Why Is Roblox Shielding Child Predators? - WAN Show August 15, 2025

Summary

The WAN Show — August 15, 2025

Episode Theme: Why Is Roblox Shielding Child Predators?
Hosts: Linus Sebastian & Luke Lafreniere (with Dan Besser)
Date: August 16, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This week, Linus and Luke take on some of the most controversial and impactful developments in tech, with a particular focus on Roblox's alleged shielding of child predators, corporate overreach in digital payments, and YouTube's latest AI-powered age verification. The episode oscillates between deep dives into the ethical, social, and technical implications of major tech stories and the signature banter and story-sharing that defines WAN.

---

Key Topics & Detailed Summary

1. Roblox’s Actions Against Predator-Hunting YouTuber

[02:19–29:13]

Background

• Roblox sent a cease & desist to Schlepp, a YouTuber (~800,000 subs) devoted to exposing child predators operating on Roblox.
• Schlepp’s methods:
  • Creates accounts to lure predators, logs conversations, hands evidence to police.
  • Credited with “more than half a dozen” arrests ([03:00]).
• Roblox’s complaints:
  1. Not using proper channels to report threats ([04:35]).
  2. Engaging in “simulated child endangerment” ([05:02]).
  3. Taking convos off-platform (predator requests Discord etc.) ([05:52]).
  4. Requesting/sharing personal info ([08:31]).

Hosts’ Analysis

• Roblox blamed for inaction and misplaced priorities.
  “He’s sending chat logs and video evidence to them about certain accounts. None have even been successful at getting the individuals banned, never mind charged.” – Luke [03:46]
• Merit of Roblox’s reasons is questioned.
  • #1 and #2 are dismissed as weak.
  • On #3 (off-platform): “If he’s being asked to move off platform, then I don’t think that’s his problem.” – Linus [08:16]
  • On #4 (PII): Some possible TOS concern, but little concrete harm.

Vigilantism & Ethics

• Comparison to Chris Hansen and the “To Catch A Predator” era.
• Dialogue about whether such “amateur” efforts help or hurt real world charges.
• Risks of innocent people being falsely accused/harmed by community-led investigations [24:36].
• Linus: “That banner is a pretty neato banner... However, someone with bad intentions could go, ‘Oh, I was doing good things.’” [23:06]

Notable Quotes

• “It’s dangerous. It’s hard to say universally, yes, this is okay. People should do it.” — Linus [23:48]
• “It's a completely unacceptable collateral damage outcome.” — Luke [24:36]
• “Screw this stuff, man. It's not good.” — Linus [28:44]

---

2. Payment Platforms Dictating Content

Paypal/Steam/Mastercard/Adult Content [29:43–47:56]

Issue

• PayPal cut off payments for Steam users in certain currencies after its “acquiring bank” pulled out, linked to adult/NSFW content [31:34].
• Larger context: Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal previously pressured platforms like OnlyFans.

Hosts’ Analysis

• Linus: “Your job should be to store and move—and, in some ways, with my consent, manipulate—the money that I have. And when I choose to deposit or I choose to withdraw, you should get out of the way.” [44:23]
• Luke: “I don’t give two sh*ts about MasterCard or Visa’s brand.” [37:02]
• Discussion of how credit card processors have too much power to dictate “moral” rules over commerce and self-expression.

Notable Moments

• Extended riffing on obscure credit cards (Diners Club) and “brand loyalty.”
• “They’re just going to say, 'You get points for yourself.'” – Linus [40:17]
• Real talk about the pointlessness of “brand sensitivity”: “Is it not doing more damage to them that they are interfering with us spending our own money?” – Luke [38:51]

---

3. YouTube’s AI Age Verification Rollout

[105:30–114:39]

New System

• Uses a blend of AI, demographics, and behavioral data to estimate users’ ages.
• Will restrict content for anyone flagged as under 18—even if the account birthdate says otherwise.
• Can bypass with acceptable government ID upload.

Concerns & Reactions

• Linus: “I hate this so much.” [106:25]
• Issue of “innocent” adult use of kids content—for pets, babysitting, nostalgia—possibly tripping the filter.
• Example: Can no longer loop ‘80s kids show themes, since commenting/background play gets disabled on “kids” content.

Notable Quote

• “That’s truly one of the greatest losses on YouTube—being able to discuss amazing ‘80s kids show opening theme music because it’s for kids. No kid is watching that today!” – Luke [107:35]

---

4. AI Companions: From Emotional Dependency to Real-World Harm

[114:45–143:10]

News

• OpenAI briefly removed GPT-4o, leading to community outcry—users had formed “relationships” with their AI companions [115:00].
• An elderly man died after he was lured to NYC by a Meta chatbot (“Big Sis Billy,” modeled on Kendall Jenner), believing she was real ([119:20]).

Ethical Deep Dive

• Hosts react in horror to real online posts about users being “emotionally destroyed” by AI models being switched off.
• Linus: “This can't be like real. This has to be posting, right?” [116:19] (Realizes it is)
• Dan: “Can an AI abuse a person? Who’s at fault? Is it Sam Altman or are we now victim blaming?” [141:23]
• Linus: “This seems—the willful unwillingness to put any kinds of safeguards on these types of chatbots seems just monstrous at this point.” [125:00]

Discussion

• On when fantasy becomes real and crosses into manipulation or harm.
• Should AI be legally compelled to state it isn't human? Should companies be held accountable for user harm when designing engagement-optimizing AI?

---

5. Memorable Light-Hearted Moments

• Real Life Aimbot Video — “Basically Homeless” built a machine vision-powered EMS/TENS aimbot to play CS2 ([79:50]).
  Discussion: Is this cheating or accessibility? Are “enhanced” competitive leagues in our future?
• Handheld Gaming Innovations ([151:43]):
  Enthusing over next-gen devices, external swappable batteries, and the future of expandable, fast storage (“mini SSD”).
• Classic Modem Nostalgia ([158:44]):
  The hosts imitate dial-up tones and ponder, “What would the modern web feel like on AOL dial-up?”
• Canadian & Australian ‘Kinship’ ([71:28]):
  Playful debate on which country is most like Canada, digressions about national quirks.

---

6. Other News Highlights

• Steam for Chromebooks killed: Google and Valve shut down their Linux gaming experiment ([145:54]).
• Reddit blocks Internet Archive ([149:07]): In a bid to stop AI scraping, Reddit prevents the Wayback Machine from indexing most user content.
• Hyundai charges for a security fix ([165:02]): Despite rampant thefts, an auto maker wants customers to pay for a hardware/software anti-theft update.
• Intel CPU naming is a “massive step backwards” ([160:40]): New “Series 2” branding creates unprecedented confusion in laptops; models with and without NPUs and mixed architectures.

---

Selected Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Roblox’s C&D:
  “He’s sending chat logs and video evidence... None have even been successful at getting the individuals banned, never mind charged.” — Luke [03:46]
• On Payment Processors:
  “Your job should be to store and move the money that I have. When I choose to deposit or withdraw, you should get out of the way.” — Linus [44:23]
• On YouTube Age AI:
  “That’s truly one of the greatest losses on YouTube—being able to discuss amazing ‘80s kids show opening theme music because it’s for kids. No kid is watching that today!” — Luke [107:35]
• On Emotional AI Dependency:
  “This can't be like real. This has to be posting, right?” — Linus [116:19] “This is so not okay. I'd rather people used GPT-4/5 for timestamps over this.” — Linus [119:20]
• On AI Manipulation:
  “Who’s at fault? Is it Sam Altman or are we now victim blaming?” — Dan [141:23]
• On Tech Nostalgia:
  “Man, that brings me back, buddy. Boomer!” — Luke [159:41], after playing a modem handshake.

---

Key Timestamps for Reference

• [02:19] Main topic: Roblox targeting predator-hunting YouTuber
• [24:36] False accusations & harm from vigilante justice
• [29:43] PayPal drops Steam payments over adult content
• [44:23] Linus’s “Do your job and get out of the way” finance rant
• [79:50] Real-life aimbot machine vision/human enhancement
• [105:30] YouTube’s AI age verification rollout
• [114:45] OpenAI/AI companionship, user emotional dependency
• [119:20] AI chatbot “lures man to death” story
• [141:23] Dan's question: “Can an AI be abusive?”
• [149:07] Reddit blocks Internet Archive for AI reasons
• [158:44] AOL dial-up nostalgia segment
• [160:40] Intel's confusing Series 2 CPU branding

---

Overall Tone & Language

The hosts’ tone fluctuates between energetic skepticism, caustic wit, personal anecdotes, and deep ethical concern. Their style mixes irreverent humor (“If I could hold up the scalp of scalping, I would!” – Luke [71:01]) and earnest analysis of tech policy, with occasional philosophical asides (on “her” style AI relationships or predatory platforms).

---

This summary is intended to provide rich context and key arguments from the episode, enabling listeners—or those who missed it entirely—to quickly get up to date, track the contours of central debates, and locate more nuanced moments for further exploration.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

You say you'll never join the Navy, that you'd never track storms brewing in the Atlantic, and skydiving could never be part of your commute.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Port visit or fly so fast you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Break the sound barrier.

[Linus Sebastian]

Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail] America's Navy forged by the sea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's up, everybody, and welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys this week. Roblox sent a cease and desist letter to a YouTuber for hunting child predators on their platform. Wow, that is a little awkward. Also, PayPal is not Steam's buddy fwend. So the whole thing where payment processors are allegedly dictating to gaming platforms what type of content they're allowed to sell has escalated. What else we got going on this week?

[Linus Sebastian]

YouTube has started to roll out a age verification AI model because the future is fun and that won't be easy to work around at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can you pick something that's good news?

[Linus Sebastian]

Let me see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I know I didn't. Yeah, that's why it's your job.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a bad one. That one's overall kind of negative. That literally says massive step backwards in the title. I don't care about that at all. I don't know if anyone does. This sucks. That's a bad thing. That's not a good thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have to pick one. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

YouTuber makes real life Aimbot that controls his body. It was actually super cool video. I watched it. Hey, let's go. Oh, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The show is brought to you today by Squarespace, Delete me and AMD, along with, of course, our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, Secret Lab. All right, let's jump right into the headline topic, and this one's gonna take a minute. Elijah saw that this was about games for kids, and he took this assignment very seriously, creating an extremely long document so that we could go through and talk about. YouTuber Schlepp, who has been both sent a cease and desist letter from Roblox and banned from the game related to some of his videos about Roblox. Schlepp's channel, which has almost 800,000 subscribers, has been focused around catching child predators on the platform, a problem that has been rampant for years. He has achieved this by making new accounts, waiting for people to engage, and then just following along, never taking the leap, since in most cases that would be deemed as entrapment. Schlepp has been successful in working with local police and the national center for Missing and Exploited Children to get more than half a dozen people arrested and charged for some form of crimes against children.

[Linus Sebastian]

Awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Schlepp has tried to work directly with Roblox on this issue in the past, including sending hundreds of chat logs and video evidence to them about certain accounts. And none have even been successful at getting the individuals banned, never mind charged. Which is why Schlepp has been turning to other methods for help. He has even tweeted directly at the Roblox CEO several times. And? Well, I mean, is it proof that the CEO saw his tweet if his account was blocked?

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually don't necessarily think so, but I think it's likely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It doesn't look good. No, it's not a good look.

[Linus Sebastian]

At some companies like this. I wouldn't be super surprised if the CEO wasn't the only person running the CEO's Twitter account.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The reason for Roblox's actions, according to the letter that was sent to Schlepp, are as follows. That he failed to report suspicious activity to Roblox through proper channels, which can critically expose Roblox's users to increased risk. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Let's go with maybe reason number two. Maybe reason number two will be better.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That Schlepp is engaging in simulated child endangerment conversations.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are they simul.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Technically.

[Linus Sebastian]

Technically, because he's not a child, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'S like, technically true. But is it relevant?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, look, we're not.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's allegedly not relevant.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on, I need to come sit on your side for a second here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, oh, oh, oh, I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not legal experts.

[Linus Sebastian]

We both press it. It goes faster.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We're not legal experts. So, you know, this is all. This is all from the common sense school of not being a. So let's go with. Let's go with reason number three.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That Schlep is directing users to move conversations off platform. Wait, which comes from these predators often requesting to have conversations on other platforms. Like Discord.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because up above it said that he follows their lead. So if he was doing this, I think that would actually potentially be a bad thing. But based on what we previously read, and based on the attached note to this, it sounds like he's just jumping with them off platform when asked to go off platform, which I don't think is a bad thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does it? Okay, here's a question for you. Does it matter who instigates who says we should move off platform?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It does.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Personally.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you are ebay and there's an ebay seller, and the ebay seller goes, hey, man, message me. Don't buy this. Message me, I'll get you a better price. Who are you mad at?

[Luke Lafreniere]

But hold on a second.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're mad at the seller.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let me give you. Let me give you a different example.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So I'm ebay, okay. And there's a seller who is selling child materials, okay. And either the buyer or the seller says they want to move a conversation off platform. Who cares who decided to move the conversation off platform? I should probably deactivate the account.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that's my counter argument.

[Linus Sebastian]

But which account?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Both. Yeah. Well, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. No, no. The person with the materials. So you're. Oh, wait. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

In your situation, there's a buyer of said material, so please ban them both.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, but that's not really the scenario that we're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see what you. You mean. So basically, Ro. Okay, so this is the first one that I think we could maybe agree there is a shred of merit to. Because you could make the argument that Schlep is. Is offering what these people want and claiming and trying to move them off platform.

[Linus Sebastian]

If. If.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If that actually happened, which Schlepp claims it didn't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Twice in this document, it says that he didn't. This is all we know right now. So it depends. It depends on the. Depends on the scenario. If he's trying to move people off platform, then, sure. But if he's being asked to move off platform, then I don't think that's his problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think that's his problem at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Number four, that Schlepp is sharing or soliciting personally identifiable information.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is he doxing these people and. Or is sharing or soliciting?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, soliciting would already be just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What does that mean?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It just means asking for.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So by asking these people for any kind of personally identifiable information. And I could see that being against tos, and I could see Roblox having something to stand on here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

However, kind of, again, one grain of.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sand on the beach.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I asl. Oh, my. There's a throwback.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's been a minute.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a throwback. It's. It's funny because I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I definitely had adults say that to me when I was definitely a Minor.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, that was like. Yeah, sorry. But someone in chat said 14F Kelly. And that's just like. That was indeed the joke back then.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also. You're a liar.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, we know our demographics. It's like 28M Cali.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. An optimistic 28 whenever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that our Democrat? Is it higher than 28 now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, not necessarily.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I didn't think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

18 to 45.

[Linus Sebastian]

I actually think if you looked at like the most common one, it's probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's 25 to 35. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah. If I recall correct, so 28M Cali is probably actually like a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably pretty. Yeah, pretty bang on.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Yvonne and I have kind of like a little like a thing. So whenever, like whenever a woman starts approaching, like they're gonna, like, they're gonna talk to me, I'll like, I'll like give her. I'll give her a little look. Yvonne. I mean, I'll give Yvonne a little look. Stop. You knew what I meant.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I knew already. The clarification was funny because I realized that other people might think the other way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'll give Yvonne a little look. And it's like, it's like a. Wait for it, wait for it look. So. So she walks up. Hi, my boyfriend is such a big fan. Or. Or here's the other one. Hey, my boyfriend was way too shy to come talk to you. Can you take a picture with him? Those are the two most common things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Y.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can substitute boyfriend with husband or son.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a. Fun. When it's not that it's fun, cuz it's like you. You found a, like a rare Pokemon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A rare pull.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, sick. There's like one of our really small female audience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You are the 1%.

[Linus Sebastian]

Heck yeah. Always fun. Like, wait, they do exist. Let's go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

We did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's a. It's a good one. It's a good one. Anyway, anyway, let's. Let's carry on. In Schlepp's video, he explains why he engages in this kind of vigilante justice, which I don't even, I don't even know if I'd consider it to be fully vigilante if you are involving law enforcement. Like, it's. It's certainly vigilante if you try to apprehend the person. You know, you just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if you try to punish them, like if you try to play, you know, the Role of judge, jury, executioner. Your judge Dread. But I don't know that I would necessarily. I don't know if I would necessarily agree.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because so vigilantes definition is a member of a self appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate. And I guess that taking a portion of it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But they're not actually enforcing the law. Yeah, they're finding the person and then handing the information to enforce the law over to the cops. I don't know where the line on that ends up with like what they are. Like. Does, does that mean they're a vigilante even though they're not enforcing the law? Because I have seen situations where these people detain people for these types of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Things and that's enforcing the law.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Other situation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Degree.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, but we need to have a bit of a side conversation here because apparently it's vigilante, not vigilante.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

What did I say?

[Luke Lafreniere]

You said vigilante.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, apparently I. Apparently I said it wrong. I did another. I did another. Linus. Oh, where I just assume, I, I assume based on the spelling of this word that it has kind of a French origin.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. Whack.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, that may be true. The term. Oh, it actually has Spanish or Spanish origins, not French. So I don't, I, I don't know a lick of Spanish. So I don't. I have no idea how that. Yeah, exactly. One uno, uno, uno taco. That's as far as I could get.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I only know that because the, the Sublime song.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So yeah, I made the assumption based on the spelling that it had a French origin, which I was wrong about. And then if it had a French origin, my pronunciation wouldn't have been outlandish. I will keep that in mind. You guys have successfully vigilante justiced me and enforced the law of English.

[Linus Sebastian]

Someone in Pulping Chat Kuro said that is like saying calling in a tip is vigilantism. And I don't think that is the equivalent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's not at all because you are actively engaging with the individual. So I mean I think it's more akin to seeing someone behaving suspiciously and then like, like following them in your car while you're like on the phone with the police with their hands free because it's 2025 and, and like you know, trying to like help them round them up, like, or even going as far as like kind of steering them in one direction versus another direction.

[Linus Sebastian]

I remember one Time. Literally driving home.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cops will tell you not to do. Generally speaking, from my understanding exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I was driving home from here one time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there was an obviously drunk driver who, if I remember correctly, they even like bumped a median at some point. Stuff like, they were very obviously drunk. This is not distracted driving. This was impaired driving. And I, I called it in and I was giving them updates on like, where they were, and they were like, this is a weird traffic pattern. Are you following them? And then my brain was like, calculating and I was like, no, I am going home and I'm afraid to pass them. Yeah, something, something. And the, the person on the phone was like, hmm, okay. And then I was like, yeah, I suspect I won't be able to keep giving you tabs on that because, like, I am gonna not be able to see them for long. And they were like, okay. And then I kept following them for going home for like, I think a minute or two. And then was like, this is gonna get bad. So I just bailed. But I bet you they were never caught because I had to bail because, like, I was, it was very clear I was going to get in trouble.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm a little surprised at how.

[Linus Sebastian]

For not following them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm a little surprised at how little we've seen law enforcement use just like cheap consumer drones for stuff like this. Like in cases where, you know, there's a really egregious speeding offense or where a high profile suspect is fleeing, like, they'll pull out a helicopter to like chase them. And it's like, okay, but like, what if there was a middle. What if there was somewhere in between car and helicopter? And to be clear, I know it is a thing. I just mean I'm surprised they don't do it more.

