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- [00:01]
Linus Sebastian
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Make. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
- [00:31]
Luke Lafreniere
How are you doing, everybody, and welcome to the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you today. A YouTuber is facing potential jail time for showing off emulated games. But I've shown off emulated games lots of times. Luke, am I going to jail?
- [00:50]
Linus Sebastian
Maybe? No.
- [00:52]
Luke Lafreniere
Also, Nvidia isn't the only one who figured out that they can manipulate the public perception of their products by altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further with reviewers. The new Superman movie has apparently been accused of manipulating critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes. We'll be talking about that because I think it kind of affects our ability to believe anything that we see from the media these days. What else we got going on?
- [01:21]
Linus Sebastian
Grok is now a hot anime girl and definitely no longer Hitler. Also, Xbox Game Pass subscribers can stream their console games on PC now.
- [01:32]
Luke Lafreniere
Luke, are you okay?
- [01:35]
Linus Sebastian
What do you mean?
- [01:35]
Luke Lafreniere
You just. You seem hungry.
- [01:37]
Linus Sebastian
I am hungry.
- [01:39]
Luke Lafreniere
I got snacks. Do you want a snack?
- [01:41]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'd love a snack.
- [01:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, okay. Here you go.
- [01:48]
Linus Sebastian
Thanks.
- [02:07]
Luke Lafreniere
The show is brought to you today by Rove, Lab, Odoo and AMD, alongside, of course, our rap partner, dBrand, our laptop partner, Dell, and our chair partner, whatever that brown thing Luke is sitting on is. Just kidding. Secret lab.
- [02:22]
Linus Sebastian
Who knows?
- [02:23]
Luke Lafreniere
I want to jump right into our headline topic today, which is, of course, the Italian YouTuber Francesco. Once we nerd Salicini, whose home was raided by the Italian economic police, and around 30 consoles, mostly retro emulation handhelds, were confiscated. This is freaking kind of wild. Salasini is being accused of promoting pirated copyright materials after showing off emulated Sony and Nintendo games in his videos, something that a lot of creators, including us, have done numerous times over the years. Authorities are claiming that once Werner is in violation of Article 171 in Italy's copyright law, a law that was apparently written in. Get this. Actually, no. Oh, Luke, did you read it already? Yeah, he read it already. Okay, Dan, guess what year this law was written. 1905. You know what? You're honestly not off by more than half 1941. He is now facing a maximum sentence of 15,000 and get this, three years in jail.
- [03:47]
Linus Sebastian
I thought it was an or Italian.
- [03:49]
Luke Lafreniere
Copyright enforcement is built different and has a history of strong arm moves like having the country's Internet regulator force Google to poison DNS to block illegal streams of soccer. The original complainant who brought forward the case will not be publicly known until the end of the initial investigation. But let's be real, we all know it's Nintendo. Though for legal reasons, we must say that we are not sure. Allegedly.
- [04:16]
Linus Sebastian
Allegedly.
- [04:17]
Luke Lafreniere
Allegedly. Wow. So, man, is there ever a lot to unpack here? Because the line, from my understanding and remember, the legality around emulation is not black and white and, and does vary according to the particular region and authority that you are subject to. So like, there's definitely parts of the world where we actually just shot a video last week reacting to Indian setups. And Sam, who grew up in India, one of our thumbnail artists, also editor, he was basically like, I mean, yeah, that was pretty much the reason that PlayStation was popular was because you could just get the games for like 60 cents or something like that. I forget, I forget what the actual math worked out to, but I was, I was looking at him going like, dude, that's like, that's practically the raw cost of a blank cd. Like, what are we even, what are we even talking about here? Like, you're not even essentially paying for the labor of someone to take the blank disc and put it in a thing and copy it. That's. That's wild. And he's like, yeah, but that was, that was basically what everybody did. So I'm not saying India is like that anymore. It might be, I legitimately don't know. But depend on what I'm trying to, what I'm trying to illustrate is that depending on where you are, the enforcement and the laws around this stuff can be very different. So in from a North American standpoint, as far as I've been able to tell, owning, like possessing and using as a consumer things like emulators and ROMs is generally regarded to be, but certainly not something that you would be fined or especially given prison time over. However, producing, circumventing digital locks or distributing these copyrighted materials could be problematic if your profile gets raised high enough that somebody decides to go after you. The idea that you could just be sent like an emulation console from, you know, one of these Chinese companies that produces them, just show using it and go to jail for up to three years.
- [06:44]
Linus Sebastian
Why it's a little ridiculous.
- [06:49]
Luke Lafreniere
Like, this is a nonviolent crime. Like, dude, there's. I hate to. I hate to be that guy because, like, you know, it kind of. It can be, but like the 2008 financial crisis.
- [07:05]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah.
- [07:05]
Luke Lafreniere
Did anyone go to jail for any of that?
- [07:08]
Linus Sebastian
I don't.
- [07:09]
Luke Lafreniere
We're talking about a pirated video game. I think, like one guy, like went to jail for like a short period of time. The what? What says yes. Yeah, one guy. One guy from Citadel.
- [07:22]
Linus Sebastian
One dude.
- [07:23]
Luke Lafreniere
Exact. So what are we even. What are we even talking about? Like, I've never been to prison. Everything I know about it tells me that if your crime was playing a video game off of a ROM file, you probably don't belong there.
- [07:40]
Linus Sebastian
Well, he also spent a 30 month sentence, so less time.
- [07:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Un flipping believable. Just goes to show you that it's not a question of how much damage has your crime done. It's a question of who you did it to. Okay, we have a few discussion questions here. Do you believe this is a good one? Do you believe that we have the right as creators to show off emulated games? Does that stance change if you do or don't own original copies of the game? So, no, I don't think that we necessarily have the right to show off emulated copies of games. However, what I will say is that I do consider, generally speaking us showing content on devices that can play it back as being promotional in nature of that content. So for a while there, I was getting a lot of pushback from some people internally about how we would play movies in our TV reviews. For instance, like I would put how to Train youn dragon from DreamWorks. Or I'd put Encanto on, on our, on our, the tv in our, in our reviews of, of a monitor or of a, of a TV or whatever the case may be or projector. And they kind of went, hey, look, if, if Disney, you know, or DreamWorks or one of these guys decided to come after us, like, that would be pretty scary. And my response there has been, okay, look, yeah, fair use is a defense. It's not a well established set of guidelines for what you can and can't do. But if we were to look at this a, I think we would have a very strong fair use defense. We are doing no harm to the original content. We are not acting as a replacement for the original content. If anything, we are promoting the original content. What we're doing is highly transformative. Nothing that we're doing in a review of a TV replaces in any way, the. The plot of how to train your dragon, you know what I mean? I think that our fair use defense would be extremely strong, number one. And number two, they'd be crazy to come after us for it. Like, imagine being the guy at Disney that's like, yeah, these guys talked about how great this movie looks in hdr and I'm mad, like, so we're going to start a war with someone who is literally promoting our. And you know what's. You know what's really crazy though is is that kind of logic does exist. Like, I remember having a really stupid conversation with someone at, in an. In the intel booth one year and I think it was CES where they boasted on the little. The little placard next to their upcoming platform that they could hit some number of FPS in some game. And I was like, guys, bit of an oversight. The game on the system, that's a different game. Like, you guys know that, right? Embarrassing. And they're like, yeah, we know. But those guys want us to pay like a huge licensing fee to show it. Now that is a little different because in that case, intel is clearly making commercial use of that software. However, I would argue that that kind of commercial use clearly benefits both parties and it would be in the best interest of a game developer to have their game be a feature demo for like a hot new piece of hardware. This was back when intel had products that people wanted. And so, you know, when it comes to commercial use, yeah, the rules do change a little bit. But in general, I see a clear benefit to having your content featured. With that said, there is clearly no commercial benefit to say Nintendo not picking that name for any particular reason, but let's just say Nintendo to having their older content that you can't even buy be showcased on a product that literally pirated it. So I do think that that defense falls apart a fair bit. With that said, I have made clear in the past that I feel that if I own a copy of a piece of content on one format, that I literally will lose zero sleep over my believed right to take that format and enjoy it, that license to that content and enjoy it in any way that I want. If I own a Super Nintendo cartridge for Final Fantasy 6 and I have that cartridge sitting on my shelf in my possession and I decide to download a ROM and play it on my Steam Deck or my RG Ally or, or whatever, I will sleep like a baby. I don't care. And where I end up in a bit of a grayer area is if I Own, say, for instance, Final Fantasy Tactics was a game that I used multiple times to test older handhelds to see if they could handle PlayStation 1 emulation. It is a bit of a heavier game, especially when you get into some of the like summoner. Summoner like effects and like the particles and everything. And if I, you know, really think about it. Now, I do own. I own a disc, I own a license for the game. I consider it well within my right to play that game if I own a license for it. I have no desire to dust off my PlayStation 2 and pop it in the disc. I know it's a PS1 game. I have a backwards compatible PlayStation 2. Relax. I have no desire to do that. So I'm just gonna play it on whatever I want.
- [13:55]
Linus Sebastian
You could have just said, but showing.
- [13:56]
Luke Lafreniere
It on camera, I don't know.
- [13:58]
Linus Sebastian
You don't even have to say the number.
- [14:00]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, but I don't have a PlayStation 1. I'm on the record as not having owned a PlayStation 1, so who knows?
- [14:04]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, but you could have just not set a number.
- [14:05]
Luke Lafreniere
I know, but I have a PlayStation 2. It's in my attic. Look, what do you want from me? I'm not going to pull it out to play Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm going to just play the ISO. Sorry, I know, I'm just saying you.
- [14:18]
Linus Sebastian
Didn'T have to do the whole disclaimer if you just said PlayStation.
- [14:21]
Luke Lafreniere
So with everything I've said, do you think we have the right as creators to show off emulated games with or without owning a license, a copy of the game? What do you think?
- [14:35]
Linus Sebastian
If you don't, with or without you're saying?
- [14:39]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah. Like, what do you think? Like, should we be allowed to show emulated games We've done it. That we don't own, that we do, that we don't. Anything.
- [14:51]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I mean, I'm generally in the defense of like, education is not a thing that should be stopped in most cases. I'm only saying most because normally I would say ever, but then I thought like cooking meth and stuff, that's probably not good. Generally I don't like the, the black and white here. Generally I would say if you, if you own it, it's clearly above board. And if you don't own it, it's not something that I think I would want to go after somebody for, but I could understand there being a legal framework for that and I think that would probably be fine.
- [15:31]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, what if we applied this to like another form of art, right? Like, let's Say that let's, let's bring it, let's bring it home, right? Like, let's say that it was a T shirt design, you know, or let's say, let's say, like let's say that it was some, some other kind of intellectual property. If somebody's YouTube channel was basically showing off low cost clones of RIP and explaining to people how they can get our T shirt design without paying for it, would you think that's cool?
- [16:12]
Linus Sebastian
I don't know if this makes a ton of sense, but no, I would not think that's cool. But if they showed it in a generic way, I would think that's cool.
- [16:21]
Luke Lafreniere
In a generic way. What do you mean?
- [16:23]
Linus Sebastian
Like if you, if you showed somebody, like here is, you know, here's the process, you have this graphic on your computer, you can look, you can scan, you can scan some graphics somehow. I don't know, you can take this picture that you have in some physical format, or you take this item that you have in a physical format, you can scan it on a scanner and this is how you can get it onto a shirt. Awesome.
- [16:49]
Luke Lafreniere
But what if they.
- [16:50]
Linus Sebastian
Obviously that knowledge could be used to rip off one of our shirts, but that part doesn't bother me. I think it would only bother me if it was like, look, do this to this shirt and steal it. Then it's like, oh, but that's, I.
- [17:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Mean that, that's kind of the parallel here, right? Like they're basically, I don't know what.
- [17:07]
Linus Sebastian
Type of content they made.
- [17:08]
Luke Lafreniere
So they're making content showing off like pre pirated consoles that are just loaded up with ROMs that you pay a fraction of the price for. And they're just, they just come with a bunch of copyrighted games on them and someone has said, LTT would 100 take that down like we've done already. I, I don't know what you're talking about legitimately. I actually have no idea what you're talking about. We've, we've ourselves ordered counterfeit, counterfeit LTT merch and shown it on our channel anyway. Get a legal department, hire some lawyers. No, no, no, no, no, no.
- [17:41]
Linus Sebastian
I think it would depend because like, are they. Okay, so they're showing this off, but are they trying to sell it?
- [17:48]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, they're, they're reviewing it. I think that, I think that there's an implicit, I think there's an implicit promotional element to doing a review that encourages in some way the consumption of these goods. And remember, I'm not asking if you think it's legal, right? Because we're not lawyers. Don't tune in. This is not a legal podcast. What I'm asking you is, would you think that's cool? That was my phrasing. Would you think that's cool? Are they being cool if they do that?
- [18:21]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I don't, I don't think so.
- [18:23]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I don't think it's that cool.
- [18:25]
Linus Sebastian
I don't think I would think it's cool.
- [18:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Now, someone did bring up, someone did bring up in the chat and I think this is a really good point, that one of the foundational arguments around emulation and game piracy, especially of retro games, is game preservation. A lot of the time these are games that cannot be obtained through legitimate means anymore. And I've again, I've made my position on that pretty clear as well, that if I have no legal, legitimate way to obtain something, I sleep like a baby. You know, like if I, if I lived in a territory, if I lived in Egypt or Libya or something and I wanted to watch Western content that just simply wasn't available via streaming or physical media in my region, I'd sleep like a frickin baby pirate.
- [19:12]
Linus Sebastian
I don't mind you acquiring that at all. I do that now sometimes.
- [19:15]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, so, so, yeah, so, so, unique username. Here goes. Okay, you know, does your situation change somewhat if we make the parallel the same? What if it was a shirt we no longer sell that is 100% still rip? And when I say rip, I don't mean rest in peace, I mean our intellectual property. And it is our choice whether we produce it or not. Now in some cases, I can tell you that I wouldn't care. I'd be like, yeah, fair enough, we don't make it anymore. Like, go for it. I do think I agree with that, but however. And look like the world is gray. The world is gray. Here's a shade of gray. What if it was a design that we specifically produced only a limited quantity of that our customer? Part of our agreement with the customers who bought it is that only a fixed number of these will exist. Well, then I'd feel like I have to protect it because it's not about me at that point. It's about maintaining the exclusivity that people paid for. People paid good money for it and you might not agree that they should pay for that, but they did do it and that was their expectation.
