actual production car to go like sub 2 seconds for it, 0 to 60. It may not have been the first, but it was certainly one of them. And it was like wild at the time, especially for a completely unheard of company that then went on to have a stake in Bugatti alongside Porsche. So they're, they're doing stuff, they're. They're moving, they're shaking. And also B, being one of the first, if not the first, hypercarp, like priced over 2 million euro that was electric. Okay, now obviously that would have been a very silly purchase, especially when back then I had upcoming expenses that were far more important, like buying a testing lab. Oh, you know, like. Yeah, I. With money that small price, with money that was spent on this building, I could have bought a car.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He could have bought a bunch of cars.

[Linus Sebastian]

And those numbers, those numbers are not as far apart as you might think because this building can be purchased with money that is post corporate income tax, but I don't have to pay personal tax on because a corporation owns it. A car. A corporation cannot own the car that I drive every day, otherwise everybody would use that loophole. Oh, yeah, it's a company car. Well, what do you use it for? Getting my company groceries to put in my company fridge in my company house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, where's your personal car and your personal groceries and your personal fridge and your personal house?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna say, I think we do use a company vehicle to get company groceries sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I mean. Yeah, I just mean if it. So. So. So that that car would have actually cost a lot more because I would have had to draw money out of the company and pay personal income tax on it in order order to purchase that car. Whereas this building.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fair enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can buy with just post corporate income tax money as opposed to with. With like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Except I think the building costs a lot more.

[Linus Sebastian]

It did, but I'm just saying the car proportion actually costs probably in the neighborhood. All told, if we talk about like, like gross profits, like before we pay any taxes or anything. Right. The car probably costs about a quarter what this building did, a quarter to a third. Yeah, because you pay so much more tax on the car. Don't forget we have luxury tax on cars in British Columbia.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So how much would it have been then? Unless you don't want to give those numbers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, no, I can. So what's the. What's the top tax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How much was the. Can you say how much the building was? I forget because that sounds nuts.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think the building was a. I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don'T know if that's legit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh crap. I don't. Hold on, I don't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or wait, I'm looking at the current.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bid price, so don't look at that yet. Don't look at that yet. Don't look at that yet. So the. The retail price for the RIMAC nevera. Okay. Is 2.2 million euro. Hold on a second. I don't know if she's going to answer this question, but I'm gonna ask her. Hey, hey, lady, you're live on wan show. Do you remember how much the lab cost?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it was around 10 million.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, all right, cool. Thanks, lady.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like really well.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you mean? Is that it? No, I'm not. It's not a pop quiz. I don't know. Okay. I mean, if you want me to look it up, I have a spreadsheet on my computer. I'm just going off the top of my head right now. No, no, it's fine. If you say it's about that, then it's about that. Okay. I mean you can actually look it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Up online because it was it bought in the last three years because all this recent sales are in the last.

[Linus Sebastian]

Three years giving people all the tips. Oh, sorry. Okay, bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bye.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh shoot. I accidentally just called Taryn. Oh shoot. I just locked my phone. Oh, shoot, shoot. What? What just happened? Okay. No, I uncalled. Taryn. Okay, it's good. Anyway, so yeah, that's Yvonne for you. She. She knows all the things. Okay, so 10. Okay, so first of all, that's Canadian dollars. So that's. That's about. What is that? Oh shoot. Taryn's calling me back youk're live on the WAN show. Never mind. I butt dialed you sort of. Okay, I butt dialed you with my finger. Okay, bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, bye.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that sounds a lot dirtier than I meant for it to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It definitely did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, he played it off well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think he noticed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay, so first of all, that's Canadian dollars. Okay. Basically rubles. So that's only about 7.6.5. Okay, that's about six and a half million US dollars. Oh man, I was way off. Oh, two euro.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, the other. The Romero was in.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, hold on. We'll get there. We'll get there. Okay, so 10 million USD to CAD. Hold on, hold on. Dang it. 10 million CAD to USD. So it's about 7 million. About 7 million. About 7 million US dollars. Okay, so that car is 2.2 million Euro. So what does that work out to, Dan? About 3 1/2 million Canadian dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But you just converted the other one.

[Linus Sebastian]

To don't worry about it. Oh, right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, no, it's the whole point of the conversation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Two and a half USD. Okay, so the car is two and a half million USD, the building is seven million USD. So already it's over a third of the price of the building.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you're gonna make up 2/3 in taxes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's before. Oh, dude, easy. Have you seen the highest tax bracket in BC?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Highest tax bracket BC. So it is 53.5%. So I don't pay all of that. If I take out a dividend, I pay only approximately what remains after the company paid corporate tax. Right. Because if the company paid me on the payroll, then that's a business expense. It pays zero tax and I pay 53.5%. If the company takes that as profit and then just issues a dividend rather than paying me as part of my salary or part of my wages, then the way the government figured out the math is to make it so that it works out about the same so it's not more efficient one way. It used to be more efficient to not pay yourself a salary and to pay yourself a dividend like, like ages and ages ago, but by the time we started a business, it just didn't. It didn't really matter. Yeah, so. So I think the Corporate tax rate is like 20 something percent, so I would pay like another. Another 33%. So we could say that my additional tax on that car would be about 33% compared to buying a building. So Dan, what does that work out to? 2.5 million plus 33%.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can hear him type.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