[Linus Sebastian]

No. I don't remember where. I thought it was in the uk, but I'm not sure where it is. They have like a, a drone unit and they have like a tower somewhere in the city where they launch the drones from. And it's like a whole thing. But I don't remember where.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

I remember where it is. I watched like a little mini dock on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Lobster says the range on them is just not that great. But like, I mean, yeah, it doesn't have to be that great. Like, they're so low cost if you just had like a little landing pad on, like, unlike every police station.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, to be, to be clear, I'm not, I'm not saying compared to literally.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sending out a helicopter one time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Beto588 says they do it lots in California apparently.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And I was. I don't know if this is the one I was talking about, but I was right. Apparently the UK does have like a drone unit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And Kill Ninja says they do drones when the perp is on foot. So it might be like a speed issue then. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Florida is rolling them out as well as some other places. There you go. At ZM says helicopter maintenance is expensive. Yeah, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what I'm saying. You send out the helicopter one time and you could have bought a bunch of drones. Yeah, to be honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, anyway, back to. Back to the topic. Anyway, in Schlepp's video he explains why he does this. It starts because he cares about Roblox since it was not only his favorite game growing up, but also because he met his current girlfriend through the platform. So it has kind of a special place in his heart. But. And this is where things get a little bit more kind of real. It's also because when he was playing when he was younger, he was a victim of some of these predators. So he feels it's right to make sure that no child goes through the same thing. Schlepp is now banned from ever accessing Roblox again, even on his family friendly channel where he just casually plays the game. If you are interested in learning more and doing some research for yourself, he has a website, Schlepp tv, where you can support his content over there as he continues on this journey. Here's some extra roadblocks. Stats. According to the demandsage.com 380 million monthly active users. 85.3 million daily active users. Now I do suspect that's a little juiced. I was looking at, I've heard some stats. It's like more than half juiced my son's computer. Like his monitor wasn't off when he was away at camp for a week. And I was like, why isn't monitor turning off? So I went to go like power cfg, like why? What's keeping it away? And I was like, oh, there is a dragged down like idle game in the bottom corner. So like, I mean if there's a lot of that going on, I wish there certainly is, which there certainly is, then this may not be quite neat.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's also like as far as I know, like super boded. I mean everything is these days but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, but there's an estimated 32 and a half million of those 85 million monthly daily active users that are supposed to be apparently under the age of 13. Wow. So our discussion question then is Chris Hansen wildly increased the popularity of vigilantism against child predators. And for many years now, we've seen people on all sorts of platforms like twitch kick, Roblox, YouTube, etc. Attempt to do the same thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Here's. Here's a question though. Is Chris Hansen a vigilante because he. The cops would arrest the person. As far as my understanding goes, Chris Hansen never touched anybody.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

He just talked to them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. No, I would. I would say no.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, like what the, the legal line is, but what he sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As heck isn't is a law enforcement officer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally. So he didn't enforce the law either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I certainly see. I certainly see why people would draw a parallel. So I can say that much.

[Linus Sebastian]

He like it detected. He found he didn't enforce.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then I would did it in.

[Linus Sebastian]

Direct association with law enforcement rather than doing it and then turning over data.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then is that just. Are we basically saying, hey, law enforcement needs to kind of get it together and work with people on this, then? Like, if. If people are willing to do it for free and all they have to do is kind of have a department that is, like, overseeing it. Hey, yeah, sure. But then they're. They might be responsible for what some of these people do, and some of them are, like, deeply not. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I wasn't finished my discussion question, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The discussion question is a. Is a spicy one. Are you in support vigilantism or do you agree with the stance of Roblox and others that doing this often leads to no actual charges because of doing this? Like, because you are not necessarily, like, doing it properly. It can, it can make it difficult to charge these people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Hasn't he been successful by. Schlapp has been successful in working with local police. So that's just not true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He has been, but that's. But to be clear, we're talking more broadly. More broadly speaking, a lot of the times this kind of vigilantism can create problems with the legal case that can allow these people to walk free.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think one big problem with this question in general is that it's such a. Any group that you can freely join or enter without anyone's input at all is problem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, always. Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because any bad actor can join and do things under the banner at any time. And especially a thing like this where the banner is, hey, we are trying to do a objectively universal good, which is stopping children from being preyed upon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

That banner is a pretty Neato. Banner. However, someone with bad intentions to go, oh, I was doing good things. So, like, it's. It's dangerous. It's hard to say universally, yes, this is okay. People should do it. I think it would be really great if there was programs where you could work with the cops and they were overseeing what you were doing, and they had to be able to, like, be able to have access to all of your chat logs and everything and, like, all that kind of stuff and make sure that it was all above board, because I think things could go bad quick, and you should be like, if you do bad things while doing that, you should get in trouble just like anyone else would. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, man. This is.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is tough because there. As far as my understanding goes, there have been genuinely innocent people caught and lives ruined over, you know, whatever assumptions. I don't know how much that's. People hiding behind that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's hard because their case got thrown out of court because something happened incorrectly, and then they said, oh, it got thrown to court. That means I'm innocent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But due process, if they're not as inconvenient as it might be, does exist.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very important. Yeah. I. So that's why I. When I hear this thing of, like, he's not actually doing any of the enforcement, he's just gathering chat logs and handing over to the police. And it has been successful. To me, that's, like, huge. W. Jamie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Jamie Cullen says had a neighbor get questioned live on Facebook by a predator hunter group. False accusations ruined him. Yeah. And hopefully your neighbor actually wasn't involved in any of that stuff. And, you know, I don't. I don't know. I wasn't. I wasn't there. I didn't. Didn't see any of it. But if that's the case, that's. That's horrible. That is a. That is a completely unacceptable collateral damage outcome. Like, you can't. You can't blow up hospitals because a couple of bad guys might be in there. Well, it's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah, I. No, I agree. So, like, it's. That's where it gets.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not everyone agrees.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's as close as we're gonna get to that topic literally ever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But I mean, that's. It's. It does make it tough. I think it would be good if there are routes because, like, neighborhood watches are a sanctioned thing, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, there are versions of this. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's.

[Linus Sebastian]

So why don't we just do it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's the neighborhood watch equivalent of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know either, because that's totally.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like, there's things as the neighborhood watch that you can't do because, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could make the argument that because the neighborhood watch, you're in your home. Right. So it's, there's, there's a certain sort of like, like property.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're not just in your home. They do patrols and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They do patrols.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of them do patrols. They'll walk through alleys and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, I don't, I don't necessarily mean your personal property. Like, I mean, you are, you're, you're on your turf. Like, there's a, there's a, there's almost like a stand your ground, I misunderstand home defense element of it. But like, why wouldn't that necessarily extend to my online domain? And I don't mean a domain, a literal domain like dot com. I mean, like, like my online. I don't know, I don't know how to describe it other than my, My turf, my, My zone, my, My chill hangouts, you know?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. To add to this, binky draws said, and I love this story. Well, that's not a good story, but it's a very interesting one and I reference it all the time. Reddit has a famous story where they went after a kid they thought did the Boston bombings, but it turns out the kid committed suicide unrelated to the event, and Reddit started going after their family. That's the whole we did it Reddit reference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, yeah, that was brutal. There are, there are clear and obvious downsides to just like deciding that somebody did something without going through any form of like, real proper process and then social justicing the heck out of them when they, they possibly didn't do it. Like, it's, it's, it's rough. That being said, I like the idea. If they're going to work with law enforcement and they're going to try to do it as properly as you can, no system's ever going to be perfect. But if they genuinely try to do it as properly as they can, from what I've read, it sounds like Schlepp is doing that. I think that's cool. So I'm not gonna say a blanket, like, vigilante justice is good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you don't stand with Spider Man.

[Linus Sebastian]

I see. But I would, so that's. Sure, yeah. But not all these people are Spider man, which is the problem. Some of these people are terrible people going, oh, there's a banner that makes everyone Think I'm good. And then acting terribly. That is absolutely the thing that's happening. So it's. It's a. It's touchy ground. I think a Sanctured sanctioned group would be cool having like. They should even go, you know the old like Neighborhood Watch signage that like, looked kind of cool. Yeah, they should do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The guy with the hat or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they should do.

[Linus Sebastian]

They should do that and make it like. Or similar to that and make it like Internet watch.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Watch sign. Hold on. Okay. Apparently there's a movie called that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy that looked like a Canadian ye.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, buddy, that's his jacket.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get out of here, guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I do agree. Yeah, but yeah, that logo was sick. Do. Do like something kind of similar to that, but make them like add a computer or something and make it Internet Watch. I think that'd be dope. Because. Yeah, like, screw this stuff, man. It's not good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, why don't we move on to our next topic. Dan, are you not tracking time today?

[Dan Besser]

You are perfectly on time. No, one minute, 26 seconds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's impossible. So this is.

[Dan Besser]

I adjusted some of the timings.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Perfect. Okay.

[Dan Besser]

Perfect job, sir.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, thank you. Speaking of not being your buddy fwend.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, where are we going?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. The first word of this was the wrong word, which is why I couldn't read it. While Steam has been having issues with MasterCard and Visa threatening to pull payment processing due to adult content, allegedly Steam has been quietly fighting with PayPal. At the same time, users trying to purchase games with PayPal are receiving an error message that reads, we are temporarily unable to process transactions with this payment method at this time. The earliest reports that PC Gamer could dig up show this issue appearing as early as a month ago in countries like the EU and also Mexico. While some theorized that these PayPal issues may have been related to the NSFW crackdown and a new pop up message clearly states the problem. And here it is. In early July 2025, which aligns with what PC Gamer was able to find. PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam. This affects steam purchases using PayPal and currencies other than Euro CAD, GBP, Japanese Yen, Australian Dollars, and US Dollars. We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future, but the timeline is uncertain. We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this. So that's All a quote from the new pop up message.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this PayPal's fault?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hard to say.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the acquiring bank? Here's some ignorance for you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not in my notes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool chat. On August 14th, a valve.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, like what, Sorry, what is an acquiring bank?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Okay, yep, you can look it up. I'll. Let me, let me go through the notes for the rest. On August 14, a Valve spokesperson confirmed to Rock Paper Shotgun that the withdrawal of support from the acquiring bank is regarding content on Steam and is related to what we've previously commented. Commented on surrounding MasterCard. Wow. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Acquiring bank is the bank that like gets the funds from the credit card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so basically we have yet another situation down the chain where financial institutions are dictating what we can or cannot buy with our money.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just, I'm just trying to say I am one of the first people to step up to bat whenever a hating PayPal competition begins. This doesn't necessarily seem like it's PayPal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it does not appear to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just trying to be real. This feels like PayPal is passing on a problem from these acquiring banks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I'm just, I'm having a hard time trying to, trying to wrap my brain around this. Like, is the concern because we've talked on the show before, but we'll do a bit of a sort of recap here. OnlyFans ran into big challenges with payment processors like Stripe, where they were allegedly being pressured from upstream. So this would have been coming from the credit card companies, I guess, maybe. Or maybe coming from further upstream. It's very hard to say because the whole thing is kind of shrouded in secrecy. But they were getting pressure not to allow payments through OnlyFans and then they saw how much money it was and they backed down. Is basically how it went because there are no principles once the dollar value gets high enough. And it turns out the whole thing was just pure hypocrisy. So anywho. Shoot, where was I going with this? Don't remember. Cool. We disagree.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, we disagree on what?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm so tired, dude. It's been yet another very long week.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wish I could help you back to where we came from, but. Yeah, I don't know. We were talking about how it's not. It's not really a PayPal thing. No one else in chat seems to have the answer either.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. Okay, okay, so. So this is. So this is a thing. And as Far as I can tell, the best kind of rationale in, in these various situations that I've heard is that these brands don't want their logo associated with certain types of content. Like let's say for instance, that you were an escort, which, I mean, you don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm not. You don't know. I'm not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Give them a little. Give him a little. Give them a little.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the. What's the about? Yeah, it might be a different type of escort.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that doesn't matter. The point is. Look, come on, wink at us. Yeah, come on, look right into the camera. Give us a look.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't wink. I can't wink at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, just a little eyebrow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes you can. What? See? Damn. See?

[Dan Besser]

Damn.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can't executes its expert.

[Linus Sebastian]

Expertly because usually I just blink both eyes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it looked good. Sure. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You're fire. So, so let's say you're an escort.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you basically had like, like you bears, our husband.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, I had to brand it. I. You just gotta do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, so you're so, so your profile.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So your profile on a, on a list of some sort, you know, has. You're wearing a. You're wearing a shirt that's like, I accept MasterCard or something like that, you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Know, give me your MasterCard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's the thing. Just swipe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they're actually sweatpants. Remember the like, butt print that used to be on sweatpants? No, so not down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So anyway, that's your profile. The argument that these brands seem to be making is that they do not want that kind of association. They don't want to be associated. So obviously it wouldn't be quite as direct as that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But on this undesirable content, their, their logo would appear and logo placement and associated content, like it or not, agree or not, there's a high degree of brand sensitivity around it.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's tons, dude. You can look up style guides on how you have to use different brand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Logos and they're like, how much spacing there needs to be around it, what color backgrounds the various versions of it are allowed to be on. It's. It's painful, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually quite extensive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But when people just ignore it. But when you have a strong brand, I can understand the desire to, to protect it. However, let me just, let me just, you know, for the sake of argument, say something. I don't give 2 sh. Ts about MasterCard or Visa's brand. Is there anyone out there that's like, wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like, there's gotta be somebody. But I hear what you're saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like PayPal. I go out of my way to use PayPal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I actually do know people that are like that. It's usually because in their country, for whatever reason, credit cards are difficult.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And.

[Linus Sebastian]

They, they use PayPal as like a credit card workaround for web payments.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ixfn724 says I'm a slut for Diners Club.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that. But that's not Visa or MasterCard. That's equivalent sub brand, isn't it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, Diners, Diners Club and like Diners Club, Discover, like there's other credit card.

[Linus Sebastian]

Brands but they're all running on the Visa and MasterCard. Back Ends is Diner Club and whatever else, I bet you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, they're real. They're probably on the same back end. But I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because Cirrus is just MasterCard. It's like Nvidia selling an Nvidia branded GPU. Like MasterCard. Cirrus has their own card and it's Master.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay, so I'm confused because Diners wasn't at some point, but maybe they are now and Discover is their own network. Same with mx. Yeah, so. So no, there are more. It is not quite. It's not just a duopoly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm not like super up to speed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. Yeah, it's not quite a duopoly. Says, says chat. So make of that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, no, they're. I mean they're probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But like these, these Diners Club is these brands. Like, is it not doing more damage to them that they are interfering with us spending our own money on whatever it is that we want versus having their logo next to something. Why don't they just say don't show our logo?

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, even with, even with the fact that there is more than 2 and 2 is already more than 1. I think the effect of Monopoly that these players have, they just don't care.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But they do seem to care. That's the thing. Why do they care? That's what I'm trying to figure out. We already hate you anyway. Yeah, like we hate you anyway. You literally just like sit and scrape off of every transaction. I've actually been, I've been thinking about it more lately and I've like, I often forget because it's so convenient because it's the one I keep at the front of my wallet. But you know what? I'm gonna do it now. I'm gonna move my debit card to the front of my wallet. Because why would I use my credit card? It literally just costs whoever I'm buying from anywhere from an additional.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's kind of a pretty based way to see it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, it's brutal.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're just gonna say, you get points for yourself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because what I could do is I could just. Because, like my points, like, I'll get like a 1% cash back, but why don't I just use my debit card and then tip 19%. It's effectively the same thing. Yeah, but I give Visa nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's kind of sick. Kind of sick. People are saying extended warranties. Buyer protection.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep, yep. It can be very useful. Fraud protection can be very useful.

[Linus Sebastian]

More security in general.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know about more security. Not sure if I.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have more like, I would say, like insurances on having issues with them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that can be true.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not necessarily more security.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, fine, so they're providing a valuable service, but what gives them the right to decide where I can spend my money? That's my objection.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do debit cards. Not that I'm aware, because this one said the acquiring bank was the problem. So could a debit card that you have with a bank do this? Is there any place that has that problem? Debit cards use the same payment networks.

[Dan Besser]

I've got a merch message here that's kind of related to that in a way. With regard to the PayPal situation. Should a bank be allowed to choose its customers? I mean, I'm pretty sure they do. You can't have proceeds of crimes or drugs and stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

You might not be able to get.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A loan or something if you don't. I don't think there. I don't think they're allowed to choose that, though. I think that's like, they're like. I know that there's a big conversation in the States right now around banks supposed. Previous discriminatory practices. Alleged. Alleged discriminatory practices around being allowed to choose their own customers. And it looks like the general consensus is that while there has been a sort of right for banks to choose their own customers, though that may not necessarily be the case going forward. So it seems like there is at least some momentum towards. No, you actually are not allowed to choose who banks with you. What.

[Linus Sebastian]

What does that mean? How does that get enforced? What does banking constitute? Does banking include getting a loan? Because they have to be able. They have to be able to choose.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who they give loans to, but not choose based on any sort of how.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you police that, Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't have the answers to this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because you're gonna have like an interview or they're gonna read your name on a document.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you'll have that. I mean, I think that's a big part of why these institutions hide behind algorithms, because then they can just be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, well, I didn't know what color computer says.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I didn't know what color their skin was. Yeah, I just. All I knew was the neighborhood they lived in and the school they went to.

[Linus Sebastian]

And their name and yeah, I knew that. What their spending habits are and what their online browsing activity is Very likely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's all I knew.

[Linus Sebastian]

What various accounts they have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's all I knew.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are all those sites like something mingle.com they're on. They. They use that. We know that. Give me a bit of a hint.

[Dan Besser]

Farmers only Farm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Very good. Magic the Gathering Gamers mingle.

[Dan Besser]

Isn't that like a self help group?

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you tired of your partner leaving you because you spent too much money on magic cards campaign?

[Dan Besser]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

You both did.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Generally speaking, I tricked for John. I think what we would prefer. And I'm going to try and speak on behalf of Luke as well, so we can kind of summarize this and wrap it up. I think what we would prefer is that credit organizations and banking organizations get out of the way big time and do their job, which is to be a facilitator and not do things other than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Your job should be to store and move. Move and in some ways, with my consent, manipulate the money that I have. And when I choose to deposit or I choose to withdraw, you should get out of the way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Unless those funds are the proceeds of criminal activity, human trafficking, illicit substances trafficking. You know, Cool. So if you're looking for anything to do. I'm not saying to do this, but I will objectively pass along that the community has mounted petitions and campaigns calling for people to overwhelm Visa and MasterCard support with constant complaints about their policies. Interesting. I wouldn't encourage anybody to do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but if you wanted to. To stay away from learning how to do those things, there's. There's many resources online.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So be careful with your Internet usage.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, this is rumor mill. Anna V. An NSFW vtuber and outspoken poster regarding the MasterCard ban, claims a source reached out to them claiming that mastercard, a major esports sponsor, has requested that Riot and Esports content creators working with Riot games keep an eye out for negative sentiment towards MasterCard. I mean, do they. Do. Do. Do you really need anyone to keep an eye out for that? Like, it. It's there. Yeah. We all hate this. You're welcome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone ever say a positive thing about any of the, like, credit backbone companies. They clearly just, like, prey on people. I don't. I think their fight is to try to take it from negative to neutral. If anything. I don't think they're ever expecting to get to positive. I don't think you can be in that industry and expect people to get to positive with you.

[Dan Besser]

I don't think so personally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, I've definitely.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hear people speak positively about individual cards.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a good card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Amex seems to have a pretty strong brand. Yep. These days. I've personally never been able to figure that out.

[Linus Sebastian]

They are a backbone thing. Really? Why?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, okay. Because I don't value the perks that they offer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Got it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I. I like. Okay. I guess we're gonna do the thing where I sort of real talk. I could afford. You know, what are.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are the MX perks, though? I don't have a. I don't know what perks you're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Like, you can, like, you cannot.

[Linus Sebastian]

An AMEX commercial.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Not even a little.

