We’re The Best In The World At Computer - WAN Show May 16, 2025

Summary

Summary of "We’re The Best In The World At Computer - WAN Show May 16, 2025" – The WAN Show by Linus Tech Tips

Introduction

In the May 16, 2025 episode of The WAN Show, hosts Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere tackle a range of pressing topics in the tech world. From setting world records to addressing consumer frustrations with subscription services, the duo provides insightful and engaging discussions, enriched with humor and expert opinions.

VPN Secure’s Controversial Cancellation of Lifetime Subscriptions

Timestamp [90:25]

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the fallout from VPN Secure's decision to cancel lifetime subscriptions. This move has left many customers outraged and seeking refunds.

Linus Sebastian expresses strong disapproval:

“If you weren't worth it to them as a customer, who by the way, already paid for the service, then you aren't worth it to them as a customer, period.”

Discussion Points:

• Linus criticizes the ethical implications of the cancellation, emphasizing the company's lack of transparency and accountability.
• Luke adds perspective on how such asset-only deals should logically affect all types of subscriptions, not selectively.
• The hosts debate the impracticality of pursuing legal action due to jurisdictional challenges, instead advocating for consumer awareness and support through negative reviews.

Achieving a Guinness World Record in Computing PI

Timestamp [01:32]

Linus proudly announces that Linus Tech Tips, in collaboration with partner Kioxia, has secured a Guinness World Record by calculating PI to an astounding 300 trillion decimal places.

Linus Sebastian shares:

“Yes, my friends, we have this Guinness World Record to show that we computered more than anybody ever computered before.”

Luke Lafreniere comments on the project's challenges:

“It's all about priority.”

Discussion Points:

• The initiative, led by team member Jake, involved optimizing GPU compute nodes and high-speed PCIe storage.
• Despite frequent power outages in their Canadian infrastructure, the team's dedication ensured the project's success.
• Linus highlights the technical hurdles and the perseverance required to achieve such a monumental feat.

Philips’ 3D Printable Repair Components Initiative

Timestamp [97:02]

Switching to a positive note, Linus and Luke express excitement over Philips' new initiative to offer 3D printable repair components for their products, promoting sustainability and self-repair.

Linus Sebastian states:

“They partnered with Prusa Research to launch Philips Fixables, aiming to encourage self-repair of Philips products using 3D printed replacement components.”

Discussion Points:

• This collaboration makes replacement parts accessible, allowing users to print and replace parts themselves, thereby extending product lifespans.
• The initiative is seen as a progressive step towards reducing electronic waste and empowering consumers to maintain their devices.

Challenges in Podcast Metrics and Advertising

Timestamp [114:35]

The hosts delve into the complexities of podcast metrics and advertising, questioning the transparency and reliability of current listener statistics.

Linus Sebastian remarks:

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to sell sponsorships against YouTube videos 13 years ago?”

Luke Lafreniere adds:

“We try our best.”

Discussion Points:

• Linus criticizes the opaque nature of podcast listener metrics, making it difficult for advertisers to gauge true audience sizes.
• They discuss Spotify's "Plays" feature, initially designed for transparency but met with criticism for potentially favoring already popular shows.
• The conversation highlights the disparity between podcast advertising rates and actual listener engagement, advocating for more transparent metrics.

Energy Star Program’s Imminent Termination

Timestamp [135:00]

Linus introduces alarming news from Ars Technica about the US Administration’s decision to terminate the Energy Star program, a collaboration between the EPA and DOE aimed at promoting energy-efficient products.

Linus Sebastian explains:

“For larger appliances, I prefer it. All else being equal, I like to see it there.”

Discussion Points:

• The termination threatens manufacturers who relied on Energy Star for consumer trust and sales.
• Luke shares his limited exposure to the program outside the American market, highlighting its varying impact globally.
• The hosts discuss potential repercussions for both consumers and manufacturers in identifying and choosing energy-efficient products.

Android’s New Scam Protection Measures

Timestamp [133:00]

Linus highlights Android’s latest updates aimed at protecting users from scams, including enhanced in-call protections and AI-powered scam detection in texts.

Linus Sebastian asserts:

“…the world is trash and it's full of people who are trash and are going to try and take everything from you for no reason other than that you have it and they don't.”

Discussion Points:

• Partnering with cybersecurity expert Kit Boga, the hosts emphasize the importance of these protective measures.
• They express skepticism about the measures' effectiveness against sophisticated scammers targeting non-tech-savvy users.
• The conversation underscores the ongoing battle between platform developers and malicious actors in the cybersecurity landscape.

Ongoing Projects and Personal Anecdotes

Throughout the episode, Linus, Luke, and team members share updates and personal stories, adding a relatable and entertaining layer to the discussions. Highlights include:

• Linus detailing his ongoing motorcycle paint project, facing challenges with achieving a candy finish.
• Luke sharing his struggle to complete Final Fantasy 6 during a flight, reflecting on the game's complexity and his gaming habits.
• Team dynamics and light-hearted banter about personal projects, enhancing the show's engaging and personable atmosphere.

Conclusion

In concluding the episode, Linus and Luke reflect on the diverse topics discussed, reaffirming their commitment to delivering insightful and engaging content. They emphasize the importance of informed consumer choices and ethical business practices in shaping a sustainable and innovative tech environment. Listeners are encouraged to stay proactive and supportive of transparent and responsible tech initiatives.

---

This detailed summary captures the essence of the episode, highlighting key discussions and incorporating notable quotes with precise timestamps to provide clarity and depth.

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 from 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. It's when Showtime, and I, for one, am ticked, teed, peeved, irate. How can they do this? We've got a lot of great topics for you guys this week, starting, of course, with VPN secure. Canceling lifetime subscriptions because they didn't know about them. What does that even mean? Oh, oh, oh. In much better news, we are officially the best at computer. That's right. We have this Guinness World Record to show that we computered more than anybody ever computered before. Along with our partner Kioxia, talking a little bit about the behind the scenes of that, how that came to pass. What else we got?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Philips debuts 3D printable repair components for, you know, Philips products, which is cool and rather surprising. And also, apparently, podcasters don't want public play counts, so I guess very, very feature first on this one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I know why. I know why. Oh. People are upset I didn't say welcome to the WAN show. Welcome to the wanna. It's been so many years since we actually sat on a couch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Vessi, Delete Me and Squarespace, of course, alongside our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Oops Secret Lab.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Technically, it was only a little bit over a year because of the April Fool's stream.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I guess that's fair. That is true.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Chewy was there fact checking us. Fact checking us. Oh, he said it too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's jump right into our headline topic, which is, of course, a lot of you. In the comments on today's video on us getting. Yes, my friends, it is real. The number of people that I saw being like, I thought it was a bit. I thought it was like a bit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's 300 trillion bits. That's right, my friends. Thank you, Dan. We actually did get the verified Guinness World Record for calculating the most accurate value of PI, which was to 300 trillion decimal places. And I only vaguely remember how this came to be. But Luke, I kind of want to hear a little bit about how Infra has felt about this project. That has been, as far as I can tell, very much in the way of things that they've been trying to do over the last, I would say months, but realistically it's been more like years. I will tell you that the project started in the same way that a lot of projects start around here. You guys probably remember back when we did the million dollar PC. So we had these GPU compute nodes and realistically it was the oodles and ood of high speed PCIe storage that made it so expensive. So we showed what a data center class node could actually be used for. I believe we did some simulations on it and stuff like that. We showed how high speed storage is so important to powering these kinds of workloads. And then we were done with it and everybody wanted their hardware back, which made us kind of go reasonable. But hear me out. What if we keep the hardware and since we've got it, we do something really cool with it. So whenever we get our hands on something that enables something that almost nobody else in the world could do, we are highly incentivized to try to do more stuff with that hardware. Not because there's actually like a compelling business reason for us to have had that stuff lying around. As far as I can tell, we. We have done absolutely nothing of use with the million dollar PC in the entire time that we've had it. And the majority of that time has been to try and get this project going, which ended up being a huge challenge. Jake was Jake. I don't know if he ended up putting it in the final edit because I saw a version of the edit that I signed off on. Then I think we made some more changes. But basically he has this spreadsheet where he went through like every tunable in Y Cruncher and basically did like before, after, before, after, before, after. Like it is the most flipping tuned Y cruncher. Not because Y cruncher is not good already, but because as far as we can tell, nobody has ever used it quite like this with network distributed storage in this fashion. So that that's how the whole thing started. We were like, hey, we should try to find something else to do with this super powerful hardware. Why don't we calculate more digits of PI? We kind of glossed over it in the video. But keeping this thing fed has been an absolute nightmare. And I want to, I want to. Before, before Luke jumps in, I want to address one more thing that I saw A lot of in the comments and that is, wow, your infrastructure in Canada must be if you guys lose power that often. Okay, couple of things. First of, in this area in particular, yeah, it does kind of feel that way. Dude, we lose power at the office alarmingly frequently. Especially given that this is an industrial zone, one that they are moving a hospital into. They are literally building a hospital across the street from labs like right there. And we have lost power, I kid you not, like somewhere between half a dozen and ten times in the last calendar year. Been unbelievable. With that said, I was sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At a certain point in my growing up, we, we lived on the same grid as the hospital that we were near at one point in time. And you would just never lose power. Like the whole everyone else would lose power and we would be fine forever. And then that stopped being a thing and it was, it was a sad day.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's all about priority.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I've also found that oddly enough, for some reason you're talking about the infrastructure around us isn't that great. I find I lose power less than the office does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This area, like my current residential setup, is more resilient than the office.

[Linus Sebastian]

This area is the pits. However, in their defense, there is kind of a good reason for it. This part of the lower mainland is quite built out, but not built up. So it's quite spread out. It kind of sprawls. And our power lines, because of that were cost effectively constructed on wooden poles. Right. So our power line, our power poles and our telephone poles, they kind of share infrastructure and they're just, they're just overhead power lines. So if you've ever been to Vancouver, you might know that we are known for having, for not just leveling all of the trees in our cities. Which is nice, you know, beautiful even, you might say. Beautiful British Columbia. That's what it says on our license plates. But it is a bit of a double edged sword. And when we have a windstorm, which, hey, you know, just like the rest of the world, seems to be happening a lot more frequently around here these days, I wonder if there's some kind of thing that might be contributing to that. I don't know. It's a great mystery, at least for, you know, half of the world that can't figure it out. We're having a lot more windstorms lately than we used to. And so branches and trees are coming down on those power lines a lot more than they used to. So our infrastructure was designed for the very mild climate that we used to have. And the very mild storms that we used to have. And now our climate tends to dip lower in lows during the winter, get higher in the highs during the summer, and we tend to have a lot more windstorms. So it's been a learning curve, I guess is what I would. What I would what I would say. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it. It wasn't great that we lost power a bunch of times during the PI attempt and also just generally lose power a lot. It's pretty inconvenient for business operations, but overall I, I don't think it's slowed us down too much over the years. Okay, so what have you guys gone through? Because there's been cooling failures, power failures, just generally us being up in your biz like Infra must be not that stoked on this project.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, Dan might have more to comment here than me, but honestly that's those same things basically because in, in a few cases we've been called in to try to help with that sound. Like even with the actually fairly extensive sound deadening that that room has, the Infra team is sat. Especially Thomas is sat right next to it and straight through all that sound deadening. It's been real loud and screaming real hard the whole time. I got some notes from Jake here. I mentioned that this was going to be a topic and asked if there's anything he wanted to add. He said don't pick the cheapest H Vac quote. He said that a lot of people were commenting on asking how it was actually verified or if we just calculated 300 trillion digits of nothing. But apparently it's something called BBP extraction or Bailey Borwin Plouffe extraction where you can calculate specific ranges of digits instead of the whole thing. So the Alexander Yee, the Y Cruncher dev, ran two separate BBP verifications against the last chunk of digits in hex form to validate and this took around six hours each on a very fast computer. So apparently no, you don't have to run the whole thing twice. And it gets spot checked against the existing record sets including 202 trillion and 100 trillion from Google, et cetera. And yeah, Jake is also saying that he could run over to the set and add some context or questions, which could be cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, yeah. No, this has been Jake's pet project for over a year at this point. Getting it over the line. It's amazing how dedicated that young man can be when the objective is purely to create the world's largest pain.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes a lot of sense for.

[Linus Sebastian]

Quite literally no purpose other than to have the biggest computer peen. Like, I'm not saying, I'm not saying he doesn't work hard on other stuff. In fact, someone Casperexplore in the floatplane chat says, hey, I thought you guys just made a video about diying battery backup. Battery backup, the lab. He's been trying, he's actually been trying to get me to do like a massive power backup project here for quite some time. And yes, the like, weird. We know it's at least a little bit sketchy. Setup that I have at my house right now was meant to be stage one. Stage two is hopefully like a bigger setup at my house because that's still a manageable scale. And if these projects continue to pique people's interest, stage three could be a larger, more resilient solution that's here at the office. So, you know, never, never underestimate, never underestimate this young man. Whether he's doing something actually useful like, you know, diying a UPS for a fraction of the cost or whether he's doing this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. I know he's in the chat right now. If people have questions over in float plane chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Isaac coming over.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, is he.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's going to join you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isaac V asks, why not a diesel generator so you guys can keep going? Maybe a more proven way for business. So a diesel generator is not as simple as just like buy a diesel generator. You have to actually like make sure the diesel fuel doesn't go bad. Like when we checked out Equinix is set up, they had to have like their own fuel conditioning, I think it's called, but basically like to rejuvenate the fuel on site and make sure that it doesn't go bad in their storage tanks. That like, tanks are underground, but also like, they have like, I think they have like counterweight or something so they don't like float in a flood or what. Like, it's not, it's not that simple to do an entire building diesel backup. And it does take ongoing maintenance. And the, the actual business disruption of our occasional power outages is not that high. Like if it goes out for an hour or two, we can just be like, okay, well, realistically all we can do is lean or clean. So find one of those things to do. And a lot of the time it's out overnight. Like it's, it hasn't. You have to do a business like cost analysis. Okay, if you guys have questions, Jake's gonna sit in Luke's chair. You're gonna go around. Okay. He's gonna go around the back. I mean, that's a path. That's a path that people can take. I tried to warn him. He could have just quickly passed in front of this camera, but instead he decided to take. You know what? Hi. How you doing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where are the headphones?

[Elijah]

What?

[Dan]

I was expecting to arrive right here.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you guys have any questions about the whole thing, feel free to throw those over in the float plane chat, brother. What? Oh, wait, where's it. Where's this quarter inch jack adapter? What kind of professional. What kind of professional podcast set is this?

[Elijah]

I wish I. Oh, I can't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why is Dan right in front of Luke?

[Elijah]

I can't. I can't show. Oh, thank you, Daniel.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's okay. Dan's a professional. He always, always keeps a 3 1/2 millimeter to quarter inch adapter in his back pocket at all times. Dan, is this true?

[Dan]

Of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of course it's true.

[Dan]

And also a quarter inch to three and a half mil.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly. He always has one.

[Elijah]

I own a MacBook. That's why I have a USB. Anything to type C adapter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are we allowed to talk about the load of utter horse that getting one of these certificates is these days?

[Elijah]

I don't know that that is on. Can you hear me through here?

[Linus Sebastian]

I can. I can't hear you through here.

[Elijah]

Look, mama, I don't know that I want to do that, okay?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I got to tell you, it.

[Elijah]

Was a lot of work, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll tell you this much. Okay? The process of getting the certificate is definitely different from what the process was back when we did Highlander, like almost 10 years ago.

[Elijah]

It's also very different if you're doing it for like, I'm a personal record. I'm like, I'm on my chocolate. The most bananas. Finding pie in a minute or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Or reciting pie from your brain.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't.

[Elijah]

Usually, I think you don't have to pay money or it's not a very large amount of money, but when you're doing something that's corporate, it's advertising, so they expect to get paid for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like.

[Elijah]

And a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Not 300 dilly. 300 trillion digits have paid, but more than two.

[Elijah]

There's a password on this laptop.

[Linus Sebastian]

More than three.

[Elijah]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you get. Can you get multiple.

[Linus Sebastian]

More than I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have the. The world record thing for. For Highlander.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't have it, do you? Only, I thought they sent them to all the participants.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I. I have one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Oh, sorry. I completely misheard you then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, I. I said, I know we have one, but, like. Like, how many of that do you have?

[Linus Sebastian]

One. You.

[Elijah]

You can get as many as you want after we. We have this one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably get more than one.

[Elijah]

And then I ordered, like, a paper one because I wanted Linus to have a worse one. You're cheap. So, like, you wanted to pay the $50 for the frame.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what the worst part is? You know what the worst part is?