3.3 million. Okay. Now let's talk about the luxury tax. What's the luxury tax on a vehicle in BC? So it is 12,7%. Okay. The cost of tax on vehicles. To avoid the luxury tax, you need to purchase a vehicle under $55,000. Yeah, that I'm not. No, I want to know how much it is. The luxury tax. The luxury tax is equal to the lesser of 10% of the taxable amount of the subject vehicle and 20% of the amount above the price threshold. So I believe the price threshold is about 100 grand. So three point or two point, let's call it $2.4 million. 20% of that. So another half a mile.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're still not there though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I am still there. That's like. That's over half the price of the building.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn't you say. Okay, yeah, I might have thought you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Said someone else so I could literally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought you said the car was like more expensive than the building.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's why I was like, what are you talking.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I must have just heard you wrong.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no. So. So that car, in terms of like, like money that came into the company, that was not brutal, paid out in expenses, would cost over half as much as the building that we have this fire truck parked in that has a fire truck in it. Including the fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. The fire truck has three fire trucks in it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So aside from it just being stupid, one of the points that was brought up by you, by Jake Tivy, by the audience, was that they didn't think that these neveras were going to appreciate like many hypercars do. A lot of the time. Hypercars is like, it's a whole thing, right? Where if you're one of the people who's on the list where you're allowed to buy the super limited run ones, that's a huge benefit to you because you could like drive it for a year, play around with it, and then sell it for double what you paid. Because these things appreciate like, like crazy if they're, if they're super collectible. So this is an auction. Finally, we're getting to it. That I came across for a 2023 Ramac Nevera that showed up in my Google news feed like the old.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, just to cut you off. The old Ford GTs, for instance, like, oh my God, they are worth so much.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was bid to just US$1.27 million.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you have to pay luxury tax on that because it's used?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Oh, still have to pay luxury tax on used vehicles, I believe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

This thing is almost brand new. It has 1300 miles on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What? I didn't see that basically untouched.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is absolutely immaculate. It is pretty much brand new. It has the exposed carbon fiber trim option, which is apparently an 80,000 Dollar or 80,000 Euro option. It has a 20,000 Euro paint job. So this was a 2.3 million Euro car and is now worth at least on bringatrailer.com less than half of what the owner paid for it. That is brutal. Now, it didn't meet reserve. It didn't actually sell, I believe. Hold on a second. Hold on. Control F. Reserve. Hello, Is it searching Control F. There we go. Reserve. Yeah, reserve not met on this car. 22 bids. Dude. How happy am I that I bought a building that has depreciated by probably a solid 25% instead of a car that depreciated by 50%? And to be clear, to be clear, I'm not, I'm not concerned about the building depreciation. It has depreciated a fair bit. The housing market in Vancouver is finally correcting. The industrial market is finally correcting. And goodness, even as somebody with a disproportionate amount of my net worth tied up in real estate, I am rooting for it. I am here for it. I have friends who can't afford to live like it's not good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Has been for a long time and currently is very brutal trying to hire here.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is bad for our company, it is bad for our society for housing to be this expensive. I am 100% rooting for the housing market to massively correct here. So I'm not, I'm not upset about it. And realistically, you know, when you're an owner operator, right, like when you're, when you occupy your own property, the calculus is totally different because we are using this building to make money. I don't need the asset to appreciate. I'm not speculating on property here. Anyway, the point is, I'm really glad I didn't buy that car. That was, that, that is what that whole conversation was leading to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you know what? I did buy a car. That's probably depreciated by half.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

My taycan is. I mean, here we can. We can find out. Actually. Yeah, we can find out. I did at least get a deal on it because I didn't pay luxury tax.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was used.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Actually, luxury. Oh, the luxury tax and PST doesn't apply to used EVs. They're getting rid of that exemption though, at the end of this month. Well, it would have been a good time to buy a Nevera. No, no luxury tax, no PST. Let's go. $1.2 million. Half price, 50% off, baby. Anyway, the point is that I did end up buying a car that's probably worth half of what I paid for it. Although I did at least get a deal, but it lost a lot less in like actual dollars than that stupid thing would have. You know what I've been having trouble figuring out is what the heck do people actually do with these cars? Park them?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, apparently drive them to a 1300 mile meetup a few times a year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because, like, if I had something like that, it's only two seats. I can't draw. I can't take anybody anywhere in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The maintenance on them is insane.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd be terrified to park it somewhere. Yeah, like, terrified.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is. This is a single rock. Precisely why I said you shouldn't have bought one in the first place. I do remember having the conversation about saying, like, if it was at least an ICE car. Those tend to. Yeah, there is some interesting investment strategies and stuff you can do. There's.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not knowledgeable enough to do that. I'm not a car guy. I don't like, know what the sexy good one is. So like, whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but it wasn't. It was an ev, so it's like definitely a drop in price. And. And there's all these other issues, but it's also just like, what's the point? It's. It's like buying. And I'm gonna offend some people here, but it's like buying like an old console that you just leave in the box.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, You. You're. He is not into.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Buying something just to keep it new in box. You can flip it later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was like, some things. Some things are, you know, they're basically art. Like, I could say that it makes more sense to me for like a funko pop thing to stay in the box because you're supposed to look at it anyways. But like a thing that was made to do stuff. Like, in my mind, the car wants to go.

[Dan]

Would you say this is just like a rich person's Funko Pop?

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess. I mean, so depressed. Hold on.

[Dan]

Luke's new at this, isn't he?