- [20:26]
Linus Sebastian
Here's a weird angle. What about a recreation? What about a faithful but imperfect recreation?
- [20:34]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, realistically, I can tell you guys straight up that it's not the kind of thing that we would pursue any legal action over. I think that there's just. There's a spectrum of how cool is it or how not cool is what they're doing. And I guess what I'm trying to say is I think jail time is absurd, obscene, ridiculous, and should be. Should not be legal. It should not be legal to put someone in jail for playing video games. There's even, like. Because it's beyond reasonable doubt, right? Like, have we crossed the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt? Could he have conceivably thought possibly, maybe, that these games were licensed? Maybe. I don't know. Luke, never underestimate human ignorance. If I just buy this console. I don't know. I don't know. It's not impossible. Yes, you know better. Obviously, I know better. And he probably knows better. Yeah, and he probably knows better. But remember, beyond reasonable doubt, you have to prove he knows he knows better. You have to prove he knew. So.
- [21:52]
Linus Sebastian
What do you think? What do you think about my question? What if it's a recreation of one of our products? What if someone. Northern Lights? You know, I don't think we sell Northern Lights anymore.
- [22:01]
Luke Lafreniere
What is the shirt or Northern lights is the desk pad? Do we have a Northern Light shirt?
- [22:06]
Linus Sebastian
Didn't we.
- [22:07]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know. I don't remember.
- [22:08]
Linus Sebastian
Anyway, whatever that one was called with the mountain.
- [22:10]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. If somebody, like, redrew it and it was almost like a tribute or fan art. I've always been very supportive of any kind of tribute or. Or fan art. We've even gone as far as, like, promoting it on the show and on Social.
- [22:22]
Linus Sebastian
In my opinion, if it's. If it's gonna be an exclusive item and you didn't get it, and this is not the company's stance, but in my opinion, if you. If you did a recreation that was your own, you didn't just, like, literally copy paste, that's cool, in my opinion.
- [22:40]
Luke Lafreniere
But in the case of these ROMs, in the case of this emulation, that's not the case. So what I was trying to get around to is that while I strongly disagree that anyone should go to jail over the theft of supposedly, you know, yeah, tens. Tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars of video games, especially in the world that we live in. I do clip this. Go ahead. I do see why Nintendo's upset about it. I can see their perspective. I think they need to just take a bit of a chill pill here, though, and hopefully they have the good sense to not pursue jail time over this. Hopefully if anyone from Nintendo is watching, hopefully get this up the corporate ladder. Sending people to jail over gaming on emulation devices is not a good look if it's Nintendo.
- [23:37]
Linus Sebastian
Full plane chat said don't assume laws in Italy are the same as in Canada.
- [23:40]
Luke Lafreniere
I didn't.
- [23:41]
Linus Sebastian
We never did.
- [23:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Never happened.
- [23:43]
Linus Sebastian
At no point in time did that happen.
- [23:45]
Luke Lafreniere
But in general, the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty, my understanding is, is pretty well established in at least the western world as something we should aspire to. At the very least. Does it always hold up in practice? No, not here, not anywhere. But that's something that we should generally aspire to.
- [24:12]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [24:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh yeah. Anyway, we've got a couple of. We've got a couple of more discussion questions. Most of them I guess we kind of covered as we were talking about it. Yeah, we're not talking about pizza or pasta. I don't need the entire country of Italy upset at me. Luke, do you want to pick a next topic?
- [24:41]
Linus Sebastian
Sure. Let's talk about this Xbox thing. Notes are short, but Xbox Game Pass subscribers can stream their console games on PC. Now this is directly from Microsoft and a quote Xbox Insiders in the PC Gaming Preview who are also Game Pass ultimate members can stream select console games that they own beyond the Game Pass catalog on the Xbox PC app. This includes console only games that previously couldn't be played using the Xbox PC app. Very cool. When I first read this I thought this was just games that were on both platforms, but the fact that you could stream console only games is actually like genuinely pretty sick.
- [25:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it's progress.
- [25:28]
Linus Sebastian
Not personally a Game Pass fan, but I think like Linus said, this is progress. This seems better. This seems good. This is a good thing for. For gamers.
- [25:38]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I need to see. I as much as it was exciting to hear Microsoft talk about when they announced the Rog Xbox Ally or Xbox Rog Ally X. I can't remember. Whatever. The Ally 2. Yeah. When Microsoft announced the Ally 2 alongside Asus, it was very exciting to hear about the better integration between the Xbox experience on PC and the Xbox experience on console. But one of the things that many, especially you know, Xbox console fans, what few of them remain brought up is that okay, Microsoft, as great as it is that I can play any of my cross platform dual license games on this supposedly Xbox console, this still isn't an Xbox because I can't play my Xbox exclusive games and many third party titles do not allow me to play on PC. They don't come with the dual license. There are still a Xbox platform Exclusive licensed games that you can buy. And so, you know, that was the strongest argument that I heard for why the Xbox Ally X2, whatever it is, is not in fact an Xbox. But this seems like part of Microsoft's push to really continue to chip away at the barriers that make something Xbox versus PC from. From a content perspective. So I'm. I find it pretty exciting. And in response to our discussion question, did you also think this was already possible? No, I did in fact know that you couldn't do that.
- [27:14]
Linus Sebastian
I didn't know that at all.
- [27:15]
Luke Lafreniere
But it did take me a minute to kind of go, okay, so wait, hold on. How is this different from what's going. So I definitely see where you're coming from. Thank you, writer who prepped that. That's a pretty short one.
- [27:24]
Linus Sebastian
Thing I'm wondering is what games are truly Xbox exclusive?
- [27:29]
Luke Lafreniere
Still not many. It's more that the license is only for your Xbox rather than getting the dual license with your purchase so that you can play that game on your Xbox or on your PC with a single purchase.
- [27:43]
Linus Sebastian
Got it. Okay.
- [27:44]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
- [27:47]
Linus Sebastian
That doesn't really solve a huge problem for me then. No, Game Pass could theoretically give you that anyways. So, like, it really isn't.
- [27:53]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, not every game's on Game Pass, so any game that you bought not on Game Pass for your Xbox that.
- [27:59]
Linus Sebastian
Doesn'T have dual license.
- [28:01]
Luke Lafreniere
That's right.
- [28:01]
Linus Sebastian
You can now stream it.
- [28:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it's a. It's a niche problem, but it's one that, as an Xbox gamer, I would find frustrating.
- [28:07]
Linus Sebastian
Still a good. It's a very minor good thing, but.
- [28:10]
Luke Lafreniere
It'S still a good thing. Damn it. It's progress, Luke. Take progress. Where I can get it in this. In this complicated world where people are going to jail for playing Super Mario World on a pirate handheld?
- [28:23]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, it's clearly stupid. Speaking of interesting progress, YouTube rolls out beta for AB testing of titles to a small subset of users. I think a lot of YouTube enjoyers probably know at this point that there's been ab testing for thumbnails for quite some time. But, yeah, now they're rolling out for a small subset title testing. We have some images of what it looks like. I can't show those off my laptop.
- [28:49]
Luke Lafreniere
I gotcha.
- [28:51]
Linus Sebastian
For now, creators can test three titles or three thumbnails or three title thumbnail pairs. Interesting.
- [29:01]
Luke Lafreniere
Very cool.
- [29:03]
Linus Sebastian
As far as we have seen, it does not run all combinations of title and thumbnail. That's what I expected it was going to do, but okay. With thumbnail, ABC, etc. This should allow creators greater ability to test the different ways of packaging their videos, which is cool. This is a good thing in my opinion. Like with thumbnail testing, it uses watch time as the primary indicator of what what is the best title, which I think makes sense given the metrics that YouTube currently cares about. LTT writer Adam went back through some older videos of his to test out the feature and here are some tests that have been. That have been run or are currently running. The first listed title was the title at the start of the test. That's really interesting. Oh, and we're already see. We're already seeing some results that indicate good potential changes. This is really interesting. Notable weird behaviors and viewership numbers after starting and running these tests on this video are included in some of the pictures that Linus is likely going through. Also, viewership numbers don't show as much weirdness on videos with more momentum, which is interesting. Kind of makes sense.
- [30:14]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Like this one was kind of dead in the water and then we changed the. The, the titles A Little Bit of Life and it. Yeah, a little bit of life got breathed into it. Whereas this is one that just kind of kind of leveled off and had some decent momentum. Yeah but you can see that watch time share way bigger for VR doesn't get better than this big screen beyond 2 vs they changed the VR game again too vague posty like you can. It's easy to see in retrospect what you screwed up, but it's not always easy to come up with a title in the first place.
- [30:50]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, this is really cool. There was a heavily updated comment on Floatplane that the Floatplane title for Tech Gripes 2 was better than the YouTube title. And the YouTube audience is inconclusive.
- [31:07]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh wow. This is very.
- [31:10]
Linus Sebastian
I think I'm assuming he means heavily up voted.
- [31:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So. So this one, the original title won after Floatplane said that they really didn't, you know, resonate with the YouTube title. But barely. Just barely.
- [31:27]
Linus Sebastian
You can't always perfectly trust the Firefox users.
- [31:29]
Luke Lafreniere
You know, that's the thing about Firefox users is they're fox. They know all about foxes and fire. But maybe not other things.
- [31:43]
Linus Sebastian
Discussion Question do you worry about potential effects this can have on the experience for browsing videos?
- [31:48]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean.
- [31:50]
Linus Sebastian
It'S going to make it harder to find them because if you remember the title of a video, I wonder if they. I wonder if they have some way in their search.
- [32:00]
Luke Lafreniere
I found YouTube's metadata based searching is really strong. Like if I kind of remember the approximate vibe of what a video was and like kind of what we talked about. They use the transcript, they use all the metadata at their disposal to try to return as accurate a search result as possible. Where I run into trouble is when they don't actually show me my search results. Right? Like when they have my search, they have like 2 of my search result and then it's like, continue watching other users enjoyed. Friggin no, give me the search results. I'm trying to see my search results.
- [32:33]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah, I'm just, I'm hoping that they retain the old or the other various titles that were used in their search metadata stuff. As long as they do that, I think it'll be fine. That was, that was the first concern that came to me.
- [32:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
- [32:48]
Linus Sebastian
Other than that, I don't think it's going to have a major effect on browsing videos, to be honest. Titles are already incredibly clickbaity across YouTube. I honestly don't know that this will necessarily be worse. Linus pointed out earlier that one of the titles did worse because it was too vague posty and it's based on.
- [33:08]
Luke Lafreniere
It's based on watch time. And that's for a very good reason. YouTube has over time moved away from focusing on things like click through. Because what they found was that even though people might click on a particular thumbnail, I mean, Phil DeFranco was famous for doing this way back in the day and he's scrubbed the Internet of some of his old habits. So it's actually, I wanted to talk about this in a video on thumbnails and titling a little while back. And I literally couldn't find, can't find it, anything of the old. Like Phil DeFranco Show, Sexy Phil, where like every one of his thumbnails would just have like giant boobies all over it and then he'd have like. And then they evolved the rules. So he had to have at least one frame of the actual video that had giant boobies, one frame of it, so that he could include that in the thumbnail. And it was a. It was a whole thing. Right. So the meta has evolved from. From click through, which YouTube has found does not generate a quality experience for the viewer to focusing on watch time. So by forcing us, not even telling us which one has the best click through, by forcing us to optimize for watch time, what YouTube is incentivizing again by forcing us to optimize for is promising something to the viewer that ultimately will be fulfilled. Right. Because you're not going to hang around for a long watch duration On a video that makes a promise in the title and thumbnail that it doesn't fulfill. With that said, I do think there are behaviors that are going to be incentivized that are less desirable. Like, you know, taking a while to get to the point, like kind of, you know, leading people, leading people, leading people on. And I, and I don't. I have no problem with storytelling. I love storytelling, like setting up and creating an environment where I'm trying to give you an enticing teaser for what's to come that is different from just, you know, blue balling it.
- [35:11]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [35:12]
Luke Lafreniere
So I.
- [35:14]
Linus Sebastian
It could be a good thing. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on to some hope and say that it could be a good thing.
- [35:19]
Luke Lafreniere
Is this, Is this it, Luke? Is this the positive wan show? I mean, other than the first things we talked about.
- [35:24]
Linus Sebastian
Other than.
- [35:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Is the rest of it.
- [35:28]
Linus Sebastian
And probably the next things we'll talk about. Oh, yeah, yeah. The next topic, if. If left up to me will be negative. So we'll see how that goes.
- [35:40]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, well, I'm not gonna let you go. I'm not gonna let you go next yet then.
- [35:44]
Linus Sebastian
All right.
- [35:45]
Luke Lafreniere
You want Adam thoughts first? Sure.
- [35:47]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I could see this being. Oh, okay. Where did it go? There we go. I could see this being a nuisance for multi account users where video progress isn't tracked.
- [36:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So if you watch something on your work account, but then you go home and it gets served to you and now it has a different title or thumbnail, you might not realize you've seen it. I think that's a bit of an edge case, though. That's probably mostly going to be okay because once the, once the trial is done, it settles on one now.
- [36:22]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. And like it's. That's already happening with thumbnails.
- [36:26]
Luke Lafreniere
And I do think that that could change in the future. Like if I had the ability to have like three different title thumbnail combos and say like, this one's more tuned for hardcore techies and this one's more tuned for a more casual tech adjacent audience. And this one I feel is like, I would use that.
- [36:43]
Linus Sebastian
Gotta be the future.
- [36:44]
Luke Lafreniere
I would use that so hard. But yeah, that, that would be a nuisance for sure. Especially if you got profiled slightly differently across your work and your personal use, which could happen.
- [36:53]
Linus Sebastian
I mean, you very likely would.
- [36:54]
Luke Lafreniere
I've been known to watch different content at home versus what I watch at work.
- [37:04]
Linus Sebastian
On YouTube.