[Elijah]

He's laughing because it's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what the worst part is? That is a hundred percent what I did the first time.

[Elijah]

Yeah, because that's in your office. It just a piece of paper. I was looking at that the other day. I was like, oh, that's the Highlander one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's the cheapo one, bro.

[Elijah]

You can buy that frame on Amazon. Not that I support Mr. Bezos, aside from when he trips and falls.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, I want to play a game. I want to play a game. Okay, Dan. Dan, you're part of the game. I would like you to guess for each of us how many times we've watched Mr. Bezos eat sh. T. How many times we've watched the clip. Okay? So each of us. Each of us has to kind of think and write down what we think. What we think it is, how many times we think we've watched it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if you watch it on loop, each loop counts as one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Each loop counts as one. So hold on. Let me. Let me think for a second. Okay, if you show it to someone else, how many views does that count as? Is that just one, or does it, like, count as a multiple view for you?

[Elijah]

Oh, I think that's your one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that's just one. Okay. Okay. I got my number. I got my number.

[Dan]

All right. I think I've got to cheat because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you show it on wan. Show? Like.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't. Did we?

[Dan]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, we did. Oh, I didn't count that one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you get, like, hundreds of thousands?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, no, no, no. It only counts as one. It counts as one. Okay.

[Elijah]

I mean, does it count as, like, half of one just because you're short?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, let's see how well.

[Elijah]

Let's see how well, Dan, I look small right now. It's. Oh, Because Luke has a big torso, right?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My chair is lower than Linus's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, Dan, that's weird. Okay, Dan.

[Dan]

Each loop counts.

[Linus Sebastian]

Each loop Counts.

[Dan]

All right, so for Linus, I'm gonna say round 120.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, come on. That's not realistic.

[Dan]

Is it not?

[Linus Sebastian]

Who would have time for that?

[Dan]

I mean, like, spread out over many, many weeks. Like, we watched it maybe four or five times on the WAN show at least.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did we?

[Dan]

It was funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if we watched it that many times.

[Dan]

Jake, maybe I'm gonna say, I don't know, 20. Like that. No, not that funny. And what do you want me to say?

[Elijah]

Or am I waiting?

[Dan]

I guess waiting and then maybe. Maybe Luke like 10 to 20 times or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you think Luke? Dude. Okay. All right. Okay, so we have a bit of a problem here because I put down seven, but I forgot that we watched it multiple times when we were looking at it on Wednesday show. So realistically, I'm probably closer to 20.

[Elijah]

We also watched it like 10. 10 times during writers meeting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think I was there for that one. Yeah, you might have been in the.

[Elijah]

Car still or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were analyzing, like, how did he biff this? Oh, he's just bad at walking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan said 10 to 20 for me. The number that I came up for myself was 15.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so Dan nailed you.

[Dan]

What I. What I didn't realize originally is that it's not like a short loop pause. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I missed it.

[Dan]

It's not. It's like, it's. It's not a loop. It's like a video that you have to scroll back on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So maybe, you know, 120 is probably a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's probably.

[Dan]

You don't just watch the game.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I did rewind, like.

[Dan]

Yeah, but it was manual.

[Elijah]

Show the people.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no. I don't want to get copyright strikes.

[Elijah]

This is transformative, baby.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I don't want to get a copyright strike over it, Dude.

[Elijah]

From Daddy Bezos, dude, we've been copyright.

[Linus Sebastian]

Striked for, like, showing game trailers.

[Elijah]

Well, that is like, the one thing that you get. Copy strike.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even just Nintendo ones either.

[Elijah]

Just being Pewdiepie.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. It's literally promotional content. It's literally ads.

[Elijah]

Can we copy strike Linus Tech tips. It's an old meme, but it checks out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like it. It's good. It's pretty good. I got it.

[Elijah]

Chad says yes, we can.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are we supposed to be talking about right now?

[Dan]

Oh, yeah. What's your number?

[Linus Sebastian]

What's your number? What's your number?

[Elijah]

Go with like, probably Dan. I think Dan was right. It's probably 20 times.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably.

[Elijah]

And a good like 15 of those was just the first time I saw it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, it's so funny. It's so funny. Okay, right, so did you. Did it. Did anybody actually, like, put any questions in the chat or anything?

[Elijah]

I'm gonna watch the clip on the laptop myself.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a. There's a. There's. Oh, man. What was one of the things that I had wanted to address.

[Elijah]

If I type Bezos biffing it, will it come up?

[Linus Sebastian]

It died.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was the most annoying thing about working on the. The pie record, Jake?

[Elijah]

Honestly, I think the power outages are one thing I would go with. When we were near the end, like. Like in February, March, timeline, the AC was just crapping its pants with no suitable explanation. So this is an amazing, amazingly engineered system. Okay? So it has error codes. There are little lights not stored anywhere. They're just blinking lights.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Nice Enterprise.

[Elijah]

They're on both sides. So if there's an error with the outside unit, it blinks the light on the outside unit, which means you have to go outside, get on a ladder, take the thing off to see it. The inside unit also has error codes if it shuts off. Like, you know when you're trying to do a world record and you really need the bloody AC to turn back on, so you go flip the breaker and, like, come on, turn back on, the codes go away forever, and there's no history, nothing saved. So you know what happened, like, the first seven times? We had no idea what was wrong with it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Elijah]

Literally none. And even the H VAC guys were like, I don't know. Come on, you're like, $250 an hour. What the heck? Anyways, it ended up being that the AC system had basically no refrigerant left in it. It was supposed to have, like.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Elijah]

I don't want to say a number because I don't know the actual number. Let's say it's 10 pounds of refrigerant. Supposed to be in this loop, right? There was like, 0.6.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know how this keeps happening. Do you know how many times they had leaks in that one mini split system in the server room over here? It's probably leaked like a dozen times. I. Okay. And I'm not even. I'm not even trying to be a jerk about it. Yeah, right, because it's. It's easy, right? It's easy to look at someone else's job and be like, ugh, can't be that hard, you know? Professional athletes. How do you miss that? I could. My grandma could have kicked that in, you know, whatever. Right? Like, that's easy to do, but, like, in this case, I actually have installed a mini split system.

[Elijah]

Yeah. And yours are mint, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they work great. How hard is this?

[Elijah]

Brian the electrician H VAC man.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, yes, I did get help, but nothing that we did. Nothing we did was super complicated. Yeah, you get some copper tube youe raise some fittings on it and you make sure they're tight. What are they doing?

[Elijah]

I mean, like, no shade.

[Linus Sebastian]

The one in Creator warehouse broke a month ago too.

[Elijah]

Okay, let's give them a little shade. You did also approve the cheapest H VAC quote we got?

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I didn't. I had nothing to do with it. I told them, get something good. I can't control. I can't control what people actually go ahead with.

[Elijah]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Great. Literally, though, who did it?

[Elijah]

I don't know, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not gonna throw anybody under the bus. There's no point.

[Elijah]

The company that does the maintenance now is a lot better. But. But yeah, it was rough. And to be clear, I think maybe you're, like, overestimating the, like, average effort that your average contractor is putting in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I'm really not. Did I ever show you the pictures of my lawn right now with the gravel on it?

[Elijah]

Did you show them the pictures of your lawn with the gravel?

[Linus Sebastian]

Did I?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, it's so bad.

[Elijah]

Wait, has it been fixed yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

They are there today. Like, with what, to their credit?

[Elijah]

70 rakes to their credit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

The company that it screwed it up. Big vacuum, dude, we'd already think it.

[Dan]

Is a big vacuum.

[Linus Sebastian]

We had already paid them. We had already paid them. So, like, if they were anything like some of the contractors that we've worked with in the past, they would have just ghosted us a hundred percent. But no, they're. They're actually good guys. They actually came back. So what they're doing is basically they're putting an inch of topsoil over our entire lawn.

[Elijah]

Oh, then you're going to have like, the mint is drainage. Yeah, to a point.

[Linus Sebastian]

To a point, yeah.

[Elijah]

And then once it's saturated, it's game over. Well, does your lawn have, like, drainage underneath? Like drainage pipes?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I'm surprised that there was just one part that, like, didn't and a couple other little spots that were a little bit soggy. So Yvonne was like, hey, can you guys come and just kind of address that? And they came and dumped gravel all over the whole Thing because of a miscommunication. So what happened was the company, whose job it is is to just deliver, like, wheelbarrows of crap to a job site.

[Elijah]

Oh, I see where this is.

[Linus Sebastian]

They got it wrong. And then the guys that were just like. The guys to just spread the stuff over, they didn't question it because they were like, why would they deliver the wrong thing? And then when the super shows up on the site, he goes, oh, my God, what happened?

[Elijah]

I'm laughing at both this story and Jeff Bezos falling on my laptop on repeat.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's got to get his count up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so one thing is, Linus said we weren't going to go off the radio show.

[Dan]

I'm watching show.

[Elijah]

Oh, yeah, you got my laptop going here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, this is great.

[Dan]

I've got my subway surfers doing my job.

[Elijah]

He was just too excited.

[Dan]

So what did you promise at the start of the show?

[Linus Sebastian]

That we were gonna stay on the rails.

[Dan]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have not stayed on the rails today.

[Elijah]

On an airplane, like, tonight.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't worry about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't seen a lot of questions about the PI stuff. Oh, I got one. Why didn't you calculate it to PI?

[Linus Sebastian]

I.

[Elijah]

You know, now that everyone has said that, I'm like, wow, I'm an idiot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, we should have done that to 300,000,069 or something. Like, there's. What was. Why the round number?

[Elijah]

So there's a few factors here. It's like, the main concern is your storage space, right. Because you have the memory in the computer. That's your, like, active working memory. And then the storage space isn't used to store the output. I mean, it is later on, but it's used as swap space, which is just like memory, but slower. Right. You know, when your computer has a swap, it's slow, but in this case, it's swap. That's 100 gigabytes a second. So it's fast, but not as fast as 3 terabytes of DDR5. Anyways, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, right. Okay. So originally, we were trying to do 200 trillion digits, and we had the storage capacity for that. And then when we were trying to do 300 trillion digits, we were like, we're going to have 98% of the. Like, we were going to use 98% of the capacity.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, okay.

[Elijah]

But I later found out, like, right before the run, you don't actually have to output both sets of digits. So traditionally, people would output the hexadecimal version, which is what is Actually calculated by the program. And the decimal version. The decimal version is longer, takes up more space, but that's what you would traditionally read. 3.1415, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. The hexadecimal format wouldn't really, like, mean a whole lot to most people until you base convert it. But you don't have to output it. So I disabled it, which saved us like 120 terabytes compressed. So we could have used that extra space to calculate 14 trillion more digits.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I would have settled for just like 69 more.

[Elijah]

Did that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what? Here's the PR response. Here's the PR response. Because then we would have a Guinness record. That was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's iconic.

[Elijah]

What do you mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, no, here's the PR response. You know, for us, this was, you know, just about the collaboration with kioxia, our partner on this project.

[Elijah]

Well, they're great.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we wanted to. We wanted to leave an opportun for the next person to come along and do it to PI digits.

[Elijah]

No, that's wrong. I actually have the real answer in Y cruncher. When you're setting up the run, when you type in how many digits, there's a short form version, you can just write 300T. If I had to write the whole thing, that would have been like.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would have been a few more.

[Elijah]

Numbers to click and like, you might.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have gotten carpal tunnel. Yeah, I wouldn't have wanted that. I genuinely. No, I wouldn't have wanted it.

[Elijah]

You'd be paying for that. Yeah, you don't want to pay for that. We already established this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look at the frame, buddy. That's. That's covered. That's already covered. He already paid.

[Elijah]

He pays for that anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, I think our. I think our premiums go. I think our, like, deductible and premiums go up. If people find a way to make things.

[Elijah]

Premiums go up. Otherwise, I think it'd be fun.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think. I think it goes up if everybody.

[Dan]

Only if you fill in the form.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Elijah]

Dan has never filled the form.

[Dan]

I don't want to cost Linus money.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, everyone has to fill out the form properly. You can't joke about Unless you're Linus. No, I fill out the form.

[Dan]

It's extremely important you fill out the form.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have somebody fill out the form for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sounds more correct. That sounds a lot more.

[Dan]

Delegation management training.

[Linus Sebastian]

I sign the form. I sign the form.

[Dan]

I have a merch message.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I get a boo boo. If I get a boo boo. On set, I sign the form. Okay. Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How much is there even to fill out before you sign it?

[Dan]

It's like nothing.

[Elijah]

You don't even fill it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have Vance fill out. Like, the issue is that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, the issue is that I have to go and find someone on the safety committee to, like, see it filled out. Like, it's the whole process of it.

[Elijah]

I take great joy in it because usually it's Dennis that's been filling it out for me, and I always enjoy a good little conversation with Dennis.

[Linus Sebastian]

So they just. They have it filled out, and they bring it to me, and then I sign it. And that way the shoot doesn't have to be interrupted and I can just keep filming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's how it works for everybody.

[Dan]

Is it?

[Elijah]

He's not special.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, well, that's good.

[Dan]

I mean, it's the process.

[Linus Sebastian]

That actually sounds like a way smarter process, so that's good.

[Elijah]

Well, because I don't know how to film. Fill out this form. There's, like, six boxes. They could have any information. What am I supposed to put?

[Linus Sebastian]

Where it says name, they fill it out for you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Where did you get your cut? What were you doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

We fell in the parking lot.

[Elijah]

What's my dress? I don't know.

[Dan]

Here's your band aid. That will cost us an extra thousand a month in premiums.

[Elijah]

My favorite field is, how are we going to prevent this in the future?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have literally written. Written.

[Elijah]

I have dumb.

[Linus Sebastian]

I had filled it out for myself a few times, and I have literally written, not do that again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does that qualify?

[Elijah]

Is that good enough?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so. Because, like, if the cause is just that I was stupid, just general.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it's your stupid end, you've never done this thing before and you don't need to do it again, then I think, yeah, it's fair to just be.

[Dan]

Like, well, reel through your hand.

[Elijah]

Why did you do it in the first place, Luke?

[Linus Sebastian]

Gosh, I think. I didn't know. Yeah, he was a learning. I didn't know it would hurt. Okay. Sorry. Dan, you want to hit us with a merch?

[Dan]

Yeah. How much electricity had it?

[Elijah]

I mean, probably more than what was shown in the video, because that didn't. Well, actually, no. I put a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's probably about right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Well, I don't even remember. I blocked it.

[Elijah]

It was like.

[Linus Sebastian]

I blocked it from my mind.

[Elijah]

Just for your reference, just so you can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thanks.

[Elijah]

Re. Sear this into your brain. I believe what the calculator said was, like, $8,600 Canadian.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is wild.

[Elijah]

I mean, nobody tell him about the. The boink project going on right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can take some solace in the fact that this is more useful than mining. A lot of cryptocurrency. So at least there's that. Or as useful is it?

[Elijah]

Oh, I see.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's as useful. I was like, there are equally pointless things that we could have. Have burned fossil fuels for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What do people use that many digits?

[Elijah]

You don't. You don't. It's like something. I think what people have been saying is, like, NASA, even in their craziest calculations, use, like, 34 digits or something like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And you can calculate something. Something, the entire size of the universe to an atom to the side. Yeah. In like, with like, a couple dozen. A few dozen digits of PI or something.

[Elijah]

That's what the YouTube comments tell me. We know how accurate those are.

[Dan]

Yeah, well, engineers use, like, they just rounded to four.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

They round up.

[Dan]

It's like, good enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Will Swami, by the way, made the point better than I possibly could have as to why. No, we are not printing this out at Linus Tech tips. A production printer is rated for about 1 million sheets per month. It would literally take 1,000 months to print that, aka 83 years.

[Elijah]

Now that sounds like a skill issue. You clearly just need more printers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Duh. Yeah. What are you talking about?

[Elijah]

Yeah, like, what about those big newspaper printer machine things? Have you seen those?

[Dan]

Those things rip larger paper.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They did network distributed PI calculations. They could do network distributed printing, brother.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of the comments on this video really are amazing. As a mechanic, watching this video and trying to understand it made me realize what other people hear when I talk about cars. Literally nothing. Yeah, that's great. I. It's exhausting.

[Elijah]

I told the girlfriend. Yeah, I needed a super.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Elijah]

No, no, I. I needed a supercharger. It's just an alternator. It's for charging.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's.

[Elijah]

It needed that. It makes a noise. A spinning noise. Yeah. Yeah, that's good for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You got it cheap because the bearings are gone.