[Linus Sebastian]

Wafer says people that buy Rimax literally just hold them in a larger collection of cars and drive them very rarely. Well, hopefully they plan to hold them for either a lot longer or they plan to get out of them immediately because it seems like they are depreciating hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Corey G Said, no, it doesn't have a box. Yeah, this is a. This is a bring your own box scenario where yet you build your own garage for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least my fire truck had a box.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's true. Kind of. It had a wall.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Well, look. Okay, that was a. That's a box on a budget. That's what I. That's what I call it. That worked up, man. We had one take it that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw the. I saw the. The full plane exclusive part for that. Good job.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Had one shot. It actually hit me in the arm on the way down. If you look really closely, it like grazed me because I was. Dude, I was trying to get out of the frickin way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw you kind of booking it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Like I was moving. It was coming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You. You kicked the supports, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The second I saw you kick it, I was like, oh, I just thought.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'D be really cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I assumed it was gonna be like a rope or something that you were pulling so you could keep moving, but you had to kick it, which interrupts your.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, because it was windy, we couldn't get it to stand on its own, so we had to prop it up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was pretty surprised. I. I saw that like in the actual video. Like I didn't. I wasn't out there, you know, I'm saying this for them, you know, but. Yeah, it was wild. The intro to WAN today. I'm excited to go watch it because I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. I was watching it on Dan's monitor when he. When we did the dry run.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no, our live version.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because like the. For you guys, if you tuned in after the beginning of the show, there's a video clip of like us getting ready that was pre recorded. But then when the show cuts to live and we're not in the fire truck, we're upstairs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we both jump on a fire pole, slide down and like run into the truck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we did it live.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that was all live.

[Dan]

Yeah, I did fumble it slightly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, did you?

[Dan]

Yeah, unfortunately. I'm sorry, guys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What'd you do apart.

[Dan]

Just the transition into the truck.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know. I saw it. It was fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel really.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was watching the monitor when you did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought I noticed. Yeah. There was some other video up or something. Is that right? Yeah.

[Dan]

I don't know what happened, but, yeah, it looped back into the video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It wasn't as long as people saw us coming down the pole.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah. That was all fine. Yeah. Just a transition at the truck. Sad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

People saying, is the fire pole permanent now?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Assuming no liability problems.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a big no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

My kids want to go on it. I will maybe allow my son to try it because he's pretty athletic, but there's. There's no way the other ones are allowed to go on it. It's really far. You have to, like, jump on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was surprising. Why was. Why isn't it closer?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Dan]

If you. If you look at the, like, supports along the ceiling.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ah, it lines up with one of those. That makes a lot of sense.

[Dan]

It was the safest place to do it. There's, like, nowhere else to tie it to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got it. It's hilarious that as often as we've said we're never going to have a fire pole. How many times we have actually installed one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At least two now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even remember how that meme started. I know when it started, but I don't remember, like, why.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, when we were moving into the. When we were moving into the office.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but, like, what? What?

[Linus Sebastian]

You're just like, we should have a fire pool. And I was like, no, stupid. That's how it started.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sounds simple enough for it to be correct.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, Dan.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's time for After Dark.

[Dan]

All right. I have to come and change those lights over.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Oh, What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have to come down. Can we go to Dan Camp? Oh, yeah. There we go. You have to actually come down here.

[Dan]

Titan tubes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you using a lap board?

[Dan]

I was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did that fall off the truck?

[Dan]

No. Okay. My plant.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no. He's in the middle of, like, the flat part of the back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I just. I saw him put it off on the side, so I wasn't sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, geez. Can you guys see the truck moving as he, like, walks around up there? I'm not sure if you're gonna be able to pick it up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The audio of, like, the water bottle falling and stuff. That sounds like Foley.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. I'm going to fix my water bottle. People been asking me to deal with this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's going on? Oh, don't die, Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

There. Sorry, man. The like suspension on my seat is so nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wait, no, I got more bounce. I'm the driver. Yeah. Okay, so Dan, where. Sorry, where is he right now? Hold on a second. Are you behind us? Are you in the. Oh, okay. You're in the ride along.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There he is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Compartment. I don't know, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huh?

[Linus Sebastian]

We don't know what you're doing, sir. Yeah, he wants to make them magenta.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently they're kind of.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, there's bluey, purpley kind of deal. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Going on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's after dark enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

He says, whatever, I don't care. And he's leaving now. Go back to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got jump scared by Dan coming to the window.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, here he goes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Old truck shakes again.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. What even is wan show Some days? I'm really not sure today is one of those days.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just dudes doing stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Just hanging out in their fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you enjoy getting down the fire pole? Yeah, it was fun. So, yeah, I. We did it like, I think it was like four times or something. Trying to shoot for the intro video. And then after we did it all those times, I was like, like, hey, we should actually just do it live instead.

[Dan]

I was surprised you guys were even going to do it during the dry runs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why not?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. It was fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would have kept doing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're both reasonably well coordinated. I was. There is a trip hazard right in front of the pool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A pretty rough one, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like, actually really like a two stage trip hazard. Yeah, like right at the edge. You know, it's there. But realistically, like, I just had Luke start with his foot on the. The second of the trip hazard. So he was just like. He just kind of leaned in and launched over. And then, you know, if I die, what am I gonna do? See the company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I mean, the. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. Maybe I should. I don't know. Whatever the. The ones we did for the recorded version, I definitely wasn't like pre stepped. It was fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was fine. My only concern today was that I was gonna. I'm wearing the like prop fireman pants.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And they started to rip and I was like, if I go again, they're gone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. The crotch is like exploding iterated on those pants.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Love it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can probably show the camera you're ready for the.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're ready for the calendar shoot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, are you guys doing another one?