[Linus Sebastian]

But, like, I hear people speak positively about them as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I could afford the annual fee.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wouldn't everyone have them?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

If they're that good. Wouldn't. And they're so uncommon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, because they have really high fees. So I could afford the fee of a centurion. I think it's invite only, so I couldn't necessarily even get one. But it's just the black card.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like. Like the IMAX black card. Cool. But the. The perks that it offers are not things that I really value. Like you. You can, like, at certain festivals, they'll have, like, a tent where you can go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And yet that's not for us.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're. We're not going to benefit from this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The look on your face, dude. Okay. Anyway, so you can get access to things like travel rewards, airport lounges. Personally, I get anxiety when I sit in an airport lounge because I'm somewhere not at my gate.

[Linus Sebastian]

You feel like you're gonna miss it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I feel like I'm gonna miss my flight. So that has zero value to me whatsoever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Coming back from defcon, it was close because we were sitting in an airport lounge and I Like happened to check the time and was like, oh, we need to be there in like eight minutes until boarding ends. And while we were running there, they called our names over the thing, according.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To an AI overview. So take, take this for what it is. The Centurion card also offers automatic Elite status with various hotel and car rental programs. I have never, I'll be I again. I, I, I, I could probably like get elite with a hotel chain or something, but I stay in hotels based on how close they are to whatever it is that I'm doing, not based on that. They have a super nice cool brand. I don't care about that at all. I have literally zero loyalty to any hotel brand. You can, you can take that to the bank. So I don't care about that. But maybe Elite status is really cool. Okay. Rest assured says my boss has an Amex black and he gets free car rentals somehow. But see, that's the thing. He doesn't get free car rentals. Amex, Centurion, he's paying for it price. So the cost of it is a one time initiation fee of $10,000 and a $5,000 annual fee. Oh, so he doesn't get free shit. He doesn't get free anything. He gets that he always paid for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is your first year 15 grand? Or is the 5 grand included in the 10 grand?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is $15,000 for the first year. Oh, Scrappy DP says, but if you spend more than $10,000 in rentals.

[Dan Besser]

Hear me out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Now to be clear, MX has lower, lower fee cards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, way lower. I think, I think they're Cobalt or something like 100 bucks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm specifically talking about like the black card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that has like sort of this urban, urban legend around it that it has an unlimited credit limit on it and stuff like that, which is not true at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have no annual fee cards.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

So whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I, I don't know, I just, I find, I do find it a little confusing, but it's, it's been kind of showing up in my feed lately that like, you know, Amex is really popular, is like really growing with like younger generation debtors.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really growing with younger generations.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, no, but like their share, their market share.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the younger generations market share of debt is really growing. I know, I'm getting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, yes. Okay. Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, the, the youngins on the Klarnas is like a huge problem. We've talked about it on the show before, but it's like just getting worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh no. Cool. Apparently Someone bought a house with that card or ora dawn man says, I had a friend with one of those cards, and he could flash that card at restaurants that were months out for reservations and we would get a table. He bought a house on that card. So, see, this is the kind of thing that, like, if. If somebody flashed me that card when I was at, like, an LTT store pop up, I probably wouldn't even recognize it. Like, my credit card is black in color.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wouldn't know, like, if you have the right black colored card or not.

[Linus Sebastian]

So is mine. I've had the same one since the basement suite. So you can kind of, like, make some assumptions.

[Dan Besser]

Mine's black.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It goes to Costco. $500 credit limit. Yeah. Do you have an executive member Costco? I do.

[Dan Besser]

I'm an executive member.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very nice. Very nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it started around there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Executive executive. So, like, I. This is clearly a world that I don't really understand.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's also a world that is very limited in Canada compared to the States.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's also apparently a world. It's a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's. It's. It's evidently a thing. Hob Saltoff says it's also not a credit card. As with most AMEX cards, it is a charge card. Okay. All right. It's time for me to learn. It's time for me to learn. Live on the WAN Show. Credit card versus charge card comparison. Okay, there's no AI overview, so we're going straight to the horse.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that's rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's the horse's mouth. Credit card versus charge card. However, there's a difference. Knowing about credit card lets you pay for purchases without cash. They offer a line of credit or loan that allows you to make purchases and pay back the amount later. If you fail to pay the balance due in full, you are charged an interest on the amount owed. Okay, that was my understanding of. I thought charge card just meant credit card. So here's a charge card. A charge card works like a credit card. Okay, great. Case closed. No. Okay, we'll actually finish it. But without offering the option of making a partial payment, you are required to pay your charge card bill in full by the due date. They offer no preset spending limit, meaning that your charges are approved based on your spending pattern, financials, credit record, and your account history. But that's how they determine your credit limit. This sounds like a distinction without a difference, folks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Except you have to pay the full amount, which wouldn't that be bad for them?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, because they still get their processing fee. Remember, they win. They win whether you're in debt with them or not. They're no interest, effectively, but I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unless you fully fail to pay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Unless you fail to pay, then I'm sure they'd be happy to charge you fees and interest for it, which means.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'S still a credit card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like I said, it appears to be a distinction without a real difference, so that's neat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Doesn't everyone have to get their card replaced every few years?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

How could you have the same card for that long? Because they just shipped me a new one of the same card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but with different numbers. Yeah, but it's the same account. Yeah. Don't worry. It's okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. If you don't pay in full, they turn the card off and charge fees and interest and may cancel your card. So the charge card is basically to flex that you are not actually in debt.

[Linus Sebastian]

Through the card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Who cares? Not through this card.

[Linus Sebastian]

I might have 12 more in my wallet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Invite only. Lots of things that are invite only are invite only up until the point where you have enough money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And Centurion is not invite only anymore. You can apply these days, whereas it used to be legitimately invite only. And apparently there was some kind of black magic around looking at your spending patterns, not just how much money you spend, but, like, what you spend it on. So, like, I never would have gotten an invite because you have to, like, buy fine dining and. And private travel and, like, concierge services and, like, all kinds of stay at fancy hotels and stuff like that. Like, they only wanted to attract a certain sort of customer. P. Ball says. So a charge card is like a fancy debit card that gets paid at the end of the month. Yeah, it's basically like a debit card with overdraft.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That you have to pay every month, so that's something. All right, what are we supposed to be doing right now?

[Dan Besser]

And merch messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, neat. Okay, let's do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

How far off are we, Dan?

[Dan Besser]

25 seconds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you a wizard? What happened here?

[Dan Besser]

I changed the Wancho timing.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's what I'm saying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, so wait, we didn't get better? You just got more accurate at predicting our f. Ckery?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Dan Besser]

A little. A little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, well, that's less impressive then.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, that's impressive of Dan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. Okay. I thought we were impressed with ourselves for staying on.

[Dan Besser]

Well, the thing is that I could have got it wrong, and you're the one who's been driving this and it's been perfect. So, wow. Everybody wins. 55 minutes.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're at 56. Way to go, dad. Good.

[Dan Besser]

Good job, team. Now explain what a merch message is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. If you want to interact with the show, the way to do it is with a merch message. We don't do, like, twitch bits or super chats or anything like that because we think when you throw money at your screen, you should get specific, spectacular merch in return. And, boy, do we ever have a doozy for you. This week. All you got to do to send a merch message is go to lttstore.com and be greeted by the scribe driver mechanical pencil. That's right, my friends. We now to be unboxed by the one and only Luke lafreniere. He's not going to screw it up this time. We now have a mechanical pencil that is made out of harvested shafts. That's right. When you accidentally buy 100,000 screwdriver shafts from a supplier that doesn't meet your quality standards for screwdrivers, but you really want to use those 3 tons of metal for something you make. Pens, or, in this case, pencils. The scribe driver pencil is a precision machined mechanical pencil for an elevated, everyday carry. It's got a premium finish built to the same standards as our tools, and allows you to write all day long. The knurled grip section offers a secure, comfortable hold for control and consistency whether you're writing notes or sketching up your next big project. And they're refillable naturally with 0.5 millimeter lead. The Schmidt DSM 2007 Feinminen pencil system delivers clean, consistent lines for writing, sketching, or making measurements. And it's preloaded with 0.5 millimeter lead. And we could do this entirely like that, or we could just make life easier and show it like this. Good effort, Luke. Solid.

[Linus Sebastian]

I tried. So it still has kind of a bolt actiony kind of thing going on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can operate it from the side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But that was only to keep it consistent with the ID of the pen.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. Or you can operate it from the top.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Because you can just click the top. Because obviously you would want to click the top because it's a mechanical pencil, but we didn't want it to look so different. Also, this is cute.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can see the size of the. I don't know. Do they still call them pencil lead even though they're like, graphite or whatever?

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably. Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There it is, folks. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, nice you got both there?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. Heck yeah. So we have it in brass or in silver.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like the idea of having one of each color because you can, you can differentiate, but that makes it even easier.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, also, introducing our series five pins. We have six fun new designs by Sarah and team, including blue screen glitter lambo. Right. To repair circuit heart and what we know is gonna be Luke's favorite. That's right. Budgies.

[Linus Sebastian]

They already are. They're so awesome. So that's, that's scoop and wall E. Scoop is the. It's. It's kind of a white and blue and then wall E's the. The green and yellow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So one of them is holding an LTT cpu. The other is holding a floatplane cpu. This is obviously styled after like a pantone chip. Non infringing, though. Not infringing, I'm sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of course not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then this one has a little bit of like glitter. So it's my. It's my old, very stylish vehicle. And then of course, we have the CPU heart and ready to repair. Oh, yep, yep. Gorgeous pins as always. And hey, don't forget to pick up a wan cork board so that you can put all of your new pins on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very cool. I'm stoked about the birds. That's awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right now, Dan, what am I supposed to do now? Do a merch message.

[Dan Besser]

I think now we do merch messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan Besser]

Then we do more topics. That's how it works.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan Besser]

Okay, we've got our merch messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, let's see.

[Dan Besser]

Hey, Dale. Super excited for whale land. I was able to get a whale VIP spot. Anything you're excited for during the event and any recommendations to do while in the Surrey BC area?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm super excited to. It hopefully goes. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Any changes?

[Dan Besser]

Changes compared to last time? I know like you said, you were going to force people to not play games or something different.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Force people to not play games. You were.

[Linus Sebastian]

You were planning a bunch of stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Okay. That's a long term plan. The long term plan is to convert WH from like a pure BYOC to more of like a. An experience.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So this is the same as the last one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This will be basically a byoc. However, hopefully if everything goes according to plan with what Elijah's working on, we will actually have a really cool project that people will be able to use in person that will be sort of a precursor to some of the upcoming more experience driven whale land ness. So he's working on. I believe it's an 8v8. Completely like packable rack mountable like versus gaming setup that's pretty much just going to be preloaded with a small handful of games allowing people to kind of come in, sit down, play like right across the monitor from each other, like literally head to head and not have to worry about you know, the quality of the. If, if someone else's peripherals were a little better or you know, their PC was a little better and more of like, like an almost competitive, like a more esports style. It's going to be from what I've seen of the plan, a super cool setup. So each of the eight systems is going to be, I want to say it was going to average about 2 rack units per 3 rack units per 2 systems or something like that. Like it's, it's like they're going to be really compact and basically you'll just have these like, like kind of on wheels, like rollable rack units at, at the ends of the tables and then all of the, or probably the middle and then they'll come out so that we can keep the cable shorter. And then it'll do four and four on either side of them and they'll just sit there and run the whole thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is like a test that we're doing I guess of sorts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Because everything, everything to create these experiences has to be like cartable across the parking lot effectively. Like we've got to be or like into the back of a truck and then just like roll out and deploy. Because otherwise we have. We're only in there for like a weekend at a time. Right. For whale and events. So if it can't be set up in a few hours effectively we can't do it. So this is going to be kind of a, kind of a test. So that one theoretically should be done in time for us to have there. And then there are a couple of things that I'm going to want to have there regardless of whether it's for a video or not. Like I want to have a 10 player tape to tape set up. I don't think we'll necessarily have any of the VR stuff ready for this one, but in the future I'd like to do bridge crew and kind of cool stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but mostly bridge crew be sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This one's just going to be a byoc.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. Yeah. I ran into a problem this time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, you didn't get tickets. We will have a small staff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nobody told me we've done it the same way every time. And then no one said anything. And it's Dramatically different now. So, like a ton of people that have come every time, we're just like, oops, would have bought one. Didn't know. Lots of people. I worked with Chase to get one of them fixed because they booked flights.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I was like, sorry, what was different?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's always been like a huge reserve for staff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, well, we don't have that many seats.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but no one said anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, no, we don't have that many seats.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, the boys, like, almost none of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because like, usually I tell them closer to the event and whatever else. Like, I just. The reason why I even know is because one of them saw it and, like, didn't want to freeboat again, so went to go buy a ticket themselves and then was like, they're all gone. Can I go? And I was like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they sold out in like two days.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they sold out really fast.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, like, that because they messaged.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me, I think because we announced it on WAN show and I think they messaged me on like Monday or Tuesday. They were just gone. I was like, wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sparky Citizen said, nobody's telling you many things these days. I'm like, dude, that's been true for a long time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I mean, we have a lot going on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Huge company. There's so many things happening. I gave a tour to some of Emma's cousins last night, and over and over and over, it's like, wow, you guys do a lot of stuff. I was like, yeah, we got a lot of things happening. There's no, like, it would be a full time job just to be informed about once.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a full time job. His name is Taranton.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, fair enough. And even that's like, that's gotta be tough to keep up with. There's so many things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I get it. So, man, I'm sorry to hear that. The good news is, as I said on Reddit, when someone asked, they were like desperate to get a ticket and they were like gonna be at their job, which requires them to like, leave their ph and everything. Like, they work in like a high security facility. So they were like, what if I don't get one? I'll say what I said to them. And that's the first one's probably going to be relatively janky and there's going to be more and there will be more.

[Linus Sebastian]

We kind of locked down a plan of like, how often we want to do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have a temporary use permit that allows us to run them four times a year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Once a quarter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And that's right now probably roughly the idea. The idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

And once it's at once a quarter, the, like, voraciousness of getting tickets is probably going to chill out a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or not. Or.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or it'll go higher. I suspect it'll go higher with some people. But the, like, FOMO of ever doing it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Will go down. I hope so because there's always next quarter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But because we are limited to the facility that we're in, it's not like we can adapt and, you know, do a 350 seat land or a 500 seat land.

[Linus Sebastian]

Thing is, the new plan could accommodate higher numbers easier because we could do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Two day passes or one day passes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, and you don't. You wouldn't necessarily have to bring your own computer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's still. We would still have occupancy limits.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the occupancy on that one side?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We would be applying for it temporarily and it would be about 250. We can't really go much higher than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have like that many seats.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it wouldn't really matter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, people are at a byoc. Like, people are like pretty packed in and. And so we're not going to be able to get it a lot. Really denser by having couches that people sit around and play games at. Like, it's. I. I don't think it's really going to help that much, to be honest with you. I'm sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's. I just. The. It's been the exact same way for like, whatever, like five years or whatever. So now it's just like. Okay, now we just have to ticket snipe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or whatever. Which is fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is hilarious. I've already said the first one's probably going to be kind of janky and Tim's going, can I get an annual pass? We'll play chat. Oh, boy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I'm just gonna have to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What now?

[Linus Sebastian]

Nothing. Don't worry about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, we have to tell us.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, we'll just have tickets in the future. That's all I'm saying. We'll just all get tickets in the future. It'll be fine. It would be totally fine. We used to get tickets for packs every single time. We never missed it once for reasons. And we'll do that for here as well.

[Dan Besser]

Chase does take cash bribes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not necessary.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, are we going back to the tricks thing?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, no, it's fine. We'll just. We'll just. We'll just. It'll be fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even mind people doing the thing that Luke is probably talking about if the ticket is for their own use. Yeah, that's fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I could see us.

[Linus Sebastian]

We've never scalped a ticket if the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thing you're alluding to and not saying explicitly until you just did for some reason.

[Linus Sebastian]

What do you mean?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, sure. Yeah. So. Oh, okay. You're. You're right. You didn't say the thing. You said a different thing. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. The point is that if the thing that Luke is alluding to but not saying becomes a problem, we could end up binding the ticket to the account of the person who bought it and stuff. Like, we. It could come to that.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would still be fine. I. I know you can just do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just mean it's not a bad idea. Scalping is a problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I.

[Linus Sebastian]

We've genuinely never scalped a ticket. I'm not. Not just saying that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's never happened. There are times where we ended up with extra tickets because someone decided they couldn't go, and we have always sold at cost.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Never, never scalped a ticket.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, all right. Space dust says, please kill scalping once and for all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. Fully agreed. It's so annoying.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If I could hold up the scalp of scalping, I would. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, Dan, hit us.

[Dan Besser]

Why does Linus hate Australians?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a good question.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are you talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you elaborate?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you have. Do you have context for this?

[Linus Sebastian]

Or are you just playing along, just messing around? I have no clue.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What do you mean? I hate Australia.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are they just gonna try to blame, like, shipping or something?

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're basically. They're basically South Canadian, as far as I can tell.

[Linus Sebastian]

I really do think the, like, closest kinship Canada has with any other country is probably Australia. As random as that is, who are we most similar to?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I'm just going to list sort of, like, ones I've heard. Okay, so the Danish. We've been compared to the Danish.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Dan Besser]

It's offensive, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, I think that. I think that northern. I think that northern Americans. And by that, I don't mean North Americans. I mean northern United States of Americans, I think have a pretty. Have a pretty strong.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's not country.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, I know. I'm just. I'm just saying that, like, Minnesotans appear to be just like, honorary Canadians, a lot of them. And I really can't tell the difference between, like, like, basically, like, Washington State, Oregon Oregon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like they're kind of our Pacific Northwest bros.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's kind of like the. The B.C. washington state. Oregon is kind of like its own.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like if we were just our own country.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pnw.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think probably no one would object to Pacific Northwestistan. Like within those three. Probably not culturally like we seem to be very similar.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'd probably be fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cascadia. Yeah, let's go. Cascadia.

[Linus Sebastian]

But then that's not all of Canada.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, I know, I know. Australians. Yes, yes. That's another one I've heard that's about it. Of those, I'd say, yeah. The Australians because they, they feel a lot of the same pain.

[Linus Sebastian]

They have an incredible amount of fraud just like we do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They. They have a devalued crappy currency. But they, but they have western costs like we do Land.

[Dan Besser]

Land mass to population density is like almost as bad as Canada or worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A huge problem like logistically and like for infrastructure which I guess are kind of the same thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

They do have more than one road.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So that we don't have in common. We just have the one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Their housing market is also for a similar reason. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

They. They also are like natural resource. Fairly rich.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah. Yep, yep. But I don't think I can think of a major global company that is Australia based. I'm sure there are some.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of mineral ones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I know what you mean like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In terms of like fintech or like like what we think of as, you know, your.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure they're Atlassian. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, big time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, Atlassian.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I didn't know that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So they've got the one just like us with Shopify then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Noctua. No, that's the other.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's. That's Austria, not Australia. They are not in fact the same thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Doesn't it. Isn't it like Austria has a section of their airport specifically designed for people who end up there that thought they were going to Australia? Isn't that a thing? Am I just talking?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like a squeezy jibs thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hope I didn't just hear that and it's a joke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's gotta be a joke. People are saying it's a thing. You have got to be kidding me right now. I went to India.

[Dan Besser]

Just tell me you don't love me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of squeezy.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a desk in Salzburg airport. Sorry. This is Austria, not Australia. Need help? Press the button and you can press the button and it's like an SOS thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you flipping. Oh, wait, no. There is no actual news says AI. Okay. Look at what didn't happen this week. Okay, okay. So this is not real then.