[Elijah]

Exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. These father and son episodes are so wholesome.

[Elijah]

I just think we need to get Linus a supercharger charger.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, since you're here.

[Elijah]

Oh, boy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Since you're here. There were some people who had some concerns about the battery backup. She's mint at my place. She's mint for now. Yeah. So.

[Elijah]

So she's mint.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yet. I scouted the location.

[Elijah]

Oh, please. I was. I was gonna ask you about this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so. So we. We. We hear you and we actually did want to put the battery banks outside. That was the original plan anyway, but it was a lot easier for the proof of concept.

[Elijah]

What is he doing?

[Linus Sebastian]

Which, yeah, he's telling us to move on. So maybe we'll make this the last thing we chat about and then we'll actually do that.

[Elijah]

That's clever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, he has to deal with a host with adhd.

[Dan]

You also don't have to listen. Or two, just. It's just a guideline.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Double your pleasure, double your fun today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hell yeah.

[Dan]

One for each hand.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we are aware that it would be better to have the batteries outside, but we wanted to do this proof of concept for a couple of reasons. Number one is that I didn't want to go all in and spend tens of thousands of dollars on something that we would then discover. You know what? This is actually kind of beyond our scope.

[Elijah]

He had no faith, is the answer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, that we have, we have bitten off more than we can chew in the past. I'm just going to say that. Okay. And number two is because Jake needed to do a smaller scale project so that he can put in all his tickets at the Christmas party to get the cast off one. After I stop using the initial deployment.

[Elijah]

I'm just gonna borrow it forever. What do you mean? Alex? Alex Wild Alex. Dick, our logistics manager, is gonna be like, thank you, Jake. I really appreciate you for getting this giant thing out of the warehouse.

[Dan]

Just sign it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks.

[Dan]

Sign it out to Jake.

[Elijah]

That's 100% gonna be his.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would like for the record to make it very clear that that is not how that works for any other employees who are watching this right now, only for Jake.

[Dan]

No, that's what Lin.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that is not how it works.

[Dan]

Just steals stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is not how it works. Not how it works. That is not how it works. I, I, those are the two reasons for the smaller scale deployment. Because Jake wants one and because I didn't want to go full hog immediately. So, good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?

[Elijah]

I don't know. Like, I'm not going to listen to your bad news anyway, so just send it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, Whatever. Yeah. So the good news, the good news is I have full faith now because that deployment, actually, for all the concerns that people raised about it, there is a few kind of valid, like, oh.

[Elijah]

We should have connectors on the things like, Yes, I know that.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there should be covers on some of the, you know, high current terminals.

[Elijah]

That's why there's connectors on some of them. And not others. It's because they gave us the wrong side.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so that's the good news.

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The bad news is we don't have a straight run from the mech room to the outside.

[Elijah]

Wait, no, I didn't. I already tell. We solved this. This is adhd, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Incarnate, unfortunately. By the panel outside.

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like where the power comes into the house. There's not a great spot for it.

[Elijah]

Yeah, but we don't need a great spot.

[Linus Sebastian]

We just need a spot.

[Elijah]

You don't go down the side of your house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She doesn't.

[Elijah]

Am I wrong? When was the last time you went down the side of your house before me asking you to go there to pick blueberries?

[Linus Sebastian]

So it would have been last August.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can. You can work around it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like in the summer I go there.

[Elijah]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like in the summer I go there.

[Elijah]

We need to mount the like, inverter thingy. So the original plan was to put it in the mech room and like make a concrete box or concrete board or something where, you know, you have an hour of it exploded and put some like, fire retardant stuff in there, like whatever. Right. But then we were. Jesus. And then we were like, let's just put everything outside because the inverter needs to go upstream of the main panel anyway so that we can ac. Couple the solar to it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

So why are we putting it inside? Let's just put everything outside. So if the. If the inverter is on the side of your house.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Elijah]

How far are these batteries going to be? Like, how many. How many iPhones tall is this run going to be?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's going to be okay to get it kind of like out of the way.

[Elijah]

This better be an iPhone to get.

[Linus Sebastian]

It out of the way. It would probably be about 40 iPhones. It's pretty. It's pretty far.

[Elijah]

Like batteries from the inverter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

Is there like anything we can put it on there? Or is that. That's dirt pouring. We're pouring a pad.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's dirt.

[Elijah]

Or we'll ask for a pad instead. We'll get large gravel.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's strawberry plants.

[Dan]

That's 19.2ft.

[Elijah]

Wow. Wait, what iPhones are we talking pro maxes. What are you comparing against iPhone 12?

[Dan]

14.

[Elijah]

Okay, sorry. How many iPhone 13 minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's go with that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this is. Wait, this is in your backyard or is this still on the side of the house?

[Linus Sebastian]

On the side of the house.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do you care about the plants on the side of the house?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I mean, they're Strawberries. Like, they. You know, the kids like them. They eat strawberries there. You know, like kids do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is gonna be like power.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kids eat strawberries.

[Elijah]

Gonna be a monumentally larger. Monumentally. Yeah, sure. Larger project.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And I'm.

[Elijah]

I gotta confess, hundreds of kilograms of batteries.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not super stoked on, like, the s of it. It's like pallets of batteries. Yes, I know. I know, Jake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you tell them not trivial?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I don't think so.

[Elijah]

Oh, well, we. What we were talking about was, like 200 kilowatt hours.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So the idea was that we could use a thousand watts.

[Elijah]

Wait, I can show them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can show them for 200 hours. So, literally, if we were using the house normally, we could be down for, like, three days.

[Elijah]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

This, four days.

[Elijah]

Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Your lab is totally warranted, and this does sound insane, but when you do it diy, it's actually less expensive than you would think. I mean, obviously we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars, but we're not actually talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Surprisingly.

[Dan]

Sure.

[Elijah]

Does that sound like. Does this. This sounds like something that would cost like, 100.

[Dan]

Yeah, that sounds quite reasonable.

[Elijah]

Am I crazy?

[Dan]

A lot of power.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, it. It sounds like the kind of thing that if we went and we got it, you know, quoted properly, that they would want, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars for. But it's. It's actually.

[Elijah]

How do I do this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Less than you'd think.

[Elijah]

How do I do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here, I got you.

[Elijah]

Why does this say. Oh, Luke Lap. Like laptop.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Not like a lap cam. Luke Laprine.

[Dan]

That costs extra per month.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is when.

[Elijah]

After dark. Okay, so this is. Eve is one of the major Chinese LFP battery manufacturers. This is like one of their newer models. It's 314amp hours. At 3.2 volts, it's roughly 1 kilowatt hour. This cell, if you buy between 100 and 2,000 of them, is 60 US dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, before.

[Elijah]

Obviously before shipping. Obviously before tariffs. If you're in the U.S. i'm so sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get Shrek.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what if we buy 50?

[Elijah]

What if we bought 250 of them times 60? It's 15 grand.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

For 250 kilowatt hours, which is a lot of money. A lot of money.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's a lot.

[Elijah]

That's like. How much is a power. Like a Tesla powerwall.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is a freak.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on. Does the. Does the bulk discount get any better?

[Dan]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Elijah]

Yeah. When you buy 500,000.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So a power wall is only 13 and a half kilowatt hours.

[Elijah]

And how much does it cost?

[Dan]

16.

[Linus Sebastian]

Something like. I forget. I forget how much they're. They're freaking expensive. But that includes the inverter.

[Elijah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it includes more. This is just raw power. We actually still need to do the install. We still need an inverter.

[Elijah]

So something we like inverter wise.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, this is. No bms. Are we planning to just like. Oh, hey, are we planning to just weld these like.

[Elijah]

No, it'll be like a bus bar situ. No, no, no, no, no. This is actually not getting bad. The Vero bms, that thing's super cool, right? That was built for car swaps. Tesla swaps, specifically. You know, say what you will about that guy, but their batteries are very useful for EV swapping vehicles. All right, that's what I'm going with this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Elijah]

They made a new thing called. I think it's called like the Veronica Node.

[Linus Sebastian]

He'll figure it out.

[Elijah]

Yeah, okay. It's not out yet, but they made a. Here's a. Here's our DIY balance board that hooks up to the main thing. So you buy these and then I think they support like, I don't want to say a number because I don't know, but like 15 cells or something like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right.

[Elijah]

And so you. They're 150 bucks. You buy. Their website is down. I wonder why that is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way to go, Wan show.

[Elijah]

Thanks. Wan show. I hadn't even opened it yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like.

[Elijah]

Like, what the.

[Dan]

They're quick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you said it.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're too quick. Yeah. Just the last thing you want to do is like, talk about a funny domain that's available or whatever because they're like, they're on it. Okay, so don't do it.

[Elijah]

So 16 cells in series, which, if I remember correctly, 16 times 3.2. I think that's the optimal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So about 48.

[Elijah]

So 16 is how many usually how you want in series. So we would need one of these for each series set. So you're talking like a few grand in BMS nodes. Yeah, you're talking like the inverters get way more expensive. The one we used for this project was the EG 4.6K XP, whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that was sized for like the rack 6 kilowatt and. And some. But like not for the house.

[Elijah]

So this is 18 kilowatts in one box and it's seven grand.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

So it's. It's almost. It kind of scales Almost linearly, to be honest. Yeah, they also have a cool one called like the Grid Boss.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's called the Grid Boss.

[Elijah]

Oh, Flex Boss. The grid box is like the integration thing. This is the bigger one. And to be clear, there are also like, there's other companies that make these. The easy for one works pretty good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Power your neighborhood, dude.

[Elijah]

Yeah, I don't know that we will for sure use this, but this is something that they said that they had and that was cool. We might need to use like two or three though. It really depends. Because you were telling me you wanted to be able to charge your car off of this. Like you talking charging your car at full rate. Because that's like, that's a few.

[Linus Sebastian]

I, I don't think I would, I don't think I would expect to actually charge my car off it. That seems stupid. I mean, that seems pretty dumb. With that said now, I mean, you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could charge your car off.

[Elijah]

Is it a 30amper?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very little.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's a 30amp. Yeah.

[Elijah]

So. But is that actually the charge rate? Like it's a 40.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's pretty weak. I, I like got the wrong ones. Basically. I, I asked for a specific one and then the contractors ordered a different one from. And I was like, yo, that's not what I asked for.

[Elijah]

Oh, I know which one you have. It's the dual head one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's the dual head one. But there was. They have a different one that would do full speed off of one head. But this one is the cheaper one that only does half speed off of each one.

[Elijah]

Oh, it's this one. It's the sun country one, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, something like that.

[Elijah]

Yeah. Okay, so it's like 40amps total, but when you're charging two cars, you get 16amps each. So this is a 7.7 kilowatt. Yeah, this is the.

[Linus Sebastian]

It actually takes like a minute to charge my car.

[Elijah]

I mean, to be fair, for your use case, it's probably fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's totally fine.

[Elijah]

But we could get some, we get some ubiquity EV stations in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I've been.

[Elijah]

I'll.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll do it eventually.

[Elijah]

I don't know if they're CSA approved yet. That could be a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah, it could be a problem.

[Elijah]

But anyways, so these are hardwired in. This is not that much though.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, well, it's, it's not that much in terms of like the, the rate of charge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just. Having batteries in your yard so that you can Charge the batteries in your car. Feels a little silly. Well, it is, right?

[Elijah]

You are. Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Elijah]

Huh. Okay. I'm glad we got there.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. So anyway, supposed to be talking. We're supposed to be doing merch messages.

[Elijah]

So wait, I want to do one. I've never done this before.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. This guy's like. He doesn't even want to go.

[Elijah]

I gotta go on a flight, too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you never done a win?

[Elijah]

Not in a long time, brother. Like Christmas years ago.

[Linus Sebastian]

And nobody does when anymore. Yeah, yeah, it's. We're on the.

[Elijah]

We're on the streak, so introverted boys over here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So have you packed?

[Elijah]

Dude, I did all my laundry yesterday. I'm proud. Usually I'm doing laundry at 11pm the night before.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Yeah, it's pretty good, actually.

[Elijah]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I did my laundry yesterday, too.

[Elijah]

Wow. Actually, I don't want.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You were sick. You got me sick.

[Elijah]

You know, I said, I'm going to be so mad if you got me sick. I'm like, sniffly now. And it's your fault.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why did I touch you? Why would I touch you?

[Dan]

You.

[Elijah]

I got it for turn. Nobody else I know is sick, and I've barely been around anyone else other than. And you were, like, actively sniffly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, boy.

[Elijah]

It's your fault.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, well, that's possible. All right, fine. I'll explain.

[Elijah]

Logged into the thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'll explain merch messages.

[Elijah]

I'll just hack Luke's account here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Merch messages are the way to interact with the show. And we've got some pretty exciting reasons to send a merch message. We have. That's right, my friends, our biggest T shirt expansion ever. We have three fantastic. Hold on, I'm getting to it. We have three fantastic new colors. Sky, forest, and chocolate. This right here is sky, this is forest, and this is chocolate. Excuse me, I'm just messing with them. And you can get all of these new colors as a short sleeve or a long sleeve. You can get them in regular and you can get them in tall sizing. Let's go. Look at his arms. This is a medium. Look at his arms.

[Dan]

I'm six foot two.

[Elijah]

Look, I'm. I'm repping the brand.

[Linus Sebastian]

On top of that, we added tall sizing and long sleeve for our core colors, black and olive. So there's a whole lot of new T shirts that you can now get at lmg, gg slash T shirt. Check it out, boys. Let's go, man.

[Elijah]

We've got some mileage out of LMG GG. That domain is like 60 bucks a year.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's affordable.

[Elijah]

I know that's a no, that's a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it domains?

[Dan]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's really expensive. I don't know how much domains cost. I don't know.

[Dan]

What could it cost?

[Linus Sebastian]

$10?

[Dan]

Yeah, but literally it cost $10.

[Elijah]

Nobody commented about that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. We also have to announce we have pre tariff pricing on [e-mail] the US version. So we have pre tariff pricing on individual magnetic cable management components this week. And if you were wondering, global customers, you already have pre tariff pricing when converted to USD. In fact, it's actually a little bit cheaper than that. So you can shop now at lmg, gg, mcm. Check them out. There you go. Anyway, as for what you can do with that purchase, when you add it to your cart, you can leave a merch message. There'll be a little box and it'll go to producer Dan. There he is. Who will curate your message for me and Luke. Also, he's here this week for some reason for me and Luke or he will respond to it himself or forward it to someone who will address it later. So Dan, do we have a couple merch messages so you can show the people how they work?

[Dan]

I do. I've got one here from lanky. Lanky person. Yeah, lots of blank tall sizes. Why? Hello, lld, as a recently diagnosed ADHD person, what are some of the pros or cons you all find about both having and working working with an ADHD person?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, working with Luke. Why don't you answer that one? What's it like working with an ADHD person?

[Dan]

All three of us?

[Elijah]

You guys saw it earlier where he was like, oh, we're not gonna be able to get too far of a run. Oh. And then it's like, no, we're putting it outside. Luke, do you have an answer?

[Dan]

He disconnected for a second. He might just be ignoring.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe he doesn't want to anymore. Frankly, I couldn't blame him.

[Elijah]

It's. It's cool because you can.

[Dan]

His mic's not working.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, bummer.

[Elijah]

Like you, it's a superpower. And it is also your worst nightmare at the same time. I mean, if you being the person that's asking, I'm sure you're aware of this. You can focus so hard when you're in the zone, but when you're not in the zone, you cannot focus on does the button work? How do I do it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe.

[Elijah]

Is it going to be a problem if it doesn't Work.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Dan]

Try it.

[Elijah]

I don't.

[Dan]

Do it. Do it.

[Elijah]

What was I even going to say? See that? That is what it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you don't get to pick when you focus. Exactly.

[Dan]

And you also don't get to pick when you stop focusing.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would.

[Dan]

Which is also bad.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would be a great superhero. Like, has anyone ever done that as a superhero gimmick where they, like, focus man? Like, they. They can't pick when their powers are active and not. Well, you kind of seen that with like Spider Man's learning. It's Spider man or whatever.

[Elijah]

You play Baldur's Gate with wild magic.

[Linus Sebastian]

And his hands just like stick to things. And he's like, ah, I can't remove my hand from stuff.

[Elijah]

Is Luke doing that thing when you're working from home and you're like on a meeting? It's like just the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is he just looping?

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is he not even there?

[Elijah]

It's like, AI, Luke, can he hear us? I don't think he knows that.

[Dan]

I don't know what's going on.

[Elijah]

We can here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's indicate that we're talking to him. Hi, Luke. Hello, Luke. Can you see us? Is he frozen?