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you mean? Another one that we have. We haven't even done the calendar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I thought you did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, we're gonna do a 20, 26 calendar, so that gives us time. Yeah. You know, I've wanted to do this for, like, like, 10 years. Like a Men of Tech, like, fireman calendar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I, I, I'm. I'm serious. That's the April Fool's joke, is that everything is 100% serious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crotch cam. I don't know. I'm wearing shorts. I could show people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. All right, Dan, do you want to give us some?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There it is.

[Dan]

That's for the internal calendar.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's just shorts. I wear, like, four layers down there right now. Three. Three layers. It's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, Dan, do you want to hit us with some merge messages?

[Dan]

I'm sorry. I didn't have a sensor ready. Hello, ltt. I'm as red as the fire truck. Hello, ltt. I was wondering, if you put a pack of unopened seven Pokemon cards in the Lumafield CT scanner, are you able to see the cards inside? Would be cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't believe so. I don't think there's enough resolution to make it out. However, I believe there is someone who used some kind of CT scanner and used some kind of machine vision, machine learning assistance to, yes, be able to tell what was inside a pack of Pokemon cards. I remember the news breaking and then there being some speculation that this would completely destroy the Pokemon card economy. To which I said, good, because it's gambling for children. This is actually terrible. And then nothing more came of it. It's kind of like the Panama Papers that way. Like, it was huge news, and then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and, like, Epstein not killing himself and all those things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, dude, I don't, I don't conspiracy theory much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even know if that like you said, but, like, when faced with.

[Linus Sebastian]

Overwhelming facts, I'm supposed to believe that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, come on. Yeah, come on. If a, if a journalist can get car bombed after the Panama Papers, Epstein can definitely get unalived.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For what he knew, the amount of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I don't know. I don't, I just, I don't remember all the details.

[Linus Sebastian]

How off the rails are we going today, Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember all the details.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it after dark at the, at the fire hall?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should have, like, turned these lights off and just left the red one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Hot take emergency, but, yeah, I, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'S, it's tough because, like, I remember reading all the details of Like, I don't know, some guard was supposed to be there, and they weren't, and some other thing was supposed to happen, and it didn't, and video cameras and surveillance wasn't working or something or other. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know, you hear this stuff happening at big companies where, like, something fails, and you're like, how did that possibly happen? And then something happens here, and it's like, oh, like, every procedure step was skipped for whatever reason. This just happens at companies, I guess. Okay.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. It makes a lot of things more understandable when you, like, do administrative stuff at companies. It's just like, oh, people are just going to people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's. I don't mean that insulting way. I just mean it in a. In a reality check.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can have great people, and sometimes.

[Linus Sebastian]

They'Ll just make a mistake. Be tight. Sometimes Troy Hunt will get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, I didn't really have time this time. I thought it would be okay. It's been okay every time for however long, so I thought I could skip it. And then, you know, this was the one time that I wasn't able to skip it and something went wrong. Whatever, who knows? Just happens.

[Dan]

More.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually. Yeah. Jaden's here. I want to show off. I don't know if you've even seen this or noticed it. I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let me go to my screen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, do we only have the one stream deck?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There we go.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, not. Not that.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? What do you mean? That is cool?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You already know about that. We're talking about that picture this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what is that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what? Oh, what? You can have a fire truck float plane or a Lambo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or a Lambo float plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

How long are we leaving that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. We can kind of leave it for as long as you want without revealing anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does this have anything to do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It sure does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Technology made for that, worked for this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We were talking about how, you know, features that we make for.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't gonna say it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For the can do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't gonna say it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then they both.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't gonna say it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Come on. You don't really think I was gonna say it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't think so at all. Yeah, there's. There's a fire truck theme, and if you look into it, Jaden even got, like, this is an actual picture of The Lambo called Lambo Time. I never actually looked at the alt text. That's an actual, like, little picture of the Lambo. And I don't remember. This might be a picture of the fire truck. Or it's just a picture of a.

[Dan]

Fire truck that looks like a picture of the toy.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe it's the toy that's awesome. Jane just said forever. I mean, it could. It could.

[Dan]

It's actually going to cost money to remove this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We could. We could park it in like, user settings instead of having it up here all the time or whatever. But. But yeah, some float plane people noticed it pretty quick and we wanted to at least leave it up at a minimum until this WAN show.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, speaking of that picture.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The fire truck is a frame from the unboxing. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently that video is up in early access on floatplane right now. Now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

My house sucks compared to this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it has been, to be clear.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ultimate Land Gaming House Tour. Let's go. So remember that Ultimate. Oops. Remember that Ultimate Land House that went like, super viral on Reddit? We went there and we shot a video tour of it. Man, they were super gracious, letting us into their home to check out all the cool goodies. And they actually arranged to havaland the night of the shoot. So Luke and I played some Left four Dead with the crew. Really fun, which was legitimately super fun. My son got to see it because we happened to be down in Texas already for an unrelated trip. We shot this quite a while ago, actually now. But as you can imagine, the editing process on something like this, when it's, you know, someone's private domicile is. Involves a little bit of back and forth to coordinate, make sure everything's chill and everything's good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Totally makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

And to be clear, I'm not saying that that's a problem. They were amazing to work with, and I'm super excited for you guys to see this video. Freaking awesome. What. What else? What else we got. What else we got here, Mr. Dan?