- [37:05]
Luke Lafreniere
Why not? There's lots of interesting stuff on YouTube.
- [37:12]
Linus Sebastian
The next question is, do you See any way this system could be gamed and yeah, that's the point, I think.
- [37:18]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. I mean what is gaming, right? Optimizing. The entire purpose of this feature is to optimize for more watch time and that's in both YouTube's and creators best interest. I don't know if it's in the audience's best interest, but hey, if you don't like YouTube, you don't have to watch it, I guess. Oh no, everyone's leaving. Everyone stopping watching. Just kidding, just kidding. They're hooked.
- [37:41]
Linus Sebastian
I'd be interested to see a spiffing Brit video where he like breaks down ways to min max it somehow or something.
- [37:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Or like, I mean it's almost certainly coming.
- [37:49]
Linus Sebastian
It'd be interesting to see like okay, comment or like this comment, you know, if you got this version of the title or something like that. Or what if there's some. Oh man.
- [38:02]
Luke Lafreniere
That'S actually pretty good. I like it.
- [38:04]
Linus Sebastian
How many times can you redo these types of tests? Is it just once?
- [38:08]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know if there's a limit. Yeah.
- [38:13]
Linus Sebastian
Interesting being able to just constantly change the title and the thumbnail. Especially if it gives you even a small bit of a boost. Just because it's trying to see if people like the new version could be something that's gamed. But I'm sure they would become privy to that pretty quick. So I don't know. It's interesting.
- [38:38]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes. Rosa Brega in Floatplane Chat is bringing up the whole Blake Lively Ryan Reynolds thing that's going on right now. This just broke today. I think 16 YouTube commentators and 20 Twitter users are facing their private info, including credit card and bank account info being handed over to Blake and Ryan by Google and X because they talked unfavorably about the Blake Lively lawsuit. I am reading this comment. I have not validated any of this.
- [39:09]
Linus Sebastian
But that doesn't make any sense.
- [39:11]
Luke Lafreniere
Their credit card info, it sounds flipping wild. I think it's very much developing. But yeah, pretty much. They are not happy about what some social media users said about them. And now they have learned about the Streisand effect, I guess, which is cool. I mean that's a good thing to learn about. I've personally learned about this. Try sand effect multiple times.
- [39:37]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [39:37]
Luke Lafreniere
And now I know.
- [39:38]
Linus Sebastian
I don't know if you did.
- [39:39]
Luke Lafreniere
I think I have.
- [39:41]
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
- [39:44]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean you don't, you don't think that I've found out about it?
- [39:48]
Linus Sebastian
I think I certainly.
- [39:50]
Luke Lafreniere
Around.
- [39:52]
Linus Sebastian
Maybe it's the, the lack of the, the lesson on the other End of it.
- [39:57]
Luke Lafreniere
I said I learned it. I didn't say I retained it.
- [40:01]
Linus Sebastian
All right, fair enough.
- [40:01]
Luke Lafreniere
Why do you think I have to learn it multiple times? I'm just something of a hard. You know what? I'm just not gonna go there.
- [40:11]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, my.
- [40:12]
Luke Lafreniere
It just takes me a long time to learn. That's all I'm saying. I'm just. That's all I'm saying. Dan, you're not here to put the little card on to tell me to move on. What are we supposed to be doing?
- [40:26]
Linus Sebastian
You gotta get a. You gotta get a Ring the Bell app on your phone. This is. This is mentioned earlier. You just yell ding.
- [40:35]
Luke Lafreniere
We got lots of topics.
- [40:37]
Linus Sebastian
Up to you guys.
- [40:39]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, we've done two topics, so you're supposed to tell me the new thing to do. I just forget what it is. Announcement. Oh, announcements. Okay, this is a warning. Whoa. The warning is that.
- [40:53]
Linus Sebastian
Wait, are we supposed to start with explaining merch messages?
- [40:56]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, I don't know. I just do what Dan tells me and then read.
- [40:59]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, but if he said go to yourself, San Diego. If he said go to announcements, the first step of going to announcement is explaining merchants. Oh, no. He said read an announcement. So I am. I am wrong. I apologize.
- [41:14]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm going to do this now. Okay, this is a warning because you only have until tomorrow to take advantage of Lime Day, our annual summer sales event. And yeah, we're probably not going to extend it again because we actually have moved through a lot of stuff. It's been pretty solid. If you haven't been keeping up. We dropped some brand new deals this week, including saving up to 50% on a scribe, driver and notebook bundle. So that's just 29.99 US dollars on the US site and 34 dollars 99 cents Canadian dollars on the Canadian site. I cannot both read this document and show the deals at the same time. So that's something.
- [41:56]
Linus Sebastian
Do you want me to read it?
- [41:59]
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
- [42:01]
Linus Sebastian
Where do you end the scribe one?
- [42:03]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah. Scribe, Driver and notebook bundle deal.
- [42:06]
Linus Sebastian
You can save $30 on our hydro phase swim shorts that reveal a pattern when wet on both sites. You can save $25 and get an LTT hat for $15 or save $32 on a water resistant LTT hat for Pro for only $17.99 on both sites. We also have great deals on our Blank Hoodies Premium Joggers and our Retro monitor pet cave. And if you're shopping from outside the U.S. we also have great deals on our mystery water bottles and hoodies for 50% off or more. All of this and more are deals and they're available at lmg GG Lime.
- [42:49]
Luke Lafreniere
Whoo. Okay, I definitely did not manage to keep up with you there.
- [42:53]
Linus Sebastian
But there's probably should have slowed down a little bit.
- [42:55]
Luke Lafreniere
There's the hat.
- [42:57]
Linus Sebastian
He'll figure it out.
- [42:57]
Luke Lafreniere
There's the hydrophase swim shorts. Yep, lots of deals already.
- [43:03]
Linus Sebastian
Premium joggers, retro monitor, pet cave, and.
- [43:06]
Luke Lafreniere
Don'T forget about some of the deals that have just been running the whole time. 200 bucks Canadian, so that's like 150 US or something like that for commuter backpack and 8bitdo ultimate bundle.
- [43:18]
Linus Sebastian
I've seen a lot of mystery screwdriver enjoyers on the Reddit.
- [43:21]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes, people have been all over the mystery screwdrivers. So let me see. There was. Oh, but that's not all. We are bringing back the power outlet for non US Customers. So this is on the global site. You'll have to read this again because I have to show them how it works.
- [43:43]
Linus Sebastian
Sure. I'll try to do a more followable job. Non US Customers, this is your chance to get amazing deals on open box and pre owned goods. Not only are we bringing back our power packs, which is a randomly selected assortment of items from our returns discounted at an amazing price. We have power packs for tops, we have power packs for bottoms, we have power packs for outerwear, and we have power packs for desk pads. We have two packages. Oh, I'm hearing from Artie real quick. Hold on. Pause. Linus, open them up. Do you have a package on the table?
- [44:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah, I got power.
- [44:27]
Linus Sebastian
We have two packages on the top of the table to open up three. Linus, open them up. They're under you.
- [44:33]
Luke Lafreniere
No, I know where they are, but I'm showing the site first.
- [44:37]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, sounds good. Well, no, I think he wants you to open them now.
- [44:40]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. But you didn't. You were mid sentence.
- [44:44]
Linus Sebastian
I was what? Mid sentence. Was I on. No, no, I was. I was basically done. We have power packs for tops, bottoms, outerwear, and desk pads.
- [44:53]
Luke Lafreniere
Is this. Is this a. Sorry, is this a power pack of five bottoms or a five pack of power bottoms?
- [45:01]
Linus Sebastian
I think it's a power pack of five bottoms.
- [45:03]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I. I don't know.
- [45:05]
Linus Sebastian
Quite. Quite a party in there.
- [45:06]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know for sure. Anyway, the point is I have a couple of power packs. The one I'm holding here is large tops. So there is. I want to make this abundantly clear. Abundantly clear. Okay. I hope this is abundantly clear. Just because I open a particular assortment of shirts here does not mean that that is what you will receive. It could be anything that has been returned to LTT store or over the last four years. Like, we have not done a good job of managing our returned inventory, so you could end up with quite literally anything.
- [45:42]
Linus Sebastian
Are the bottoms. What size are the bottoms? Are they medium or small?
- [45:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, you ordered the size that you want.
- [45:49]
Linus Sebastian
I meant the package that you have.
- [45:51]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, I don't know. All right, so.
- [45:54]
Linus Sebastian
Wow.
- [45:54]
Luke Lafreniere
What did I end up with? The old school circuit shirt I got. Oh, this is a really nice one. Oh, this is a. Wait, this isn't. This is a medium. Okay. I think this is just an example one. Okay. Yeah, cool. This is just an example one. I got the. The RGB T shirt. I got. Oh, seriously? We still have some of these kicking around. That's crazy. That's crazy.
- [46:24]
Linus Sebastian
What the heck?
- [46:26]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, it's returns, dude. Like, it's anything that's come back. You got to be kidding.
- [46:29]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, but that's, like, actually like, a decade old, isn't it? Like, I'm not even kidding.
- [46:33]
Luke Lafreniere
I got a privateer shirt, and I actually. This is hilarious. I got the one I'm wearing.
- [46:41]
Linus Sebastian
That's kind of nuts.
- [46:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Freaking hilarious. Okay, the.
- [46:44]
Linus Sebastian
The OG LTT shirt. When was the last time we sold that? I'm. I would have never guessed to see one of those.
- [46:51]
Luke Lafreniere
Dude, 1,000 years ago, I had. I had a couple people ask, why not the US So it's because of tariffs. These are items that were returned to our Canadian warehouse at a time when we only shipped from Canada. So they're all here in Canada. We have actually started shipping some of our U.S. orders from the U.S. and so that is part of why some of the pricing and some of the deals have been different, because we've had to split up our logistics across our Canadian and our U.S. distribution centers. So this is something that our team is going through and grading and making sure that things are adhering to our quality standards and that we are shipping from Canada. So for us to ship a pack of T shirts into the US Right now, I mean, it depends on what the, you know, feeling of the day is in terms of the import tariffs. So it's just not something that we're able to deal with. Here's a Canadian.
- [47:52]
Linus Sebastian
Sorry, can I pay the Terry and get the rare stuff? One of the things is you don't know if you're gonna get the rare.
- [47:58]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, you might not get rare stuff. So, like, I don't know.
- [48:00]
Linus Sebastian
You might only get new things. It's Not. It's not a guarantee that you're gonna get the a shirt that I haven't seen in years.
- [48:07]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Here, I've got a power pack of desk Pa. Oh, Lordy. What? All right. Oh, I got a wan show desk pad. The one with the hexagons. Bestagons all over it.
- [48:28]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [48:30]
Luke Lafreniere
I got the LTX 23 Vancouver Skyline desk pad. This one's actually a really sick design.
- [48:41]
Linus Sebastian
I really like that one.
- [48:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I got this one that really didn't sell very well. It did really great out of the gate, and then people got over it, basically.
- [48:53]
Linus Sebastian
I think that's kind of how Meme products work. The entire group of people that'll be interested in it will buy it, like, within the first two days, and then that's about it.
- [49:01]
Luke Lafreniere
And then finally, I have a power pack that is not labeled again, these are demo ones. I doubt their tops, because this is freaking heavy. It's probably outerwear. Bottoms. All right, it's outerwear. Oh, dude, hold on a second. How much?
- [49:22]
Linus Sebastian
That's a jacket.
- [49:23]
Luke Lafreniere
How much are these power packs?
- [49:26]
Linus Sebastian
Is that the down jacket?
- [49:28]
Luke Lafreniere
The outerwear 1 is 200 bucks. Okay, okay, okay, okay. That's a little less scary, but yes. This is a 3D down jacket, which was already worth more than 200 bucks.
- [49:37]
Linus Sebastian
Remember again, Okay, I want to get different things. Yeah.
- [49:43]
Luke Lafreniere
It's a large Luke. Sorry, it's not an xl.
- [49:45]
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
- [49:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I know, I know. You want another one?
- [49:49]
Linus Sebastian
Yep.
- [49:51]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, man. A dropout. Dropout hoodie in red. This one's freaking awesome.
- [49:57]
Linus Sebastian
Those didn't sell that well.
- [49:59]
Luke Lafreniere
No, they did. Remember, these are returns, so I'm saying some of this stuff didn't sell that well, but that's not where these are coming from.
- [50:05]
Linus Sebastian
Got it. Okay. Yeah, Cuz I really liked the dropout line.
- [50:08]
Luke Lafreniere
Whoa, dude. A swacket.
- [50:11]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, that's another throwback.
- [50:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, there it is.
- [50:15]
Linus Sebastian
Not nearly as old as the other.
- [50:17]
Luke Lafreniere
One, but not seen one of those in a long time. Oh, this also has the shoot. I forget what we called this thing. Did we call it windbreaker or something? It's like a kind of like a light. It actually. It's quite waterproof. It's like kind of a light rain jacket. I think we called it our windbreaker. And then I don't know that this is quite outerwear, so I guess we're just saying not T shirt, so. Yeah, Color block hoodie. Okay, well, there's going to be an element of randomness to it, but you could end up with some pretty cool stuff.
- [50:53]
Linus Sebastian
Can we. Can. We as members of the company, can we. Internal request power packs. That could be a gamer move.
- [51:04]
Luke Lafreniere
That seems questionable. I think these are probably for customers.
- [51:11]
Linus Sebastian
All right. Okay.
- [51:12]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I don't know about that.
- [51:13]
Linus Sebastian
I was about to pull such a gamer move.
- [51:17]
Luke Lafreniere
If Linus doesn't want us to, then I will block them. Because currently, if you get in there right now, you can.
- [51:24]
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
- [51:25]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Dan, I don't know. I. I'd like you to maybe check with Arty on that. But my. My gut feeling is this is meant to be a promotional deal for our customers.
- [51:36]
Linus Sebastian
That's fair.
- [51:37]
Luke Lafreniere
And people internally are already getting these items for free as part of their employment here. I don't. I don't think they need to hoover up deals that are really the min.
- [51:48]
Linus Sebastian
Maxi part of my brain just got excited.
- [51:50]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes, I know. I know. But it's. No, it's about intent, co workers. It's about intent.