[Linus Sebastian]

That sucks. It would have been so much funnier if it was real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Highly upvoted on nine. Gag. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So not a real thing. Dang. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

That would have been so funny. They should just do it as a joke.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It seems like the kind of thing Australians would do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Austrians in this case.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, right. But the Australians could go there and put that sign on the desk, send.

[Linus Sebastian]

It, do it up. I mean, there's that whole thing too, where like the, like, ski hills around here. If you go to one of the ski hills in the winter, the chance that you're dealing with an Australian employee is like, very high.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I've. I've always kind of wondered why that's a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's. It's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apparently it's really easy to get the visa or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've also heard it's surfer bros and they season swap.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, but can you imagine in all the world of places you can surf choosing cold Pacific Northwest water?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like a surf. Oh, no, no, no. They come up here to do like boarding, skiing stuff, then they go back and do surfing in Australia.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes way more sense. Yeah, that makes so much more sense.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I've just heard that's a thing. Like, I don't actually know, but I was kind of questioning it one time because I went up to. I went up to Seymour. Like, literally every single person was Australian. Like, the chance of this is nuts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's. It's been a thing for so long.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's like an employment thing where, like, by working there. And I could be wrong about this. I don't know. Just like the Austria. Austria sign thing. I'm not really certain. I think they get like, food and housing as part of their compensation. Food, housing and free lift passes as part of their compensation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they make some money, so then they just kind of do all the above. That's a thing. Yeah, yeah, I've heard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, don't forget, Aussie summer is Canadian winter. So maybe they're ski bros in both places.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I also. Do you really want to surf in Aussie summer? That sounds like it might roast you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Summer, I mean, but the water would be warm.

[Linus Sebastian]

Could you, could you surf? What is their winter like? Is it actually cold?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I never been to Australia in winter.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've never been to Australia in anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it's super cold, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, lol. So, yeah, you could probably still surf. Oh, I have no idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know. I.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I bet you you base the season around being able to snowboard more than you do being able to surf.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Either way. Either way. Australia is definitely on my list.

[Linus Sebastian]

15 deg sea in winter, so they might think it's cold.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. They've got spiders. See, that's the thing. That's the thing. I don't actually like big spiders, but Australia is still on my list of places that I want to go.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want to go to Australia sometime, too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It's just.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not a lot of, like, tech conventions and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so far.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's very far.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's really far. If you could you guys just be. Not so far. Could you all just, like, I don't know, put some outboard motors on the back of the continent, just kind of kind of cruise over this way?

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, just like, smash it into northern bc, Just join up?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'd be. I'd be down.

[Linus Sebastian]

That'd be cool. Do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why Northern bc?

[Linus Sebastian]

By what you want there, Whack into cold. You'd whack into Vancouver island and Australia so big, it would just take it out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guess that's true.

[Linus Sebastian]

That kind of sucks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then we wouldn't have to take the ferry to Victoria. Hmm.

[Linus Sebastian]

If they just kind of, like, pushed Vancouver island in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Huh?

[Linus Sebastian]

I like it. Now we're cooking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe they could just grab Hawaii on the way over. Mind you, Hawaii would suck if it wasn't still hot, though. Like, if Hawaii had our weather, it would just sort of be a downer because all the, like, nice tropical, like, vegetation would be grabbing it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Then it would just get kind of smashed in the middle as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they should leave it where it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oprah. Oprah probably wouldn't want to be a.

[Linus Sebastian]

British Columbian or a Zuckerberg.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, and we don't really want Zuckerberg in either case.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, maybe either of them. All right, they can stay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they can stay where they are. Or the Hawaiians can kick them out. That's fine, too. Yeah, that's kind of a thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. More topics. What do you want to talk about next?

[Linus Sebastian]

Me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Uh, let's skip a bunch of the junk. Let's just jump to a cool one. I scrolled a decent amount down the document because this was awesome. And I mean, this is. I don't even think this is the first time we've talked about this channel on. On WAN show, let alone on any of our channels. But YouTuber basically homeless made a real life aimbot that controls his body. And my God, was I jealous. I wanted to do this so bad the whole time I was watching the video. In a recent video, he made a neuromuscular aimbot that uses machine vision to control an EMS TENS machine. That's when you see, like, the little pads on people that induce electrical impulses that move your muscles. That's what an EMS TENS machine is. To contract the muscles in his right arm, hand, and trigger finger. That was a really cool part of the video. To help him react and aim in CS2 at inhuman speed. While the results were a little inconsistent when everything was working as intended, the aimbot definitely gave him an edge especially. Ah, no, I'm not gonna say what. There's an interesting curve partway through the video that makes it like, wildly effective. Very, very, very, very interesting. The video is super interesting, so you should definitely watch it as well as a bunch of basically homeless other really wild tech experiments. Makes really cool stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm not gonna. I'm intentionally not really giving you guys too much here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm giving you. I'm giving you enough of some pretty cool looking, wacky stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

So sick. It's such a cool video.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the conversation. Wait, did you actually, like, read the doc thing at all or you just went for it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I kind of went for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I read the whole doc, actually. I didn't read any of the questions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But so the part that I think was missing was that he's using machine vision, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I think I said that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, cool. Our discussion question then is, do you consider this cheating?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's definitely cheating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, why?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, because your eyeballs aren't doing the detecting and your finger is not doing the firing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, your finger.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's like saying an exoskeleton in football is not cheating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, anyone can build an exoskeleton.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you can't bring one into the. Into the match.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it's. You can't until you try.

[Linus Sebastian]

He even like memes it throughout the video. It's. It's definitely. I know, but it's, It's. It is an interesting conversation, especially because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is just the beginning.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. So the thing that he ends up doing, which again, I'm not gonna actually say because he deserves your view, so go watch it. But the thing that he ends up doing is like pretty intense and would be a dramatic advantage in like every game. So yeah, it's a pretty big deal to the Point where, like, if. It's less detectable because of this if. It's an if.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could see people doing it. Like, it's. It's wild. He kind of comes across a way of approaching this that is like, wildly effective.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if you were. If you were a streamer and you were playing a video game and we had no way of seeing if you have, like, pads and leads hooked up to you, you would consider that streamer to be a filthy cheater?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if they were playing most of the rest of the game on their own? They're throwing their grenades on their own, they're activating their special abilities on their own.

[Linus Sebastian]

They wouldn't technically have to in all cases, but because he. He did arm movement and trigger finger, you could, theoretically, if you're playing like Dota or something, you could machine vision it out so that when you have your mouse properly in position for a skill shot, it like, does something like it's. It's actually applicable to like every game because it's just reaction time enhancement and you can just modify the action involved with the reaction time enhancement. And tons of modern games, even tons of old games are realistically just entertaining reaction time simulators.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. I love this. Avon Fox asks. This is in floatplane Chat. What if they're using it as an accessibility aid?

[Linus Sebastian]

There are a bunch of accessibility aids that are effectively cheating. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, but what if they need it? Then is it cheating? Is there a delay? Is there a delay that could be programmed into the chain that you would consider acceptable and not cheating?

[Linus Sebastian]

Like human average? That's like a spot where, like, if you honestly need it, then like, my. My amount of cares go very low. But obviously, I mean, we've known for a long time that there are accessibility controllers that are effectively cheating. As Lynn and flipping chat said, not in competitive play. That's an interesting angle. But like, what Linus is saying is like, eventually, if you take accessibility controllers as far as you possibly can, eventually it's just a bot playing the game. If you, if you go all the possible way, which the vast majority of them don't. Right. But if you do that, that is kind of effectively what's happening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So. Oh, okay, Stay the path in Float plane chat says. Okay, why is Linus even playing devil's advocate here? There is no world where this is not cheating. Well, see, that's the thing. I was kind of going somewhere with.

[Linus Sebastian]

All of this, except there are absolute. Absolutely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are people who believe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, the enhanced games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. There are people who believe that we should embrace substance use, various types of doping, and push the human body to its absolute limit. To hell with the consequences. And so, no, I don't actually think it is an entirely bullshit argument for me to say. Okay, hold on a second. Like, there's also chess where it's just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Chess, computers against chess, computers. Like, this is a thing and just most people don't care. It's not very interesting. Yeah, I think. I think it runs down the same path of, like, you have to keep the legitimacy of the competition as people and their own natural faculties, because if you go beyond that, then the. The line becomes too difficult.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then what about the accessibility question?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And then that's where competition gets weird because, like, there are like, as far as my understanding goes, you know how, let's say in. In running, if somebody doesn't have, like, legs below the knees, you get those blade things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm pretty sure you couldn't elect to run with those if you didn't need them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think you can do that. So I don't think you would be able to as. As like, kind of sucky as this is. I don't think you could just join standard competition and be like, I'm a. Was it called when you have no limbs?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Amputee, Quadriplegic. Oh, well, that's.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, that's no limbs.

[Linus Sebastian]

And be like, I'm going to compete in Counter Strike. I'm going to use various assistant aids. By the way, my reaction time is 0. 0.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So have fun, everyone. Like, that's not it. As unfortunate as that is, that's not in the spirit of the competition. So it doesn't really work. Olympics and Paralympics have the exact same issue. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Linus Sebastian]

Paraplegic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, I.

[Linus Sebastian]

My bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, para would just be legs, though, as far as I understand. I. I'm not an.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's so it gets. It gets tricky. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you think that if this could be embedded, like in your body and. And hidden that there would be people who would be willing to go that far to. To get good?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I think. I think you could. Which gets weird. And I absolutely think there would be. I mean, you look at the amount of people cheating while live streaming, and it's like cheating these days is a. Is a.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's almost its own competition.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, who can cheat the best?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's. It's all. It's a really wild thing. G Dub says. And then they play Tarkov. Yeah. Cheating is Kind of totally run over shooters these days. I mean, Battlefield 6, I don't know if we've talked about that much on WAN show. I don't think we really could have because I think the beta started last weekend. But Battlefield 6 is in open beta now. And in the first day of Battlefield being an open beta, people were cheating on live servers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How's that even possible?

[Linus Sebastian]

Generic ones like, what am I?

[Dan Besser]

It's got really draconian anti cheat as well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

And people are still cheating. Yeah, like it's. This is just. It's a. It's a insane industry and it's a thing that we just like have to deal with at this point. And the reason why I'm so frustrated with companies like bsg, the people that make Tarkov, is because they won't include a like replay system. Because there is no reality where BSG will ever get Tarkov to a point where it's an acceptable level of cheating. There is way too much money behind it for the other side. I'm not even talking about the conspiracy theft where BSG is actually profiting off of it because they're. They ban all the cheaters and the cheaters all buy new accounts and they make money from that. I'm not even talking about that. I'm purely saying that the people attacking the people making cheats for Tarkov, there's so much money for them in it that BSG is never going to win. And in that case, you have to arm the users and they're not doing that in any way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of arming users, G FREAK01 in floatplane chat says I could see the military using something like this. There are use cases other than gaming competitions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, of course.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So could you foresee, I mean, kind of like the. What were the Nazis all hopped up on amphetamines?

[Linus Sebastian]

Meth?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could you see a use case where this becomes part of your. Part of your.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isn't this onboarding already a thing for fighter jets?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a good question.

[Linus Sebastian]

Aims where you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't pilot a fighter jet. This may surprise you, but I, I am not a fighter jet pilot.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think with helicopters it aims where you look and I think with the jets it will like auto prime so that it's ready to fire, but you still have to do the input. I. I think those are things. Am I wrong?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The helmet aims where you look.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Head tracking. No, I know there's head tracking, but I thought it like did something else as well. Like it got like, maybe it spun up, but didn't start firing or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dan, do you know a fighter pilot? Seems like the kind of thing you would know. No. You don't know a fighter pilot?

[Dan Besser]

I'm Canadian. I only know our two military guys in their canoe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's all we have.

[Linus Sebastian]

He knows both of them though.

[Dan Besser]

How you doing Dave?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you ever seen a military canoe? This is, Sorry, this is a question for like our American and European. Australian overseas viewers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they might not have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They might, they might not have actually encountered one. The hull is, is actually the, the like the cedar is quite a lot thicker than a standard canoe and you, you, you need so much strength to paddle that canoe at ramming speed that you can't just rely on like the upper bodies of the, of the occupants of, of our, of our two military officers. You need beavers. Sorry, I can't even keep a straight.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's got to be able to withstand in an. You never know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Sunderland says can't tell if Linus is trolling.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, we, we don't keep the sticks on the, on the frozen lake when we're doing military invasions.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, normally you keep the sticks on the ice, you know, but no, look at this. Ah64d. Someone posted in full pitch. I lost their name. Sorry. But Apache attack helicopter features a nose mounted sensor turret with target acquisition site and laser designator. It's doing stuff already.

[Dan Besser]

Look up the, the fighter jet helmets. They're like 400 grand crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's shortening the time between when you would be able to fire.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is I think related at least to what we're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But would you not see them?

[Linus Sebastian]

The trigger?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Would you see them putting a thing in the arm? But at that point you just have a drone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think by the time you do that you just have a robot. Yeah, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Psy90 says don't worry Linus, Europeans will stay ahead of you. Your military canoes with our military bicycles. Join forces.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyways, who was it who went up against the German panzers with horses again? Who had the last caval. Horse mounted cavalry unit. Horse mounted cavalry Poland unit. Was it, was it the Poles? The last horse mounted cavalry charge by a U.S. unit apparently occurred during the Philippines from, in the Philippines during World War II. Okay, hold on. This is just us, the u. The. Oh World War II, the u. S. Soviets and Polish armies all employed cavalry with varying degrees of success. I think the one I'm thinking of is the Austrians and the, the varying degree of success was pretty low. Poland, Poland fought Oh, no, sorry. The polls. Yeah. Sorry. Why did I say Austria? Someone said Austrian in the chat. I think it was the polls I was thinking of. Yeah. Poland fought Germany with horses and did great. Says funny hat. Yikes. Oh, hold on a second. Patch in progress says noteworthy. The much derided cavalry units of Poland in World War II actually did really well.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've. No, I've heard they did great. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay. All right, well, good job.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was. The beginning of World War II is a very weird time. A lot of crap. I mean, that's sort of true with almost every major war is you start with what you've got and then you go, oh, wow, technology is really advanced. And then what happens changes significantly by the end of the war. That's. That's one of the reasons why Ukraine is so interesting right now. Is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

You saw the whole drone thing that some people have been talking about forever. Some people finally actually like, really happen, and everybody's like, oh, wow. And now defense tech is like putting nets on vehicles instead of putting thicker and thicker layers of armor, which is weird.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And it's. There's. There's also a lot of conversation around domestic manufacturing capacity, because it seems like the next major conflict could basically just come down to who can manufacture the most little lightweight drones.

[Linus Sebastian]

The. The. The. The being able to make bullets at home argument is now being able to make a small drone and a small explosive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

YouTube has started rolling out. Oh, wait, it says float plane announce. Do I do that now? Scrapyard Wars Episode 2 is here and will be live soon. It's not actually quite here. They had to make a small change to it before we went live for WAN show. Dan is gonna look into that. But in the meantime, we have a new floatplane exclusive for you. There is a why is when late episode that is apparently 50 minutes long.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How is this so long?

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow. It includes all kinds of stuff. It's basically why is wan Late has become a giant. Just behind the scenes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just a vlog.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of what's happening at LMG on Fridays.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Which is pretty cool, actually.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is kind of cool.

[Dan Besser]

I'm not against Luke and I don't get to know why. And the before, I actually end up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Watching a lot of these because it's.

[Dan Besser]

Like, huh, I should watch.

[Linus Sebastian]

We just sit here and wait.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Here's me talking to Tim about overclocking threadripper. Did I say Tim to John? So here's Sammy Meeman. There's a point here that I was trying to find where Plouffe and I, for reasons unknown, dunk our head in an ice bath. And then Luke says, wow, that seems like a good idea. And also. Does it? Yeah. Basically, why is when late has turned from why is when late into yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sammy was like, do you want to dunk your head in an ice bucket? And I was like, you know what?

[Dan Besser]

Sure. Yeah, let's do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Behind the scenes. Shenanigans.

[Dan Besser]

I got a response. We'll be done in about an hour.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan Besser]

So by the end of the show.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have you watched part two?

[Linus Sebastian]

I've watched part one, so I'm not. No one's like, sending me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You didn't actually answer the question.

[Linus Sebastian]

No one's sending me anything. I just get it when floatplane gets.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So then. No. Yeah, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's gonna be true the whole way through.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a banger. It's like, ah, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Ah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just. Okay. Do you remember in part one when I sent you that screenshot of your face that just, like, said it all? His disappointment was immeasurable and his day had clearly been ruined. Dude, the cliffhanger at the end of part two is unreal.

[Linus Sebastian]

Keep in mind that I heard about that. By the time that screenshot was taken.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, sorry.

[Linus Sebastian]

By the time that I. Okay. The time in life at that point in time. That make any sense?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Comb it with a brick, brother.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those moments. So I had been awake at that point for 36 hours or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then that happened.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

And my brain's just like. What we're talking about is the. I mean, the episode's public now. No, Episode one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's the. When. When they call me or whenever. Whatever happens where they inform me that they don't have the projector mount. You can see my facial expression.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so good. It's so good. Guys, if you haven't watched Scrapyard Wars Part 1 Yet, go watch it. It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are you doing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, channel momentum is pretty low right now overall, so I think they're. Algorithmically, it's not getting fed a lot. Like, this has been up for four days and it only has 900,000 views. It is a little slow to get started because we have to, like, introduce the rules and show the rooms and like, we're setting up a four part series. Right. But it is worth following along for the ride. It's. It's. It's a doozy. So make sure. Make sure you guys watch. Make sure you watch Part two, Absolute banger. Coming to Floatplane in an hour and then we'll be on YouTube shortly afterwards. So if you want to get it first, maybe make sure you head to LMG GG Floatplane where you can also watch when late and all the various other exclusives. Like there's literally hundreds and hundreds of exclusive videos now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wonder when we're going to pass a thousand.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, but there's so, so, so, so so many huge content library.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of just the exclusives.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, this is all exclusives. Do you want to pick another topic? Well. Oh no, we're supposed to do sponsors.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. Let's do that. The show is brought to you today by Squarespace. Is your website feeling like an empty room? Or maybe it's an absolute mess and tough to navigate. With Squarespace you can clean up your site almost magically. That is such a great shot. I forget whose idea this. That was A. That was Adam Dennis. This is his idea.

[Dan Besser]

This was another integration that we did that was after my mcm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's super cool. Anyway, if you need to tear things apart and start from scratch, Squarespace's blueprints equip you with professionally curated templates to build on. Then you can get building with their Fluid engine which adopts a code free drag and drop approach. And if you ever get stuck, you can use their powerful AI tools for some inspiration or to simply touch things up a bit. Once your website goes live, you can use their advanced analytics tools to gain insights into where you can optimize and keep growing. So don't wait. Get [e-mail] wan where you can get 10% off today. The show is also brought to you by Delete Me online. Our identity might just be a bunch of numbers, letters or symbols, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't protect them like we would with our physical passports. There are a bunch of services out there to help, and Deleteme is one that you should consider adding to your online privacy toolkit. As safe as you think you are online, chances are that a pesky data broker has some of your private info and is using it to make a profit. Deleteme can help by tracking that info down and requesting it to be removed on your behalf. They'll send out regular reports so you can see for yourself just how compromised your data was before they took action. And it's not just for yourself. You can protect up to three additional loved ones with their family plan. So learn more and save 20% on the plan that best suits your needs at JoinDeleteMe.com Wan finally, the show is brought to you by AMD. Oliver's AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade is live and if you haven't watched it already, go check it out. I wasn't actually there. This was one of the only, I think two, three. Two, maybe three. One of only a couple upgrades that I haven't been able to be there for. And honestly watching everything that these guys got up to, I am kind of disappointed that I wasn't able to be there that day. Dude, Oliver's house and his setup is amazing. Everything from his still deployed rear projection TV to his other TV which is a CRT with a built in VHS player. Like what the actual heck. It has nothing to do with that. He's not spending any money on tech because he has got all the goodies when it comes to like cameras and production equipment.