[Dan]

Sure. Hi, guys. With the tariffs going to affect, what are items or services in the tech space that you're pretty sure are gonna get affected? Thanks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, we'll be fine because we're in Canada, almost all of them. For Americans, practically everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, especially because there's no like, man, I've. I've heard industry scuttlebutt that's just like companies are like, pissed because they went and they. They moved their production out of China. You know, last Time around on at the last rodeo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And didn't this happen at Nintendo?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's happened to a lot of companies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where they, they moved stuff in order to, you know, respond to tariffs on China or whatever. And then now that country is getting tariffs. So they're, they're literally just out like millions and millions and millions of dollars on like facilities that they built in order to appease, you know, this like China trade war thing. And then now it's like, oh, I don't know, it's trade war with everyone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Apparently Nintendo moved manufacturing to Vietnam. Gilmore D Said that the musical instrument space is just. He said F'd hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, because makes sense. Like the, the, the, the by design, the tariffs are so high that you can't just absorb them and keep doing what you're doing. That's the whole point.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like it's gonna be worse. Some, some people are saying like, oh, there's a 63% tariff, therefore my thing will cost 63% more. It's like, no, dude, it's gonna cost, cost way more than that because companies need to protect their margin in order to be able to pay people, otherwise.

[Linus Sebastian]

Their stock will be destroyed. Yeah, that's the bigger one because they could make the same, they could make the same gross dollars, gross margin dollars and they could still pay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you're showing brutal losses or if.

[Linus Sebastian]

You'Re showing that your profit's slipping, your stock will get although obliterated.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who knows these days?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, that's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nothing seems to be based off anything logical anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everything is meme stocks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, but that, that is traditionally a very bad thing. So yeah, it's going to be way worse than whatever percentage the tariff on the country is. So buckle up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. Yeah. T. Lewis says yeah. 90% of guitars are made in China. The only ones that aren't are super expensive high end models.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's traditionally how it's been.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can get the USA made ones for like triple the price. And it's like. Yeah, I think that I, I don't, I think the only realistic outcome, if this continues the way that it's going and it isn't just, you know, a negotiating tactic and will go away immediately. The only realistic outcome is people are going to have to embrace the buy once and use a thing forever mentality.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe this will be good for repairability.

[Linus Sebastian]

Has absolutely die right to repair in North America.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like that's a cool side effect.

[Linus Sebastian]

Be ready to spend, you know, $500 on a dining room chair and sit on that chair for the rest of your adult life and never replace it. And you know what you might buy? You know, I bought Canadian made chairs when I bought our dining room set and they look today other than the leatherette backing, so we had to get them reupholstered. But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But other than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but they look today and sit today like they did when we bought them over 15 years ago. So you might get higher quality stuff, but you're not going to be like keeping up with fashion when it comes to clothes and home decor. You'll be buying things that you need and using them until you die and don't need them anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sop Cannon said parts will be more expensive. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But it'll be.

[Linus Sebastian]

But they'll be less expensive than buying a whole new one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And that's a pretty big deal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, you're up. Sure.

[Dan]

Will you guys add new bonus bin items?

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a sticker pack right now. It ebbs and flows.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sometimes there's stuff, sometimes there isn't as much stuff in the bonus bin especially you'll see us be more generous with the bonus bin when margins are good and volumes are high. We're doing a big sale promo and there's other stuff that we can know we can make money on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you get tariffed on bonus bin items?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea. Idea. So wait, well, hold on. No, no, because our cost will not be impacted. And if we sell it for $0, then wait, yeah, would. No, the tariff would be on the cost of the item.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would.

[Dan]

Cuz you would have to declare the actual value of the item.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, yeah, I think you could get tariffed on.

[Dan]

Otherwise you just ship everything for $0 and then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, you're right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Okay. So yes, if you declare your the value of your shipments properly, it would be based on the original value, not based on the build price. So yeah, no, you could easily get tariffed on it. Yikes. Anyway, so yeah, now is not a great time for us to be taking big hits to our margin on really generous bonus items. Like the. The impacts are not always obvious, but they're.

[Dan]

Hey, slick Napoleon and our overlord, I have a brown belt test tomorrow in Shaolin Kempo. It's my first out of dojo test and I'm kind of worried about it. Any tips for martial arts and dealing with pressure?

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, I mean practice. Practice lots. Right. And when you practice, are you practicing in front of people? Even practicing in one of. In front of one person will make a huge difference to your Nerves. Like, if you're just used to being by yourself all the time and nobody, like, watching you, you know, that'll make a huge difference. Whereas if you, like, you know, get a. It's tomorrow. Oh, lordy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I was gonna say. There's not a lot we can say in one day.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was gonna say late to, you know, have some people over and, you know. Yeah. Have dinner together and be like, okay, I want you guys to watch my routine, you know, because that. That would help with the nerves.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Be the weird guy. Go to the park. Just do it there.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's good. Do that. Do that. Now go do your whole routine at the park with people watching. And that's gonna be so awkward that I guarantee you during your test tomorrow, you're good to go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Might even feel less awkward.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. You got this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You'll be fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's good advice. I like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thank you.

[Linus Sebastian]

While you're at it, play some Pokemon. Go walk around. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's literally tomorrow, so just focus, get rested. You'll be fine.