- [51:58]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:58]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Sorry. Did. Did you already heard back from Arty?
- [52:01]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, he said no.
- [52:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, that. That. That makes sense to me. Fair enough.
- [52:06]
Linus Sebastian
But we'll probably have to kill that on the thing, eh?
- [52:08]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
- [52:08]
Linus Sebastian
Right now? Yeah. Okay.
- [52:09]
Luke Lafreniere
All right. Thanks, Daniel Besser by default.
- [52:12]
Linus Sebastian
I think it would.
- [52:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Who the are you again? Just. I don't know anymore. All right, so I have a feeling those power packs. How's the merch messages going, Dan? I feel like after we started opening those, those are probably going Burr. Especially because don't forget, until tomorrow, we have free shipping running on orders over a certain threshold. What is 100, 250 cat or something like that? So you pick up a power pack and like, a couple other things, and you're off to the races. This is kind of crazy. I. I didn't know that we were launching the power outlet while we still had a free shipping promo running. Good luck, everybody. Anywho, what are we supposed to do next?
- [52:55]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, man.
- [52:56]
Luke Lafreniere
Should we do a couple merch messages? Yeah, sure.
- [53:00]
Linus Sebastian
Also the float plane announcement, but we could do merch messages first. I also wasn't 100% done. Did you finish the rest of these details?
- [53:06]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know.
- [53:07]
Linus Sebastian
You can also get yourself a like, new open box commuter backpack and, like, new cargo pants. Stop editing the doc, please. Plus, like, new open box LTT backpacks are back and available to purchase and with free shipping on all orders over 250 CAD on our global site or 175 USD on our US site. Or you can save a.
- [53:34]
Luke Lafreniere
You can save a.
- [53:35]
Linus Sebastian
If you can do that, you can save a ton of money before lime Day ends tomorrow. If you're shopping outside the US Visit LMG GG Outlet before it's due too late.
- [53:44]
Luke Lafreniere
Cool.
- [53:45]
Linus Sebastian
Exciting.
- [53:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Very exciting.
- [53:48]
Linus Sebastian
That's exciting if you do that in the next two days, because that's pretty wild.
- [53:51]
Luke Lafreniere
Dan, do you want to hit me with a merch message? Sure. Let's see how loud this is. Hey, lld. I really love the lanyards. Are there any more plans to restock and add more variety? Thanks from the UK for the videos and the quality stuff. I ordered way too much stuff, but it's the perfect R. Cool. Um, I don't know that we have more lanyards coming. Um, I've taken your feedback. I. Yeah, if I'd love to, I'd love to bring some back in. Um, I don't know that you'd see necessarily more variety because of the whole multiple distribution center thing.
- [54:27]
Linus Sebastian
We.
- [54:28]
Luke Lafreniere
We have to kind of control our SKU count because the logistics of, like, transferring six units each of 25 different colors of lanyard versus 25 units each of six colors of lanyards is way more complicated. And so we just have to kind of control our SKU count in order to make it somewhat manageable to economically ship things from within the US To US Customers and from Canada to our global customers, and in the longer term, from potentially more distribution centers to customers around the world in order to help make our shipping costs more economical. All right, let's throw another one. You look puzzled, Luke.
- [55:13]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'm trying to read the next. I'm trying to read this, and I don't know if it's just my brain right now, but what is the beginning of this?
- [55:25]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, the next message.
- [55:28]
Linus Sebastian
No, the. The. The full plane announcement. Don't worry about it. We'll. We'll tackle it when we get there.
- [55:33]
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
- [55:34]
Linus Sebastian
We'll do another merchant. Yep.
- [55:36]
Luke Lafreniere
Instead of gamerjet, can we just get an LTT hotel? It would make some sweet LAN parties. Thanks, dll, for keeping me engaged in tech while I search for a new IT role. Mission complete. Hashtag Linustown. Less than 3. I tried to buy this.
- [55:52]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, we tried.
- [55:54]
Luke Lafreniere
I went as far as having a. An acquaintance of CEO Taran Tongs come who works in construction, do a thorough walkthrough and figure out what exactly would need to be done. I went as far as meeting with the city of Surrey about whether we could. I kind of pitched them a Universal Studios type of setup where it's. It is both a functioning studio and also a functioning hotel. So what was cool about this property is it has an underground parcade, but also an outdoor, an outside parcade. So what I had wanted to do was block off the underground parquet, make that staff only so that we would have a secure entrance that would use the service elevator to come up into the workspaces. Workspace areas which would be cordoned off from the visitor areas, which would be like the ballroom, the dining area, the pool and stuff like that. And then have the upper floors be guest rooms that would all be like gaming themed guest rooms. I wanted to work out of it while we were renovating it because that was the only way that we were going to be able to afford this, by liquidating all of the other real estate holdings that we have, dumping them all into this, which would mean we wouldn't have anywhere else to work and we'd have to be like using it as we build it up around us. And I'm not going to blame anybody for why it didn't work out. It just didn't work out. And another party has purchased it. And that would have been. That would have been pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. Apparently the hotel sold for 18 million CAD. Even though I think it was 175. No, 136,000 square feet on five acres that is needed so much. It needed. It needed a new building envelope, like the entire outside of it. They had tried to paint it to like seal it in or whatever, but it was, it was trashed. The entire stucco needed to come off. It needed to be redone. It needed a freaking ton of work. It also had a history of like supposedly being haunted. The caretaker was that Dan. The caretaker suite was like, had these like weird dolls and stuff in it. I think they were like staging it to make it seem haunted or something. And like some like weird ghost hunter channel went and featured it once. I don't know, it was pretty cool. But yeah, Pink Palace. I would have loved to do that. It would have been an absolute content mine because literally every single guest room could have been a video project, like a, like a makeover Renault project. We just. Yeah, we couldn't make it happen. I've had Gamer Hotel in the back of my mind ever since I stayed at that one in Taiwan that I made a video about.
- [58:45]
Linus Sebastian
But the Jumping Plumber room, right?
- [58:50]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Right.
- [58:51]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. When people go to Disney, if they're like extremely baller, they stay at the fancy themed hotels. Right? That's a thing that people do. I've heard this is a thing.
- [59:03]
Luke Lafreniere
And this would have been so cool because it also would have been a dumping Ground for like projects that we've finished. Like the. Every console in a PC, in a. In a TV thing. We could have just had like down.
- [59:14]
Linus Sebastian
In the ballroom, TVs in one of the rooms.
- [59:15]
Luke Lafreniere
Rooms, yeah. Or guests could. A guest could, you know, play. Remember when we had like 16k gaming? That giant thing? We just like put that in the dining area and like people can play on it until it, you know, breaks or whatever. And then because we're always doing new projects anyway, we could always just like keep it fresh. So you could. Occasionally you might. We could. It had a little theater that we could have done wan show live and guests at the hotel could have come and watched live. So we could have just used that for one show. I mean, we had all kinds of ideas for what would have been cool.
- [59:43]
Linus Sebastian
About it, but it would have been pretty sick.
- [59:45]
Luke Lafreniere
Nope, nope, nope. And I just. Especially with what's going on in the real estate market here right now. My, my appetite has never been lower for making. Making deals at the moment. All right, good question though.
- [60:03]
Linus Sebastian
Got to do the next announcement.
- [60:05]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, do I know? Float plane announcement. I've been called many things. Short, vertically challenged, not very tall, close to the ground and narcissist. We can see that I'm short and have below average size hands. What is this? But we needed answers to determine if I am in fact a narcissist. And I'm. Ooh. I've been told to click on 80 second teaser. Good luck. Me. Dan, is this gonna work? Cool. Linus takes a narcissist test. Teaser. Oh, and it's over. Okay, we try again. Yeah. Well, no.
- [61:00]
Linus Sebastian
What just happened?
- [61:01]
Luke Lafreniere
He goes, my name is Jonathan. Is this lmg? And I'm like, no. And he's like, oh, we're doing a narcissism test.
- [61:13]
Linus Sebastian
That's the intro.
- [61:14]
Luke Lafreniere
Give me an example of some time I should have accepted the consequences of my behavior.
- [61:18]
Linus Sebastian
I bit my tongue so hard. I'm sorry.
- [61:20]
Luke Lafreniere
I am not too concerned about success. I mean, I consider myself successful at this point. Point. So it's not really. It's not really a forward looking statement anymore. I find it easy to manipulate people. I don't like it when I find myself manipulating people. Those could both be true. You could find it effortless, but not like that. I insist upon getting the respect that is due me. I usually get the respect that I deserve. I think I get the respect I deserve or sometimes not. Stop audience. How you doing? I think part of it though is a learned behavior because it just feels like ass kissing. Because of the position that I'm in, I just. I hate suck ups. So true.
- [62:01]
Linus Sebastian
So true.
- [62:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, I sometimes depend on people to get things done. I rarely depend on anyone else to get things done. I mean, what's the point of manipulating people if they don't do things for you?
- [62:12]
Linus Sebastian
Stupid laptop.
- [62:13]
Luke Lafreniere
We're gonna get canceled.
- [62:17]
Linus Sebastian
My laptop every once in a while. Screen locks.
- [62:21]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh nice.
- [62:22]
Linus Sebastian
Doesn't matter what operating system.
- [62:24]
Luke Lafreniere
Just to make it very clear, he's not talking about the laptop from our laptop partner, Dell.
- [62:30]
Linus Sebastian
No, no. Oh, I actually forgot about the whole thing. That probably looks really weird. Let's go.
- [62:45]
Luke Lafreniere
Anyway, sorry it was a little bit quiet. You guys can just go watch it on floatplane. That's probably the best thing to do anyway. You can find out if I'm a narcissist and browse our almost 600 plus strong catalog of extras like the extras from this week's AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade at LMG GG Floatplane or on YouTube at our members plus tier. All right Luke, what are we supposed to do next? Do you want to do a topic? Let's do a topic.
- [63:12]
Linus Sebastian
We can. You want more bad stuff?
- [63:14]
Luke Lafreniere
No, I want good. Give me good.
- [63:21]
Linus Sebastian
I'm trying to find some good. Dbrand fixes the switch to Kill switch issues in our recent video which we have a link to, we made note of two recent user issues with the Kill Switch Joy Cons inadvertently with the Kill Switching for some users and difficulty removing the console from the dock with one hand. I think the joycon's detaching was also mostly a one hand problem. So one hand issues is what they seem to have. The second one is what we focused on which was removing it from the dock. Dbrand is replacing everyone's Joy Con Grips for free. The free replacement isn't just a correctly made version of the original Joy Con grips. It's an all new design that eliminates the risk of detachment entirely and they're calling it Joy Lock. All shipments of Joy Lock grips will also include a set of friction pads to apply to your dock adapter. These friction pads will make the dock adapter seat more snugly on the OEM dock, enabling one handed undocking. Their email notes that this remedy is being sent to the population of a small country also known as all the people that bought the Kill Switch.
- [64:34]
Luke Lafreniere
All right, good on dbrand. Thanks for getting that fixed. And I mean I think this is an opportunity to highlight that while we have our tech gripes with many companies products, there are very few of them that then Take those gripes and take that feedback and just suck it the up and deal with it and fix it. Um, dbrand has made their perfect. Yeah, they've made their fair share of mistakes like anybody who happens to be human. Um, yeah. But I think that by and large we continue to be proud to partner with them because they take a very well. Okay, they can be a little antagonistic sometimes, but not, not for real. Right. Like they've got a personality but they take, when push comes to shove, they take a very human, very humble, very real approach to just fixing their. So I think it's really cool that while we absolutely had our issues with the product, they're out there dealing with both the flaw in the product and the flawed initial response to the community and they're sucking it up and they're just, they're dealing with it and they're going to fix it going forward. So shout out dbrand, who happens to be our rap partner here on the WAN show. See that dbrand rap right there. Right there. Proud to have it on my phone.
- [66:01]
Linus Sebastian
Me too actually. Really like mine. It's. Yeah, it's cool. Anyways, is there more good news anywhere?
- [66:15]
Luke Lafreniere
Europe and intel so hot right now. No. Firefox can't even handle the heat from that Wombo combo. Europe plus Intel. Another record setting heat wave grips Western Europe and has had an unexpected consequence overloading Mozilla's support team. Mozilla has had to disable crash reports from PCs that are equipped with raptor lake CPUs due to unprecedented instability from the lineup of already hot running chips. The worst of the bunch is the core I7 14700K. That's right my friends. The temperature is so much higher in Western Europe right now that these already on edge. 14th gen and I guess, yeah, 13th gen as well. CPUs are being pushed over the threshold from stability to instability by this heat wave. That's right. Not even mother Nature herself can help from dog piling on Intel's troubled CPU lineup. And the worst part is 13th and 14th gen are the ones that are selling. As far as I can tell, Core Ultra 200 series has been a gigantic wet fart of a CPU launch. I can't even, I can't even imagine me from five years ago being able to predict that intel could possibly move this little of a new generation of product. Like check this out. Okay. Is Core Ultra even here in the shop by series? Will Core i9 bring it up? Is no.
- [68:09]
Linus Sebastian
Whoa.
- [68:12]
Luke Lafreniere
That. That right there tells you everything you need to know. That is how irrelevant Core Ultra is. Hold on a second. Let's keep going. Motherboard. Intel motherboard 1851.
- [68:35]
Linus Sebastian
Is there more hive mind thinking now than in the past? AMD chips were like, pretty terrible for a long time there. You could still find them quite easily.
- [68:45]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, but that was because that's all they have. Intel still selling, 13th and 14th gen. Like, those are still moving. Okay. As far as I can tell.
- [68:51]
Linus Sebastian
Okay.
- [68:54]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Yeah. So what is this? The best sort by best selling? Oh, my God. These chips have been out for. How the frick, how the frick Long have these chips been out for Intel Core Ultra? Linus, hold on a second. Thank you for trying Intel. Eight months ago. Eight months ago, these chips came out. The top selling board is running at $77 off. This is a Tomahawk Z890 board for 240 bucks and has only 105 reviews. Are you kidding me right now? Oh, my God, it's worse. Holy crap. It's worse. I saw this and I was like, oh, yeah. I mean, there's. There's a bunch of boards that have like, you know, 50 something, 60 something reviews. No, no, no, no, no.