[Elijah]

No, he's.

[Dan]

No, he's not.

[Linus Sebastian]

He's drinking. Are you sure?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

Are we getting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think he's frozen right now. No.

[Dan]

Oh, Luke.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

Are you there?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. I think he's okay. I think he's going to be okay. What I would say the biggest challenge is managing the bursty productivity.

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I mean that both for myself and for unnamed people on our team who also are somewhat neurodivergent because you'll run into a situation where. And like back when I was a much more integral part of the video pre production timeline or pipeline, I would have. I would have this issue right, where two out of the five days of the work week I would get like realistically everything done. And then the other three, I'd be all over the place. But. But what's really but. But on the other hand, it can also be like kind of a superpower during those times because it's like this endless fountain of creativity and you can kind of push a bunch of little projects going and kind of start a bunch of little fires and see what burns. And then. And then you can like hyper focus and finish the other ones. But then also getting something finished, finished is really hard.

[Elijah]

Oh, man. I have so many things, like, I feel like I want to say because, like, in my world, I've noticed since becoming starting Medication for this condition has been an interesting experience because, like, I feel like I start way more things than I used to before. I would get the, like, procrastination of. I don't know if I can do this. So I'm just not even gonna start. I fail before I even get there. That way I can't fail because I just never tried. Right. So now I try and I start doing something and then. Oh, man, I feel like I probably have. Can just show a photo of this, My desk. I'll just. Maybe I'll just show you. Yeah, I can probably just show that on the show, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, you can just send it to Dan.

[Elijah]

See that? Can I just, like, hold it in front of the camera?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you got to send it to Dan.

[Elijah]

How do I send it to you, Dan?

[Dan]

Luke. Luke should be back now. See if you can.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you back?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Hey, welcome back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is going to happen again, just as a warning.

[Dan]

It's not my fault.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hopefully we can recover faster next time.

[Dan]

Yeah, now we know.

[Elijah]

Okay. I sent you a photo, Dan. Hopefully there's nothing. Nothing incriminating in there.

[Dan]

I will.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, lordy. It's fine.

[Elijah]

It's like my desk.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's okay. Nothing important's ever leaked on. When? Before.

[Elijah]

Is there anything NDA on here? No, I think it's probably fine. I think it's fine. There's a couple 3D printers. It's a vibe. You'll. You'll get the vibe immediately, though. There you go. Okay. So this was my office yesterday.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. You can know. You didn't get into, like a cleaning frenzy zone, did you?

[Elijah]

Oh, yeah, I did. I did. I cleaned my. I'll show you the after. After photo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, I see. I knew the second I saw that.

[Elijah]

I was going to describe things. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

The second I saw that, I was like. You did the thing. You were up late tidying, weren't you?

[Elijah]

No, no, actually, it was during Jake tidy. The lights were still on, as you can see. You see this thing right here? Is that like a dad joke bell?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

Is it a real bell?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Elijah]

That's impressive.

[Dan]

It gives him dopamine.

[Elijah]

How did you like adhd? Oh, because you, like Amazon ordered it. While we're on the show. That right there, that black thing is like a dry box for the 3D printer that's down here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Elijah]

I printed it. Before that, I had the 3D printer. It is still sitting in parts on my desk. Now it is sitting in parts beside the 3D printer. Ready to go for something? I will Never put together.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Elijah]

The Prusa XL on The other side, i3D printed an enclosure for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Elijah]

The plexiglass I ordered from China is sitting in my closet, and so are the rest of the parts for the enclosure that I will definitely put together at some point. Those bins, they're all supposed to, like, on the bottom. The filament stores, they're all supposed to have, like, little things in it to, like, pass the filament through. They don't. I've had them for, like, two years, so these are all things I've started. If you can see under the pile, there's, like, a BMW manual clutch pedal. I was gonna make a short throw one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like this was legit.

[Elijah]

I3D scanned it. This is ADHD, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

This could very well be my workspace. I love that you had the intent of having a pegboard wall.

[Elijah]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you have one tool on it.

[Elijah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's like that. That is classic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's lore accurate.

[Elijah]

Yeah, that is classic tannin.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the way, I think you're. I think your carpool mate is with for you.

[Elijah]

Do you want me to leave right now? You're vibing. Okay, cool. Speaking of carpool, you see the cars up there?

[Linus Sebastian]

That all right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, those are tough.

[Elijah]

But anyways, it's like, I start more things, so that's cool. But also, I don't finish as many.

[Linus Sebastian]

That actually transitions us pretty well into something that Luke and I need to talk about because the what will happen first? Will Luke complete Final Fantasy 6 or will I finish painting? My bike race has been heating up hard.

[Elijah]

Dude, you've been.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was. It was a cold war for a long time. Yeah, and now it's guns are blazing.

[Elijah]

Dude, you started that before the PI Project. I'm pretty sure that took ages. Did that work? I really hope that worked.

[Dan]

Yeah, I get to hear it because I'm monitoring differently.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I will say this. Do we want to talk about that later? Why don't we get through merch messages?

[Elijah]

Didn't you tell me it looks. You told me it looks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it's complicated. Okay, you know what? Let's talk about it now. Let's talk about it now. Here we go, Dan.

[Dan]

Yes, it did.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sending you a little video. Sending you a little video. What even is this show anymore?

[Elijah]

Is there supposed to be topics?

[Linus Sebastian]

There are topics.

[Dan]

There's more than one, I'll tell you that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have we done topics yet?

[Dan]

You've did one.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think we did one.

[Dan]

Well, you've been talking about powerwall and garbage for an hour.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not garbage. It's gonna be quality. I hope it's gonna be quality.

[Elijah]

What's the worst that could happen? Burns down. We'll just build another one.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'll build new children.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's content.

[Dan]

Yeah, it's fun.

[Elijah]

The cats is what I was concerned.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

Seven of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got to the point where all the parts that needed to be pink were pink. I had two little drips. Two little drips. You can show the second one first, Dan.

[Elijah]

But you know how to fix the drips, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, here's the problem. Because it's a combination of things, because I'm ambitious, slash foolhardy sometimes. See, I don't have the same issue with not starting things. I start things. That's not a problem. But sometimes I start things that are too big.

[Elijah]

Can I just say, before you continue, I know exactly, exactly where you're going to go with this. And I'm just. I want to write it down, but it's in my brain. I just want you to know that I've acknowledged this. I know where this is about to go, and I really hope that it's the same place that I'm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that was a little early, Dan.

[Elijah]

Go ahead.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, you're doing great, though. Okay.

[Elijah]

Okay. Now I really know where this is going.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I have no problem starting things. But sometimes I am a little too ambitious. So it's a combination of that. And I think I realistically probably got some bad advice at some stage in the paint selection process. Painting is hard because I ended up up with a. Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Anywhere from about an 11 to a 12 layer paint.

[Elijah]

That is a lot of layers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So we got two primer.

[Elijah]

Different kinds of primer or the same primer?

[Linus Sebastian]

The same primer.

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Two of a solid base, a white, and that is all easy, dude. Getting it primed and white, no problem. But I have then after that, a candy, and candy is tough.

[Elijah]

Can you clarify how many coats are supposed to be on this? Because about 11 to 12 for the end. Okay, so this is. Right. So for the uninitiated, some of the complicated paint coats can be like, here you throw down a base coat of a certain color, and then a color coat, and then you have like a pearl coat, and then you have clear coat. Or maybe you have tinted clear coat. Wow. There's a lot of stages.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So. So I have this is one of those. So. So the four of the, like the primer and then the base color 4 to 5. Realistically to get really good coverage with the white because it doesn't cover very well once you get it reduced for the gun. So that's easy. You get a nice even color. If I were to just paint my bike white. Okay. And just clear coat, that I would have been done ages ago. But the pink, the pink candy is a nightmare to get even. And I picked the hardest possible thing to paint with it. Because if I was doing a hood of a car, that's easy, relatively speaking.

[Elijah]

I think you would have a lot of paint people that would also say a flat surface is easy but also hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Elijah]

It's easier to fix the screw ups that you will inevitably have a multifaceted.

[Linus Sebastian]

Three dimensional piece with nowhere to freaking hold it and all these different tiny little surfaces is really hard to get even. And I finally. And wheels.

[Elijah]

Yeah, I was just gonna say wait till you try wheels.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I have progress though. I have progress on the wheels. But anyway, hold on. First, Dan, bring up the picture. I had two little drips. Two little drips in the pink. And I actually found a technique to fix them. Fixing candy. You read online they say it's impossible and it's basically impossible. But I found a technique that actually worked. You can kind of see it in the very bottom right where it was a little bit too big to work on this one. But I almost fixed that spot.

[Elijah]

Are you talking about the part where all the paint is missing?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no. On the very. In the very, very bottom right of the gray part.

[Elijah]

Which part?

[Linus Sebastian]

The. I don't know. Dan, could you have a mouse cursor? Can you even.

[Dan]

I'm trying.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whatever. There's a little spot that almost has like kind of a little white outline. So basically what happened there was we kind of peeled it back and then masked around and then used like a little airbrush, like for doing those like temp tattoos. Little airbrush. Got it on there.

[Elijah]

What was the defect? Was this like a dust nib.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it was an awful drip. I don't even know where it came from.

[Elijah]

Okay, I see.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it was like purple. Like it went on so heavy. It was like purple in that spot. So we see. So we got it off. Managed to put that on. It wouldn't have looked great, but it would have been passable for the level of quality that I've resigned to at this point.

[Elijah]

And this is pre clear cut coat, but.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but when I went to pull the masking tape off, it ripped that whole strip off. So, Dan, do you want to bring up the video that should.

[Dan]

Yeah, sure.

[Elijah]

I don't think that was supposed to happen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not even a little.

[Elijah]

I don't think your paint is bonded very well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I can tell you that the white is bonded real good to the primer because this is how long it took to get the white off the primer.

[Elijah]

It doesn't look like anything's coming out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's coming out.

[Elijah]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, you can see it.

[Elijah]

Wow. It's really on there.

[Linus Sebastian]

On the entire front fairing piece of my bike, it took like four and a half hours. So I was at the point where everything was pink coated and then this happened. The good news is this piece is now white, needs to be sanded white one more time, and then I'm ready to paint it pink again. And I'm not going to get a drip on it this time anyway. And Jake, I figured out wheels.

[Elijah]

What do you mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

My wheels look like butt right now.

[Elijah]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I'm re white coating them. But we finally found a technique. So in order to get the candy on there even we made this. Dan, you can move that.

[Elijah]

Who is we?

[Linus Sebastian]

Ivonne's been helping me a little bit. Oh.

[Elijah]

So we roped her into this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. We took my drill and then we took a bunch of rolls of tape, like small ones that fit in the big ones and basically made like a. Like a spinny wheel on it. And so she basically watches for a landmark as it turns around and is like, okay, three, two, one, go. And I start spraying. And then she's like, okay, three, two, one, go. And I move it off and it's.

[Elijah]

Like this is spinning the wheel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. While she's. While she's spinning it with the drill with like a big, like tape roll thing on it.

[Elijah]

So I actually 3D printed a thing recently because I bought new wheels.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of course.

[Elijah]

Yeah. Because I wanted to ceramic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of course. To both of those.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Elijah]

So I 3D printed a thing so I could spin the wheel while I was ceramic coating it and then proceeded to not use it. I just. I have it.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're only doing a solid color, it doesn't matter. It's not that hard. But if you are. If you're doing a candy. And I'm not even going for the whole thing. One solid candy. So I'm doing a pink stripe.

[Elijah]

You know they make like candy powder coating too, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Well, I didn't do that.

[Elijah]

And it would have been stronger and cheaper.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they wouldn't have matched, though.

[Elijah]

What, all. If you did all of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but it's not just the candy. There's the two layers of candy and then there's the two layers of pearl.

[Elijah]

Yeah, well, it wouldn't have been the exact same thing. Yeah, but it would have been pretty nice. It probably would have been better overall, to be honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is great. Also, Beltrick says, just pay a professional Mr. Millionaire. That is not the point. What would I even do if I just paid people to do things? What would I do? Do? What would I do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That comment bothered so many people. I responded to it. Somebody else in chat responded to it. You respond to it.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're all just like, what? No, that's not the point.

[Elijah]

So is the point that you should have just left it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, just like left it silver?

[Elijah]

No. Well, left.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I 100% should have done that.

[Elijah]

The drip. Could you not? Because, like, I've. I've seen people do drip repairs before. I've seen techniques where they like fill the surround with Bondo and then sand it down so that you're sanding down the Bondo on the outside and not ruining the rest of it. I've seen techniques where they like just strip everything down and do it again. I've seen it where they cut it with a knife. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I basically did the knife thing. But the only issue is that when I peeled it up, it. It hadn't cured enough yet. It was. It was too fresh.

[Elijah]

That was bare metal. Was it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because. No, no, that was primer. So I, I did the same thing on my tank. Tank. And the tank worked. Did you actually can't find the spot on the tank?

[Elijah]

Did you not like sand enough between the primer and the top coat?

[Linus Sebastian]

So let's see, that was on the.

[Elijah]

Was it too long between? Too little between?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it could have been too long between the primer coat, but I think it was just mostly that it hadn't been long enough since I did the. Since I did the pink on the wall light.

[Elijah]

Well, when this is done, I think it would be really fun for us to polish it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, God.

[Elijah]

I want to. I want, like, I want you and me. We should polish it.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, we should.

[Elijah]

It'll be fun. It'll make it look so much better. Dude, you have to polish it after. Otherwise just not going to look good. You get rid of all the dust nibs and stuff.

[Dan]

Yeah. You like actually.

[Elijah]

Do you actually need to. Yeah, that's going to look like crap.

[Dan]

It's like requirement Even if you clear coat it.

[Elijah]

Yeah. I mean usually when a body shop polishes stuff after they paint it, it looks like crap. Like we fix so many. Like body shop tried to polish a car.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have enough.

[Elijah]

So many.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have enough hours in this project that for you to say anything that sounds. Anything like more hours is just going to make me instantly recoil.

[Dan]

It'll only take a couple days.

[Elijah]

Right now just put everything in a bin and go to a powder coating shop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Solve your problem.

[Dan]

That's what I'm going to do with my wheels. I'm not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you powder coat plastic? I'm not aware of that. I mean that piece you were looking at was plastic, so.

[Dan]

Yeah, you gotta.

[Elijah]

I should probably.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's. That's. Oh, okay. That's part of the nightmare of painting a bike is that I have steel pieces, aluminum pieces and plastic pieces and.

[Elijah]

They'Re gonna be seven different colors. Even though he painted.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently traditional powder coating does not work on plastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it would melt.

[Dan]

You have to bake it.

[Elijah]

I think I've seen plastic, fancy plastic powder coats, coat stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm sure. Dude, there's enough material science these days. I'm sure somebody figured something out. Anyway. Drive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Specialized industrial methods seem to. Something. Something, whatever.

[Elijah]

Yeah, powder coating is cool though. Anyways, goodbye.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, Drive safe.

[Elijah]

See you later, Luke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bye.

[Elijah]

See you, Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess. Yeah, he. He never acknowledges me when I tell him to drive safe.

[Elijah]

Oh, no, I usually say I won't. I also say the same thing to my mom and she doesn't like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, she wouldn't. Neither do I. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

See you later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So this time. This time he crosses the camera.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, you figured it out that it's better to just quickly go that way than to painstakingly make his way across over here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I. I have updates as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now he's back. Oh.

[Dan]

Oh, you later.

[Linus Sebastian]

Jeez. Okay. Okay. So. So how's your. Okay, so hold on. I should probably give the update. So all but that piece that need to be pink are pink. But they still need two more pearl coats and then two to three clear coats before I can actually like drop anything off for reassembly with the shop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you definitely can't finish before 2am.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you gonna be done today?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. But you're gonna be leaving the country.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And thus away from your bike.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And luckily my project is portable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay. All right. How many. How many of the party have you reassembled? In the world of ruin?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm in the world of ruin.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But just barely. Oh, but I still think. I still think I'm gonna beat you. I still think I'm gonna beat you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I still think I'm gonna beat you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The reason why it's not that good is because I also have had a progress issue.

[Dan]

Oh, no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I lost a save.