[Dan]

I love the new set. Hope it stays for the next few WAN shows. Question. How did Yvonne react to the fire truck idea and who came up with it? Amazing April Fools video.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yvonne is shockingly chill these days. She's been through a lot. I mean, remember when I bought GameStop stock on WAN Show? Like, I don't know, man. She. We play the characters, I think, a little bit, even internally, of, like, Linus, the. The. The Firecracker. You know, the. The guy with the. With the. Not in like a short, short temper kind of way. Like the. The guy with the. Who's unpredictable and he'll do things, and it's wild and dragon energy and all that, you know, And Yvonne, the. You know, the. The reasonable, measured person. And that is true. That is very true to an extent. But you got to remember, you know, we've been together for 20 years, right? Like, we've been. We've been shaping each other and. And. And. And molding into each other for longer than we have not been together, you know, and so there's nothing that we can really do that's. That's that surprising. And we. And we push each other to. To do things that are outside of our comfort zones. And being fiscally irresponsible, but in a way that is planned and measured is kind of our jam. That's where we've landed. You know, the appearance of fiscal irresponsibility. But actually, we're pretty careful. We're pretty prudent. Like the the fire truck was a calculated risk. You know, we spent 35,000, 30,000, some tens of thousands of dollars on it. But we came up with a plan. We went to the team and we said, okay, what can we do for exclusive merch? You know, who can we put on this video to make sure that it is sensational and the audience flipping loves it and gets excited about it and enjoys the crap out of it and wants to support us to make this kind of content. Okay, team, let's get together. Let's make something truly outstanding. Let's, you know, promote the merch with the live stream. Let's have some fun. You know, let's do some cool stuff. And people are probably going to respond. They're going to pick up some thirst extinguishers. They're going to subscribe to ltt, they're going to watch the video. They're going to pick up some cool firewall department T shirts. Let's make sure that this investment that's. Let's make sure that this is an investment, not just burning money in a fire. And spoiler alert, we made it back. Believe it or not, we are responsible adults running a responsible adult company making sure that the people who work on all these projects get paid. And we made it back. We sold thousands of water bottles.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The water bottles are sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wish there was more shirts.

[Linus Sebastian]

We sold out of the shirts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like the purchases of Fire Truck kind of like over performed almost.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because we sold the shirts too fast.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's the thing is you could look at it and go, oh, well, it would have been more responsible to rent the fire truck. And it's like, yeah, but that's where. That's where the. The wild, wacky side of it that I bring to the table comes in. It's like if we were always like, oh, yeah, we did a wild thing, but. Oh, actually we didn't. We did like, the boring, completely responsible version. I don't think you guys would engage with that as much. I think you love the Chanel shenanigans. I love the shenanigans. I think you love the shenanigans.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Absolutely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, it's way cooler that we actually bought a fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Minus one thing I will not disclose at this time. The highlight of my week was introing the show by jumping down a fire pole.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, that was. That was so sick. The moment when Dan is like, counting down.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And my foot's on the thing and I look back at Linus and Linus is smiling and I'm just Like, this is sick. Yeah. This is just really cool. I don't know, like, what else to even say in that moment. It's just awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, it's rule number 10 in the how to make great videos. Right? Have fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you are not having fun, everyone's gonna pick it up. And you know what? It is way more fun for me to sit here in the real actual fire truck having come from unboxing a weird random toy because my co worker needed help moving it on the website we both worked for to this whole thing where you guys are watching us and we have this incredible team and we can just, like, buy a fire truck because we f Cking feel like it. Like, how cool is that? That's fun.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The only thing I feel like missed from the video was I think you should have hit me with the hose.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hit Dennis.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You hit Dennis?

[Linus Sebastian]

I shot his car.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would have blasted him more, but he actually had his passenger side window unrolled and he didn't know. He was like, why didn't you spray me more? I was like, dude, your window's open. Like, aren't you happy that I noticed? That's funny, that moment when I'm the adult on set when we're playing with our fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't want to show your highlight a week. It's because it's not my news. Yeah, it's someone else's news. Someone guessed that. It's an engagement. No, it's not engagement. It's just straight up not my news. So I'm not doing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you'll know soon enough and it'll be great and you'll be super jazzed, and we will be jazzed to talk about it, but it is someone else's news and it is up to them how they want to break it, and we are just happy to be helping make it a reality.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, what else we got?

[Dan]

Hello, lld. My house has in floor radiant heating, and we want to control it centrally and remotely. Linus, I was wondering if you were pleased with the solution you showed.

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, it's pretty okay. Home assistant with those ecobees wired into those. Those OG2 wire things with the bypass mode thing actually works pretty solid. All the WI fi issues I was having with those Ecobee thermostats went away once we turned off the 2.4 GHz radios that for whatever reason defaulted to all beyond and whatever. I'm not going to blame anyone. We turned off all the 2.4 GHz radios that were talking over each other, and it's much better now. And basically, as long as you're willing to put in the time to kind of build logic around it, there can be a little bit of savings compared to what most people tell you about in floor radiant heating, which is that you should just run it at a constant temperature all the time. That doesn't work for me because I like my house a little bit warmer when I'm awake than I like it when I'm sleeping. And that's especially challenging to balance when your sleeping is upstairs. And in floor radiant heating tends to just rise up. So you can't just have it like warm in the living spaces downstairs and cool in the bedrooms. You can do that with, like, forced air, but it's. You can't really do it very well within floor. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. But you've got to be ready to do some work fine tuning it. And every fall and spring, I have to manually turn off the infloor, switch over to radiant, and then turn off the radiant and switch over to forced air in order to keep things balanced. Because if they're both active at the same time, they fight each other, and it's a nightmare.

[Dan]

Oh, there we go. Hey, y'all. I have nowhere else to ask this. So what's the title theme of Scrapyard wars in season three and up? And why wasn't it in the newest season? Also more women's clothing? When I wasn't sure what this meant, I figured you guys might be able.