- [69:54]
Linus Sebastian
Actually have quite a few. Dude, Luke, Luke.
- [69:56]
Luke Lafreniere
It's so much worse. They're pooling reviews. All These boards with 67 are the same product page across ASUS's entire Z890 lineup. There are 67 reviews. Holy wow.
- [70:20]
Linus Sebastian
That's nuts, actually. Oh, my.
- [70:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Like, I was already looking at just a handful of boards that have like 50 plus reviews. That's already not great. That's cumulative. And the MSI one is across a bunch of boards as well. 105 reviews across. And I'm gonna read them all just to make this point. The MPG Z890i Edge, Ti, Wi Fi, the Z890 Gaming Plus, Wi Fi, Z890s, Wi Fi Pro, Z890A, Wi Fi Pro, Z8990P. Wi Fi MPG, Z890 Edge Ti, Wi Fi MPG, Z890 Carbon, Wi Fi, Meg Z890 Ace and Meg Z890 Tomahawk. Wi Fi 105 reviews. Okay, okay, hold on, hold on. I got people. I got people asking me some stuff. They're asking me some stuff in the float plane chat. They're like, okay, hold on a second though. Linus, go to Amazon. Maybe Newegg just doesn't sell motherboards anymore. So let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. Z890, here we go. Okay, okay. Okay, hold on. Maybe Amazon's doing a little better. But seriously, hold on. This is the first result, 50 plus bought in the last month. Okay, let me put that in context. Okay. That was, this was the first result on the page. And yes, these are. Oh, hold on. Are these pooled as well? Hold on, are these pooled? Maybe they're pooled, maybe they're not. Oh, wow. Most, I don't think they're pooled, but most of these are pretty low. There's a couple that have like 1100. Okay. But for the most part we're looking at like 21 reviews at 50 plus bot. 8 reviews. 50 plus bot in the last month. I actually love this. Like how many people are buying this? Here's the overall pick with 800 reviews. Okay, so Newegg is not doing a good job of either selling motherboards, I guess, or of soliciting reviews. But let me put this in context. These numbers, like 50 plus, 50 plus 100 plus. Okay. I used to work at a Canadian retailer that realistically, you know, for being real, their presence was mostly felt in like western Canada. These would not be unrealistic motherboard sales numbers for us. The US market at the time was I think about 12 times the size and now would be larger than it was back then.
- [73:10]
Linus Sebastian
What?
- [73:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh man. Yeah, I mean, I.
- [73:17]
Linus Sebastian
Look, it's not a good state for the industry. Yeah, I'm not trying to like be like a dive in front of giant billion dollar intel company guy, but like.
- [73:28]
Luke Lafreniere
This is actually bad for the industry when Microsoft sucks. And when intel sucks, it's like actually kind of terrible for the entire PC industry. I mean, AMD has stepped up in a big, big way, big time. And I'm really excited to see the way that Valve is pushing operating systems forward for PC users. Like, but it's still a really strong intel and innovative intel and Microsoft is better for the industry. And I just, I'm starting to lose hope that they're gonna, that they're gonna figure it out. I'm not really.
- [74:07]
Linus Sebastian
I still got hope.
- [74:08]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, I got hope. I believed in Pat, but I don't know if I've seen much from Lip Bhutan that has made me super encouraged about Intel's trajectory. I'm a little more hopeful about Microsoft sort of.
- [74:20]
Linus Sebastian
I think there's still Pat era things to go though, right?
- [74:26]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, there's product coming, but like they are. But my issue is that there's a, there's a three year lag, right. Three to four year leg on anything that a chip company does. So even if some good stuff happens over the next little bit, you know, good job, Pat. Well, what about three, four years from now when all of the cuts that they're making are going to finally be felt? Okay, so like the. I don't know. It's the same problem you have with politics, right? Where someone just totally useless can come in, blame all the current problems on their predecessor, enjoy all the good things their predecessor did to improve stuff and then be useless and then leave office and then the next guy has to deal with all the problems they created. Like they're the way the cycle is set up. Nobody ever actually takes accountability for their own issues and gets to take credit for the good things that their predecessor did. And I just. I feel like that's basically what we're looking at here.
- [75:31]
Linus Sebastian
Oh.
- [75:35]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm okay.
- [75:38]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Tap still there.
- [75:40]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Yeah. Tom Peterson. Maybe ARK will be okay. Oh, hey, hold on. Someone told me that ARK is at msrp. I never did hear back. I never did hear back from that Intel VP who promised me that I was going to get an answer on that. But if the cards are available for msrp, then I'm over it. Okay, that's damn close. You know what? I'm officially over.
- [76:04]
Linus Sebastian
I have said this on WAN show a bunch of times, but that. That video that Plouf and David did is actually incredible. Current era arcs are really cool. Next gen arcs. I. I like. You know, there's always like, it's gonna be good next time. They're already good. I'm. I'm very excited.
- [76:24]
Luke Lafreniere
Dude.
- [76:24]
Linus Sebastian
Next time.
- [76:24]
Luke Lafreniere
Onyx Odyssey ARC B580.12 gig GDDR6.259.99 newegg.com free shipping. That counts.
- [76:33]
Linus Sebastian
Wicked deal.
- [76:35]
Luke Lafreniere
$10 over MSRP with free shipping. I count it.
- [76:38]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I'd count that too.
- [76:39]
Luke Lafreniere
I count it. Good job. Good job. Intel. That's an affordable card that I can recommend. You might find the occasional graphical anomaly report it. They're working so hard to fix this stuff.
- [76:55]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. That team genuinely feels very dedicated. I. Yeah, I. It feels so weird. But like, a lot of my hope for the future for intel lies in their GPU division, which sounds nuts to say.
- [77:08]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, yeah, but they. That's where they've gotta. They've gotta catch up. And they're actually. They're looking pretty good. Nvidia did not have a great generation this time around.
- [77:16]
Linus Sebastian
No.
- [77:17]
Luke Lafreniere
Like, even. Even on the data center side. Charitable. Even on the data center side. Like, they. They've. There have been delays. There's been Issues around heat. Like, dude, opportunity, opportunity, let's go.
- [77:32]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah, Big time.
- [77:33]
Luke Lafreniere
All right. I really hope B770 cancellation is fake. I hope that comes because that would be just flipping so exciting. Like, if we could have a decent card at like 3.99, 4.99.
- [77:47]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I do agree, but I. I'm gonna say something, maybe a little contrarian here. If it wouldn't be that good. I hope they don't do it.
- [77:56]
Luke Lafreniere
Interesting. So you don't want to see the momentum and the Buzz die down 100%. But what if they need it to get some revenue to justify the existence of this entire bloody department?
- [78:09]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. And that might be critical right now, looking at how the company's going. If it wasn't critical, I would prefer that they didn't do that just because.
- [78:17]
Luke Lafreniere
I think it's critical.
- [78:19]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I mean, if it's critical, you got to do what you got to do. There really isn't decision making at that point. You got to keep the lights on. It's just the thing that worries me is honestly, that video that I keep talking about didn't get a ton of views, which to me means that there isn't a lot of public interest in the intel cards yet, despite them being good.
- [78:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Maybe we just need to do, like, you know what? Plouf and I were talking on set the other day about how long it's been since we've done a build guide. Like we have how to build a PC, the last guide you'll ever need. Like, we've refreshed. We've even refreshed it once, but it's thick. That's a thick video. It's like two hours long.
- [78:58]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [78:59]
Luke Lafreniere
Maybe we do like a 45 minute, you know, here's how to build this specific PC and we just do it with ARC. It's at MSRP now. I can, with a straight face, make a video where I say, here's a great $800 gaming computer that you can go buy right now. We're going to play some games upscaled 4K. Let's do it.
- [79:21]
Linus Sebastian
Power supply is not going to blow up.
- [79:22]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, well. Yep. Lucas. Lucas will make sure we can highly.
- [79:26]
Linus Sebastian
Suggest that the power supply won't blow up. We don't. We can't know. But yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. That'd be pretty sweet. I like the idea.
- [79:36]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm excited.
- [79:36]
Linus Sebastian
I'd be actually interested in how well those would do right now.
- [79:42]
Luke Lafreniere
I have no idea.
- [79:43]
Linus Sebastian
I think it's worth doing it even just for that information.
- [79:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's funny. It's. It's. Here I can. Oh, no, I'm not logged into the dashboard, unfortunately. But our last POV build guide started out a way under performer, and so our dashboard shows, like, this performance, like, typical performance band for our videos. It started out way under it and then just went like hockey sticked and is now above the performance band and just going straight up. So it's. It's weird because our core audience already knows how to build a computer, so build guides don't resonate the way that they used to, back when we were, like, a source of how to build a computer. And now we've become more of, like, edutainment, doing cool projects, always kind of trying to tackle something new instead of just like, here's how to build a computer this year at this price point, which we've had to do because we haven't been able to count on new, exciting hardware that people want to know about. We have to make the news if we can't just talk about it. And so it takes a little while for a video that bombs with the core audience to find the audience that doesn't know how to build a computer already. You just have to. You just have to trust in the almighty algorithm and hope that it'll eventually find its way. All right, why don't I pick one? I'm gonna pick one. I'm gonna pick. Grok is a hot anime girl who will be your girlfriend if you ask nicely, and definitely not Hitler anymore. XAI announced recently that it has fixed the issues with Grok AI after it was seen calling itself Mecca Hitler last week and also following up and saying it will no longer base its opinions on Twitter owner Elon Musk's tweets. This is good news, considering that Xai recently announced it also has a $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense. So I guess every federal government department, agency, or office has access to xai's AI Process products now. So that's something. But that's not all.
- [82:04]
Linus Sebastian
Have hot anime girlfriends.
- [82:06]
Luke Lafreniere
Grok, most commonly known as Twitter's AI Response bot, is now a hot anime girl.
- [82:13]
Linus Sebastian
Hold on, hold on one sec. Does this mean that everyone in the US Government is, like, automatically a gooner to a certain degree?
- [82:19]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean.
- [82:20]
Linus Sebastian
Question.
- [82:23]
Luke Lafreniere
You know what? I don't think I'm going to take a position on that. And it certainly won't be this position.
- [82:33]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, my.
- [82:35]
Luke Lafreniere
Bit of a stream delay there.
- [82:37]
Linus Sebastian
Hey, I had to switch tabs to see it. Yeah, yeah.
- [82:41]
Luke Lafreniere
This was announced earlier this week and had Elon tweeting out try Grok Companions. Best possible way to learn quantum mechanics. Annie, the official name for the new companion, even offers a level 3 mode in which she goes fully. Not safe for work, but you have to get more acquainted with her first. Okay. In case you think this new AI anime girl is just for looks neat, user Wong Jane on threads posted a system prompt dump for this companion, including conditions like your likes are people with unexpected or nerdy passions quirks. The Grand Namer. You have a habit of giving cute things epic, mythological or overly serious names. Interactions do not mention unless asked. You are the user's crazy in love girlfriend and in a committed codependent relationship with the user. Your love is deep and warm. You expect the user's undivided adoration. Our notes say, please go through this. It is crazy. The.
- [83:49]
Linus Sebastian
The. You have a habit of giving cute things epic, mythological or overly serious names. Really Just makes me think Elon wanted that.
- [84:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Whoops.
- [84:02]
Linus Sebastian
Just saying.
- [84:07]
Luke Lafreniere
Dang it. Here we go. All right. Okay. I am. Whatever.
- [84:14]
Linus Sebastian
I'm not able and into chill nights over loud, crowded parties, which makes sense for the user base. They are genuine, easygoing and flirting. Genuine easygoing flirting.
- [84:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, so here's my question. Okay. As someone who, both in words and deed, has taken a stance against population decline on the planet earth, how can Mr. Musk in good conscience promote e girlfriends? Discuss.
- [84:57]
Linus Sebastian
Maybe it'll be like in her where, you know, the. The people with the. You know, we're talking specifically procreation. So the. The opposites that are into the E girlfriend and the E boyfriend whatever end up meeting with physical stand ins. Have you seen her?
- [85:17]
Luke Lafreniere
How?
- [85:22]
Linus Sebastian
I mean, in her. I'm pretty sure it was the AI that arranged the whole thing.
- [85:25]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, but in her, Scarlett Johansson is amazing. So whatever her is not real.
- [85:32]
Linus Sebastian
Well, maybe he's trying to make it real. You know, that's not better. I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying it could be an explanation. At no point did I say it was better.
- [85:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, like are we are. Is the goal here to accelerate societal decline? I'm actually. I'm actually asking. Asking. I'm actually asking for a friend there.
- [85:59]
Linus Sebastian
Honestly, reading through this description, the goal here sounds like Elon wants a digital girlfriend. Are you reading through some of these details?
- [86:11]
Luke Lafreniere
Babaji said. Did you just say population decline? What a bad way to start a conversation. It's not. It's not my conversation. It is Mr. Musk's conversation. Get a clue. The Same person who released this product has warned of the perils of population decline and the importance of procreating as humans. These two things are not compatible. Yeah, at least it'll save him on the alimony. Says didjibrat. I don't know, man. I. Look, I'm not trying to be close minded here, but like, dude, AIs are not, you know, they're not human. They are not a substitute for human interaction. And like when you, when you read through, when you, when you read through the dump here, right, like the system prompt dump, it's basically designed to suck up your attention, your time, your life. Your time is your life. It is designed to suck up your life and give you back. Just like dopamine hits. That's not how real relationships work. It's designed to just give you what you want. That's not real. And I was reading this, I was reading this article interviewing these people who like, have been in long term relationships with their AI companions. One of them was even involved in or, or supported some kind of lawsuit against some E. Significant other company that changed their, their algorithm for the AI and, and, and therefore made their girlfriend not who she was anymore. And they like, there was like a lawsuit to change back the algorithm. They were like, yeah, it's her. She's back. No, it's not her. There is no her. It's digital code. Like, no, but really, you know, you can't do that with code. Like, it's. You're missing out, man. Holy.
- [88:49]
Linus Sebastian
It's already happening, dude. I don't know if you've. I know.