[Linus Sebastian]

What? How do you lose a save? You're playing on Steam.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I genuinely have no idea. I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

What. How much did you lose?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Something. Something happened with. Quite a bit. Something happened with Cloud Sync. I. I, like, I. You know, I pre installed it on my laptop. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I pre installed it on my laptop because I knew a fair amount of play time while I was on the strip was going to be offline.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is Final Fantasy 6 as it'll influence plane chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I. Yeah, I installed it like at my house ahead of time. Cloud synced everything before I left. And then on the plane I loaded it up and it was like way earlier than where I was like, like many hours lost.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which usually, like I have quit games over that before. Like just fully just whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm like, no, forget it, I'm out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's it. But this is a challenge, a competition of sorts.

[Linus Sebastian]

I almost quit Final Fantasy Tactics over an issue like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I've done this many times.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I got to the. I got to the notorious fight where if you don't happen to build Ramza correctly, you literally can't win it. And I ended up. I thought I had lost like 10 hours, but I had only lost like three or four. So I. So I stuck it out. But I was so mad. I was so mad. I think we've. Every gamer has probably felt that. And it's just like the rage to how much this matters ratio is probably the highest out of anything that I've ever experienced because at the end of the day, it's a video game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so it doesn't matter at all. But the rage is so high. So that was. That was me like probably an hour into my flight because I didn't pull out the laptop immediately. You know, I kind of got settled. You have to wait for the. The belt thingy to the. The buckle thingy to the light to go off, all that kind of stuff. I finally get the laptop, I load it up and I just stare at it for a while thinking like, there's got to be some way to fix this, right? And like, obviously no livin says just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Grind to level aerith. She'll be great later in the game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So, yeah, so I, I, I pushed really hard. I was for, for certain context. It went so far back. I had no s. Like I lost multiple saves worth and I don't understand what at all what happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I, I, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's all on that one flight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

On the one flight. Because I've now I've done this. So now I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going. Those types of things. I realized that the, some of the things in the game are very weird. Like some of Sabin's stuff scale off of magic, even though he's like a martial arts guy and stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Things, things are just kind of odd. But now I know those things. So I just got into like a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way more experienced run, then go mode.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I, I got to past where I was before on the one flight, which is like wildly compressed before compared to before. And I'm, I'm kind of flying. I'm much more knowledgeable now on like, you know, checking for weaknesses and hitting things with the right magic and stuff like that. So like the fight to get to the floating continent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just blitzed through it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it was ridiculous.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It ended up being so easy. Like, I think you commented last time we talked about this, you commented about how the Pixel remaster is too easy. I think you said, yeah, yeah, I, I get to that fight with Ultros and whatever his big buddy is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whatever. Yeah, something or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I like two shot Ultros. Like just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so you're like, you're like super overpowered now then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm jacked.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And like, I'm doing better about like, making sure that I'm min maxing having the right esper on the right person when they level up to gain the bonus.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many characters do you have in the World of Ruin? Oh, no. He suggested a poll. Dan, do it, do it. Whether Luke will Finish Final Fantasy 6 or I will finish painting the SV650.

[Dan]

Sure. Give me one second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now hold on a second. Hold on. We got to define completion here. Is Luke allowed to, like, look up guides when he gets to the World of Ruin or does he use the paper manual?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

Paper manual is all I had when I was a kid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like it's got to be paper. But you're getting help from Avon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not much. For what it's worth. And I'm there working on it every time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I will say I am completely down with whatever judgment comes here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I am totally fine with paper manual.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, let's do paper manual.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is my completion complete when I finish painting it it, or when the shop assembles the bike?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like, when are you gonna let your beard grow out?

[Linus Sebastian]

When I'm done painting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not when the shop finishes assembly.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no. I'll do when I'm done. When I'm done painting, I'm done. Like, I don't need the mask anymore then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Personally, I think it's paint.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm making this harder for myself. I'm saying paper manual, and you can just finish when you're painting. But I think both of those things make sense.

[Elijah]

Sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As much as I'm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people are saying they think I should be okay. Just for. To catch you guys up. The. The. The bet is whether Luke will Finish Final Fantasy 6, a game that I've been bugging him to play basically since we met, because it was like my favorite childhood game. Even though I have realized in also playing through the Pixel remaster at the same time as him, because I got it in my head at some point that I was going to be super ambitious and both finish Final Fantasy 6 and paint my bike in the time it took him to finish it. Anyway, that's not happening. Or if I will finish painting my motorcycle, which has been an ongoing project for, I think about two years now. Okay, I'm gonna look at the results. I'm ready to see the results. I'm kind of afraid to look at the results. Okay. I'm looking at the results. Who will finish first? Come on.

[Dan]

Move it over. Move it over.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry. I'll move it. I'll move it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Normally with this question, you think it'd be the other way around, but 80%.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow. Three kids, buddy. Three kids.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get that other poll out of there. We all know they all use Firefox. Jeez. Well, you know what? You know what, haters? I'm gonna go home tonight and I'm gonna pack and I'm gonna do some sanding. Yeah, sure.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How. How much? Because I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

No way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When. When? Honestly, when the. When the ship flying thing was happening, when I was getting to the floating continent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought the game was ending.

[Dan]

Final Fantasy.

[Linus Sebastian]

I suppose you imagine. Imagine that the final boss only has two phases, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I have no idea. The only other Final Fantasy I've played through is 8. And with 8, I played it through on PC. So you had all the discs, so you kind of knew, right? Like there's more content coming. Right. When I hit Floating Continent, I was like, oh, okay. I guess there's more to this.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a lot more to it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I kind of got that vibe. I also started kind of mulling over, like, all right, well, there's, like, a level cap and stuff, and my level is not very high. I don't know if you're expected to hit the level cap because I'm like, I don't know. Pokemon? You're not at all. Okay, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. No, not even. Do you remember what the stakes are of this bet? Noki's asking. Are there stakes? I don't even remember.

[Dan]

I don't think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was so long ago that I literally cannot remember the circumstances of us making this bet.

[Dan]

I don't think there was. It was just sort of like, otter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don'T underestimate how hard we will try.

[Dan]

It was a friendly handshake, kind of bragging rights type of thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Honestly, I got so focused on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Zeus says maybe we should vote again. After hearing you talk about how you thought the game was over and you're at the halfway mark.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I'm not looking stuff up. I'm trying to, like. And honestly, it. It hit a lull there the last time I was playing. Yeah, it's cooking again. The game's fun again right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

How many characters do you have in the World of Ruin?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'd have to load it up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. You have more than one, though. Do you have. Do you have Terra?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay. Okay. You're moving pretty good, then. He's. He's moving pretty good, boys. I will say that I definitely hit a lull again to the point where I just, like, haven't played it again after where you are. Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dang. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

With most.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, with the game. It's such a game this long. It. It makes sense that there'd be multiple lull points. The. The only thing I'm not really enjoying right now, now is that it. It feels like it has a man. It's a great game. I need to be very clear about that before I complain about anything. It's fantastic. But if I played this game at, like, the same time that you did, this would probably be in my, like, top three all time. I'm not even. I'm not surprised.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is good. It hasn't aged perfectly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And I think one of the things that has made it not age perfectly is it came from an era where people would, like, in a review of a game. People would include the estimated completion time and if it was too short, they'd complain. People would rate it lowly.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you know what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which was dumb.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, that is something we never touch on when we discuss the cost of games over time. Because back when we were buying games for 60, 70 US dollars, but it was the mid-90s, games were, were expensive. Like I don't think I knew anyone as a kid who had more than like half a dozen games in their library for a given console.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So your game needed to be long so you could get a lot of value.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the time you had five games, you had literally spent more than you spent on the console and controllers on the game titles. Right. Like that was the dynamic. Whereas now we treat games like they're just disposable, you know, like oh yeah, I tried that game. I didn't really like it. I like, I played it for too long to get a Steam refund so like whatever. But it was $8 in the steam summer sale, so who cares, you know? Yeah, it's a totally different mentality.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like having more than four or five games was pretty surprising because I remember people would do a lot of trade ins and stuff back then too because things are so expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh no.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or you trade with your buddies or whatever. People say you'll love Expedition 33. Yeah, I, I, I'm not gonna play it right now because I need to finish Fantasy 6. But I, I wish listed it because it looks really cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think you got time, Luke. I, I haven't, I haven't finished rewiting the wheels yet. After I do that, I have to pink the wheels. After I do that I have to mask the wheels, then I have to black them, then I have to clear coat them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I was, I was legitimately worried you're gonna be done on this show.

[Dan]

Dude, he has to start again.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. No. And, and the scariest part of the whole thing is still coming because the frame, which I did pink ages ago, I never did the pearl on. So it's been sitting there for about a year with just pink on it. So I have to clean it, I have to tack cloth it it and then I have to oh my God, I hope I succeed at this. Do my very first pearl coat. I haven't pearled anything yet, so there's plenty of time for me to screw up and have to go back to square one on any number of different parts. Like I am, I am many, many, many hours from completion on this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, I pulls just about the One thing I'm kind of noticing is just the, the kind of like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I gained 15 points in the polls though. Sorry, I'm listening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The, the Time Wasty bits.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the grind.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The, the grind. And I mean, that's, that's a classic.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're coming up on some grind tastic parts, I'll tell you that much. Like, gotcha.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of the spells that have like 1x growth rate and stuff. Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then being a little bit more intentional about like trying to actually use the espers to learn spells.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. And back to the completion thing. Does he have to get the whole party together? And I'm not even talking about like optional characters like Go Go and Umaro. I'm talking. Does he have to get the world of Balance cast back together or can he just like, try to take on Kafka's Tower with like eight? People are saying any percent. They say any percent. You can do whatever you want.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Almost everybody's saying no or any percent.

[Linus Sebastian]

But interesting to be. There's no way lose gonna play a game like that. That's hilarious. There's, I know this man too well. I already knew the answer before I asked the question. There's absolutely no way. No shot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What was the answer?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's no way you're not gonna get the whole team back together. There's just no way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was gonna say I'm probably gonna do it anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

A huge part of what makes this game so special is the ensemble cast and you kind of get attached to them. He's not gonna not go, yeah, go get Shadow. Like, you gotta be kidding me. You saved Shadow, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, good. I thought he was gonna say who.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's so funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got a little freaked out about it. I, I, I did, I did do a little worried save.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I was like, I don't know if this like, he might actually just die, but I'm happy that he, he doesn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So I found.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, I'm gonna, I'm, I, I'm. The whole chat said any percent or no. But honestly, I'm, I'm gonna go get everyone. So, so it doesn't really make a difference for me because I'm planning on trying to get everybody. I didn't actually, that was a my, I don't care. To be clear. But that's a minor spoiler because I didn't know if everyone was okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

We should probably do sponsors. Dan's had the sign up for like 40 minutes.

[Dan]

Yeah, we're just about it. When after dark.

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, everyone knows I love sandals, but they just can't offer the same functionality as our sponsor, Vessi. Their shoes are breathable, lightweight, and most importantly, they help keep your socks dry. Oh, and of course they are more fashionable than sandals. I mean, subjective, but sure, their weekend sneakers aren't just great for day to day activities either. I actually wore them during my Asia trip not that long ago. Oh, look at that. Dennis has me wearing my shoes in the rain. Huh? That's me. Oh. Oh my goodness. It rained so hard that day. That was at Universal Studios. Anywho, we're going to Taiwan for Computex next week and Dennis even bought another pair last minute as a gift for his mom. Look at that. Did he really? So he did. What a guy. He's worn them everywhere from strolling through Thailand to racking up 20,000 steps a day in Tokyo. With a thicker, cushioned midsole and relaxed fit, they are perfect for a long walk. So pack smarter and travel better with Vessi. Visit vessi.com wanshow now for 15% off, your first parrot check out and start exploring with confidence. The show is also brought to you by Delete Me. Did you know a piece of you might have been sold online? I'm talking about your data, your address, phone number, email, and even details about your loved ones. Well, don't let data brokers cash in on your personal information. Our sponsor, Deleteme can help remove your data from hundreds of these data brokers. Their team of experts tracks down your information and gets it wiped from these. Dennis tried it out himself and found that his data was listed on seven sites, including a lot of sensitive details. But Deleteme helped remove them all. The removal process was simple. Just sign up and their experts do the work for you. You'll receive a detailed report in 7 days. And it doesn't stop there. DeleteMe can keep scanning and deleting for you regularly all year long. So check them out using the link below and use code WAN at checkout to get 20% off. The show is also brought to you by Squarespace. Slacking off too much at your 9 to 5? Why not fire yourself up and turn your creative side hustle into a bit or your creative side into a creative side hustle? With our sponsor, Squarespace, you can create a stunning website for your business in just minutes. Squarespace is an all in one platform that lets you manage everything in one place, from booking photo shoots to invoicing clients, to even lightening 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. They also support all major credit cards and many other popular payment methods. It's so easy. We built our Linus Media Group website on Squarespace. You can check out their new AI website builder too. It helps to simplify your design process by providing custom design suggestions, text and images. So start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase by by visiting squarespace.com wan all right, it says two to three more topics oh my goodness. We haven't talked about the VPN firm that canceled lifetime subscriptions because, and I quote, they didn't know about them. This is amazing. Sources Ars Technica My jaw just about hit the floor when I was reading this. In March of this year, VPN Secure customers began complaining online about lifetime subscriptions no longer working. Lifetime subscription holders then began receiving emails that stated lifetime deal accounts had been deactivated as of April 28. An email posted on Reddit notes that VPN Secure has been acquired by new ownership in 2023 in an asset only deal. So this new owner acquired the technology, domain and customer database, but not the liabilities. That is a direct quote. What glorious. The new ownership claims that the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of LTD's or lifetime deals had been sold through platforms like Stack Social. And they stated that they only discovered the lifetime deal accounts months later after finding that their resources were being stringed by LTD customers who provided no sustaining income to the service. Too bad. When you acquire a company you get. Okay, hold on. VPN Secure sent out an additional email this week reiterating that the acquisition was an asset only deal. Don't you understand? It was an asset only deal. And after we reviewed 6 to 12 months of VPN Secure's previous financials before the purchase, the listing, profit and loss statements and communications never mentioned these lifetime deals. Yeah, but you see the P and L. If you see the profit and loss, then what are we even talking about here?

[Luke Lafreniere]

If it was an asset only deal, it should have quite literally canceled all subscriptions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well yeah, then you should have. No, you can't have it both ways. You can't have the monthly subscriptions, but not the lifetime date. You don't get to pick which customers you acquire. VPN Secure has offered affected users discounted new subscriptions of $1.87 a month instead of $9.95, $19 for a year instead of $80, or $55 for three years instead of $107 until the end of May. Here's a suggestion. How about you not buy anything from a company that treats you so disrespectfully? There's an idea. And I'm not even going to poison this segment by mentioning another VPN that you could sign up for, because that is not the point right now. The point right now is don't give them a dime. Not one penny. If you weren't worth it to them as a customer, who by the way, already paid for the service, then you aren't worth it to them as a customer, period. That's how this works. Since March, there have apparently been 20 pages of one star reviews on Trustpilot. And VPN Secure is responding on Trustpilot, acknowledging it could have communicated better with customers. No, no. What you could have done is not renege on a deal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't think there's a way to communicate this better. I think I'm going to be pissed anyways. And it also says like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Despite not assuming the previous company's contracts or payments, like that doesn't sound right. They had the monthlies, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

As far as I know, the new ownership says they kept the lifetime accounts active for two years as a gesture of goodwill. No, they didn't notice it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You didn't know?

[Linus Sebastian]

They made it very clear they didn't notice it. And then their third message claims the new owners didn't gain access to the customer database for months after the acquisition. Dude, I. I'm sorry. I just don't feel bad for you. That's. I. I'm sorry. I. There's no. There is absolutely no right answer here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm afraid, other than incredibly low cost of VPN users was worth the 20 pages and hopefully in probably more one star reviews you're having now. Idiots.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who's AF1 says, Luke, would you sue the company if you had a lifetime sub? Come on, we all know the answer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. Yeah, it's so much work and it's probably so expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, basically. And it's like, I think that's something that a lot of people don't necessarily consider is that it's really easy to make a video about how you're suing someone or whatever, actually following through on it, like to the point where there's an actual judgment and. Or settlement of some sort. That's like saying would. It's a ton of work. No one's interested in it. It's not content anymore, only the initial announcement. You know, the big bombshell is Content. Nothing else is content. So it's just gonna die. And it's just. And it's like you gotta, you gotta weigh the cost benefit, right? Like, what is Luke owed? Dozens of dollars? What's it gonna cost to have even an exploratory call with a lawyer? Come on.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If somebody already set up a class action lawsuit, people are, people are asking if I would join that. And it's like, even then, man. Like, what am I gonna get from it? Like if I'm gonna click one button. I don't know. Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the, the honestly, the biggest impact thing that I could do is to obviously never bring them my business again. Go somewhere else, leave that one star review and try to get as many other people to do the same. Because if they have 1 star reviews everywhere, like if it's. If like, you know, there's trustpilot, but if they also have one star reviews on. I'm assuming they're on the app stores and everything else. If they have just one star reviews everywhere, then that's it. Unless they do a major rebrand, which is going to cost them a huge amount of money and kind of ruin a huge part of the reason why they bought this company anyways. They're just like screwed. There's so many VPNs out there. People aren't going to just go to the, the one star one constantly.