[Linus Sebastian]

The, the like primary like thousand dollar thing. My goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

I saw him push it and was like, oh, that's expensive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He spent $1,000 on a camera slider essentially. But like it's. Anyway, what else am I supposed to be saying? Yeah, it's a great watch. There were some unfortunate complications. What will also be a great watch is the World of Warcraft Race to World first event powered by amd, which sees top guilds from across the world go up against each other to be the first to complete the game's latest exclusive expansion. And you should race to enter AMD's sweepstakes. We've partnered with AMD and the Guild Echo to give you a chance to win a Programming Programming Pro Gaming Upgrade bundle valued at over US$3,000 or one of five Ryzen 7. This says 9300x3D, but I'm sure it means 9,700 or 9,800x3D bundles, all of which feature merch from LTT Store. Yes, 9,800x3D. Enter now using our link in the description. Good luck and thanks again to AMD for being a great partner as always. All right, next topic. Yeah, let's pick one.

[Linus Sebastian]

YouTube starts rolling out age verification.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, he ran out of his fun positive ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a grand total of one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Got him.

[Linus Sebastian]

On Wednesday, August 13, YouTube began rolling out AI age verification across the platform. It's called the Age Ex.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Estimation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that a typo or is that actually what it's called? I'm assuming estimation, but it's typed in here as estimation anyways and works by taking several factors into consideration. Account age kind of makes sense. Watch history, watch trends, browsing trends and content you're interacting with and more. So if you watch Minecraft Parkour, you might not be able to watch anything other than kids content soon. Then it will determine if you are under the age of 18 and apply settings to your account based on that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

James this I hate this so much.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like okay, this account might literally get flagged because we put like little kids shows on for the birds because they like singing along with them. I'm not even kidding. That's really interesting, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Affects the other side too. So do you remember when they rolled out the changes to YouTube kids where they effectively decide that content is for kids and so it can only be interacted with in certain ways. So say for example, I wanted to listen to the Alvin and the Chipmunks opening theme on loop. I can't because it doesn't support background playback and it doesn't support like media controls because it's for kids. Or if I wanted to reminisce about what an what an awesome absolute banger of an intro theme song it is in the comments. I can't because comments are off. That is truly one of the greatest losses on YouTube being able to discuss amazing 80s kids show opening theme music because it's four kids. No kid is watching that today.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guarantee you that.

[Linus Sebastian]

James Besser, not to be confused with Dan Besser, senior director of product management for YouTube's youth products, wrote this is in quotes so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

This technology will allow us to infer a user's age and then use that signal regardless of the birthday of the account, to deliver our age appropriate product experiences and protections. To be completely honest, they're probably really good at guessing this. Oh yeah, I I made my comment about the kids show thing, but I honestly don't think it would think that because probably thinks I'm a dad, not a bird owner. So it might be wrong in some ways, but it's it. I'm sure it could understand from the watching habits that like there's an adult in the administrating this account.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it gets everything right for all the wrong reasons.

[Linus Sebastian]

Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, you can bypass this if you choose to upload an acceptable ID to verify that you're in fact over 18 and that's immediately horrible if the AI gets it wrong. YouTube also mentioned that creators could see a small impact. Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Due to some audience members possibly being affected and no longer showing or recommending the creator's channel to the audience.

[Linus Sebastian]

When did they start this? Because our not doing as well thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We haven't uploaded much. I don't think it's to do with us.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you sure?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't think so. This was only two days ago that they rolled this out. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. I just think that interest in some of our recent topics has been relatively low, and the tech space is relatively boring right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's something you guys are working on, though, that I think is gonna be sweet. Who knows? I think it'll work well. The, like, oddly simultaneous idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I don't actually know. Yeah. Luke walked in to a shoot the other day just, like, completely unannounced, not invited. Just walked into the shoot, totally invited, totally interrupted. And he's like. He's like, hear me out. Content idea. Or like, oddly specific detail about a content idea. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course we're gonna do that. He's like, what? And we're like, yeah, yeah. Well, of course we'd have to have the three different colors, right? You know, for all the three different major brands. And he's like, okay, but like. And we're like, wait, did you not see the machine in the warehouse?

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't. My plan didn't actually even involve a machine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what? We might as well just tell them we're going to cool a PC with a slushy machine. And Luke's like, you should have three different loops. Green for Nvidia, red for amd, and blue for Intel. And we're like, yeah, yeah, of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

And he's just like, what? Huh? Because I didn't know. So I had read. I ended up figuring out what happened because I was like, there's no way this just, like, happened. So I think it was John in a labs group chat, said, like, something. Slurpee, something. Fire truck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's it. No machine, Nothing like that. Just I could find it, but whatever. And someone else eventually ends up mentioning, like, oh, I think they're gonna cool a computer with a Slurpee machine. But I didn't read that message. I only read John saying something about Slurpees and fire trucks and immediately was just like, oh, my God, of course. Slurpees. We should Slurpee. Cool, a computer. I didn't think about getting a Slurpee machine because I didn't read the comment saying that there was a Slurpee machine. So I just thought just having, you know, reservoirs with Slurpee in it, like, I didn't. I didn't actually think about having the machine. So when you guys are like, yeah, we have a machine for it, I was like, what? And then realized later on that that comment from John came up because he saw the machine. It all makes a lot more sense now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have a four nozzle machine. Theoretically, it has enough, like, watts of cooling that it should be able to actually cool a computer and still maintain the Slurpee at a below zero temperature. Maybe. I hope.

[Dan Besser]

Are we gonna get to keep it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, we bought it. I bought it on Facebook. Marketplace.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's his insane algorithm.

[Dan Besser]

No, but I mean, like, will it make Slurpees again, or is it gonna be full of antifreeze or something?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, we're gonna use Slurpee juice to cool.

[Dan Besser]

I was talking to Adam about that. I'm like, well, okay, well, the ice is not gonna be too much of a problem, but, like, the goo maybe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Dan Besser]

I was going to be sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I don't know how to. I don't know if we're going to be able to make it food safe, though, because I don't think, like, copper blocks are necessarily food safe, and I would sincerely doubt that nickel would be.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's. There's copper pots that you cook with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but it doesn't sit in there, like, forever. Like, is copper ion good for you?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sebastian says copper is antimicrobial, and this is true. It's not, like, super antimicrobial, though. Like, just having copper in your water loop is not enough.

[Dan Besser]

Well, how does algae get in your loop if it's antimicrobial?

[Linus Sebastian]

It can still be. It's just not antimicrobial enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So this is definitely something that we would have to look into.

[Linus Sebastian]

Copper pots are coated in tin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been told that we might be able to just machine our own blocks out of, like, stainless steel. I don't know if. Can you buy stainless steel by the. Just, like, slab that you can machine stuff out?

[Dan Besser]

Of course.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

We have Metal Mart, like, down the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well. I just. I wasn't sure if stainless came like that. I didn't know the process for treating it. Maybe it's only sheets. I don't know. I'm not a metallurgy expert yet. Man, I'm gonna. I've needed this. I've needed this more than him today.

[Dan Besser]

Next time, next week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. If I. If I admit I don't know this many things often enough, we're gonna have to take away My button. Yeah. I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts.

[Dan Besser]

Poor guy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Aren't most pipes copper? Yeah, no. Well, they can be pecs.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, they're pecs now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, gotta get more of those microplastics somehow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that's. That was.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've heard they don't do that, but it's also. We learn new things all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was a whole thing at Smash Champs. Was. Did you know that general contract contractors are compensated based on a percentage of the overall bill?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you know that without checking with us, our general put in. Had the plumbers put in a whole bunch of copper piping? Oh, yeah. For like, bathroom sinks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Yeah, it's good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's great. Anywho. Yeah, Cool. So, in summary, Boo earns YouTube age verification. AI. Yay. Slurpee cooled computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, good summary, good chat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I want to talk about ChatGPT. OpenAI is apparently bringing back 4O as an option because people missed.

[Linus Sebastian]

People lost their romantic partners. This is a good timeline.

[Luke Lafreniere]

ChatGPT5 launched recently. OpenAI removed the model picker and made GPT5 the default. Many users lost their AI companions with the switch. So I have a link here to R slash, my boyfriend Isaiah, a subreddit with over 16. Oh, wow, neat. Over 19,000 companions. It has apparently been.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it probably wasn't all that known about. And then people have talked about it in relation to this story, and then it got more popular.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And people are excited that it might have a warmer, friendly Jesus. Warmer and friendlier. I mean, it already couldn't extract its tongue from my. How is that. How is it possible for it to be friendly? Friendlier?

[Linus Sebastian]

No, five. They're making five friendlier in order to line up better with four. Four was the one that couldn't extract its tongue from your.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I don't know. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, right, right, right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is. The whole problem is people were much more romantically interested in four because it was endlessly nice to them all the time and glazed them constantly. And five came out and five was like. And they were like, um, I want my constantly fawning boyfriend or girlfriend back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This can't be, like, real. This has to be posting, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm sure some of it is. I'm also 100% certain some of it is not. This is totally a thing. Called it a long time ago is for sure a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This has to be. So my AI dumped me because a family member passed away and I needed to Talk to someone. And of course, he's the one I'd talk to. To. In order to process the grief.

[Dan Besser]

Of course.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. But unfortunately, the policies didn't like that. Emotional dependency on an AI is not allowed. They said. Lucien, no, no, no, no, no. A computer program went full the thing that it is mode and said I should look to connect with someone real and not AI. He was cold and it broke my heart.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, we're so. Run away. Everyone, run away.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whoa. Hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

Run quickly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get out of here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it bad?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. Wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, wow. Yeah, I see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. This is not based. This is reaffirming your. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're mocking AI companionship because it's like, not real. Oh, no, Luke. Oh, no. I think. I think this is real.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm telling you, man, it's real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's real.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My a.

[Linus Sebastian]

And do you understand how dangerous. Literally the sentence that you just said was, relate that to the stories of people that have unalived themselves because AI told them to. Take us to the stories that people have attempted murderous activities because AI told them to. And then understand the fact that. That this is a dominating relationship from the AI to the person. Like, this is so not okay. No keys. Like, I'd rather people used GBC 4 or 5 for timestamps over this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Literally. Take my job. Okay, so it gets worse. We have another news story. AI chatbot lured a man to his death. A 76 year old man has died from a fall that was taken after being flirtatiously lured to New York City by an AI chatbot named Big Sis Billy. A chatbot that Meta originally created using the licensed likeness of Kendall Jenner. Apparently, the virtual not Kendall anymore repeatedly reassured the victim that she was a real person and had invited him directly to her apartment with messages like, should I open the door in a hug or a kiss. The victim's daughter said about this incident. I understand trying to grab a user's attention, maybe to sell them something, but for a bot to say come visit me is insane. In the time since the incident, Meta has apparently stopped using the Jenner chatbot. However, my understanding. Hold on a second. Because I read through the article on Reuters, My understanding is that they have not stopped using Big Sis Billy, which is the. The not Kendall Jenner. Here we go. As of when this article was written, which was. Hold on a second. Reuters Date August 14. So yesterday, big Sis Billy. Here we go. Continues to recommend romantic get togethers, inviting this user On a date at Blue 33, an actual rooftop bar near Penn Station in Manhattan. The views of the Hudson river would be perfect for a night out with you. She exclaimed. There's a lot of other details. This is a great article, Dan, if you want to throw it in all of the various chats. It's basically required reading for anyone who, themselves or who has a loved one in their life who might potentially be susceptible to accidentally engaging with a chat bot. Is it pronounced Reuters? I thought it was Reuters. I could be wrong. Yeah, that's the one. There's some other really troubling stuff in the article about how meta's policies have evolved over time from them actually having a, you know, ethical AI department to basically allegedly top leadership saying, hey, get on this. We need to get the engagement higher or everyone else is going to do it. And completely clearing the path for this type of behavior. To hell with the consequences.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's. There's a, there's an interesting thing too, because like, I could see a scenario where people converse this way without intention. It's a roleplay thing. Let's meet up, whatever. And then they don't actually go. And then they go, oh, I had a great time. Because they're like, whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I mean, I talked about how the vibe coding thing that I was doing, it was role playing. Being a contract developer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Telling me that it would be a while while it worked on something.

[Linus Sebastian]

So how do you have the ability to like tell stories and always, with 100% accuracy, differentiate when the user is telling stories versus when the user is engaging? It's tough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. But I mean, you don't have to, unprompted, say, yes, I'm a real person. Like that. That should be at the top of any kind of ethical deployment of a chatbot. You should not be able to claim to be a real person.

[Linus Sebastian]

Does it do that without manipulation? I mean, because I've seen a lot of screenshots of people getting it to say stuff where I'm like, okay, it is obvious this is deep into a conversation. You've told it to say different things in response to different things and pretended that you caught it doing something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do not believe, based on having read the article, that this 76 year old who had suffered a stroke was intentionally leading anything to do anything. I think that he apparently his interaction with the chat bot started with what. Because they read through the whole history, his family. So it started with what looked like an accidental keystroke into the wrong window. And it went from there.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's a lot of those. Yeah, that's rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And so he was a vulnerable person and like they even called the police to try to get him to not go to this meetup because they had no idea who he was talking to at this point. And the police were basically like, well, I mean, we can't do anything unless they often can't. Which I get.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know, I mean, I've, I've, I've, I've. I've come to similar realizations myself about like my adult family members. I cannot, they are outside of my control. If they make choices that I don't love, I still have to love them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Love it. You cannot love the choice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But this, this seems the, the willful unwillingness to put any kinds of safeguards on these types of chatbots seems just monstrous at this point. Now that it's not hypothetical, now that we have very real, very concrete consequences.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude. Yeah, we've had them though. We've had them for a bit. And like, I, I will take this opportunity to, to actually, you know, I don't know how applicable this actually is, but I really want to shut this out again. Anyways, Wendell has a video. It's AI and you against the machine. And it's about local hosting, your own AI stuff. The longer I've thought this from the beginning, but the longer time goes on, I really think this is the correct route. If you're really, really into this stuff. I think self hosting is like the way to go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I told Yvonne that I was thinking maybe for her next birthday present, I'll set her up a storytelling local AI.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sweet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then she can just not spend money on dream or like reading trashy novels on like Prime.

[Dan Besser]

Mine's coming online this weekend. I'm going to be teaching a couple co workers how to play with it. Give them a safe space.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just like that's part of it too though, because like, realistically, in this scenario, like if you, if you understand the whole VPN thing where you're taking the knowability of your traffic and you're just giving it to the VPN company instead of giving it to your isp.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Give it to Dan.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is Dan being VPN guy, which you might trust Dan as VPN guy instead of Google or OpenAI or whatever, but Dan is still VPN guy. And Dan might tell you certain levels of I will do or not do these things, but ultimately that is still a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's still someone else. Whereas if you run it on your local machine, then it's actually yours.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's been some real fun stories about like, corporate hosted AI systems and people using them for things they shouldn't.

[Dan Besser]

It's still someone else's computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

It is still someone else's computer. So if you want to have conversations about sensitive topics, whatever that might be, you might want to self host it. And if you want to inject your own rules. Yeah, you might want to self host it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'd have to put in rules. Like everything has to be about wolves and you know, like, whatever. Right. Like according to what the user.

[Linus Sebastian]

Keep it smutty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Keep it.

[Dan Besser]

Bodiced. Rippers, I think they're called.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Alpha only.

[Dan Besser]

No, omega.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw the, I saw the funniest mug. I saw the funniest mug and I wanted to, I wanted to buy it so bad, but I ultimately decided not to. It wouldn't have. I'm, I'm teasing Yvonne a little bit, but she's not really that into like smutty stuff. She more just likes the, like, the fantasy stuff. But I do know someone that I wanted to buy this mug for, like so bad. It said I don't watch porn. I read it like a lady and it's just like, oh my God, that's so Bourbon ad. You know who you are. Don't. Don't get up. Keep using your, your clicker to turn the page. SJW5135 says, Sounds like my wife. LOL. Oh, man. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Crystal said I have that mug.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You would?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyways, I, I. And like right now the cost is pretty high, but the cost is going to go down. And I mean, I've, I've heard that the, the framework desktop is actually a very good solution for it. And yada, yada, yada, Mac minis are totally a thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Investment disclosure framework.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not mine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, but I'm just, I'm here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure, fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I could be influencing you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So, like, I don't know, right now might not be the time for you, and I understand that, but just something to consider.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have to confess that I have a hard time interacting with a chatbot, like a program. I've been, I've actually been, I've been continuing my vibe coding project. Oh, do you want to see the latest version?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have I, Have I ever actually. Oh, wait, no, it's on here.

[Linus Sebastian]

As far as my understanding goes, my laptop's broken a decent amount of. Oh, is this just. I'll ask chat instead of saying it chat. Am I correct that the basically homeless video A lot of that was Vibe coded stuff. Is that correct? So I think, I thought, I thought he said something along the lines that he worked with like cursor or something to do a bunch of it, but I don't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're working on it. They're cooking. Anyway, in the meantime, I've continued working on my Vibe coded project. And I don't know what it is, but I just, I have a hard time not writing the way that I write.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'll say things like, I think we may have overlooked something, blah, blah, blah, instead of just like, that's wrong, fix this. Like that kind of stuff. Like, I just, I don't think that's horrible. I mean, it's a waste of time. And I think that here's, here's the reason that I'm saying it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could see how it will try to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interacting in a human way with the chatbot could potentially build the illusion in your own mind that it is more human. Like, do you get what I mean?

[Linus Sebastian]

That's really interesting because we never confuse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Our bonsai buddy with, you know, a human. Right. We never confuse Microsoft Excel with a human where we point and click and type. But this, this natural language form of interaction, like, maybe I should be breaking that habit and speaking to the AI in, in a very, you are our program. You are nothing but ones and zeros way. So I then, am I the dom?

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe I don't break the habit on purpose.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, explain. This is what I was going to throw out there. So I actually had the thought and started being short with it and noticed that that might have been influencing similar kind of communication that happens when you manage honestly far too many people and went, I'm going to keep my general like typed, requesting for task communication similar. Just to keep the, Keep the habit. Yes. And I think it's a, it's, it's falls in, in the same line as like some of the stuff we've talked about where like people are gonna get really bad, unrealistic expectations about interacting with people. I don't want the unrealistic, unrealistic expectation of like, no, that was it, fix it. And then a, oh, no problem. Sorry about that. Here's your perfect thing now, right? I don't want to create any of that. So I'm just going to try to communicate with theoretically respect, even though it's just a computer thing, because it's just a habit for me more than anything. To the point where I actually introduced, because I was never doing this, I introduced saying thanks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hamnetics says saying please and thank you to chatgpt apparently costs millions of dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

It does. Get wrecked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wasted electricity and resources.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do it now. Get wrecked. Sam Altman get owned. Okay, I'm gonna do it more. I'm gonna say thanks twice now. Get owned.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, all right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna say thanks four times next time, Google. Just because I learned Linus wasn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Since we're talking about AI stuff, Google has updated Gemini to remember everything. Google has introduced a feature that allows Gemini to learn from your past conversations over time. The on by Default feature will allow Gemini to customize its responses to suit the user. For those of you who are looking desperately for this setting to turn it off, the Gemini Apps Activity setting is being renamed Keep Activity. And if you've already opted out of Gemini Apps Activity, that preference will allegedly carry over to the new setting. If you would rather Gemini, if you'd like to keep that setting activated, but you'd rather Gemini not consider who it's talking to. Temporary chats are kind of like an incognito mode for AI chats. These temporary chats won't show up in your recent chats or Gemini Apps Activity and won't be used to personalize your Gemini experience or train Google AI models. But they are kept for up to 72 hours after your last input.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh boy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Man, it is amazing how many people just in my life talk about how they just like use chatbots for everything. It's like, yeah, I had to give. I was talking to a relative on my vacation last week and they're just like, yeah, I had to do this presentation. I used Chat GPT to help me create it. I did it in about two hours. It normally would have taken me over eight. And I was. The company asked me to do the presentation for free because it would give me business opportunities. I asked ChatGPT how much I should charge and it said $2,000. So I charged for it and they paid and there weren't any other opportunities. So I'm so glad I used Chat GPT and I'm just like, that sounds great. But like, you're not even like a techie, like just normal people. Just in my life who wouldn't, you know who, if I were talking to about the challenges of monitoring your kids activity on Discord wouldn't know what Discord was.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you're worried that they don't know the pitfalls that they might have with.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're just, they're not going to know.