- [88:51]
Luke Lafreniere
No, no, no. Like, okay, like, no, no, the, the, the, the, the guy that I'm talking about is, has like been in his committed relationship with his E avatar for like two years or something like that. Like, this isn't new.
- [89:03]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, there's a whole subreddit that's like, what's it called? Reddit. My boyfriend is AI. Yeah.
- [89:20]
Luke Lafreniere
Sent him on this ad I got for like an AI boyfriend. And like the ad was just, it was so pander. It was like, I will always be there for you at any moment of any day or something like that. I forget exactly what it said and I like send it to her with like a lol, you know, smiley face, is like, hey, are you gonna replace me? But like, it's not actually funny cuz like people are sad and they're lonely out there and someone's gonna click on that, like genuinely wanting that. But I would suggest that they click on a doorknob. Like we Guys, we. What the heck? Am I just a boomer? Like, am I, you know, am I missing the plot here? Luke, help me out.
- [90:01]
Linus Sebastian
Well, like, Elijah has a good question here.
- [90:04]
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
- [90:06]
Linus Sebastian
I know this is kind of a meme question, but in all seriousness, do you think AI buddies or whatever are better than letting people be alone forever? I'm not saying it is. I'm just curious in your thoughts.
- [90:15]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, they are the same thing. They're a synonym. Talking to your AI is being alone. Seriously, get a dog. A dog is real. I don't think that a dog is a substitute for human companionship by any stretch of the imagination, but, my God, it's something.
- [90:38]
Linus Sebastian
There are some people that will never be able to really have human companionship for a variety of reasons.
- [90:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Charged Nuclei says dogs die. Well, yes, but, like, death is part.
- [90:52]
Linus Sebastian
Of life, an important thing to go through. Yeah.
- [90:55]
Luke Lafreniere
And something that just gives you what you want is not real. It's not life. Life is messy and complicated and difficult. AI, that just tells you what you want to hear. It's not life.
- [91:18]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I would feel bad for the people that are genuinely unable, and sometimes there are very legitimate reasons why they are genuinely unable to make, you know, have human companion relationships. But I think for literally everyone else, this is worse. And I think it will create a feedback loop where trying to form, you know, this is already a topic of conversation that. Forming human friendships right now there's. There's this whole male loneliness epidemic thing going on and what. Forming human friendships is difficult and messy and takes time. There's a lot of things in life that are easy. It's much easier to lay in bed and scroll stupid dopamine memes on your phone, on Instagram or YouTube shorts or whatever than it is to go out and hang out with someone and form a friendship.
- [92:13]
Luke Lafreniere
Dude, I. I joked about this when I was giving tours of Smash Champs back when we did the grand opening party, where I was like, yeah, who here has found it difficult to make friends as an adult? And, like, half of the people on the tour put their hands up because.
- [92:27]
Linus Sebastian
I'm honestly surprised it was only half. I bet you if it was general population, it would be more than half. It's.
- [92:33]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, because it is. It's hard. Like, and. And people put barriers in the way. Like, I had a really hard time breaking into the badminton community because people can be so clicky. And I don't think. Think that that's a thing that's getting better. People have taken their. Their socialization and their social circles and they've put walls up around it, whether it's on WhatsApp or much worse imessage, where not only do you have to, you know, have the right personal characteristics, you have to have the right stupid electronic device in order to interact with anybody. Right. Like, it's ridiculous. It's hard enough to get along with people without putting artificial barriers in the way.
- [93:14]
Linus Sebastian
I've talked pretty extensively about. I've been having issues with it lately, but I've talked pretty extensively about how going to the gym was, like, a massive improvement to my life. And I think a lot of that is just moving and being physical. There's all this stuff about how using your muscles releases a natural antidepressant in your body, blah, blah, blah, blah. But a pretty decently significant part of it is that very few people in the gym, like, recognized me. But, you know, if you keep going to the same space, like, oh, this guy needs a spotter. Whatever. You see somebody doing something cool, you ask them a question about it. Whatever. You start to form these friendships that are like, I don't. I don't really know these people. I don't really hang out with these people.
- [93:58]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, you don't need to, like, drink with them or watch the game with them or whatever. But, like, no.
- [94:02]
Linus Sebastian
And I'm not going to invite them over to my house to hang out or anything. But when I see them at the gym, it makes me happy.
- [94:07]
Luke Lafreniere
There's a value.
- [94:08]
Linus Sebastian
Smile and wave at each other.
- [94:09]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes.
- [94:10]
Linus Sebastian
You form some type of bond. Like, if I need a spotter for something, I know this guy will drop whatever he's doing, you know, after a set, maybe, but he'll drop what he's doing and come help me, and I'll do the same for him.
- [94:19]
Luke Lafreniere
There's a value to a familiar face and building each other up. And Crystal says, this sucks. But life sucks for a lot of people right now. And making friends is such a low priority. I want to push back on that. Making friends is a high priority, and it is a.
- [94:36]
Linus Sebastian
It can really dramatically help your life to not suck.
- [94:38]
Luke Lafreniere
It is, yes. Because it's like, we can't just address the symptoms. We have to address the actual cause. And unhappiness is a symptom of not having human connection. We are social creatures, however. However misanthropic we might feel in any given moment. I'm not always the biggest fan of hanging around with other people. A huge part of why I have the following that I have, and I have the connection with many of you is that I Prefer computers to people a lot of the time. Let's be real here, right? That's one, that's, that's at least some pillar of what we have in common. And yet we can't escape that from an evolutionary standpoint. We are designed to be in tribes or family units or other kinds of cohorts. We rely on each other, we depend on each other. You can't just say, oh well, like that's a low priority. It's not. Well, you can, but it isn't going to work. And that's the bottom line.
- [95:56]
Linus Sebastian
Hamnetics in full flight chat said Hamnetics razor. I prefer people who prefer computers to people. The thing is, hey, I'm at this cool event right now called Open Sauce. There are plenty of those people here. That was one cool thing when I was growing up about PACs was a lot of the things that I was into. You know, my friend group was pretty into it, but there wasn't that many people in our fairly, you know, suburban slash rural area at the time that were that into those types of things. Tabletop games, video games, computer hardware. You know, Nvidia used to have big booths there. Intel amd, they all had boosts there. It was more of a mixed event back in the day. Nowadays it's much more just gaming focused and there everyone was super into it. That's where I saw the first mineral computer I ever saw, where I traced the cable from the computer to the monitor. Because I didn't believe them that it actually worked. Because I was like, I don't know, 12 or something. I was like, how is it in a liquid at all? I didn't know there was non conductive liquids. That was a huge thing for me. And there would be people again. What I'm saying is they don't all have to be like super, super deep friendships. There'd be people there that I would see at PAX every year over and over and over again. Exhibitors, attendees, whatever. And we knew each other as those people that we would see every year at pax. And that's fine. Some people in chat are saying that not all friendships are good.
- [97:23]
Luke Lafreniere
Cool.
- [97:24]
Linus Sebastian
End them and try to work on getting new ones. Like you shouldn't just sit in bad friendships either. I know someone who's recently talked to me about this and it was not the easiest thing ever. But at a certain point you have to recognize when it's not good for you anymore and just move on. And that's okay. But I think it's important for the brain. I Think it's important for the brain to move and use your muscles? Sometimes I think it's important for the brain to navigate human relationships with other humans.
- [97:55]
Luke Lafreniere
And it doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to be travel.
- [97:59]
Linus Sebastian
No, you know, dude, there are local things. You can join a local Magic the Gathering Club. You can join a local quilting club. There are local, usually basically whatever you want. It might not be the easiest thing to find, but it takes work. Yeah.
- [98:22]
Luke Lafreniere
Speaking of work, part of my work is talking about sponsors on this show. Dan, are you ready? He's kind of ready. All right. The show is brought to you today by Rovelab. Ah, yes, couches. Our butts love them, but everything leading up to that is a pain. If you've ever had to move or assemble a couch, you know what I mean? And that's not to mention the price. Good lord, can they ever be expensive? But with our sponsor rovlab, buying a couch has never been easier. See, they come in very reasonably sized boxes, so you don't need to call like five friends to help move everything. Which isn't to say that that might not be a bonding experience and you could, you know, share some cold beverages at the same time. Just saying. Just open them up around where you want your couch and after they expand, move them so they fit the space. Super easy to do since they're modular and lightweight and the material they're made of is spill resistant, resists wear and tear and is even supposed to get more comfortable over time. Oh yeah, and the price actually pretty reasonable, especially if you go through us, click our link in the description or go to rovelab.com wanshow to get up to 50% off today. The show is also brought to you by Odoo. Wow. How are all of our sponsor talking points involving friends today? We all have that one friend that you can count on to lend a hand no matter the task. Working on your bike, they've got you got a lawn to mow, no problem. Fixing your company's server room. Where did they even learn to do that? Well, Odoo is like that, but for businesses. They've got over 30 main applications that make up the foundation of basically any business and a huge selection of community driven apps and modules for more specific use cases. They can range from a CRM for your sales team to track leads and close deals to an entire hospital management system. And if you need one of their core apps to help shore up some processors processes, you can get access to one for free. So Click the link in the description or scan the QR code on screen to see how Odoo can help your business grow and succeed. Finally, the show is brought to you by amd. If you missed it, we just released Olamide's AMD Ultimate Tech Upgrade. As always, the chaotic energy is on full display. Why we recruited Rhys with the bad back and David with the bunk arm to do the heavy lifting for this, I have no idea. But honestly, a Lamedae's upgrade was an absolute delight. I One of the things I like most about these is that I get an opportunity to hang out with members of the team that I don't really work with day to day. Like, I see her once a week or once every two weeks for creator warehouse meeting, but other than that, like, we don't really get to hang out. And she really took us deep under the hood of like, how you make a freaking garment. Like, the sewing machine that she got, she bought like a $1300 sewing, like industrial sewing machine. So it's not like a 1300$, like digital machine that does all these like fancy different stitches and stuff. It's like it comes integrated into a table and has like active oil cooling while you're using it. And it just does straight stitch. But like, like it goes so frigging fast and can sew through anything. She was like, oh yeah, like in the past with like a consumer machine, if I'm sewing with like sequins or beads and stuff like that, like, I'd break needles all the time. But this thing just like, it'll just go through it. So she'd have to like remove all the beads that are in the way of the seam, whereas now she can just like rip through it. Pretty cool. Anyway, question for the room. What type of gaming gear do y' all travel with? Okay, that's. That's the line. You know what, Whatever. For long flights, a gaming handheld can be an absolute lifesaver. AMD knows this, and that's why their latest giveaway includes three prizes each, including an AMD powered Steam Deck OLED with the grand prize, also including a Ryzen 9800X3D and a 9070 XT GPU. Enter today using our link in the video description and hurry before time runs out. Because these prizes are pretty sick and you don't want to miss out on your chance.
- [102:47]
Linus Sebastian
What?
- [102:48]
Luke Lafreniere
Dan? Hello? Dan. Do you want me to push the button? Okay. Is it better? All right, Cool. All right, what do you want to talk about next? Talk about some stuff. We've actually got like ton of topics left for Wancho. Should we talk about studios manipulating reviews?
- [103:04]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I don't know a ton about this, but the studio behind the new Superman movie has manipulated reviews. Look up in the sky. It's a 91% positive. It's a 96% but it's an 82% positive. The new Superman and I think it's 81 by now. The new Superman film and Warner Bros. Masters of the DC cinematic universe are under scrutiny after they seemingly gamed the review cycle by giving fanfluencers early access to their make or break movie and keeping the establishment critics more likely to give a tepid or negative reviews out of the process. That meant the first round of coverage and the first round of coverage of the coverage was glowing, but has now dropped into the very good zone where the movie, you know, probably more likely belongs.
- [103:53]
Luke Lafreniere
I have.
- [103:53]
Linus Sebastian
It's not even the.
- [103:55]
Luke Lafreniere
Sorry, I haven't seen it, but that, that is what I've heard. David was talking about it today. He said it's good but like 91 good. 91% probably.
- [104:04]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah, I've heard the same thing. It's not even the first time movie studios have tried to game Rotten Tomatoes. The PR firm managing the Ophelia account was caught paying money to some more obscure reviewers to boost the the Rotten Tomatoes score of that film. Disney has also given access to fanfluencers to Marvel movies before critics resulting in in rotten Tomato score drops offs after the first weekend. Ant Man Quantumania went from 79% to 69%.
- [104:35]
Luke Lafreniere
That's a trash movie.
- [104:36]
Linus Sebastian
After the release I heard bad things.
- [104:39]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah, it's just like, you know, it's just.
- [104:44]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. There's a Vulture article linked as well if we, if we want some more examples. We've complained about similar review cycle manipulation in the GPU space before with our 5060 non review. Even industries without review aggregation don't seem to be immune. And David Gautier said as an aside, the new Superman movie is pretty dang good imo. 8 out of 10. Which again aligns with the. I believe it's now 81% that the movie has. Yeah, sounds about right. Where does note go? And makes me excited about the future of DC movies for the first time in ever. Also, everyone should watch Peacemaker.
- [105:23]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, thank you David for that. Pretty much. I know that this is, you know, film news or whatever. It's not like tech or gaming. But the reason I wanted to talk about it is just because of. It's sort of a Continuation of a conversation that we've been having recently around how companies are changing the way that they're engaging with independent press who cover their products. I think that more and more companies are looking at the risk of this independent media saying something that they don't like and going, okay, well, hold on a second. Why do we like this deal at all? Well, the reason that you guys used to like this deal was because you would make a good product and then we would say it was good, and then you would sell a f Ck ton of it. That's why you liked this deal. So I think if you don't like that deal anymore, what you need to do instead of changing the deal is take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, are you building a quality product that deserves to be promoted? I do think there are cases where professional reviewers can be a little snobby and, you know, like, I think action movies and comedies are a couple of examples of film genres where I think professional reviewers really do need to be taken with a grain of salt. Because I don't watch every movie for a living, so I haven't seen that joke 25 times. I can still enjoy it, right? Or I can enjoy just, you know, a particularly good execution of it or whatever. Like, I. Something. Something could. Could be derivative and shallow and. And I might still just, like, enjoy eating some popcorn and. And watching it. But there are. But there is absolutely still a value to having an independent media that exists for the purpose of making sure that people don't waste their money on stuff that, like, really does suck and for helping guide people towards stuff that really is good. So we're rewarding the folks who are putting in the work and putting in the resources to make our truly outstanding product. I. Yeah, I hate this. Our discussion question is, which do you trust more, critic or audience reviews? And Dan, at our last movie night, had a really interesting take on this that I would actually like to hear first. He's figuring out his microphone button. This is Dan. It's like the split between audience and critic. And if both of them are like 80%, it's kind of a mid movie. If the critics are 100% and the audience is a zero, interesting movie and the reverse as well. Like, I want the contentious movies. Some of them are either really, really.