[Linus Sebastian]

People are talking about small claims court. I can't speak to every other jurisdiction, but small claims court here is intended for like local defendants. Like I can't take some like Israeli or you know, Chinese company to small claims court like that. On they. They would have. Under what authority am I going to summon them to the courthouse like that? That's the thing, right? Like it, it's not happening. Anyway. Someone says in the US you can. Okay, well that's great and I wish you luck with that. But yeah, here it's woefully impractical.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know the nice voice crack. I don't know the, the country lines thing. Like we're, we're only could be aware of our, our local stuff and even then, barely, if I'm being completely honest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Inception was says if they don't show up, then the judge sides with you in small claims court. Yeah, that's nice. But so what. How am I going to actually get anything from them? Is. Is the judge also going to like get on a plane and go to their headquarters and like rough them up if they don't pay Definitely going to go get my. Yeah. What are we. It's not, it's not actually that simple to actually get the money out of someone that supposedly has lost in small claims court. All right, what else, what else we got this week? Do we want to talk about some good news?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is so cool here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna fire up the promo that Philips did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is like, dude, how is a company this big doing something this cool?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was stunned to be honest.

[Dan]

Is this, this is real.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is real.

[Dan]

That is incredible.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is real fixables, dude. They partnered with Prusa.

[Dan]

This was the point of 3D printing when it was first like coming onto the scene. Seen like a decade ago.

[Elijah]

Dude.

[Dan]

So you could just like, oh my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could just make Philips compatible like replacement pieces and adapters and they've got a whole thing like look like that. Dude, this is so cool. They've got, they've got Joseph freaking Prusa in the promo for it.

[Dan]

It's like the best news a WAN show's ever had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is genuinely, incredibly cool. They will have my business for this reason. Reason I. Yeah.

[Dan]

30 years ago. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, I don't know anything. I. Okay. I don't not know anything. I don't know much about Phillips. Right. In, in the last, you know, 10 years, what have they done that's been on my radar? They have overpriced light bulbs. I don't know. They have like, oh, we use them here.

[Dan]

Has the Philips hue.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. Right. But like, like have they done anything that has even remotely seemed this cool that has shown up on your guys's radar in the last decade?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Definitely not. But I don't think anyone in the spaces that Philips operates in has either to defend them a little.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh no, I'm not attacking them. I'm not attacking them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just making it clear for other people.

[Dan]

They do a lot of healthcare stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, this came completely out of nowhere for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I was just so, I was so excited to see this that I just didn't, I don't know. I don't really know what else to say other than this is super cool. So they've teamed up with Prusa Research to launch Philips Fixables aiming to encourage self repair of Philips products using 3D printed replacement components which will be available on printables.com Philips will include recommended print settings to ensure that your 3D printed parts are sturdy enough to be a long term solution. And there's only one design so far. But the website and promo video show additional 3D printed parts for Philips grooming products and users are able to submit requests for specific parts if they're not already available. So it's baby steps right now in the infancy. But right now, if this is what it seems to be on the surface, I am so amped and this is enough to significantly sway my purchase decision between like a Philips something or an oral B, that thing or you know, a Norelco shaver or a Philips shaver like I am, you know, I'm so in.

[Dan]

Same here, Same here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what's interesting is people are talking about how apparently it's like trending on thingiverse or whatever already. I wonder if this could be an interesting way to inform like product development because if you see that one part in comparison to all the other ones that you're offering, if they don't mind.

[Linus Sebastian]

This for data, they're crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you're like, wow, this one part seems to be breaking a lot. Let's re engineer that a little bit on the next model and make it better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or like everyone and their dog prints a number five and a half buzz cut.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We should add that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That should be in the standard kit. Yeah. You know, dude, this is, this is cash money or I hope it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's so killer.

[Linus Sebastian]

This kind of behavior should absolutely be rewarded.

[Dan]

It will affect my purchase decisions easily. If there's a Philips equivalent to something else I'm reaching for.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Philips Panda says Philips is Norelco law. Okay, well fine. Branding works then. I guess they've indoctrinated me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someone in full Plane chat also said that they're in the market for new beard trimmer and they're going to get a Philips one now because of it. This is like, this is where, you know, voting with your wallet works both ways, right?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I hate how often it has to be like a negative message. This is, this is exciting. This is an option.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to support this personally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Send a positive message like, gives me.

[Dan]

Hope for the future.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was actually, I went as far as ordering the replacement battery for my, my electric toothbrush. I think it's A, I want to say it's an oral B or something like that. And I was so, so I was so annoyed to discover how difficult it is to replace the battery in it, but I found out it's possible. And then I had like a video title idea in my mind that was like my toothbrush shouldn't be this hard to fix. And the idea was I was gonna do, like, a handful of little fixes around the house that were, like, rejuvenating things. And then we did that sponsored thing with what's their nuts? Life in or something like that, and I started using that toothbrush, and then I got distracted by some other shiny video project, and then. So we never ended up doing the video. But having had that experience with that other toothbrush and then seeing Philips's attitude here, there's just absolutely no question that I would consider a brand that built that kind of impossible to repair ability into their toothbrush anymore. I just wouldn't even consider it anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm looking them up right now because I'm not. I wasn't actually sure of the. The brand of my toothbrush and shaver, and it. I. I guess I'm already in the Philips ecosystem, so there's not a ton more I can do.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But. But, hey, they'll have continued purchases for me, I guess, over time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, I mean, we're in a unique position where there's definitely things that we can do, you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So at least there's that. So, you know, back to the VPN thing and this, you know, we could talk about it on the WAN show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That hopefully makes a difference. All right, what else? What else we got this week?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Energy star going down.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want to talk about podcasters not wanting public play counts. Spotify.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is funny to me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Spotify has responded to podcaster backlash over the Plays feature that was announced last week. Plays was announced as a new publicly visible metric of how many times an episode of a podcast has been actively watched or listened to, rounded to the nearest thousand. Spotify said this would help users attract new audiences. But podcasters were quick to criticize the features, with most feeling that plays would give additional promotion to podcasts that already have large audiences and make small shows less appealing to new listeners. Spotify announced changes earlier today, updating the program. So plays only start to be displayed after 50,000 plays and will only update at specific milestones instead of being more granular. So, Luke, what do you think about this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like their update might be worse because. Because now people are just gonna see and discard everything else, which is, like, so bad. Wow. Yeah, I feel like that's, like, the worst pivot they could have almost possibly done. I'm not. I feel like, in a weird way, I'm not super surprised that some podcasters don't want to show the play count.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I have got. Oh, I've got so many thoughts about that, but, yes, carry on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I mean, a lot of that comes down to podcast ad rates being, like, super, super high for some reason, compared to any other form of media, which I've never understood. And now I'm wondering if it's because play counts are hidden.

[Linus Sebastian]

As far as I can tell, the entire model for podcast advertising, which, yes, to your point, commands an astonishing cpm compared to, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Compared to video, which makes no sense to me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Absolutely no sense. The only difference, as far as I can tell, and the reason that podcasting commands this extremely high rate is that it has this air of, like, exclusivity, or not exclusivity, but, like, professionalism, slash, old media that it has somehow carried over from the radio days and a lot of relationships with radio advertisers moved into the podcasting space. And because it uses a lot of the same bull metrics that newspapers and magazines and radio did to calculate their reach. So podcasting advertisers, as far as I can tell, have just been bamboozled for years and years and years into paying rates that make absolutely no sense, as far as I can tell. Like, I have seen the numbers that agencies have floated by us for what they think a podcast that is equivalently sized to the WAN show might be able to bring in. And I'm looking at it going like, this is more than we do in AdSense sponsor integrations and, like, merch sales, like, what. What is even. What is even going on right now? But it's very, very old media. The way that the podcasting advertising space works, and I guarantee you the last thing they want is transparency in terms of seeing how many people are actually listening to any of this. And it's something that I've tried to. It's something I've tried to figure out multiple times, because every once in a while, I will have someone reach out and invite me onto their podcast. And one of the things that I will try to figure out is. And like, look, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but. But is this a real podcast, you know, or is this just like a dude and his friend who bought a snowball and this is, like, their first episode? Like, I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do a little bit of due diligence to make sure that I am optimizing my time. And, you know, so I don't. I have done. I have done interview requests with very, very small publications in the past, and I have turned down very big ones. It's not a hard and fast rule. It's not just like, oh, well, like, are you big enough? It's not like that. But I also like to do my due diligence because there have been times when I've collaborated with people and not done due diligence in the past that haven't worked out so great. So I. So basically there have been multiple times that I've kind of sat down and I've looked at a podcast and gone, okay, is anybody actually listening to this? It is flipping impossible to tell how big one podcast is compared to another one. Unless it's like, you know, the top ranked, you know, handful per category or per country or whatever. Like there are some metrics, but even then it is tough to know which ones are relevant. People are talking about like Fallon and stuff. Okay, no, no, no, not, not, not, not related to that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, not a big enough podcast, I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gonna need to, gonna need to question that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. So I gotta tell you, as an advertiser, you're probably coming up against the same information wall where you just cannot tell if anybody is actually consuming this media or not. And what I suspect is that the vast majority of podcasts are just part of a roster of podcasts or like a. A bundle of podcasts that are being sold by agencies, some of which are performing, but most of which absolutely nobody is listening to and do not want anybody to know that nobody is listening to it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's also extremely easy to these days and it has been for a while now, probably four years, five years maybe. It's been extremely easy to make a very professional looking and honestly, decently professional sounding podcast.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

With some of the solutions that are out there. You put that some people were listen to Luke today.

[Dan]

That's not like Foghorn.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't blame you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You took it personal. We were copying the Joe Rogan setup for a while. These days it seems to be more of the Andrew Huberman one where it's that like spaced out wooden slat wall with the black behind it.

[Dan]

They're all like sitting on a couch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A very plain table. And then you have two like SM7BS and if you can buy that, and a two mic audio interface, which you can do because of the road casters. Everything's kind of like solved for people now. Elgato can get you your lights and things really quickly and easily. When we were first doing this, it was weird, complicated. Steal things from the audio industry, try to make it work, science. And now it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or, you know, actual training which we didn't have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

And if you have a tiny bedroom or a tiny room, it's much easier to treat, you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And if you don't do video. Oh, easy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But even, even what my point is even doing the video side, which is, I think, actually I think there's something there. I, A lot of these smaller podcasts have been doing video these days and I think it's on purpose and I think it's because you can achieve that professional look quite easily. And then if you can get in one of these bundles, or if you can, at least if you can make yourself look professional or whatever, if you can pay to have a very reputable guest, come on, Even if you're not getting a ton of views, if you can get some clips from it, if you can get whatever else, you can make yourself look very popular. There was, there was some proof not that long ago that people were making fake podcasts and using that to promote products. I don't know if you've heard about this, but they would make these podcast looking sets with these, the wooden slats in the background with the black behind the wooden slats, maybe a fake little ikea plant, the SM7B's wooden table, people facing each other. It wouldn't even be a real podcast. It would just be two people talking about like, yeah, this thing like changed my life, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it would look like a discussion, but it was a, like a shadow advertisement. It's, it's fake influencers pretending that they're having a podcast and they're just naturally talking about something, but they're not, they're advertising very specifically for a product. That was a huge thing for a while that became a thing because achieving this professional looking podcast look became relatively, I know I'm saying cheap when it's a few thousand dollars, but relatively cheap.

[Linus Sebastian]

And easy for how much money you can gain back from it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cheap, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's why you see that a lot on TikTok. Yeah, I don't know, I don't use TikTok, but that, I know that was a thing for quite a while. I'm not surprised it's still a thing. And when you know that the barrier of entry is that low, if you can use that low barrier of entry to get into the podcasting space and then hide under a non reported play count, like, I promise you, people are gaming that system. I, I would bet very solid cash that people would be gaming that system.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, I fully, as someone who has had to claw My way for every. For every bit of recognition. Do you have any idea how hard it was to sell sponsorships against YouTube videos 13 years ago?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, especially when you were effectively the first one doing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you have any idea how hard that was? And, like, the craziest part to me back in the day was like, I had metrics, and I'm up against these guys that have no metrics. As far as I can tell, nobody is actually watching any of it. And I see the kinds of deals and budgets that they're getting, and I'm just like, this is insane. Just completely stop writing their checks, sign them over to me, and immediately watch your ROI go up. But it took a decade. It took a decade for people to figure it out, and a lot of them still haven't. So as someone who had to actually have all of my performance completely transparent to every brand and every viewer that I've ever engaged with, every collaborator that I've ever worked with, I support it, Put play counts on it.

[Dan]

Yeah, I've got our podcast metrics here if you want any insight or you want me to share any insight site. But are they real? Who knows? Did they report them properly?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We don't get a ton on the. On the listing side, which is we do.

[Dan]

We get 75% over the video side of our Spotify.

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually have no idea what our podcast numbers are. Sorry, Dan, are you talking about them right now?

[Dan]

Yeah. Do you have a guess? How many. How many?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a lot higher than I thought.

[Dan]

How many streams have you have we done this year?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like when show streams this year? I mean, like Spotify, like 20 or whatever. Oh, sorry. How many streams?

[Dan]

Streams, views, downloads? There's. There's kind of a complicated way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, categorize. We've had about 20 episodes, right? And then every episode does anywhere from half a million to three quarters of a million on YouTube generally. We had kind of a rough week last week, and I think this week's gonna be pretty rough. I think we did not nail the title of this one. But whatever, we do our best. So that would be, you know, 10 million or whatever on YouTube. So let's say I literally have no idea. Let's say Spotify. I don't know. I don't even subscribe to Spotify. I don't even like using.

[Dan]

Remember, podcast goes out to everywhere where there is podcast. Podcast is like a really cool format. 2 million. Almost exactly 2 million streams.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Dan]

Yeah, it was very bang on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well then that's fine, I guess.

[Dan]

And like, A quarter of that are watching because we do video for Spotify.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

I didn't even know. Makes my life so much easier. Not a lot of people do. It was a new feature that they were testing for a while. So 75% listen, about 25% seem to watch. That might be a Spotify only thing. And podcasts go to literally anywhere. Like it goes on itunes or anywhere because it's RSS feed based.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's a funny thing because then super cool. That makes makes us a really big YouTube tech live stream, but actually one of the largest podcasts. Oh, see, that's the thing. These numbers are so small to me, I just assumed that we're a small podcast.

[Dan]

It's very interesting. No, we're one of the large ones. I think the. Because of the barrier for entry is so low now and like most people aren't doing what we do, which is the bad way to do it, which is just record it live and then send it without doing any mastering path ass at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, whatever.

[Dan]

So we try our best.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we though?

[Dan]

Yeah. No. Yeah. How much more money do you want to spend on this? We could make it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, we don't want to. We don't want to try our best.

[Dan]

No, you don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not trying our best. And we don't want.

[Dan]

You do not want to. It will cost you an arm and a leg. But like 25% of people finish a quarter of an episode, 5% finish three quarters of an episode, and 3% of almost finish all of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's terrible. So that's just like a complete waste of time and we shouldn't even bother uploading them then.

[Dan]

No, it's pretty. It's pretty useful.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it okay?

[Dan]

For reasons.

[Linus Sebastian]

How do I.

[Dan]

How I won't go into.

[Linus Sebastian]

So here. So here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna try and do this.

[Dan]

Good.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm trying to do this. Okay, so I'm, I am trying to find top tech podcast. So I. Because Dan pulled this, pulled this statement, as far as I can tell, completely out of his butt that we are one of the bigger tech podcasts. And I'm, I'm looking at this and I'm going, how. How are you supposed to know that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you hear me?

[Dan]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. My computer's doing that thing. So I'll be back.

[Dan]

Okay. I will meet you top shows.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so these are. Are these the top technology podcasts like Verge? I know the Verge. I know ted. Is that a tech podcast though? A lot of Ted stuff is kind of tech. Wait These are just top episodes. Why is this. Why is this so obtuse? I tried to. Okay, top shows. Okay, here we go. Ah, yeah, dude, we're tiny. Unless we're not.