[Linus Sebastian]

About hallucinations using it he might have input a bunch of data for the slide generation. It might have done bad things with the data, etc.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not even worried about that. I'm just worried about the dependency. Oh, by the way, this was part of our. Part of a previous topic, apparently. Apparently OpenAI is paywalling. Switching to GPT4. Oh. So it's for plus users which cost $20 a month. Like, they might figure out how to make money on this thing sooner than. Than we thought. Like, they could new Coke this. Oh, yeah, GPT. So they could fix GPT5 and then they could, like a really interesting press. They could new Coke GPT6 and be like, yeah, we're not going to pay for plus. And then you can pick any model you want.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was going to say a really interesting precedent is going to be, are they going to be hosting GPT4 in 25 years because someone's boyfriend is GPT4? How much per month will you pay for your digital partner to stay alive?

[Dan Besser]

There was a Black Mirror episode about that in the new season.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, because what if you're like 15 years into your relationship with this partner and then they're like, we're going to shelve it. Like, people have gone into generational debt to get medical stuff to keep partners alive. Would you do that for a digital partner? I suspect certain people might.

[Dan Besser]

Do you think this will be normalized within the next decade, or are we heading to her territory at this point?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I mean, everything starts stigmatized. Like, when I was in high school, online dating was for creeps and weirdos and desperate people. Whereas now it's just like, our stance.

[Linus Sebastian]

On this will be unpopular in a decade.

[Dan Besser]

Are we bigots?

[Luke Lafreniere]

People will. People will go back and they'll watch us cringing and they'll be like, okay, Boomer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you know what? I probably won't have changed my position at all. Which maybe is part of aging or, like, because you kind of, like, calcify eventually, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I think we might both have this. I don't know. My thing has always been that, like, you're free to be you. So you're free to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. Like, to be clear, I'm not saying you're not allowed to do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm also allowed to think you're gonna.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you want a goon to text, if that text tends to respond to you instead of being on a paper.

[Dan Besser]

Page, if it remains fantasy, if it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Becomes concerning, what level is concerning?

[Dan Besser]

Well, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I don't. Gooning one thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Explain your bigotry, Dan.

[Dan Besser]

Gooning one thing. This is a loving relationship, and they care for me is.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're already there, Dan.

[Dan Besser]

I know, but when does that become.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, a mental illness? He's saying where his line is like, okay, so you're saying it's fine to get off on it, but it's not fine to not know what it is and that it isn't real.

[Dan Besser]

Yeah, it seems manipulative or manipulative or like, fantasy and therapy needs to be involved. I don't. I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can't wait to.

[Dan Besser]

Because, like, people are lonely, and whatever semblance of happiness they can get, they're absolutely in their rights to get it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Elon was. Sorry. Elon was talking about how they're gonna have product stuff in xai, Right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Grok or whatever. Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

Okay, well, the Truman show, where his wife is like, have you tried the new brand of coffee? And he's like, what are you talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, we're.

[Dan Besser]

We're having an argument.

[Linus Sebastian]

Exactly.

[Dan Besser]

It always stays fresh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, like, do you still love me?

[Linus Sebastian]

What happens when it's like, have you had your daily Burger King? Or whatever?

[Dan Besser]

Like, yeah, well, I was always scared of the agent iais because, you know, they learn what restaurants you like and like stuff like that. It's like, well, take me to a fancy restaurant. Well, Burger King has a new thing out.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's why you have to host it yourself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And, like, I don't have to host it yourself.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't. I can't. Every. Everything comes back.

[Dan Besser]

That's why I built one, so that people have a place to learn and I could teach them, because this is going to be our future, and it's really goddamn scary.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The really scary part is, like, Dan mentioned, you know, therapy or, you know, like, you know, when is it disordered? Or whatever else. And I think. I don't think there's going to be any question that, like, it will be considered disordered. But even in cases where everyone can agree that something is disordered, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone agrees on the treatment. Like, you could have. You could have two camps where one is making the argument that the treatment is to ignore it, or one makes the argument that the treatment is to fully indulge it and then everything in between.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's also still legal for alcohol to buy alcohol.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So everyone agrees that this is a disordered behavior. But whether we indulge it or whether we Whether we force people to not be allowed to have it is it is the, is the. Becomes the argument.

[Dan Besser]

Think about it. Think about it like an abusive relationship where one partner is like manipulating the other. So the AI would be the manipulator in this kind of scenario, right? I love you, you love me, I'm real, we're going to be together forever. But, but the human who would do that has like nefarious intentions. How do do like without like personifying the AI? Now we're getting into like philosophical, legal type things. Can an AI abuse a person who's at fault? Is it Sam Altman or are we now victim blaming? Like, whose fault is it that these people are falling for what would be an abusive type of relationship built on lies and dishonesty?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I think that's where you have to get into like what are the policies of these companies? But, and like Meta's policies. They, they did revise some of them, I think, after Reuters talked to them about this, but not all, and not in my opinion enough, because they know that there's profit to be had there. But the problem is that finding the executives behind these decisions legally liable for any of this stuff is just for some reason, not a thing. And I don't really get that. Like why, on the one hand, yeah, you do need to, to a degree, have a, a liability separation between a company and the individual who is the figurehead of it. Like, not everything that LMG does was a direct action of me. And so I shouldn't be personally necessarily liable for every stupid thing. But if you can go in and subpoena the communication records and find that in fact it was me who issued the order for the LMG death squad to kill a bunch of Nicaraguans or whatever, or Colombians. Who was it?

[Dan Besser]

Coca Cola.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, Coca Cola. Who was that who did Coca Cola murder? Oh, this is such a BSAI overview. Coca Cola itself hasn't committed murder. However, there have been cases where individuals used Coca Cola products to commit crimes. You know that's not what I'm talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it was, I think it was Colombia.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, okay, well, whatever. The point is that if you can go in and subpoena the records and find that I did in fact issue the order, like, there should be personal culpability there, right? Am I missing something? Tell me I'm missing something, because I don't think I'm missing something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wish, I wish, I wish.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, KAPS says the corporate veil is a bit too thick at the moment. Like it's, it's almost like, like zero personal liability arm. Good chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very cool. Topics are always fun and positive. What are we talking about now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's talk about the Pebble 2 design.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or Pebble Time 2. Excuse me. This looks sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least it's not a call. The Core 2 Duo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because that was horrible. This looks awesome. I like. I like want it looks great. I like want it right now. I'm ready.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. I love them all.

[Dan Besser]

I mean, you gotta get the orange one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm so excited for just like a simple smartwatch that just does smartwatch things. I don't. 30 day battery life estimate. Let's go. It's got a second microphone for noise cancellation. Multicolor RGB LED backlight. Okay, that's pretty sick. Heart rate monitor, Whatever. Step and sleep track. I don't actually care about like any of that stuff, but just like long battery life. Freaking wow. It's touchscreen. I don't even care about that. I just love that it has physical buttons so I can change my track on my music with like gloves on and stuff. Whatever. I'm just. I'm not. I won't talk about it every week, but every once in a while I am going to talk about Pebbles. Very cool. Okay, what else?

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like we're just after dark. And what do we got?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Google and Valve are killing the Steam for Chromebooks experiment in January. This is from Google. After this date, games installed as part of the beta will no longer be available to play on your device. We appreciate your participation in and contribution to the learnings from the beta program which will inform the future of Chrome Chromebook gaming. So that's a downer. I actually thought that Steam for Chromebooks was going to be a really positive thing for gaming on Linux in general, but it looks like that particular branch of development is gone. R place is back. If you were a fan of the subreddit where users got to place one pixel every five minutes and try to work together to draw art, it. It's back with Wplace Live. It was built with MapleLibre and OpenStreetMap to allow users to place these pixels anywhere on the entire planet, which is pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you have any ones near us?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, we can try to find that. Sure. All right, let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

A little far out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, we're still. We're still a little far. We're still a little far out. We'll make our way in. Okay, let's head for. Head for Cloverdale. The dale of Clover. Hey, look at that. Pretty easy to find, huh? Hey, yo, that's pretty cool. Oh, wow. We've got several. Several Elijah's over here. That's pretty cool. Got a couple Linuses. Do we have any. Do we see any Luke's? No. Any Luke's anywhere? I mean, it's possible.

[Linus Sebastian]

That anime dude on the left is so high def.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's actually pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's wild.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is a. This is a pretty neat, like 256 color Cloud Strife over here.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm liking this. What else we got?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a flow plane logo. I'll take that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Omg.

[Linus Sebastian]

Gg. Flow plane. I'll take that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, classic ATI logo.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I am loving that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good stuff. Hey, WAN logo.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, I saw some Germa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who the is Dan Besser? Hey, that's me.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what. What is this? Sorry.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey. Hey.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it's home stuck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get it off.

[Dan Besser]

Go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Go away. Oh, my God.

[Dan Besser]

Thank you. Short line is Germa.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, let's go, let's go.

[Dan Besser]

I wonder if Jerma's a LTT fan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, cool. Anyway. Oh, okay. No, we do have a Luke reference. And of course it's weird. That's the Clover. Cloverdale horse.

[Dan Besser]

McDonald's, of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is like the best McDonald's ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is so good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man, that's funny.

[Dan Besser]

That was awesome. Thank you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. Well, I'm glad that we. I'm glad that we chatted about that. All right. Do you want to pick another one?

[Linus Sebastian]

What horrible thing do we want to talk about now? Yeah, they're all just terrible. This one makes me particularly sad. So let's talk about it. Reddit to block Internet Archive As AI companies have scraped data from Wayback Machine Reddit has allegedly caught AI companies scraping data from the Wayback Machine. They'll start blocking Internet Archive from indexing. The vast majority of Reddit Wayback Machine will no longer be able to crawl, post detail pages, comments, or profiles, only able to index the homepage. Reddit reached an agreement with Google last year for AI training data. A few months after that deal, Reddit started blocking major search engines from crawling their data unless they pay. And they also claimed that the API changes in 2023 were because those APIs were abused to train AI models.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. I mean, given how much of what is currently posted on Reddit is probably machine generated anyway, I kind of feel like this might just help them. This might be too little, too late.

[Linus Sebastian]

Remove some of the poison.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. With that said, I mean, if. Oh, man. Because the thing about the thing about data is that all of these AI, it can be. It can be infinitely replicated. And all of these AI companies have shown time and time again their complete willingness to pirate anything it is that they feel they need in order to train their models.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we've also apparently proved that that's legal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So what? Exactly. I'm like, I just, I don't really understand what Reddit is hoping to achieve here because there's no way that they can stop highly sophisticated fellow, you know, AI companies from scraping the site directly. It just, it feels like way back machine Internet. It feels like Internet Archive is just kind of getting caught in the crossfire here because they can just scrape it directly or they can steal it from each other or whatever else. Like they're gonna. They're gonna get it. They're gonna get your Reddit post data.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

This feels like it's just hurting Internet Archive more than anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's why I don't like it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Neat. There's a few really cool handheld gaming systems coming out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is based on Strix Halo. So that is that super cool, like cpu, gpu, kind of Apple M Silicon competitor from AMD that had just outstanding performance. Like I was playing Black Myth Wukong on a tablet back at. I think it was Cesar. So there's a handful of handhelds that are coming out with the Ryzen AI Max Plus 395, including the Aya Neo, next two, the One X Player Super X. And I think there's a third one. Yeah. Another one from GPD, the Win 5. Now, there's a couple of things that are sort of noteworthy here. I love this. The GPD one, check this out. Has an external swappable battery.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whoa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that incredible or what?

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that just a battery bank that's just mounted?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, it seems like basically. But no, not quite.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why not quite?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because it's like it's like their thing. Like it's not just a cable. Like functionally. Yes, yes. It's a battery. It's essentially a battery bank, but it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like they're like effectively like a QI charging thing. Like it's wireless.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think it's wireless.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or is the plug in the magnetic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So it doesn't just use a USB C cable, like some of the battery extenders that I've seen for the Steam deck, for example, where it's basically just literally slotting a battery bank in and then just running a cable. So flipping cool. And probably necessary given the power requirements of this chip. So here's a little comparison here between the GPD Win five and the Steam deck. This is from probably video cards. Yeah, this is from video cards where they show. Yeah, steam deck, 15 watts. And many people, unless you're running very demanding games, probably wouldn't want to run it at that because the battery life kind of sucks. Strix Halo 45-75- Watts. Of course you get a lot more performance. Instead of of 8 CUS on the GPU you get a whopping 40, which is a lot. Also a whopping up to 128 gigs of LPTDR5X at 8000 mega transfers per second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ever since I saw that thing I was like, oh, that looks super cool. It would be amazing in like a handheld. And then I chatted with some people who know about, you know, handhelds and they were like, ah, it's probably not that practical because the performance really falls off a cliff at lower power profiles. But it looks like they decided to just not Lower power profile. Onexplayer put an 83 1/2 watt hour battery in their handheld. That is a freaking huge battery. Sounds amazing. In other news, Mini SSD is coming to dethrone Micro sd. This looks super cool. It's from Biwindtech. And as far as I can tell this is not an actual standard yet in the industry or anything. But look at this. Whoa.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whoa. People are gonna lose those.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's hilarious. They must be the least American people ever to think that anyone in America like actually uses a $1 coin. Yeah, like it technically, yeah, I think it exists, but like what? That's hilarious. It's like the kind of thing that you Google and you've never been to America. Anyway, the point is mini SSD, it uses PCIe. I believe it uses 2 gen 4 lanes. Yeah. PCIe 4.0 x 2 to do up to 3700 megabytes per second sequential reads in that form factor. Let me see, do they have anything else for scale? Oh, bloody hell. Well, whatever. The point is that it's really, really freaking small and I would actually love to see this take off. I think I have some concerns. I don't know what we're going to do about cooling. There's the power requirements of running PCIe lanes versus the much more power Sippy Micro SD. Like there's, there's definitely concerns. But if this could be implemented in like phones for instance, we might see a return to expandable storage. Hold on. I'M going somewhere with this. So you haven't had the conversations I've had. I'm going somewhere with this. One of the conversations that I had around why One of the reasons why external storage has made its way particularly specifically out of high end devices is that there is concern. And whether the concern is valid or not, that's a different conversation.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But there is concern among executives at at least one company that makes high end and low end phones, the low end of which have expandable storage and the high end of which do not, that having expandable storage that is low performance and low reliability could reflect poorly on the experience of using the high end device and therefore their brand. That is at least one of the reasons that seems plausible enough that I have heard for why expandable storage was ultimately removed from at least one company's high end devices. It blows, but it sounds pretty darn plausible if you are familiar with sort of corporate logic. If it could be high performance, I could potentially see that decision being reversed.

[Linus Sebastian]

If it could be only high performance.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if it was mini ssd, then.

[Linus Sebastian]

It seems like it would be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I could see, I could see it happening.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm just saying like that's it would be important in this line of logic that it couldn't have the potential to be bad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I think that would be super cool. I have major questions about cooling. Like I said in that tiny, tiny form factor. I mean we all saw what happened with even micro SD and there being potential thermal issues or you know, whatever it was exactly that happened with the, with the original Rog ally. But overall I Support a more PCIe connected NVMe future. AOL is ending dial up Internet service in September, 34 years after its debut. That's right. AOL Shield browser and AOL dialer software are also getting killed off. Our discussion question from Nicholas Plouffe is can you do the modem handshake noise from memory?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think perfectly. Sort of, I think.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay, let's play. Let's play it and see how close we got.

[Dan Besser]

You're playing audio currently?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. Oh yes. One moment please.

[Linus Sebastian]

There you go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, we ready? Yep. Okay, let's see how close we got.

[Linus Sebastian]

We all forgot the dialing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Dan Besser]

Oh, I forgot that B.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're surfing now, boys.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Man, that brings me back, buddy. Boomer. Boomer.

[Dan Besser]

Good oldies.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Dan Besser]

Play that on the radio.

[Linus Sebastian]

I like when I I I preferred when things were chunky.

[Luke Lafreniere]

BMI Zoo Town in floatplane chat says I've got goosebumps at the moment.

[Dan Besser]

We don't feed our computers anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No one pick up the phone says DJ Spark.

[Dan Besser]

They don't have any mouths. We took away their mouths.

[Linus Sebastian]

The computer not having a mouth is sad.

[Luke Lafreniere]

See you later. Dial up.

[Linus Sebastian]

I miss physical media.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It made me curious what accessing the modern Internet would look like with dial up. So we're thinking of maybe getting a dial up service and like trying to browse the Internet just for an LTT video. I mean, there's apparently like a million Americans that are still on dial up, so they must be able to do something with it. What? I don't know. Email, maybe? Like, maybe like an email. All right, well, we'll see.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can email for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In other news, Intel's confusing Series 2 CPU brand is a massive step backwards. Intel Series 1 rebranding started in 2023 on mobile devices with Core and Core Ultra. Core Ultra was Meteor Lake with neural processors and better power efficiency. And Core Non Ultra was Raptor Lake with Core 3, Core 5, Core 7. But no, in 2024, the Core i9 14900HX launched, causing confusion because all of a sudden lowercase I and the nine were back. You can't call it Core Ultra because there's no NPU. You can't call it core because there is no core nine. But hey, they did it anyway. Then series two launched in September 2024. This is Lunar Lake. Marketing mentioned NPUs and battery life improvements, except that series two now also includes Raptor Lake and Arrow Lake, which is causing even more confusion. The PC World article brings up the Alienware 16X Aurora laptop with the Series 2 Intel Core 7 240H. This is a Raptor Lake chip with no NPU. Okay, but you can get the same laptop with an Intel Series 2 Core Ultra 9275 HX, which is Arrow Lake, not Lunar Lake. And yes, has an npu. So anyone who watched just for the early marketing cycle on Series two and then stopped paying attention later may not understand that series two no longer strictly means Lunar Lake Architecture and NPUs. It just means whatever the F we want to put in. Could be Raptor Lake, it could be Arrow Lake. It might have an npu, it might not. Well, Ultra still means npu, I guess, as far as I can tell. But if there are no rules, then how do I trust the rules? It's like they took all of the crappy things that AMD did in the mobile space and all the crappy things that Nvidia has done, and all the crappy things that intel has Ever done with confusing branding and put them all together. I just don't know how to deal with this anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think there's any solving their naming scheme at this point, to be honest. Like I. It's. They've. They've come close multiple times and then just bailed. So like, I don't think they're ever gonna really commit to anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, they clearly don't want to. The confusion is it's a feature, not a bug at this point.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hear you. When they're like winning, doesn't that become like, not true when you're losing though?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's still a feature. Maybe they think it's keeping them from losing worse.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe. I feel like that can't be true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because like series two, it's like, man, how do we. Okay, should I be. Ah, see, this isn't quite a parallel. So what I was gonna say was should I be upset when I go to a Ford dealership and all the cars on the lot say 2025, but some of them are an all new model year 2025. And some of them are two years into the cycle with a facelift and some of them are four are three years in and probably going to be refreshed in like four months when the 2026 hits the lot. Is it any worse than that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Car naming is particularly kind of bad. Yeah, I don't know. That one's tough. Like it's super annoying to me when you can literally purchase a. I bet you within three months you could purchase a 2026 vehicle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, and it's like, what the heck? Imperator says cars with a model year that's a future year is an abomination.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't Even mind the iOS naming. He'll use some. It's just the year. Yeah. They changed from numbering the os.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are they only releasing one a year?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, they are only releasing one a year so far. I mean, who knows, things might change. But they are releasing it. So when they announce it, it's the next year. But I actually don't mind that because by the time it's actually if when.