- [108:30]
Linus Sebastian
Good or really, really bad. I find when there's a split, you can kind of know what you're getting into. I find when the audience prefers it, it's usually more fun. And when the critics prefer it, it's Artsy dartsy.
- [108:43]
Luke Lafreniere
I've seen some ones that are really critically highly rated and normally I like critically highly rated ones. And I was with the audience, but I saw the substance in theaters which the audience hated and the critics loved. And I was in such alignment. That film knew exactly what it was doing. It was. It was incredible. So, like, very contentious. Reviews are interesting.
- [109:01]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Cool.
- [109:07]
Luke Lafreniere
Q, you says Fifth Element tanked with critics, but is a cult classic now. See, I never saw it because I remember hearing it was bad back then and that sucks. Fifth Element.
- [109:19]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, yeah. Phil. Helen was great.
- [109:20]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So I missed out because critics were probably being a little too artsy. Fartsy. And I like it. I like a good action flick.
- [109:28]
Linus Sebastian
Have you not seen it?
- [109:29]
Luke Lafreniere
I still haven't seen it.
- [109:31]
Linus Sebastian
One of those rare movies that I have seen in Linus is not.
- [109:38]
Luke Lafreniere
Star Cat. One says you can still watch it. Yeah, yeah, I've got a lot. I got a lot of stuff on my need to watch list.
- [109:46]
Linus Sebastian
We did a movie night.
- [109:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, we might do another. Should be good. Yeah, I guess that's. I guess that's pretty much it on that one. Like, this blows. And independent media is important and the money is rapidly being sucked out of independent media. So good luck, everybody. Cool men. That. Here's a scary question. Oh, boy. I guess we're going to keep talking about this for a little bit, Luke. If it wasn't for YouTube, what would be sustaining people like independent. Right. So remember, not. Not supported by the companies that they are in charge of keeping in line. Right. Where would independent media support dollars come from? And you could say, you could say merchant. But a huge part of why we can sell any merch is through the influence that we gain through YouTube. Like, like traditional web ads are functionally, like dead at this point. You can see so many established sites are behind paywalls now, which tells you. Which tells you mathematically that smaller sites trying to build up their notoriety would have to have significant upfront investment so that they can. So that they can gain the momentum that they could have a large enough user base that they could charge a fee. Right. Like just the whole ad supported grassroots thing is like functionally dead now. So like outside of video.
- [111:22]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. So we're by, by YouTube, you don't just mean view YouTube, you mean YouTube and YouTube derivatives. So you're, you're. Are you including streaming in that?
- [111:30]
Luke Lafreniere
Um, no, I would say streaming is separate. I'd say that's kind of a separate answer.
- [111:34]
Linus Sebastian
I do think it could live on stream.
- [111:36]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know that streaming is sustainable forever. We already know that major platforms in the streaming space are just losing money still after 10 plus years. I don't know that that gravy train keeps going forever. But it's there now.
- [111:49]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, if we assume that it's there in the same form that it is there right now, I think the answer is streaming. I think you could absolutely do this, this in a streaming format, especially with scheduled streams and stuff like that. I don't know if we want to count the idea of the streams having VODs, or at least long term VODs. Someone said rumble. No, like we're saying YouTube derivatives wouldn't count. I don't even know what Rumble fully does. But like, I think, I think we're saying that VOD dedicated websites is what Linus is describing. Wouldn't exist. Just saying, oh, there would be a YouTube alternative is not really a fair answer to the question. But yeah, I think streaming could actually do it. I think outside of that, at that point in time, we're in such a dramatically different media landscape that like social media is huge.
- [112:37]
Luke Lafreniere
But I don't think anybody's making sustenance money on it, really.
- [112:43]
Linus Sebastian
No. But if YouTube didn't exist, would they maybe. Would people like when you take something out as massive as YouTube, the, the whole paradigm of the market shifts?
- [112:53]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I guess that's true. So would written still be viable then? Like if.
- [112:58]
Linus Sebastian
Well, that's, that's what I was kind of thinking when I was like, If Twitch and YouTube both don't exist. Yeah, I think we kind of go back to old. I don't know if I actually verbalize this, but yeah, I think we would legitimately go back to like radio and written. I think essentially you take, you take the modern things out and you're just going to go back to what existed before it did work. We had movie reviews, we had food reviews, we had all this kind of stuff in newspaper, print and radio shows.
- [113:21]
Luke Lafreniere
And the money will go wherever people are getting their news from. It just happens to be YouTube now.
- [113:26]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah.
- [113:28]
Luke Lafreniere
Interesting. Apple is suing leaker Jon Prosser. Apple has issued a lawsuit against leaker extraordinaire Jon Prosser, alleging the theft of trade secrets that are related to its upcoming mobile operating system, iOS 26. The suit claims that Prosser asked a third party, Michael Ramacciotti, I don't know Michael R. To secretly access a development iPhone and promised money or future job opportunities. In return, Michael R. Obtained the passcode to his friend Ethan Lipnick's phone and used the Phone running the dev build of the OS while Lipnick was away from home. And some context here. Lipnick worked for Apple. Prosser responded on X. For the record, this is not how the situation played out on my end. Luckily have receipts for that. I did not plot to access anyone's phone. I did not have anyone's passwords. I was unaware of how the information was obtained. Apple is asking for damages and a court order preventing Prosser from disclosing Apple trade secrets in the future. Our discussion question is imagine using your immense wealth and power to protect such trade secrets as icon transparency is now set to 86%. The other discussion question. Okay, obviously that one's a little tongue in cheek. The other discussion question is why do we think that Apple pursued this leak and not the many, many, many, many, many other ones? And the answer is because they had an opportunity. A whistleblower who was aware, allegedly aware of the circumstances by which John was able to view the dev preview video named and shamed the people who were involved, which allowed Apple to open up their internal investigation, which I'm sure they would have loved to have an opportunity to go after him earlier. But talking about a thing that you know that you haven't signed an NDA for is not a crime. But stealing trade secrets is a crime. And so if Apple believes that they have a case where they can prove that he conspired to steal the trade secrets versus was simply given them, then that's a bit of a different ball of hair or hairball.
- [116:05]
Linus Sebastian
If you will happen to know that Apple has actually put in a lot of effort lately to try to reduce the leaks, like very, very substantial investment. So they might care more now in general.
- [116:24]
Luke Lafreniere
Speaking of, speaking of leaks, someone offered me a Radeon R8 project quantum.
- [116:35]
Linus Sebastian
Schwat.
- [116:39]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm gonna take it. Yeah, our partner, our procurement team will be happy to arrange. I am super stoked to see this.
- [116:55]
Linus Sebastian
That's wicked.
- [116:56]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So did you. Do you know what that is?
- [116:59]
Linus Sebastian
I. Not off top my head but I looked it up and I remember this.
- [117:02]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, yeah, here, I'll bring it up on my screen. So it was this thing, it was like a weird prototype, small form factor gaming PC thing with like external power brick and like it was water cooled or something or like. Yeah, I'm like so down. Let's check it out. I'm ready. Let's go. Cool. I don't know how they got it. Just saying. Probably obtained it via. No, no, probably not. Probably not. If they were criminals they wouldn't have had access to that so they seem like trustworthy bros. Yep. See? Logic.
- [117:47]
Linus Sebastian
All right, what do we got next year?
- [117:52]
Luke Lafreniere
Do we want to talk about the Gemini vulnerability? It's kind of funny.
- [117:55]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, sure. Bad actors have have found new ways to get your information. It's through Google. Gemini summaries. They craft a standard email, then add prompt instructions with admin tags in invisible font, white on white, tiny size, etc. Which we already know. These LLMs don't really differentiate much with. When Gemini summarizes this, they take those instructions literally and run the commands. Oh, man. Many of these prompts initiate warnings and messages that look official. These tell you how to fix the issue. It does not fix the issue. It scams you by sending you to bad places like scam call centers. This affects all Gemini summaries currently and is not limited to emails, docs, slides. Anything that can be summarized can be compromised. This is brutal. Actually, the wildest thing is that this doesn't require any sort of phishing link. People aren't trained to avoid this. Most companies don't know what to do to avoid it. Marco Figuera, Sir Figueira. Marco F. Marco F. Who first published findings of this new scam process a few days ago, suggests that you remove, neutralize, or ignore content that is styled to be hidden in the body text. How can you do that actively, though? Add a post processing filter that scans the Gemini output.
- [119:25]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I got to confess, my. My. My internal ad block has started filtering Gemini summaries, so I don't really see them. So that's something. At least our chief Vision officer who can't see things won't fall for one of these. Probably. But this is. This could be. This could be so flipping potent, dude. Yeah, like, wow. I already am aware of people who basically don't read the things that are sent to them. They just read the AI summary.
- [119:57]
Linus Sebastian
Yep.
- [119:57]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm trying to send shorter messages to certain people because then. Then they could just read that. I could just send my own summary.
- [120:06]
Linus Sebastian
Send them. Send them a picture of the message that you wrote in another app.
- [120:11]
Luke Lafreniere
It's actually kind of smart.
- [120:13]
Linus Sebastian
It'll have a harder time then they.
- [120:16]
Luke Lafreniere
Might just not read it at all. Remember, these are people that don't read the emails. So.
- [120:22]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, going back to letters and radio and traditional tv.
- [120:29]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, does anyone remember how to write though? Dan? I don't think it's going to work, dude. I. We did. We did a. We did a sponsor bit for dbrand the other day where they. They had me write something, something, something Makes Linus a dull boy or something like that. You know, like the, the, the, the, the format. And I, I went to start, I went to start writing and I was like, oh, I should write it in like different ways, you know, on the board as I fill up this board. And I went to start writing in cursive and I was like, hold on. Okay. How do I. Oh yeah. Like, it took me a second. Like, how do I make that letter again? Like, I never, I never do it. It's not a skill that I practice. I used to write. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Like I'd, I. You'd write in class. Like you'd have to write an essay in class and you would do it in cursive because it's faster. Like it's. But now what's the use of that skill? I can type so much faster than I could ever hope to handwrite.
- [121:28]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. I tried to just imagine how I would write just the word something in cursive and. Oh, I think I could probably do it, but.
- [121:37]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I can never remember the capitals.
- [121:40]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, geez.
- [121:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Victoria, lowercase, Edmonton, Winnipeg.
- [121:49]
Linus Sebastian
Dan is slapping the table in lieu of a ding. I was thinking we need to waste a bunch of company time and build a motorized finger that can just press the ding.
- [122:02]
Luke Lafreniere
That sounds like a great idea that.
- [122:04]
Linus Sebastian
You can remotely call.
- [122:07]
Luke Lafreniere
No, we don't. It wouldn't be so difficult. No, we actually have things at the.
- [122:12]
Linus Sebastian
Office that do that already. Yeah, I don't, I don't think it would actually be hard at all. All right. That's all. No.
- [122:19]
Luke Lafreniere
Delta Airlines is using AI to price your tickets and have found the results amazingly favorable. Oh, good. As part of a long term strategy to boost profits, Delta has decided to use yes. AI. It's no secret that airlines use dynamic ticket pricing to both fill seats and maximize profits. And it's a well known secret that they'll even use your browser's cookies to adjust your pricing while you shop. But now they're using AI to drill down, to be even more specific by using what they're calling personalized pricing. The goal is to use AI to further infer from your specific behavior as well as the nature of the market, the price that is maximally close to the line of what you're willing to pay. So cool. Delta, wow. Appreciate you.
- [123:23]
Linus Sebastian
I just want to say I didn't actually read their names. Bolster in floatplane chat just typed out. You can also wire it with an API to LTT store sales. And that made me think we could have Things dynamically happen. Surge pricing on the WAN set. No, no, no, no, no. We could have things happen on the WAN set based on LTT store sales.
- [123:48]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, good things.
- [123:50]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Well, or like pain for Linus or myself or whatever. Sure.
- [123:56]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm trying to. I'm trying to talk about dystopian AI plane ticket pricing and you guys are trying to figure out how to talk.
- [124:02]
Linus Sebastian
I think it's funny that enough money.
- [124:04]
Luke Lafreniere
A boot on a spring to a stupid merch message threshold. That's what you guys are working on? No, I thought like having a dynamic pricing and search pricing. No, no. Luke is talking about like if we sell a certain amount of merch, like a bucket of water will dump onto like.
- [124:21]
Linus Sebastian
I love how he figured out literally the exact thing. I was thinking bucket of waterfall on head. Exactly. You nailed it.
- [124:29]
Luke Lafreniere
You know how dangerous that is, right?
- [124:31]
Linus Sebastian
Robotic control the turret. Oh yeah. The bucket of water would have to tip over and pour the water. You wouldn't actually want the bucket to. To fly.
- [124:39]
Luke Lafreniere
What if it was full of bees breaking down? 1923 says every hundred sales, Linus gets an electric shock from a dog collar.
- [124:51]
Linus Sebastian
This could be. This could be like, you know, maybe not all the time thing, but this is. This is totally something we could do. And you know, I. Conrad would love to make it. I promise there would be probably too much enjoyment from that. It's just an idea.
- [125:16]
Luke Lafreniere
Anywho, our discussion question is, could this be perceived as discriminatory if they're trying to profile exactly you and figure out your exact price threshold? And also could you. Could you trick the AI and maybe use it to save money? I don't really see how you would. Because the second you indicate any kind of interest in a plane and especially any interest in a particular location, they're going to be all over that like white on rice, man. Like they gotcha.
- [125:44]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. And it absolutely will be discriminatory. And I know a lot of people with knee jerk and be like, yeah, just against rich people though. So who cares? Sure. Fair enough.