[Linus Sebastian]

To pick this apart music. The title theme. I would think it would be under it. No, if we.

[Dan]

Because I know we use endemic sound. Is that it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So scrap your worst three and up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, that's old.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, they said end up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I just mean, like. Well, we would have started using that maybe before we were using endemic. Oh, yeah. No, we don't. Dude, I have no idea. I'm so sorry. You might have to like, Shazam it or something. Oh, epidemic sound. I don't know. Something. I. I don't even.

[Dan]

Epidemic sound?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't even know what service we use for it. My deepest, most sincere apologies. As for why we didn't use it, probably because we forgot in the description.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It links to approaching nirvana.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that's just an agreement that we had with them that we included them in every video description as long as we were using their. Their song for our intros or something. Thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So we didn't. We didn't pay for either that or Supernova from Laszlo. Because they were like, oh, no. We're just like stoked you guys are using it. As long as you credit us, then we consider that to be more than worth it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that was pretty sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Dan]

Hey, Dan, Linus and Luke, do you have any updates on the Labs lanyard? As I got one in my last order and went looking at the page to you think about getting a second.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I have no updates to share at this time. I think Nick is still trying to figure out what exactly happened with the process there and other than, hey, guys, if you have a problem with it, even though it didn't have the box stitch like it was supposed to. Oh, I do know that the material is that way because we printed on it and we couldn't use that tougher material and print on it with the Labs logo and everything. As for the box stitch, basically, we're gonna have to do a virtual box stitch for you. If it breaks, you let us know and we'll get you taken care of. Trust me, bro. And we're gonna make sure that doesn't happen again. There. Let's go with that for the update.

[Dan]

Hey, LMG foolies. This is one we already did earlier. Love the firetruck videos. Is there an actual end game as to what will happen to the truck or was the purchase just for the memes?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's no clear end game, but I figure it can't be that hard to like, find someone who needs a fire truck. It wouldn't be a fire department because this is too old.

[Dan]

It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's out of service. But, you know, some private organization that needs to have on site firefighting capabilities could be interested in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean. Yeah, it works.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's exactly what it was doing. That's the duty it was pulling before. And, you know, we'll make sure that we take care of it while we have it. You know, we'll. We'll get it, you know, ready for its next owner. So I'd love to resell it. If we could find a worthy cause that needs something like that, that isn't just like some commercial entity or whatever, then we would consider doing an extraordinary price on it or even donating it. But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's not yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's not yet. That is not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is not fun for a while.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, for now, we're gonna. We're gonna pump water through some water blocks, see if we can blow them up. You know, let's go.

[Dan]

See what else we've got here. Hey, ldl. Luke or Dan, do You have any stories from when you did concrete? Shout out to Tatiana from CW for.

[Linus Sebastian]

The amazing merch, the concrete cooled PC.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He said, luke or Dan, though?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, they probably don't know that you guys weren't involved in that. So we were not involved in that concrete cooled PC. My favorite part of it was us realizing on the day of the shooting what a catastrophe we had on our hands when we didn't have any way of making the plan. The plan from the team was to just put paint in water. And I was like, oh, my God, that's not gonna work. So I had them go get milk and we saved it. We managed to just put paint and dye or something in milk to turn it the color of concrete and to do so convincingly enough that some people legitimately believed it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Quite a few.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nobody was dumb enough to try it on their own and, like, be mad about it or whatever, but some people legitimately were, like, trying to come up with theories about how or like, trying to debunk it. You know, they were like, with the exothermic properties of concrete curing, there's no way blah, blah, like, taking it seriously one way or another.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's my other favorite story of the concrete cooled PC. April Fools is arguing with the writing team who was telling me that it's not even funny because nobody would be, like, stupid enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could believe it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, that would probably work. Nobody could be stupid enough to believe it. It's not even an April Fool. It's basically just a dumb skit. And I was like, no, no, no.

[Dan]

I've been doing this a long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've been doing this a long time. This ain't my first rodeo. Trust me, I can sell it. And so some other members of the team ate humble pie when I sold it, managed to convince people that we had cooled a PC with concrete or that we were trying to earnestly convince anyone that we had done it. We got people to take it seriously, which I thought was pretty funny.

[Dan]

Hello, Linus. Luke and Dan. Linus, having owned both a PHEV Volt and an EV Taycan, what do you think is right for the average person in 2025? Should all ICE vehicles be hybrid PHEVs by this point?

[Linus Sebastian]

Plug in hybrid electric vehicle is a fev. Thank you very much, Dan. I think plug in hybrid is outstanding. My review of the Volt, based on my time with it was I said what I meant and I meant what I said. I think the Volt was a misunderstood car. I think that it was outstanding. An Incredible step forward. A happy medium between full electric operation, hybrid operation, and ICE operation, you literally could operate it in any one of those three modes. So it was either an EV for your daily commute to and from work, or it magically turned into an incredibly efficient ICE vehicle if you needed to go a long distance. I absolutely, absolutely love that car. I feel, again, speaking of humble pie, I feel very vindicated because I talked up the Volt a lot back in the day and got crapped on by both the EV crowd and the ICE crowd. And now plug in hybrids are fricking everywhere. Like every major manufacturer, even like hypercars, they're looking at plug in hybrid in order to find a balance between economy, performance, complexity, everything. Dude, they're, they're outstanding. Like, what was, what was the, what was the backorder time on the, the, the RAV4 prime when Toyota launched it? Like four years or something like that? Like literally, companies cannot make enough of these plug in hybrid electric vehicles. And I got absolutely dunked on for buying one. I, I think plug in hybrid is the play. The only reason that I am full EV is. And this is, this is not. Well, there's a couple reasons, but one of the biggest ones that really drove me to stop dailying the Volt, which by the way, we kept, we sold it to the company and we still use it to run errands and stuff because it's, that's great. It's a super efficient car. The back seats fold down, it has a huge trunk capacity for what it is. Anyway. Sorry, sorry. I love the Volt. The only reason that I got rid of it or a big driving force, aside from just thinking the Taycan is super cool, is that I hate going to the gas station. I don't like, I don't plan my time very well. I am almost invariably late for everything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't plan your time.