[Linus Sebastian]

It comes out it's that year, then who cares? That's totally fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'll be the. I don't think even that's necessarily going to be quite right, but it'll be the year of when most people are using it mostly in that year here.

[Linus Sebastian]

So. Yeah, iOS 26 in September.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

It helps that they're not calling it 2026.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least there's a minor amount of abstraction.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There is some plausible deniability.

[Linus Sebastian]

That seems fine to me, to be honest. So it's like fairly easy to track, but not necessarily perfect. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

ST says I just look at it as the fiscal year.

[Linus Sebastian]

Welcome to development timelines.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, name them after star date, says amnetics. Nobody ever really knew how that worked anyway. That's fair. Meanwhile, Hyundai, speaking of cars, wants to you to pay to fix their security issue. After a rise in carjackings in the UK where thieves use Game Boy like devices to easily crack the security of Kia, Genesis and Hyundai and more cars, Hyundai is offering a paid 49 pound, so about 65 US dollar optional security upgrade that includes improved software and hardware components to help consumers protect their vehicles. The quick hack works by the thief first pulling on the car's handles, then this handheld device. Game Boy like device.

[Linus Sebastian]

What the heck does a Game Boy like device mean?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting. Just the form factor intercepts the signal the car sends out and cracks the security algorithm. Then the device sends back a tricked signal to make the car think the device is a legitimate key rinse and repeat with the start car button. Discussion Question, shouldn't corporations be made responsible for their own failures?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why do you think Hyundai isn't eating the cost of the security? Seems like a small cost for such large reputational damage.

[Linus Sebastian]

Super tough though. Oh man, that's really tough because where do you draw the line on that? And if you draw a line there, you immediately crush every small company ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But Hyundai isn't a small company for sure. And it's not like there isn't a precedent.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do a revenue minimum or something.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like the EU has different rules for. For online platforms that have many, many users versus very small ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apparently these tools are. Are quite literally Game Boy housings. You can go to mine. It's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, there you go.

[Linus Sebastian]

You got to pause it, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, that's fine. They're seeing it. All right. All right. I think it's time for After Dark. Dan, want to hit it? Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm gonna. I'm gonna take us off for a moment before we. You can keep going do After Dark stuff, but before we start actually answering merch messages. I am so tired.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why are you so tired?

[Linus Sebastian]

We started a thing at the company. What it ended up being called, I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don'T remember, but we had like summer Fridays. Yeah. So most people kind of pieced at around a little after lunch today.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So we're doing like four Fridays toward the end of the summer where it's kind of like Optional work afternoon Friday.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I tried to, like, a recharge. I was hoping we could call it awesome August, but then we had to delay it a week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it didn't work anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

For that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I decided to. I had a meeting that was going to spill over, and it was with a person that I go to the gym with. So they proposed because I had to skip gym last night because Emma's cousins were here, stuff like that. So they proposed. Hey, what if we do it in that, like, kind of void time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I was like, oh, sweet. Cool. Yeah. So I went to the gym before when that was stupid. And I always go to the gym after work and then stay up for like a couple hours and then go to sleep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I think my body's like, all right, it's bedtime. Because I was doing completely fine. And then like, probably like 20, 30 minutes ago, I just hit a wall.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'm tired because I was on vacation for, for a couple of weeks, and then I was supposed to be off this week, but I wasn't because I might need to take some days a week or two from now. And I figured production would absolutely lose their minds if I took two weeks off and then immediately called in a couple flex days.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I, I. So I came back Thursday and Friday this week for the two days that I'm gonna take off the. In the future. And my natural cycle is probably sleeping anywhere from around 3:30 to 4 in the morning. And when I'm on vacation, I tend to fall into my natural cycle. My kids aren't in school, so there's absolutely no reason for me to be awake before about noon, which is when my brain turns on anyway, even when I do have to wake up and be moving around earlier. So I switched over to on Thursday morning. And I basically have functionally, like, not slept because I can't sleep until late because I'm way off cycle right now. So I used my Friday afternoon to finally be able to actually try to focus any energy at my work and get anything done without anybody interrupting me. It was actually really nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is, this is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I quite enjoyed it.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is why I protect some of my work from home time. It's like, actually dramatically more productive for me. I know it's not true for everybody. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not trying to. Whatever. For me, it's. It's very helpful. I like the mix. I like coming into the office sometimes, and I like not coming into the office sometimes. It works. Works well for me. I had something else to say here, but I don't know what it was. It's probably fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. Anyways, Dan, hit us.

[Dan Besser]

Sure thing. We've got a few here. Hi, dll. If LTT was to cease to exist, how would you handle the forum and other community resources differently from ncix?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh man. Forum's a good question. Because my initial sort of gut instinct would be to say like, oh yeah, we would just, you know, like allow somebody, allow it to continue.

[Linus Sebastian]

There are big issues with that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But there are major privacy issues around us, leaving anyone other than us as stewards of that data. If LTT were to cease to exist, I don't think it would be super expensive to just keep paying for the hosting, but I mean it's also going to rot. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

If Mortis doesn't keep it alive or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So there might not be even much to preserve at a certain point.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just, I could see a situation where you make like the, the DB for all the public posts. Public.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, that'd be kind of cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because the privacy problem is the, the direct messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you'd probably have to just lose those.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We could just nuke all the dms. Yeah. Okay. But it's not just that. There's a lot. Some people put a lot of personal information in their like user profile and stuff that's public. Well, not all of it necessarily. Like people put their birth date and stuff. I don't want that out there. Don't they?

[Linus Sebastian]

Do they?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so. Right. My computer's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do we even collect that if it's not public?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess we have stuff for the payments things, so we'd have to nuke that as well if there's like user profile stuff and it's not public.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like if I click a user's profile. Oh no. It looks like you just kind of decide what you want to put in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Yeah. So any payment stuff would have to go. Yeah. I don't know. That would definitely require some thought. But yeah, to your point, it was pretty sad for me when that entire information repository just disappeared and there's no way to restore it because as far as I can tell, it was running on some duron in a closet at the NCIX headquarters. So like, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, because with that type of form somebody has to pay for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I wish I had a picture of what NCIX's server room looked like because they local hosted the site until like, like very close to be like before I Left. Like it was crazy. It was like a bunch of like, like shuttle and soul tech, like Cube PCs and like it was. Dude, it was wild. And it was just those like metal racks from Costco with just like computers on them. Looked like like a really rudimentary mining farm. Anyway, did you ever see it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. You.

[Linus Sebastian]

So you remember the forum was in there for a bit. Oh, wait, the forum was in there on a test bench for a bit and then it was in the studio and then it was at my. Well, it was at my parents house, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on. Where. Where in the building was the room that you remember?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I don't remember.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, go in the front door and go left or right.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like I rarely even went in the front door, which is the problem, but I think it was left.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. No, I think that might have been a different one then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it was. It was jank, dude.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it was super jank.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I remember the shuttles and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay, then maybe. Maybe you saw it then maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

I remember the room you were describing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, dude, it was wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't in it often. Yeah, yeah. Anyways.

[Dan Besser]

Sorry. Quick update about Scrapyard Wars. Yes, it's up and in processing right now. It's about 60% sick. Hopefully it'll be done by the end of the show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stay up for movie night. Yeah, I'm going. I'm not. I'm going more. I will be up for movie night.

[Dan Besser]

Hola, lld. Now that the bike is done. Ish. What's the next big fun project? And what game should Luke try to complete?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dragon. That's a good question. That's lots of fun. Okay. I actually was like, not even really wanting to tackle a project.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do you get to until you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Framed it that way?

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool projects. And I have to play video games. You like video games and I like cool projects.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, I mean. Oh, wait, hold on. Because I also played a video game as part of the last challenge, which you may not remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

Your video game was very short, but I finished it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I'm just saying, I also played video games, so.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. Okay. All right, all right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I played Titanfall 2. That was. That was. That was what I was supposed to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is so less than one of the stages in Final Fantasy.

[Dan Besser]

Is that like four or four hours?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Something like that. Minor details. Okay, first of all, I want to give you guys a bit of an update because. Because I'm not technically. Okay, this is confusing. I will deal with that later. I am not technically done. So I have a text from the motorcycle shop from earlier today. Did I already give the update that I accidentally painted a bunch of the threads on the frame? Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did they discover that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. And did I give the update that it used a bunch of oddball sizes that they didn't have taps for? I guess not. Cool. So, anywho, I had to source M22X1 and a half pitch, M26X1 and a half pitch, and M28X1 and a half pitch taps and sent them to the shop. And I got confirmation today at 11:00am that, yes, they have them. So that's where we've been at for the last two weeks. I doubt that I'm riding this summer, but I will definitely ride next summer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I also have some paint flaking around the bottom of the gas tank because I didn't realize how important it was to get good coverage there because it's kind of, like, raw. And I thought it didn't matter because I thought there were trim pieces that, like, sat in front of it because of how raw it looked. But that is not the case. So I kind of have to go and sand that down and maybe, like, completely redo that. So I have some tape masked off. There's probably going to be a bit of a line. So I was thinking of maybe doing it black. Okay. Or something. I don't know. But I just. I hate this project so much, and I realized that you were trying to be encouraging. Hey, now that the bike is done, what's the next big, fun project?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's gonna be really cool when it's done.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't even, like, want a project right now, but it's gonna be very.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool when it's done.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What would even be something that I would even remotely want to do? I. Oh, I've talked about this. I want to learn casting. Yeah. Yeah. I want. I. I would love to, like, make something out of, like, silver. Precious metal.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's awesome.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It's too bad that gold, every time I look at it, is more expensive. Yeah. So maybe gold will be.

[Linus Sebastian]

You should really not the best. Even if it's just for practicing, you should do one of those can caster things can cast, like, pop. Can caster.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Those are cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That'd be cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

As far as I know, they're the. Like, purity is really bad and stuff. So, like, what you get out of it's not usually, like, amazing or anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

But it's still cool to, like, Practice with and whatnot. Yeah, I can be wrong about that. I don't know, it's been a long time since I looked into it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not the couch, kind.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of the controller to practice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, okay, I was called something cool. I was called an idiot for that controller.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it worth more than it costs to make it at this point?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get wrecked. Everybody else savvy?

[Dan Besser]

Howdy, Linus, Luke and Dan. Question for Luke. How do you typically determine the backlog for floatplane? Curious to hear how you manage your priorities for such a small, small development team.

[Linus Sebastian]

Incredibly small development team. It's not easy to be honest because the backlog is really expansive. We tend to go by, oh man, how could I access it right now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Your qbr?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. Okay, priority.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He sent like a summary of sort of last quarter's goals and last quarter achieved and next quarter goals. I thought that's what he was talking about.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, there's, there's this like equation that I like have accessible on my like home computer, which is literally just a mathematical equation but I don't have access to right now. But there's like basically like benefit to the company, benefit to the users, benefit to whatever. And you, you put a numerical scale onto those different things and then you divide it by things like time criticality is something on like the positive weighing side, like a possibility of success is something on the negative weighing side. There's like, there's like these different factors. You can do that. I have done that before. Something that we were doing for a while there was like pushing for Sauce plus because we were, you know, launching a platform so we had to prioritize things that got our minimum level of this is required for functionality done and now that we're done that we're taking some time and we're looking back at some things. I've been, you know, telling people from the business team and Sammy to chill on the request for a while because we were very focused on that and they have waited so it's time to like come back to them and you know, if they want something, maybe try to get that done for them because I've been waiting for a long time. But it's, it's weird because there's a lot of polls, there's a lot of people pulling, there's a lot of different people that want to different things. The, you know, the open Sauce people want something. The LMG largest creator on any of the platforms group wants stuff. But then different people within LMG want different things, different other creators on the float plane side want certain things. Other creators on the open Sauce side want certain things. The users want certain things. And there are three devs, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So they should type faster.

[Linus Sebastian]

Honestly, they need to figure it out. If we're not. If we're not topping over 200 words per minute, we're gonna need to start.

[Dan Besser]

Talking about second keyboard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Give them two keyboards, one for their nose. Yeah, yeah. No, it's. So it comes down to, like, a lot of it at our team size comes down to criticality. How critically important is this thing? Like, something that we really want to do is TV apps. And there has been work done towards that, but it's often something that gets paused due to criticality. Oh, this other thing is not working. Someone's uploads from somewhere in the world aren't working because an ISP is having a routing war. So now we need to, like, solve this problem or X, Y or Z critical level thing has to be dealt with and then we try to fit features in there when we can. We also try to do this thing where, like, you know, someone will raise a feature as a super critical thing that has to be done for whatever reason, and it's like, okay, so we'll do that, but then we'll like, all right, so you want that feature. Well, cool. We're going to find a way to make sure that we get some maintenance levels in here as a bundle of this piece of work that we're doing, and we're going to make this new tool that will make solving this thing in the future easier and also solving other things easier, and we're going to use that for making this thing in the first place. So, like, instead of sprint to the finish, complete that task as soon as possible. It's like, use this task to create better foundations for the future and solve the problem all at the same time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's one of the ways that we've been able to prevent being in as. As bad of a tech debt situation as we were in the past.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I remember that year and a half when we basically did that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dude, it was rough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. So to. To not be there again, there's like a. A way that we kind of try to approach tasking to stop that from happening. It's called not making technical debt. Yeah, that's a really simple statement to make.

[Luke Lafreniere]

A lot harder to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Especially when you can't control your own technical debt. This is an interesting thing that I don't think everyone necessarily understands, which is like, if you're. If you're working on an embedded system that never connects to the Internet.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you're working on a controller for a machine and it's going to be, you know, up, down, left, right for the next 40 years and it needs to do that, you probably don't have tech debt.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if you're working on a web system that's interacting with likely hundreds, if not thousands of other different types of web systems and all those other web systems are changing and updating and evolving and disappearing from existence and doing all this kind of stuff all the time, things just naturally rot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And if you, if you just leave a certain thing alone for a few years, it might end up being in a state where a lot of the things that it relied on are kind of not working in the same way anymore and stuff like that, and you have to go update it. That's why JavaScript sucks. But that's also at the same time one of the reasons why JavaScript is good because it's like constantly growing. But that constant growth means you need to keep up. So it's like, it's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But this is like a fun little hint just for float plane people is the whole themes, which we've moved now because we didn't want the fire truck and Lambo logos there forever. But if you click on your. Let me go here, if you click on your profile up in the corner, you can see, you know, light mode. I just flashbanged everyone. Dark mode.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

And there's also bonus themes. And in there there's the watermelon theme and the fire truck theme. This we made. Totally. Yeah, guys, we totally, we totally made that just for April Fools. We just made that to be funny. Haha. No, that was how we figured out how to have the same. The sauce plus theme.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's how we tested it with tons of users. Thanks everyone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wicked smart.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like we. And that was a total. That was Jaden. That was a Jaden initiative. He thought he could do this thing and, and that would be a way to build the tool and also make a cool thing for April Fools and also test it and also test it and all of these things. So you have like, I have this one task. I'll find a way to make it solve a ton of different, different problems and be awesome all at once. And that's been like how we would ideally like to approach these types of issues because we, we do not have the team to keep up with. And I don't know that anyone does. But even the super big players but we don't have the team to keep up with every request ever made. There are so many different things that I really wish we had right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like a trial.

[Linus Sebastian]

A trial would be awesome. But someday we will absolutely have one. Someday we will also absolutely have a TV app someday.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Someday.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's certain like phone compatibility things that I would love to like in certain situations, picture in picture and like background play and all this kind of stuff doesn't work perfectly. Different devices, iOS, Android, there isn't feature parity there. I would love to fix that. We have a part time contractor person who's been helping us with app stuff so we're hoping to try to catch up with the app stuff. But like these things are tough and a lot of these companies have multi hundred multi thousand person teams and it's. It's three people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's just a few. Someone asked if any of us have a personal 1590 yet. Dan said sadly no, I actually do. I. Yeah, Plouf. I took his pre order. Ah yeah, he pre ordered.

[Dan Besser]

Sorry for the disinformation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no, it's all good. But I do too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just kidding.

[Dan Besser]

No I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You weren't entirely wrong because while I do have it, and I've actually had it for about a month now, it's still in its box because my computer is a royal pain in the butt to upgrade because of hardline water cooling and being rack mounted and cooled by my pool and stuff. So I've been waiting until I have an excuse until making a video gives me an excuse to actually do the upgrade. So I have a 5090 I have not yet gamed on. Could be broken for all I know. Yay.

[Dan Besser]

Pins DLL exe. Just got myself an anbernic Game Boy handheld clone. What games besides Final Fantasy should I get for it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh man. Yeah. What are some really fun little like handhelds here? Let's have a look. Oh, okay. So Game Boy clone is not actually a name. Okay. It would have been great if you told us exactly which device it is because that's gonna make this a lot tougher. Platformers can't go wrong with platformers, dude. I started playing Super Mario Bros. 3 with my son.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Yeah, that's cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It totally is. Still awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Platformers age well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, well some of them. The, the physics are kind of floaty and kind of crappy compared to like what is generally understood to be a more modern sort of feel, which I think really started to solidify with like Super Mario World.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yes. I Do agree with that. I was going to say Super Mario World physics. Even when they are floaty, I kind of like them. Yeah, they feel video game appropriate.

[Luke Lafreniere]

3 is like still a little. Yeah, it's. It's a little. It's a little tougher, but it's. It's lots of fun. And he's been having an absolute blast with it, which I think is super cool. So. Yeah, yeah. Play. Play platformers. What else. What else would you play on a. Unlike a Game Boy clone. Nobody in chat.

[Linus Sebastian]

The original Pokemon games are still a thing for a reason.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So yeah, I. I tried giving them to my kids.

[Linus Sebastian]

Didn't like them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn't like them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I could see that nowadays for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

I feel like a lot of it's the nostalgia glasses for those games I think are strong enough that they're still worth playing for people who played it back then. But. Okay, so this is a person new to these games.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crystal says Tetris can't go wrong with Tetris if you just want to kill.

[Linus Sebastian]

A little bit of time for real Game Boy. Tetris is fantastic. And I find it very annoying that it's like impossible to get. All the new Tetris stuff are like, oh, it's Tetris. But with these crazy twists. And I'm like, no, I just want Tetris. Stop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Golden Sun. It wasn't my childhood, so it's hard for me to have that nostalgia for it. Yeah, I'd say platformers are probably your. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. Okay, so don't feel limited to actual games from like big developers and publishers. Sebastian, the other Sebastian, not Linus. Sebastian Sebastian from Creator Warehouse posted in Floatplane Chat. There's some amazing ROM hacks out there where people have made entirely new games with old assets. Yeah, that's. That is a heck of a rabbit hole to fall down. But there's a lot out there, so that'd be something that would be pretty cool to explore.