[Dan]

Depends on the category. It can be a little bit complicated. I mean, this is. We do get rankings for us, and.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is specifically on apple pie, because we haven't even. Dude, we haven't even shown up yet. Dude. Wan show's not even top 100 according to this.

[Dan]

Maybe not of all time, but certainly in the tech sector. I know that we're up there, but this is tech.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wait, Charts. Genre. Yeah, genre. 13, 18. I mean, we got Linux unplugged. See now, though, now we're getting to the point where I'm having a hard time believing, and I don't want to call anybody in particular out. Okay, so Wan show?

[Dan]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, I'm having a hard time believing. Okay. I. Look, I don't want to call. I don't want to call anybody out, but. Who is Logan Bartlett? I just want to know who Logan Bartlett is. 4.8 stars. That's really good. Apparently this is really good. Good. There's. The Internet is full of influencers I've never heard of, so it's nothing personal. Logan Bartlett. Okay, so the Buddy uploads on YouTube and has some very, very popular videos. First interview with Sam Altman after GPT4. Oh, okay. So that's. That's pretty cool. I'm not sure if I believe that this podcast is bigger than ours, though, based on the numbers I'm looking at. But that's the thing is some of.

[Dan]

The splits are obscene.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I. I look at everything through a YouTube lens like I'm YouTube native and everything else is just like. Well, okay, not everything else, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Same way that someone will be like big on Instagram and I'll be like, are they actually big? And then check their, like YouTube, because again, I'm YouTube first. And then I have to take a step back and be like, oh, wait, no, this is. This is an Instagram first creator. If this person is a podcast first or.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or, you know, Spotify first creator, then.

[Dan]

Yeah, I mean, think about something like Twitch. You know, if you have six concurrent viewers, you're in top percentages. If the barrier for entry for podcasts is so low and you can just like sit down and upload whatever you want. You know, if you're.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, if you.

[Dan]

If you're in the top 10,000, you're doing pretty okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Eddie Coldrick. Oh, so we're not under tech. We're under Tech News.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm working on it.

[Dan]

Yeah, I can't. I can't find our. Our rankings that we get 10. And there's also tech news, funny US, tech news UK, that sort of thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I haven't heard of some of the other things that are in the top 10.

[Dan]

Yeah, I think we talked about this ages ago. If you remember when we were starting into this, like, who are these people? And they're more popular by us by, like, a large margin.

[Linus Sebastian]

I pretty much guarantee you that a lot of them say the same thing about us. Us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm sure. I'm 100% sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Who the heck are these guys? I mean, their show isn't even professional. Look at this.

[Dan]

Yeah, this is. This is terrible garbage.

[Linus Sebastian]

This actual trash. Actual dumpster fire.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude clearly just woke. Woke up. He didn't even do his hair. What is happening?

[Linus Sebastian]

That is the least of our problems. You're wearing clothes your coworker made.

[Dan]

It's like, what? Not even a good gaming headset. Don't have RGB on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No mastering. Pass on the audio. A lot of podcasts, like, you know, if. If they're.

[Dan]

I have to do a real time master. It's awful if you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If you're only listening to the audio. It's nice to have it actually, like, sound good.

[Linus Sebastian]

We are number six after cybersecurity headlines, Babbage Cyberwire, Daily 404 Media, them. I know. And the tech news briefing from the Wall Street Journal.

[Dan]

And they are way bigger.

[Linus Sebastian]

How do you remember?

[Dan]

I remember looking at some charts that we. Like, I haven't touched podcasting in a.

[Linus Sebastian]

While, but where do these charts come from? Do you have to pay someone for the charts?

[Dan]

Well, we get charts because we're special, because we're one of the larger podcasters.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. As a larger podcaster, you get intel on the other podcasters, but that's not available publicly.

[Dan]

I get like. Well, I don't know. I remember. I remember getting a weekly, like, digest email that said that we're. We're better. And it. Like, that's your billboard 100.

[Linus Sebastian]

Everyone should have access to that.

[Dan]

I mean, charitable.

[Linus Sebastian]

There we are.

[Dan]

Let's see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And is real data. Like, are you getting this from?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like, where's this from? Yeah, I think everyone's just guessing, dude.

[Dan]

It could. It could be lies. Let me see if I can actually open, like, here.

[Linus Sebastian]

We can see how many people. We can see how many people, like, rated it. That's something. Like, how many people Rated the WAN show. Wow. I don't know. I don't know if I agree. I don't think it's that good. But thank you. It's very generous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this just buy ratings? No, because this One only has 123 ratings. Ratings.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What one?

[Linus Sebastian]

The cyber security.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I'm not super surprised because that has like the most generic name and profile photo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But apparently they're, they're bigger, but they also upload daily. Oh, so that's a daily podcast. So that's a volume game and a half right there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I could see following that though cybersecurity daily. Like how many on the way to work?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like I could absolutely see 1400 episodes.

[Dan]

So this is one I got from last year because I think they're blocked in our email thing now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan]

But for Apple podcasts, we're number eight for tech news in the U.S. number 211 for Great Britain for. For news. Number seven for Great Britain for tech news. 146 in Canada for news. Number two in Canada for tech news. That's on Apple podcasts.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. I don't know. I think it's all made up and I support more transparency. All right, there are some, oh, there are some new Android scam protections and this video is not out yet, but we did a collaboration with Kit Boga recently that was a lot of fun and was both eye opening and also extremely terrifying. I. It's not something I dedicate a lot of my brain cycles to. It's not something that I have really experienced with my aging relatives. But there are so many different angles of attack from scammers that I just never heard of. And he really kind of like, like, I don't know, kind of red pilled me. Okay, so I, I get it now. I am, I, I am, I am now aware of what's out there. And the world, the world is, is trash and it's full of people who are trash and are going to try and take everything from you for no reason other than that you have it and they don't. And that sucks. And thank you very much, Kit. I appreciate you very much. Anyway, at Android IE this week, Google announced new tools in Android 16 aimed at protecting users from such scams. They have new in call protections that prevent users from taking risky actions such as granting accessibility permissions or sideloading an app for the first time. If you are. Oh yeah, if you are in call, that is super cool. That's a way for Android to stay open and allow sideloading and allow special accessibility permissions, but not allow somebody to get you to do that while you are on a phone call with them. So that seems pretty neat. If you are screen sharing during a phone call, Android will now automatically prompt you to stop sharing at the end of the call. And they're piloting a program in the UK where launching a participating banking app while screen sharing with an unknown contact will trigger a warning from Android and give you the option to end the call and stop screen sharing while with one tap. Scam Detection is an AI powered tool for scam detection in texts that will warn when it spots suspicious conversation patterns and key Verifier allows you and the person you're messaging to verify the identity of the other party through public encryption keys to help thwart imposters, e.g. sim swaps. My only concern here is that the kinds of users who from working with Kit on that video seem to be targeted by these folks may not be helped that much by this. It seems like they are accustomed to a very unsophisticated, non savvy user. Like I was amazed at how dense we had to pretend to be in order to get them to hang up on us. Like Luke, I asked this one guy to sing me Happy Birthday. Plouffe and Adam both succeeded in getting the scammer to sing them Happy Birthday. I asked mine who's your daddy and what does he do? That wasn't enough to deter him. Like so the angle for the video, so you guys know what to expect. It's gonna be dude, it's gonna be a blast. I think we shot two videos, one for our channel, one for kits I think. Or both for our channel. I don't know. We did something. I think we did one for. I think the other one was for kids channel. Anyway, the point was I just went where they told me to go and I was a me on camera. Anyway, so for ours we try to make the unscammable PC and then yeah, the one that I think is going live on his channel is just him having us compete to see who can keep scammers on for the longest. So it's me, Plouffe, Adam and Elijah and Kit. If you I recall correctly, all five of us took a whack at it. I might have some of these details wrong, but the point is the shtick for it was that we don't just keep them on the phone because honestly that's relatively easy. You have someone off camera holding up a piece of paper with stuff. You have to say stuff that you have to insert in the conversation. So that's where some of these like wackadoodle things. Who's your daddy? You have to tell them you're so lonely. No one came to my birthday party. Will you be my friend? You have to ask if their mom's single. Like just. Oh, so painful. So painful. Anyway, it's going to be great. It's going to be great.

[Dan]

Oh, that's exciting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't miss it. To cool. New Android scan protections seems like progress, but I uh. It's also hard to look at this and say anything but like, feels like too little too late, but let's see how it goes. Uh, Rog Rig reboot is back. We are excited to announce that we have once again partnered with Asus to give our viewers the opportunity to be flown to Linus Media Group headquarters where they will build a PC with me on video. We are opening up to our international audience this time, so all you got to do is go to LMG GG Rig 20, submit a video showing us why you need a rig reboot. Whether your system's unable to keep up with your workflow or you can't run demanding games, or it's just absolutely cooked, we need the details. And this is a competition that rewards creativity and originality. So make sure your video is unique and not reminiscent of previous submissions. Yes, we will know. Submission criteria 30 to 59 seconds. Show us your current setup. Tell us why we should pick you again. Be creative and submissions will be open until 4:45pm Pacific Time, Sunday, May 25th. Check it out. Do redeem. Do redeem that offer. Also, we have a floatplane update this week. Our handsome, tall, intelligent, rich and narcissistic Chief Vision Officer Linus Sebastian had his latest vision. We're trying out something new on floatplane clips. These are quick behind the scenes moments that aren't quite long enough to be a full floatplane exclusive. Open this link to just show what it is. Explain if needed. Okay. Ah yes. Linus and Elijah discuss My Little Pony. Oh, I have already watched this. So it started at the end. We talk about our favorite ponies and people apparently liked that.

[Dan]

Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, you guys loved the first one, so we're going to keep it going during competition.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did I just yell yikes from the from the back?

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of our team will be on the ground next week uploading random clips as they happen. You may see things like eating stinky tofu for the first time, silly stuff on the show floor and everything in between. And yes, Luke will apparently be doing his traditional show floor walk. Sammy says totally announcing this. So Luke makes time for me to do a show floor walk with him. Oh, okay. So Sammy had not discussed this with you?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, he asked me like a while ago if I would do it and I was like yeah. And then he asked me again today and I was like yeah. So I think he forgot that I that I already agreed to it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But that's okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So check out the LMG team during Computex at LMG GG Floatplane. All right, what else we got today? Okay. Okay, I'm confused by this. Luke, help me out here. Source Here is Ars Technica Industry Groups decry the Imminent demise of Energy Star the current US Administration has decided to terminate the Energy Star program, though it's not clear if Energy Star can be limited eliminated without an act of Congress. Energy Star is a program run by the U.S. environmental Protection Agency, the EPA and the Department of Energy, the DOE to help consumers, businesses and industry save money and protect the environment by using energy efficient products and practices. It identifies top performing cost effective products, homes and buildings through its distinctive blue label. Okay, what I asked for in this topic was an ELI 5 for Energy Star. Because other than seeing the label on things and being like, okay, so that to that I guess it's energy, I never really knew what exactly it meant. It meant that this one is like more ranked or gooder for the efficiency, but also a lot of the time it seemed kind of arbitrary because it's like, yeah, this one's really bad for power efficiency. But also it's like on the much bigger end of like how big TVs can be in this category. So obviously, you know, like I. Okay, so that's what it is. It is a voluntary program that was created as part of a bill passed by the near the end of George H.W. bush's time in office, President Clinton issued an executive order mandating that federal agencies should prioritize Energy Star certified products in their procurement Chamber of Commerce. Something Something. Energy Star enabled consumers to save an estimated $500 billion over the past 33 years. Ars Technica notes that companies that have invested in making more efficient products are faced with the loss of the Energy Star brand as a marketing tool. Oh, this is why they care. Okay. The Energy Star logo has helped them make the case with the government support, that the initial cost of efficient appliances will be offset over time in reduced water and energy consumption. Got it. I was trying to figure out why industry groups cared about Energy Star going away. So the answer is marketing. Hit me. Hit Me, you guys in the chat, do you, do you factor Energy Star into your purchases? Because I gotta confess, other than like seeing it in my bios or whatever, I, I, I, I, I can't say that it's been a major factor for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's, it's something that I see on the product after I buy it essentially every single time. And almost all of Chad is saying no.

[Linus Sebastian]

But remember, we live in. Anyone in chat say we live in B.C. where our electricity is cheap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's something they.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

States have some of their own regulations as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, used to, my wife does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. And especially if it impacts like government procurement, then I could see it affecting a significant number of units that are purchased, even if it's not individual consumers. I have. For larger appliances, I prefer it. All else being equal, I have. Okay. I like to see it there. Oh, interesting. Yeet. Dab man says that sticker is a real POS to remove. I'd say no for appliances. Heck yes. Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I love how that's there.

[Linus Sebastian]

There are consumer rebates based on Energy Star in some jurisdictions. Okay. So maybe this is just more of like Americans have a higher level of awareness of this. Because up here I don't see it really that consistently applied to things. I don't see it marketed that hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hard. Yeah. I don't see it marketed literally at all up here.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think on appliances. Yeah. But I don't remember a time you would have bought appliances because you bought your place new and it was full of appliances.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I bought a dishwasher because it didn't work.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did you look at the Energy Star?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not even a little bit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I talked to my dad, I talked to some of my dad's appliance friends about which one would break the least.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No problems ever since.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, good chat. Apple is attempting to scare users if apps use external purchases. Sources the Verge here. Allegedly. Allegedly. Apple seems to be trying scare tactics to prevent people from downloading using apps that use external payments. The message, which appears with a big red exclamation mark at the very top of the app's page, says the following. This app does not support the App Store's private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases. Scary. This seems to be in response to the EU's decision in March of 2024 where they require Apple to allow developers to enable external purchase options instead of essentially forcing developers to pay a 30% fee to Apple. People have been reporting that this isn't new, and Apple has been doing it since the EU started enforcing Apple to comply with the ruling change, but what they've been changing is that the warning image used to just be a lowercase I for information rather than the new red exclamation mark.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, because I was gonna say we've talked about this before 100%, but that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was also this didn't make it into the doc this week, but there was also like Fortnite is not on the App Store because Tim Sweeney is pushing the envelope again. But also Apple in my humble opinion, is clearly in the wrong here in the first place. So yeah, good. Good luck Epic and Apple. I hope you guys bury the hatchet someday.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not yet though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Steam didn't get Hacked Speaking of hacking hatchets or something, Valve has responded to rumors of a data breach that appears to have started on LinkedIn and included claims that more than 89 million records were for sale. With a sample of the data made available to prospective purchasers. Something, something, something. Valve examined a leak sample and determined the data did not come from a breach of Steam's systems. There's a bunch of other stuff, but basically from a Steam perspective, Valve says customers do not need to change their passwords or phone numbers as a result of this event. It is a it's not a bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Idea to do it anyways though.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a good reminder to treat any account security messages that you have not explicitly requested as suspicious though, and reminds users to set up Steam Mobile Authenticator if they haven't already. All right, pretty much. Good guy. Valve and nextcloud accuses Google of deliberately crippling its App European software vendor nextcloud has accused Google of deliberately crippling its Android Files app, a file synchronization tool. In 2024, Google's Play Store revoked the All Files access permission that they've had since 2016, effectively crippling the app and instructing NextCloud to use a more privacy aware replacement. But NextCloud says, hey, we can't use those. Storage Access Framework cannot be used as it is for sharing exposing our files to other apps. Mediastore API cannot be used as it does not allow access to other files, but only media files. Google's developer documentation states if you target Android 11 and declare all files access, it can affect your ability to publish and update your app on Google Play. So basically you can't compete with Google Drive. Is that what I'm hearing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes. Yikes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Timo says. There are so many file managers out there that don't have their permissions crippled. Yeah, it does make it feel a little personal, doesn't it? I can't say for sure that it is, but nextcloud sure seems to think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Google and Apple are both getting really stabby about defending their mobile moats right now. Yeah, and I hope this continues to go poorly for them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me too. Unique username says nextcloud is the largest competitor to all the cloud lock in solutions from Google and Apple. Well, yeah, I don't. This doesn't feel accidental to me is what I'll say. All right, Dan, are we supposed to be doing After Dark now?

[Dan]

I think we got our announcements done. I think we've done all the topics.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's do do it.

[Dan]

Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not a ton of curated merch messages today.

[Dan]

No, Lots of people buying. What are they called? The tall sizes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, that makes sense.

[Dan]

I wonder why. Because they're great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Go us.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's because they're compensating.

[Dan]

It's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's true.

[Elijah]

But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But for what?

[Dan]

Not being short?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. We don't get to be fabric all the.

[Dan]

All the k are short.