[Linus Sebastian]

And when I have to go to the gas station on my way somewhere, I am then 5 to 10 minutes even later than I already would have been. So it doesn't work for me. So I like having an EV that I charge every night in my garage and I never have to think about fuel. It's just like I was reading this article about like, like decision over overload or whatever. I make too many decisions. I have too many little things to have to think about whether my car is fueled. And I can, I can do it, obviously, long time. Or I just tie. Cannot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan. The bell.

[Dan]

It's over here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The bell. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Or I could just not bother and I could just have a car that I plug in in my. In my garage and I just don't think about it. And realistically I. I worked pretty hard. I was also lucky, but I worked pretty hard and I decided I was going to treat myself to a really, really stupid present and I bought a T. My midlife crisis mobile. That's what I call it. Do you like it? Yep. But I think plug in hybrid electric vehicles are sick. Yeah, I think they're super cool. Volvo has their shoot. I think XC is the electrified line. So whatever. Whatever the other. Whatever the other one is but there's whatever 90 it looks pretty cool.

[Dan]

Lold I'm going to Japan at the end of the month and I know Linus was there a year or so ago. What cool tech things that amaze you during that trip. Plus when LTT branded cables.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Japan has like other than like weird exclusives like oh my, oh my gosh. We. We unboxed a hello Kitty smartwatch like officially licensed hello Kitty smartwatch for adults. They were very clear. Adults. Okay on short circuit. That's coming soon. So other than like exclusive stuff like that, like Japan's technology is basically like what we have here now. It's not like, it's not like it used to be where they got the Super Nintendo like a year before, months prior, whatever, like anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot of their stuff is quote unquote behind.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In some ways that I like actually like they, I don't know, public terminals have like big chunky buttons instead of garbage. Terrible touchscreens which is great but it's like older tech technically. I've heard that they're like banking systems and stuff like that are all feel kind of old. But again in some ways like I don't necessarily think that every change is actually good.

[Linus Sebastian]

As for when LTT branded cables soon. TM man, the samples, I was gonna say they look good, but they more than look good. I've been, I've been dailying them. I'm super, super happy with them. They're gonna be expensive. Tariffs aren't gonna help. But dude, they're so nice. It's like if there was a cable that I could buy and just be confident that every time I plug it in it's gonna do exactly what it says on the side of it. It's the LTT cables. The, the high speed stuff is all coax shielded. Oh, it's beautiful.

[Dan]

I actually ran into an issue where I used a USB C to USB C and it didn't do what it needed to, like yesterday.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Dan]

Very exciting.

[Linus Sebastian]

All the time. So annoying.

[Dan]

And last one I've got for you today. Hey, Linus and Luke. I recently saw a video about using both AMD and Nvidia GPUs in one setup using Lossless Scaling's new dual GPU frame generation method. Wondering if you have any thoughts.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do. We're gonna be do. I'm gonna try it. We're gonna do a video on it. Just a matter of, like, when we can get it on the schedule. But yeah, I definitely want to explore it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bring us the old meme back, Dude. Linus did that in 2013.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's true. I did. I did SLI and Crossfire in the same system. Same system.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hell yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It worked, by the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus, SLI Crossfire. Check this out. Check, check. Check this out. That brick. Hold on. That brick of GPUs in there is two. I want to say, 780s. Yeah. 780 ti and two R9 290 x's installed in the same system. So what was the idea here? Look at you, just, like in the background, making dinner.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What am I doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

I forget what the point of this was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love how you don't skip a beat either.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, you just. You could. Games would scale in both or. I don't. Man. What was the point? What was I trying to accomplish? There was a reason why was I back there. Okay. Nvidia sli. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're playing some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I really think you're just trying to prove that it works.

[Linus Sebastian]

That you could have both drivers installed at the same time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at all these DVI connections.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's absurd.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm pretty sure that was. Does it. Which is great. It's interesting even now. That's interesting. You have drivers. Like, what the heck?

[Linus Sebastian]

What am I looking at? Good gravy. What. What is this? Why did we put this in our promotion for Audible Sheba? Is that even Twitch safe?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We do. We did some stuff back then.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's fine.

[Dan]

Male presenting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. Dude, I. I don't know, man. I've talked about this before, but I just get such a kick out of it anytime people are like, ltt used to be mature.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Old LTT was better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100% better. Nah, new LTT is. New LTT is better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why you want to do dildo racing anymore?

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at this. Look at this. This is great. It's a float plane. It's got a fox on it.

[Dan]

Non copyrighting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me guess.

[Dan]

Cringing fire. Kitsune.

[Linus Sebastian]

69 cents? Because of course it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's of course time to say, see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Maybe not. Bye.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wow. We had some merch messages today. We did?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good grade.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at the dashboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe the polishers.