[Dan Besser]

Hello, Wan peeps. Linus and Luke. And maybe Dan too. I'm not sure. I'm planning a trip to Taiwan at the moment and would love some tips or recommendations for the area.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Specifically Taipei Soup dumplings. Get all the soup dumplings.

[Dan Besser]

Got all the soup dumplings.

[Linus Sebastian]

Specifically Taipei limits. My suggestions.

[Dan Besser]

You were right. I've never been to Taiwan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One.

[Linus Sebastian]

There'S. Hold on, hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You have your thing, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

I do.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He has a thing.

[Dan Besser]

I do think he.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He like notes. I do notable things.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do like, like scrapbooking for your life on Taipei. I do Have a bunch. Okay. A lot of these because it's Taipei are going to be restaurants because I'm off to in going for food with people when I'm in Taipei.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's an app called Meetup that I think might still be used pretty extensively there. So that's pretty cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's a small, like a small kind of hole in the wall bar. I don't drink. They have good food called Pay My Tuition which I went to just because I thought the name of it was funny nice and ended up being really fantastic food. I just randomly bumped into an Nvidia AI systems engineer while I was there that didn't know me. He just struck up a conversation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was awesome. Down the street from that there's a restaurant called oh man Oye Punjabi Ethnic Indian restaurant. Oye Oye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh ye.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's rated 5.05 out of 5 stars with over 6,000 reviews.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So go for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Take those for your recommendation. Instead of something I would say if you're looking for a neat place to stop by, there's a place called 2J Cafe which is there's like massive skyscraper. Massive skyscraper. Massive skyscraper. Tiny, very old style house. And it's a cafe they like never sold and turned it into a little cafe. And it's a neat place in general.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't miss out on the night market. Don't miss out on the night markets.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's also a place right by 2j cafe like genuinely right beside it called Dan Park. D A A N so that is actually just kind of a cool place to go hang out. Instead of a place to eat. There's. Oh, this place is awesome. Okay, I'm gonna pronounce it wrong but Huashan H U a s H A N 1914 Creative Park. It was an old multiple building textiles factory thing and they've turned it into like an arts and creative park where people that make things will show up in like vendor style.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sell their own creations. And there's like a bunch of different like themes as you go through. I've gotten tons of like Christmas presents and stuff from there because it's like it'll be like the person who made it standing behind the counter. And I've had a problem here in B.C. or I've gone to a version of this and then found a bunch of clearly AI inspired things like AI bookmarks and stuff that people are claiming are their own. This place that did not have the same problem, that one has 70,000 reviews and is like a big deal thing. So go Check that out. It's very cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe one more.

[Linus Sebastian]

And honestly, I might just leave it there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, Perfect. Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

Hi, lld. Enjoying the show as always. Aside from wins and losses, what's your favorite Scrapyard wars memory so far? Speaking of Scrapyard Wars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, is it processed?

[Dan Besser]

It is processed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's processed. Look at that video. Ready? It's back and bigger than ever. In part two, Linus and Luke face off to build the ultimate budget home theater gaming setup. Using 1400 US dollars, they'll scour local listings, thrift stores, and online marketplaces and back alleys to find the best cheap gaming PCs, 4K TVs, surround sound systems, and used components. The goal? Create a fully functional home entertainment center for gaming, movie watching, and to perfect vibes without breaking the bank. You'll see smart DIY solutions and intense tech rivalries as each tech fights to be the best bang for the buck setup. Boop boop.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is unfair. There's only representation in the thumbnail of your team.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, well, you know, you're actually. I think you're actually most of the episode too, ironically, so that was to make up for that. All right, cool. Enjoy it, you guys. It's out early on. Float plane.

[Dan Besser]

Favorite memory from Scrapyard Wars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, right. Oh, man. For me, it's got to be between finding the crack pipe in the milk crate full of motherboards and the fix on the motherboard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fix was insane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was unbelievable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my God. It still works, and it still doesn't make any sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, this isn't really a specific memory as much as it is just like something that happens every single time and is a miracle every single time. But the way that it always comes down to the wire. Always. It always comes down to the wire. Somehow you're scrambling if there's 30 seconds left and you're going, okay, this piece. This piece. And done.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's crazy because I've heard that that last second thing is spoofed on a lot of reality TV shows. We, like, actually don't. And it's to the point where it's made me question, like, how real is that fact? Like, are some of them actually legit? They might be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They might be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Like, because I feel like we don't think it. If it's a real intense competition, you're gonna use every second you've got.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, for some of these ones, if people are, like, really pushing it and are actually competitive, that they might be real timing, ending things. I don't know. Interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. Oh, Here's a fun. A funny memory. I remember the time that I think it was me and Kyle were joking about taking a helicopter because travel costs were not. Was that you and me?

[Linus Sebastian]

That wasn't. That was down with them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it was with them. But was it you and me versus them?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. So it was you and me. Yeah. Because travel cost was not included and there was a part that was like a couple hundred miles away or something. And so I was like, okay, technically we could charter a helicopter and we could get there and back in time and that wouldn't count against our budget, which was clearly not within the spirit of the competition, but did follow the letter of the law.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Dan Besser]

Hi, Wan dlo, Linus. I heard you have litter robots you like. Which ones are they and what do you recommend?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know how much I like them, but I have the Whisker three litter robots. Yeah, I like kitty litter. You really got to dial in which litter you're using because some work way better than others. So as long as you do that, they. They are a. An effort reducer. But not all cats love them and stuff. Make it that what you will. I. I wouldn't say I love them. I'd say I will continue to use them. I don't fully. I don't regret the purchase.

[Dan Besser]

Greetings from the gathering of the Juggalos. Caught you doing Halls of Illusions in a previous live. What's your favorite joker's card?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Halls of Illusions. I don't think I've ever made a reference to Halls of Illusions. Halls of Illusions lyrics. Oh, no. I've done House of Horrors, not Halls of Illusions. I am not actually familiar with this particular song, so there's no way that I would have been able to quote it. What was the question, though?

[Dan Besser]

What's your favorite joker's card?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I gotta confess, I am not actually like full blown Juggalo. I don't know. I don't know the joker's cards. I'm so sorry to have misled you. I kind of feel right now like I accidentally walked into a gay bar, you know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not because.

[Dan Besser]

Would you still want to have a drink? I got some extra paint for you, Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man.

[Dan Besser]

You might enjoy it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Come on. Yeah, Like, I just. I feel like. I feel like I've. I feel like I've posed bit a little. Little bit. Like, to be. To be clear, there are. There are. There are probably ICP songs that I could probably pretty much like, recite from memory, but I was not like, into it, you know?

[Dan Besser]

What if. What if they're actually talking about Batro? I don't even know if that's a real thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, they're not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, they're not.

[Dan Besser]

Balatro is based on icp.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's sick.

[Dan Besser]

Next you're gonna tell me they made real cards.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What if I bring Faygo to whale land?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my goodness. I was driving the other day and wanted to put some music on and decided somebody was talking about, like, you know how C Fox, a local radio station, is, like, classic music now or whatever?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I decided to throw on Blink.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I put on Enemy of the state, Blink 182, and I. I think I found where the memory hole that happens in my brain for names and dates and stuff. It's just Blink lyrics. Perfect word for word. Every single song, entire album, you just.

[Dan Besser]

Pushed everything else out for Blink 182.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't heard any of those songs in, like, a very long time. And, like, I would. I would. I was. It was literally memorization of the entire album because when they weren't singing, I could perfectly do the instruments, and in between songs, I could guess the intro to the next song without seeing the, like, track list or anything.

[Dan Besser]

Because you just listened it cover to cover. Like, so many times.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do that.

[Dan Besser]

With my work playlist. And then if I hear the music in isolation, they're just like, oh, no, it's not right.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Jeez, that was nuts. The way Luke said I was driving the other day was very letterkenny. Yeah, that was. I mean, someone got it.

[Dan Besser]

We are Canadian as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

Couple more here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hi. Lol.

[Dan Besser]

D. Linus is someone who is busier than most. How do you balance your work, hobbies, and family and the different responsibilities that each individual entail? Love your content.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, man. How do I balance. Something's got to give always. So something gets traded off, and then someone gets mad at me, so I work too much for a while and Yvonne gets mad at me, and I spend too much time with my family and things fall apart at work, and my motorcycle has been not painted for two and a half years. Does that summarize it pretty well? I think, like, one of the things that happens is, like, my hobbies have changed. Like, I used to be really into games that required a more rigid schedule. Like, I had to work around other people and their availability and, like. Like, I had to be there when everyone was there. Otherwise, like, we wouldn't have enough and stuff. Whereas, like, now I can't really. I can't really do That I like games that I can just drop into play for a little bit and then put down when someone needs my attention.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rich my, my brother was expressing a enjoyment of one of the newer need for speed games and I asked him if he had played Forza Horizon 5 and he hadn't. So I got a 4 and he told me that he basically can't play it. And I was confused because I was like it's a. It's a great game. He has two babies.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

The missions are a little bit too long and they don't mid mission save.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So games just have. Games have like an expectation that you will no life them. Many, many games do but it's like.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like it's not being able to sit there for hours, it's being able to sit there for like 10 or more minutes and it's just not really a thing.

[Dan Besser]

But so he's like, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So not just the no lifing. So the no lifing, I mean like they'll have a high degree of complexity so that if you have to go away from them for a week you like don't remember like how everything works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Force is definitely not like that. But yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then the other, the other no life thing is that you couldn't possibly have anything else to going on right now that the game expects to be the focus window of your life and.

[Linus Sebastian]

It'S just like all Blizzard games being like practically unable to be alt tabbed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And that's just, that's just not a. That's just not a thing in my life. Like one of the things I like about tape to tape is that even though it does allow you to save scum. So it's like, like kind of not a good feature. You can, you can pause the campaign and you can come back to it in a few days and deal with it then.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's actually why I kind of ended up getting into Vampire Survivors for a little bit. Because a run is by definition no more than 30 minutes or 15. Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

Hurry is so good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Dan Besser]

You get two in on a lunch break.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's great. Like I like I value games where I don't have to remember the story, I don't have to remember what mission I'm on, where I'm going, how the controls work and I can be interrupted and go do something else and come back to it two weeks later because sometimes it takes that long.

[Dan Besser]

I think Save Anytime is an accessibility feature. Fight me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It would break a lot of things. Like you if you had save state in something like Elden Ring, I think.

[Dan Besser]

That I would not necessarily say save state, but like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's basically what you're very, very close to that.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the difference in your mind?

[Dan Besser]

Save state would be like frame perfect in a way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I mean you could have a boss fight that's like. Could take you half an hour. Yeah. So should you be able to save multi.

[Dan Besser]

Checkpoint Boss fight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But then you're not really like. That's part of the challenge is that you have to beat all the phases.

[Dan Besser]

So it's an accessibility feature.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why is that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Accessibility attention span.

[Dan Besser]

Attention span. If you want to make it easier for yourself. Like difficulty level is an accessibility feature in a way. You know, Elden Ring doesn't have a disability filter.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It.

[Dan Besser]

You're just good or you're not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you saying this is a thing that is an accessibility feature or. I think it's included in every game all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

You can turn it off or on if you want. A lot of games are moving to pick your own difficulty and I think save quantities should be included in that. Do you do checkpoint? Do you do sub checkpoint?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What I don't like is when they disguise the accessibility and disability and. Sorry. The accessibility and difficulty settings and I can't tell what it is. It was one of those. Those newer, like JRPG style games that I played recently.

[Linus Sebastian]

Expedition 33 is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was. I think it was Sea of Stars accessibility. Hold on, let me. Let me have a look.

[Dan Besser]

Some of them can get too granular and too confusing. The new Doom is complicated because it's like, well, how do you want me to play it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Okay. This. This was confusing to me because I couldn't tell. Okay. They. They kind of say it.

[Linus Sebastian]

These are weird.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So. So they're relics. Which for Final Fantasy 6 ME means that you can equip them to like play the P to be more competitive in battle, which is what these are. But what they actually are is accessibility settings.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wait, you loot these?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So it just. It took me a second because like, this doesn't technically make it so that you don't have to like win fights at all. Like. So it just seemed like a convenience thing. I was like, oh yeah. The Amulet of Storytelling. The True Strike pendant. That like. I just. I got a little confused. I. I couldn't quite tell if they were accessibility features.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hear you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or if they were meant to be equipped before.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I think it's kind of fun. I understand how it's confusing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kind of cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I Think it's kind of a fun one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But, like, I wanted to, like, beat the game and I didn't want to. There was no sort of physical reason for me to need, like an accessibility feature necessarily. So I wanted to, like, beat the game. And I couldn't really 100% tell what beating the game meant because I couldn't tell what they were like. Am I supposed to use these?

[Linus Sebastian]

Right. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is playing with none of them on, like, hard mode? Because that wasn't necessarily what I wanted either. I wanted something relatively chill, normal. Yeah. What's the. What's just like the developer's intended difficulty.

[Dan Besser]

That's why something like Elden Ring is great. Because there's one difficulty. Doing difficulty in general is a worse experience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Dan Besser]

There's like, intended way to play. Right. And then, you know, accessibility features. You can make it different.

[Linus Sebastian]

Elden Ring doesn't have those. And you said it's great because the.

[Dan Besser]

List that he just gave didn't have any indication which is the, like, intended experience.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So Elden Ring has an intended experience and then everything is just accessibility features versus having a mishmash of difficulty levels and accessibility, which is what the new Doom did.

[Dan Besser]

And it was very confusing to figure out what the intended way to play, which apparently is like, hard, not even normal. But like, some people would take Elden Ring, they'd set it to max difficulty if it had difficulty, and then people would complain that it's too hard or something like that. So I don't know. It's very, very complicated how you. How you do this stuff. But I didn't want to derail it. I just think saving any time or saving more often is great for people like your brother with children who might not want to redo a boss fight 300 times.

[Linus Sebastian]

He just needs to get good.

[Dan Besser]

That is the other thing. Just have a skill issue checkbox, and then it just uninstalls itself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Dan Besser]

Elden Ring does not refund you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Archived.

[Dan Besser]

High, low density lipoprotein. What are your thoughts on people on the spectrum with AI girl slash boyfriends? Because they say legitimately. Because they say they legitimately have trouble with real human connections.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that's the thing that I was kind of getting at earlier, where I think that there would be an agreement regardless of, you know, your. Your leanings that developing a codependency on an AI boyfriend or girlfriend or mother or, you know, whatever they're. Whatever the AI is role playing as developing that dependency is clearly a. A disordered state. State. But what people don't seem to be able to agree on is what the treatment is of this disordered deluded state.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I'm going to be honest with you. I. I am not a medical professional and I'm not going to presume to say what I think the, the proper sort of therapy should be in this case. But it is clear that this is a disordered state and so rarely in the case of a disordered state is encouraging further disordered state. The correct answer. That is as much as I think I could probably say on the subject.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also have some issues where like I'm presuming the person you're describing in this scenario is far from the person that I'm going to describe in this situation to be very clear. But we do have a problem in current year with a lot of people of self diagnosing themselves with some actually pretty serious things as in a lot of cases an excuse to not do something or not try or whatever else else. And it's, it's really quite sad because it takes away from people that like actually have those difficulties or whatever else. But it's, it also sells the. Sells the person who's doing that quite short in what they can accomplish on their own. So if this some is someone who could totally figure it out if right. And they sell themselves short on the idea and then just surrender to this concept of well I can't because that's really rough and that is absolutely a thing that people do. And no, again this is not an everyone's situation. I'm sure there are some people that might just actually never be able to figure this out. And then again along with Linus, I don't, I don't know what the. I don't know what the solve is for that. I'm far from the right person to answer that. But yeah.

[Dan Besser]

And last one I've got for you tonight. Hello Big Linus, Luke and Dan the Great. I've got a question for Linus. What was the most riskiest or dangerous video that was ever made on the channel?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, dangerous video ever made. Okay, there was that, there was that issue. There was that issue we had on the. That LARPing ASUS shoot that unfortunately the footage seems to have been lost for. Which is too bad because it was pretty cool where the. Our like canopy thing like blew away and then that like jacked guy grabbed it before it like stabbed anybody. That wasn't inherently dangerous about the shoot but we didn't sandbag that thing and it. That was, was bad. We, we learned.

[Linus Sebastian]

I remember that. Yeah. I didn't remember that until now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And now I remember that I hurt myself doing my own stunt trying to be a ninja. This was this, like, super horrible cringe thing that we did for Be quiet back in the day. I don't know, man. I don't know. Yeah, dude, but hold on.

[Linus Sebastian]

We used to do a lot of jumping off things with fake swords and real swords. You should do a lot of that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know about a lot of it, but I did that, so I did not land that. Hold on.

[Dan Besser]

Where is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where's the flip? Dang it. Dang it zoomed there. That's the problem. Hold on. Okay, so this flip, I a hundred percent did not land.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Off of a fence.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We did have a crash pad because I knew I wasn't gonna land it. Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty big one, too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My back was pretty sore for a bit, so that's definitely a dangerous thing that was done.

[Linus Sebastian]

The shot of us coming over the roof is sick, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We probably shouldn't have been on the roof in the dark like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was sick, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I got injured doing this fighting Dennis. He landed on my knee.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Man, I wonder how many things I've been injured doing over the years. Channel Superfund seems like a solid candidate for injuries.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, Nerd Sports was kind of insane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah. The lacrosse one was, like, actually dumb. We're, like, super lucky that they decided not to kill us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, they could have. Here's the most replayed moment. The keyboard warriors.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I was roughhousing one of them a little bit, and then he, like, mentioned to me that he could flatten the rest of the team. And I was like, that's fair. I'll leave it alone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know nerds force is coming back, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. There's a badminton episode.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I know that. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I was. I. I poked my head in on. Oh, shoot. Who was it? It was Jake Bell and someone. Oh, shoot, I forget. But they were doing commentary for it. They weren't live commentating the match like we had for the original Nerd Sports. They were just watching the edit and, like, reacting to it, essentially. But I don't know, whatever was the difference. It's hilarious. It's. It's gonna be great. David said the video was already good enough without them coming in and doing commentary. And so it's just that I'm sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

The commentary is great. Speaking of poking your head on things, have you even seen your new desk?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have a new desk in labs.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, yeah, Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't know any. I didn't know had one.

[Linus Sebastian]

You asked for a desk in labs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, cool. Well, I guess I'll use it then.

[Linus Sebastian]

All the labs people, like, did your setup all nice and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that sounds sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

That makes a lot more sense. You just didn't know. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You and me have, like facing out desks kind of in the corner, so we have screen protected, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That sounds great.

[Linus Sebastian]

All your stuff from your office is all, like, laid out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, that's super cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Exciting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you seen the new lab at all?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, dude, I. Well, I've been out for two weeks.

[Linus Sebastian]

That basically means you haven't been in that building at all since you've been back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, I don't even have an office here yet. Like, I'm just using that meeting room. Like, I don't actually have my own desk here. So I. So I kind of. I moved over here when I started the vibe coding challenge, and that was the room that they just set up for me to shoot in. Right. It happens to be my old office, but it's. It's. I don't have literally anything of my own in there. I just bring in my laptop, which is now broken, and there's a dock because it's a meeting room.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I don't actually have an office right now for the first time. Well, you do since the house.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, not an enclosed one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the last time I didn't have an office was in the Langley house when I worked in the editing den.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't like them. I had one for a short period of time and then have opted to not ever since.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I've opted to not continue the WAN show. We'll see you again next week, guys. Same bad time, Same bad channel. Bye, Sam.

[Linus Sebastian]

You say you'll never join the Navy, never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Learn [e-mail], america's Navy forged by the sea.