[Linus Sebastian]

We just get to be serfs. It's hard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Harder for us to pack because our clothing takes up more space.

[Dan]

Jamie calls me Slender man and asks if he needs help finding my pages. 10 out of 10 banter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right. Sure.

[Dan]

LLD, could you expand on the hesitancy to include more tall spots? SKUs can't speak for others, but it's worth a 5 to $10 premium for me. Shouldn't that cover the overhead? Gift cards for pink 2 XL tall shirts win.

[Linus Sebastian]

The hesitancy is that in order to stock a thing, you have to buy thousands, in many cases tens of thousands of dollars worth of that thing. So it is both a risk management issue because you don't want to go and buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of a thing that then just sits there because that's bad for business. And also just a cash flow management exercise thing. You can't just take your entire existing portfolio and okay. A have the, you know, worker hours to create new. Right. New patterns for everything. Right. Like literally you are doubling the number of the amount of grading that you have to do. So grading is where you take a design and you adjust it for all your different sizes. You're doubling the grading that you have to do for a given style and then not only that, but you are significantly increasing the amount of cash outlay that you are spending in order to hold. In order to buy and hold that inventory. Inventory. It's boring. Spreadsheet. Accounting stuff. I don't expect people to care. But it doesn't make it not just how it is. And it's. It's a big part of the same reason that. Or it's a big part of the reason that we also haven't just like, started up an EU distribution warehouse. Because it's not that simple. The logistics are not that simple. The reporting and taxation and accounting and all of those things, they're just not that simple. And at the end of the day, we are still, and I can't emphasize this enough, we are still a pretty small company, right? And overall, we have like a hundred plus employees. I think we're at around 100 and something right now. Is that right, Luke? I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's roughly correct.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think that's about right. But Creator warehouse doesn't have 100 employees. Creator Warehouse is a tiny company. They have a couple of dozen employees. The fact that they sell around the world at all is a small miracle. Right? Like what you're going to say. Oh, yeah, well, they should just. They should just have distribution centers on every continent. Are you serious right now? Like, we're. No, that's not how it works. It's not how any of this works. We are doing our best, and we are going to, you know, constantly try to get delivery costs down around the world. We're going to try to expand our styles with, you know, tall sizes. I just got confirmation. They promised me husky sizes for T shirts are coming in 20, 26. Okay. We're working on it, but these things take time. They take cash, they take hours. Someone's got to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like, I'm, I'm happy we're. We're finally getting them. And I, I'm really. I was very surprised. I got it spoiled to me by the chat, but I was really surprised that there was all the colors for tall sizes. That's. That's super cool. But I didn't really expect it. I mean, there's a reason why almost no store that you go into has any tall sizes. Like, it's just doubling your skus. Like, that is tough.

[Linus Sebastian]

And you got to know that there's some chance that it's going to work out, which is why we took it slow. It's why we started with the black. We started with a small order because in theory, anything's a great idea. But there's a big difference between people being excited about something and people actually pulling out their wallet and spending money on it. Huge difference. Vast ocean of difference. So you need to be evidence driven. That's a big part of what like Taran pushes ever since he joined. Joined is like be data driven. That doesn't mean that we can't YOLO and buy a fire truck once in a while. But it means that we need to overall make sure that we are making decisions that are supported by real world evidence that we can use as our guiding star at the very least.

[Dan]

Hi Linus, Luke and Dan. Question for Luke. Which individuals or teams do the marketing or advertising for flow planning? It would be cool to hear about the work they do to attract new creators versus users.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, we do very little work to attract new creators.

[Dan]

Isn't that Linus?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, that's my job. I have not. I have been asleep at the wheel for many years.

[Dan]

What a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a bad employee.

[Linus Sebastian]

Terrible. Terrible.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. The business team, there's Sean and then indirectly Colt on the business team who work on coming up with like the business sides of ideas of you know, trying to make floatplane better and more worth it for people to join and stay for a variety of creators. But you know, the business team is focused on LMG stuff. But then hopefully those features benefit other people as well or those ideas benefit other people as well. But they're, they're goal, they're looking at the LTT subscription. Right. Like they are employees at Linus Media Group. Those are business people at Linus Media Group. These are not floatplane people.

[Linus Sebastian]

And Sammy is sort of indirectly a big part of the marketing of floatplane just by creating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wasn't even there yet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Great content.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, hard, big time. It's, it's Sammy making exclusives and pushing the envelope with the types of things that we're doing. Including this. I guess maybe it was Linus's idea, but including this. The like clips thing. You're talking about the like short, short content. That's a cool idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

I shouldn't say it's my idea. It's not like I came up with the idea of short form content. But that's not what I meant.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Having that on the platform now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Get better at being a narcissist. What's wrong with you?

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, so like that, that's, that's the engines that are going for the Linus Media Group side and you know, we, we learn things from the content that LMG does and how it performs on the platforms and then, and then sometimes other creators ask me effectively me about that and then I'll share some of that information so they can benefit from that learning as well. And then some of the work the business team does can. Can potentially benefit other creators as well. But they are generally focused on Linus Media Group expansion within the floatplane universe. And then the floatplane dev team essentially tries to make floatplane better for all the creators because the full plane dev team is focused on the platform as a whole. The full plane dev team has been very focused on that big project we've been doing for a while that has been semi leaked but not fully leaked and that has resulted in. And when the business team keeps coming to us with very reasonable, fairly measured requests, us going, sorry, can't do it right now, little bit too busy. And then we've been doing that for quite a while now. So sorry, business team. But there are things that they want to do that will be good to be clear and we will do it eventually. But yeah, that's kind of that circle. There's Sean and Colton from the business team and then Sammy from the content team and then the floatplane dev team.

[Dan]

How about some more?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm just looking up this next one. This has been added to Drive.

[Dan]

Learn more.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like, no, no, I want to open it in drive. I have my new product in New Product Introductions Inventory Planning sheet.

[Dan]

Isn't drive awful?

[Linus Sebastian]

And I'm trying to. Oh no. Oh, oh, cool it. It enhanced without being blurry this time. Cool. Okay, hit me, Dan.

[Dan]

Dear Daniel Besser, please could you ask the relevant authorities if we might be able to receive an update on the production of the Pencil Scribe driver. Yours faithfully, a Brit in need of a pencil.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, the last NPI document I have says Current launch date April 30, 2025.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What does NPI mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

Linus New Product Introduction. So that didn't happen.

[Dan]

Good job. We don't have a history of that at this company at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

In all seriousness, in all seriousness, we are way tighter about things now. But what I'm trying to say is soon, soon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My niece kind of like chanting it in floatplane chat. Do we have anything we can say about Mod Mat?

[Dan]

Well, it updates when we can.

[Linus Sebastian]

It will be ready when it is.

[Dan]

Ready and we'll update you when we're able to.

[Linus Sebastian]

Only when it is ready.

[Dan]

My niece is having trouble finding a PC under a thousand dollars to play Fortnite and Roblox. Any tips on how to navigate ultra low budget PC box buying? It's hard to know the line between performance and requirements.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do I ever have tips on that? May I. May I suggest. Really Great. Well, okay. YouTube channel. A bit of a narcissistic host. You'll have to kind of get past that whiny voice. So check this out. So, Linus tech tips. Yeah, yeah, this, this guy right here. Oh, he's awful. Anyway, the point is you just go on the videos, okay? This is a man. They really do like clutter up with these members only videos. Anyway, the point is you kind of scroll down and you see if there's any good ones on, you know, making a cheap computer. Okay, you know what? I give up on that. So why don't we just use search? Because the year is 2025. Linus Tech Tips. Cheap PCB build. There we go. Okay, here's a $500 gaming PC. Oh, a $69 gaming PC from two months ago. Hey, that looks pretty good. We could try. Yeah, I wouldn't build the lowest rated PC but the ultimate $500 gaming PC from four months ago. That looks pretty solid. Pretty solid. Oh, you could pick a good budget gaming CPU that no one ever told you about from a month ago.

[Elijah]

Go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Lots of really good resources here. What about the repairing the perfect PC? No, I wouldn't recommend that. The perfect PC at every price though. Hey, there's a good one. Yeah. Heck yeah. I would say of these I want to go ultimate 500 gaming PC and then maybe you could make a couple, a couple clever upgrades. You could have a look at perfect PC at every price and. And then the $500 gaming PCs kind of somewhere in between there.

[Dan]

Hey, Wan Dll downsizing from three gaming PCs to just one with Sunshine moonlight, what are your thoughts on the current state of self hosted game streaming?

[Linus Sebastian]

Super cool. If we do a tech house, which is kind of in conversation, I don't think I would run fiber optic DisplayPort and fiber USB every I think I would just go Sunshine Moonlight, Run Cat 6A everywhere and just frickin have one gaming PC. And then like I want to try that thin clients man. So cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I talked to you about my issues with Sunshine Moonlight. No, I meant to talk about this on wan show but I think I just completely forgot and it's been a few weeks now so I'm going to try to make sure I get all this accurate but I was trying to set that up at home. I bought bought a new controller because Linus wouldn't stop harassing me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it never worked. And you my so many of our gaming sessions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I got a new controller and it comes with a little charging dock thingy.

[Linus Sebastian]

A charging dock didn't come with It.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it was like, really cheap.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, so it has a cheap charging dock. Yes. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that has a dongle in it, which is nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. It's a dongle dock.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So good wireless connectivity. Cool. I don't have to have it be wired anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow, neat. This is. This is compelling. So wait, you say this controller. You say this controller can charge?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can explain why that matters.

[Linus Sebastian]

It can charge on a dock and it's wireless. But does it wirelessly charge?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, maybe they'll come. Technically, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really? With no wires?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. Sans wires even.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where are you going with this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, my, my, my reason for that is I don't have the Bluetooth things for my computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

He doesn't have the Bluetooth.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have one idea where I could.

[Dan]

Buy the little antenna.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or I could buy the base. The dock charging thing. The dock was the same price, so I decided to go with that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, what a story. Riveting tail chap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm able to use the controller wirelessly. I can play games with my tv, which seems cool. So I want to do that without running a super long HDMI cable. So I was trying to set up this setup to install. Which one is. Is it. I don't know, is it sunshine on the tv? I can't remember to install whichever one has to go on the tv. It turned out that I needed a app on the TV which is like developer mode or whatever. And in order to install that app, you have to have a developer account.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, do you have an LG tv? Nice. Nice to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I set up an account and it was like acting a little bit weird when I was setting the account up. So I immediately signed out, went to go sign back in, because I was like, I don't trust that. If I remember correctly, there's only one password field that doesn't get you to verify your password. And there was some other stuff that was just acting oddly and it refused my login. I'm like, okay, well, well, forgot password. I'll just reset my password and fix it, go to enter my password again. You can't use the same password twice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Okay, I've done before where I've typoed a password the same way twice and then not been able to figure it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it wasn't, except I was copy pasting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Dan]

So.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But anyways, so I make a new one, reset the password. All good. I'm logged in. It's all cool. Cool. I log out. I go to log back in again. Doesn't work. Forgot password. Reset Password. Can't use the same password, bro. What the heck? Because I have to make the account on my computer or my phone and then I have to log in on the tv, so I have to log in again. This whole, like, you can only log in one thing will not work for me. I have to log in again. So I'm like, okay, okay. So I make a new account. Like, maybe that account's just screwed out. Exact same problem. Okay, okay, okay. Well, I'm realizing I'm on the American site anyways and my TV actually cares and it has to be the Canadian site, so let me do that. So I'll make an account on the Canadian site.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, well, you can't use the same email on both for some reason, but sure, why not? So I have a lot of emails. That's fine. I'll use another email, I'll make another account. I get signed in, no problem. Sign out, sign back in. Doesn't work. Reset password. Can't use the same password. It's the same problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't log in. I can't. I cannot log into this account no matter what I do. I don't know why it won't work. I email their support, they send me a link. I. I detail everything. I detail everything that I did. All the different accounts, the different, different regions, everything. I get a response back. That is not, I promise you, it is not a generic auto reply. It took like two days to get the response. It's clearly someone typed it out. They just linked me the forgot your password link, nothing else. And when I got that email, I was just like, all right, whatever. I'm just gonna, like, come back to this in a couple weeks and whatever bug they probably have will hopefully be resolved.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is there not a Steam Link app for WebOS I haven't tried.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think there was.

[Dan]

I think, Yeah, I think I checked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I don't think there was.

[Linus Sebastian]

Funny hat says I've lost the plot. What's going on now? User error?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Getting password on sign up. Yeah, it might be something like that too. I don't know. There's something weird. I ran into a problem recently. I. I don't want to say what organization it was, but I think I took a picture of it or I took a screenshot or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that's going to make it pretty obvious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of the. Well, I'm not going to show it, but I want to go look at what the actual rules were. One of the probably Worst rules for passwords I ever seen. Yeah. So it has to have an uppercase letter. It has to have a lowercase letter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has to have a number.

[Linus Sebastian]

Makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has to have a symbol.

[Linus Sebastian]

Symbol.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has to have at least eight characters, but it cannot be more than 15 characters.

[Linus Sebastian]

But why?

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it has to be between eight and 15.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have to save all those bits in there on their, their storage server for the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So there's like very, a very small range of character counts that the password could even be. And then there's like all these. I don't know, just way to make your thing less secure.

[Linus Sebastian]

My goodness, that's hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, someone get Luke a password manager. I have one. What are you even talking about? What does that have to do with what I'm doing? Whatever. Anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan.

[Dan]

Hello, Dalla. I've been curious about the silicon lottery and how some CPUs on the same batch can be better than others. What exactly is better? Like, how do the less better ones even work?

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's a ton of redundancy when you manufacture high complexity silicon products. More than you would probably imagine is wasted to having a backup plan in case there is a small imperfection. So that's part of it is you can have one that has, that is. That is. Is higher quality in certain spots. So for instance, like back when Nvidia had those GPUs in the 465, 470 days, where some of the 465s could be unlocked to have additional functional units. That means that they, they didn't have so many defects in some of those, Some of the. I forget if they were called SMS back then, but whatever. In some of those functional units, units such that they had to be shut off. So part of it is you can just have parts of the CPU that have so many problems with our GPU or whatever it is that have so many problems with them that they, they can't turn on that part of it. You can also have ones that have more parts of them that can be turned on versus ones that can have fewer parts. That's why you'll get like AMD's tri cores back in the day, day those were all quad core CPUs, but like one of the cores was in many cases dead or in many cases actually not dead. And you could unlock them to quad core processors. Okay, so then the other part is more to do with the overall quality of it, and that's where everything might work, but it might not be within the target power Envelope or thermal envelope for that particular part. So they might have to, you know, turn off some cores or, or turn off some cache for that reason. Probably wouldn't affect cache so much. But cores for sure, you might have to turn off some cores in order to make this one fit into the power envelope for a core i5, 14th gen or whatever the case may be. So basically what it comes down to is that it's pretty much black magic at this point how they managed to make anything as small as it is. There are a ton of defects in them both small defects in terms of like oh yeah, this gap is like this many like freaking angstroms larger or smaller than it's supposed to be. And you know, that could affect the power performance character, the switching speeds of it or you know, whatever else. You can have defects like that. You can have defects that are caused by contamination. So they build in a ton of redundancy and they also use binning as they're sorting all of these dies to turn them into different products at different tiers based on what they know during the pre production process and the design process is going to be their defect rate. So silicon lottery basically just means that, you know, both of these chips might, you know, pass the minimum bar of how many cores need to be active and what kind of power and thermal characteristics it's supposed to have. But one was like slightly more better and that's great and one of them wasn't and you either get a better one or you don't. And there's absolutely no way of knowing because intel or AMD or Nvidia, they don't want to go into things with that degree of granularity because then their product stack becomes an absolute cluster bomb.

[Dan]

And last one I've got for you today. Hello, lld. Just wondering, will the cargo short shorts come back sometime in the future? I love mine. Just wish I had gotten more.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, Alon actually has a really, really cool way of explaining the like the small defects like differences in gaps and stuff. Remember folks, computers are actually analog machines that operate on digital logic. So small defects can change the analog characteristics without affecting the binary logic up to a point. If you crank up the analog, the Boolean logic breaks down. So analog meaning like voltage, current, temperatures, things that are inherently analog. Yeah, that's a really good way of explaining that. Okay, Cargo shorts. I don't know. Hold on, let me see. Oh, that wouldn't be a new product introduction anyway, so it wouldn't be on this document. So I honestly have no idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'M sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe. I think so.

[Dan]

If they do, they do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not this year. Yeah, not this year. And that's it. We'll see you again next week, guys. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'll see you soon, I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Elijah]

It.