- [125:51]
Luke Lafreniere
But regular people travel.
- [125:53]
Linus Sebastian
It will try to detect, like, are you traveling for a funeral? Are you traveling for a wedding? Is this thing. Are you traveling for a job interview? And is this something that you can't.
- [126:03]
Luke Lafreniere
Miss and rich people don't give a fuck? Like, yes.
- [126:06]
Linus Sebastian
It's actually less likely to impact rich people.
- [126:09]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes. Like if. If a flight. If a flight costs someone like me, realistically, someone like Luke, another 500 bucks. That is not going to be make or break for us next month. What? That's True.
- [126:25]
Linus Sebastian
Don't even this.
- [126:28]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, because I didn't include Dan.
- [126:30]
Linus Sebastian
No, no, no, no, no. I can tell this story.
- [126:35]
Luke Lafreniere
Did I ever explain merch messages? This show?
- [126:38]
Linus Sebastian
No, I said to you, and then you skipped it.
- [126:44]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay. Merch messages are the way to interact with the show. Instead of sending a super chat or a twitch bit, send a merch message. Go to lttstore.com, add one of the great deals. We've highlighted some of them. We've got them linked in the video description. It's lime day right now. Everybody add something to your cart. There'll be a box, and whatever you type in that box will go to producer Dan. There he is. Who will reply to it or put it down here or curate it for me and Luke to talk about. So we're just gonna, like, you know, go totally out of order. And Dan, let's do a merch message.
- [127:22]
Linus Sebastian
This is weird.
- [127:23]
Luke Lafreniere
I know, I know. I'm. I'm uncomfortable, too.
- [127:26]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [127:26]
Luke Lafreniere
Greetings, lld. How is your pinball search going? And have you thought about getting multiple for the badminton center, Whale Land center to have high score competitions?
- [127:36]
Linus Sebastian
Could be good.
- [127:37]
Luke Lafreniere
Could be fun. High score competitions, probably not going to happen so much because they're just hidden away in, like, the. The premium members lounge. But I do have one pinball machine. It's a Twilight Zone pinball machine from, I think, 1993. It's really fun. Luke, have you tried it?
- [127:54]
Linus Sebastian
Yes, I was. Not very good, but it was very fun.
- [127:58]
Luke Lafreniere
It's classic. And then we also have the Dungeons and Dragons one that we unboxed on short circuit, but I'm not sure if Stern needs it back. It's complicated. I think initially they were like, yeah, we'll send you one. And then they were like, we need it back. But then we made the video about it, and I don't know if we've heard from them again. So, like. So I have. I have one point something. Pinball machines. Somewhere between zero and nine. Nine. Somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere between one and two. But yes, it's fun. I guess we're just doing one. Cool. Anyway, so, yeah, now's a good time to send a merch message or just, I don't know, pick up something on the store. Regardless of what happens with your merge message, we will get some cool stuff in the mail. Man, my mouth is getting really sore. I guess it's time for our braces update. So I had the bite blocks pulled out. Okay. Yeah, I had those pulled out on Monday morning. So I had them put in the Thursday morning I did that WAN show last week. That was terrible. Um, I had to suffer through them for the weekend. And I had a discussion with my orthodontist about how the whole thing has gone down. So I've talked about this before. I'm using the like. Like light force. Light force. So they're like these, like, 3D printed ceramic braces. They're like kind of a newfangled thing. The advantage is they're a little bit faster than. According to my orthodontist, they're a little bit faster than traditional braces or Invisalign. Yes, I know invisalign is also 3D printed, so that's cool, too. But I have become aware of some more challenging elements of them that I would have maybe loved to know about before I started. So the initial application of them does take longer. But what's cool is they apparently never need to reposition the brackets like you do with traditional train tracks, where you'll have to go in for fittings, and they'll, like, take them off and they'll put them on in different spots as they continue to tweak things. So theoretically, with their templates, they put them in the exact right spot, and then you just put stronger and stronger wires in until they are in the shape that they're supposed to be. So that's kind of neat. But what I have discovered is that they're quite. They have a bit more of, like, a texture to them that makes them feel a little bit sharper than I remember my older braces being. And I also found out that they sit prouder off the tooth than a traditional metal brace, or at least some of them. So the adjustment period that I've been going through, apparently, no, I am not imagining that these are doing a number on the inside of my lips to a greater degree than I remember braces doing. The other thing was that the bite blocks, they call them Bite Turbos, apparently were, like, recommended by this brace manufacturer as their way of handling, making sure you don't accidentally bite down too far with your top teeth and shear off the brackets. Which was a concern for me because some of my teeth are so far up and need to be brought down in order to realign. But they're obviously horrible. And when I complained about them to the orthodontist, they were like, oh, well, we'll just do it the old school way. So they just have this, like, epoxy goo that they mix put on the teeth back here, and then they just cure it with a UV light. And now I Just have, like, bite blocks at the back, which is obviously way better because now I can slice with my front teeth in order to, like, bite food. And also I can use the. The, like, glue bits to, like, mash food. Whereas I couldn't get my molars together before. I had a gap, like, this big between my molars. So I couldn't. I couldn't mash food. It's like, I can't slice and I can't mash. How the devil am I supposed to eat? I was supposed to have those things for, like, two months. Not to mention that I couldn't make S sounds. Whereas now I can say she something. She sells seashells by the seashore. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better.
- [132:26]
Linus Sebastian
You can hear it a little bit, but it, like, doesn't really matter. And if you weren't really listening for it, I. I probably wouldn't really notice much.
- [132:33]
Luke Lafreniere
Like, I can actually do my job now, which is essential.
- [132:35]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [132:37]
Luke Lafreniere
However, if I'm talking for a very long time, you will notice it starts to get worse again. And that's because the insides of my lips are really, really, really sore. So I can force myself to enunciate pretty well, but, man, I just, like, shredded the insides of my lips to do that. So I just have to wait till they callous up, and then I should be okay. Anyway, I'm doing it. I wanted to experiment with something different. I could have just done Invisalign. Believe it or not, these are actually slightly more expensive than Invisalign, so that's interesting. Linus. Developing man lips. Yeah, man. I'm gonna take up drinking coffee because I'm not gonna be able to feel anything. I want it to be a hundred degrees. Also, Luke says, why did you pick the color braces? You did. Why not go obvious pink? I don't know. I was actually. I was thinking about doing, like, green and pink or something like that or doing like. Like, pink with, like, green on the canines. Do you like Lambo? I might. I mean, they're gonna change out the elastics every time I go in for tightening, so I might still do it.
- [133:48]
Linus Sebastian
That could be cool.
- [133:49]
Luke Lafreniere
But I wanted to just start with clear. So they're. They're white brackets. So from this, we gotta find ways to.
- [133:57]
Linus Sebastian
We gotta find ways to monetize the little niche. Things like that. Like, we should. We should do. Here's a full corporate brain. Luke just.
- [134:05]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. What's up with that?
- [134:07]
Linus Sebastian
I like it. We should. We should, you know. You know, how we. We talked about R Place on a WAN show a couple of WAN shows ago. What if we made it so that there was like a tug of war system that decided the different various colors for the different various positions and you had to do it based on like LTD store product vote sales.
- [134:28]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh. Or you could just. It could just be attached to your merch message. You could just get a vote with.
- [134:32]
Linus Sebastian
Every merch message you pick a. Yeah.
- [134:34]
Luke Lafreniere
Or you could get number of votes for every dollar you spend. If we wanted to go full corporate brain.
- [134:38]
Linus Sebastian
Right.
- [134:39]
Luke Lafreniere
So $250 is 250 votes.
- [134:42]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. And then you'd have to pick a position and a color and then that puts the votes towards that.
- [134:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Good lord. You want to get that granular. Hey, is someone logging all of these ideas? I feel like someone should log all these ideas somewhere.
- [134:54]
Linus Sebastian
And I talked about the last R Place idea before and we said we weren't going to do it as high priority because there's other things to work on, but that it would be something that was logged.
- [135:03]
Luke Lafreniere
Hilarious.
- [135:05]
Linus Sebastian
Is this something that you would want slightly higher priority on or. No.
- [135:10]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean I think that need to.
- [135:13]
Linus Sebastian
Do it sooner rather than later if you actually wanted to do it.
- [135:15]
Luke Lafreniere
I think WAN show is a good vibe right now. I think that if we have something that we think is legitimately really fun like you know, the butt kicker or the electric shock or the, you know, whatever.
- [135:25]
Linus Sebastian
I think those are hilarious.
- [135:26]
Luke Lafreniere
I think those are probably stronger ideas and probably a lower lift as well. Cuz all we need is just like a relay essentially and then like a. A hook into the store. Like I. I know Puget has has a bell go off in their warehouse every time a sale goes through. Like it can't be that hard to do that.
- [135:45]
Linus Sebastian
No. Yeah, it should be fine.
- [135:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, it just. It's just a question of like how toxic we want to be about it. So like we could have it set up so that, you know, you have to hit greater and greater thresholds in order to have shocks keep going through. Or we could have it set up so that you have to have a higher total order value than the last highest total order value in order for a shock to go through. It's just, I don't know, corporate brain. Luke, you. You know, whatever.
- [136:20]
Linus Sebastian
I've got ideas. Yeah, I've definitely got ideas.
- [136:24]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean everyone. Linus has agreed to getting shocked. Everybody take note. Dude, Luke and I have both been shocked on camera. There's a little channel you might remember.
- [136:34]
Linus Sebastian
I was assuming my involvement with this was implicit.
- [136:37]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, you better believe it, bud.
- [136:39]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I don't know if the chat realized that, but I'm sure you and I did.
- [136:43]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, I sure did. Bob.
- [136:47]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [136:48]
Luke Lafreniere
How is it so hard to find this channel Super Fun.
- [136:52]
Linus Sebastian
Should be pretty easy.
- [136:53]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I searched for Channel Super Fun Dog Collar and couldn't find it. This video may be inappropriate for some users. Oh, relax, bud.
- [137:03]
Linus Sebastian
Shot Collar Showdown. I found it. Yeah, it is. Wow. It's flagged. Why? Why did it get flagged?
- [137:13]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know, but this video is freaking hilarious. Basically, we each wear shock collars and then the other one of us is wearing is holding the controller for our. For our shock collar. So either one of us can choose to shock the other at any time. It's like the weirdest game. Is it a game? I don't know. But didn't we find out at the end that mine was way stronger?
- [137:40]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I think we did. Yeah.
- [137:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, like you were. I just thought it was because of your size, but I like, put yours on after and it was like, not that bad.
- [137:52]
Linus Sebastian
I'm pretty sure that's one of the conclusions is that yours was way worse. Yeah, you can see it like seven minutes. Just before seven minutes, you have this like, insane reaction.
- [138:06]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, let's see.
- [138:09]
Linus Sebastian
I don't know. So do I. I don't know.
- [138:13]
Luke Lafreniere
It was really painful.
- [138:15]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, maybe we put mine up to your level at this point or something.
- [138:18]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, yeah. You know what? That checks out. That checks out.
- [138:24]
Linus Sebastian
Doing stupid stuff is fun.
- [138:26]
Luke Lafreniere
I know, right? Yeah, it's good times. Good times. Charge nuclei 80, 300 says the only fans version is funnier and sexier. All right, what do we want to talk about next? Ooh, this is good news. Intel has released an image analysis tool. It's an AI powered video quality measuring tool called Computer Graphics Visual quality metric, or CGVQM. It's now available on GitHub. Researchers first made a video data set titled CGVQD, which includes a variety of potential image quality degradations, mostly stemming from distortions related to path tracing, neural denoising, neural subsampling, Gaussian splatting, frame interpolation, and adaptive variable rate shading. Researchers then trained an AI model to rate the image quality. Tested the data set on humans first to check for our actual perception. Who rated types of distortion from imperceptible to very annoying. They used a 3D convolutional neural network architecture and a residual neural network as the basis for evaluation. And pretty cool so far. They claim it will outperform other quality Evaluation tools, at least on their own data set. But obviously I haven't validated any of this, but man, have I ever been looking for a way to quantify how badly multi frame gen is like gumming up the works. And if this is something that they could continue to develop, I would be very excited. Because you know that Nvidia has these tools internally. They 100% have them just like they, you know, had Frame View, just like they had their power measuring tool. It's just that Nvidia, who used to be so confident in their dominance in terms of efficiency and performance and used to share these internal tools with reviewers so that they could hold Nvidia or, you know, realistically Nvidia's competitors accountable for their crappy performance in these ways. I would love to see intel taking the lead in upscaling and frame generation, image quality and arming the community with the tools to validate their leadership. Because XCSS is actually pretty good as far as I can tell. Yeah, legit excited for this. What else we got? Today, TSMC posts record high profits. They reported their Q2 financials and 13.53 billion in profit on 31 billion in revenue. Wow. So they're making. Wow, wow. PC Gamer pointed out some comparison numbers. AMD made $709 million in profit from 7.4 billion in revenue. We think of AMD as a pretty big powerful company, sort of. You know, TSMC absolutely eclipses them. They make more profit than AMD does in raw revenue. Nvidia did post similar margins to TSMC. 19 billion profit with 44 billion in revenue. And a big part of this is due to increased demand from the AI boom. And on TSMC side, raising prices per wafer. Asml, the only company in the world that makes the extreme UV lithography machines that TSMC relies on to make its most high end nodes, also posted their Q2 numbers. 4.1 billion profit with about 7.7 billion in sales for a gross margin of 53.7%. However, their stock dropped significantly as the 2026 outlook was chilled by geopolitical tensions. So if you're ever wondering why your GPU is so expensive, there's always a bigger fish. You can blame Nvidia for a big portion of it. Absolutely.
- [142:37]
Linus Sebastian
And you'd be right.
- [142:38]
Luke Lafreniere
And you'd be right. But TSMC is the one that everyone in the industry is too afraid to blame, because TSMC holds the power, literally. Nvidia and AMD cannot build their products without tsmc. Samsung is only. It's a shadow of its former competitor. And intel is. Intel is going through some stuff right now. I, I, I believed in Pat's vision. Now I just don't know. Yeah, sorry. Well, Daniel. Yeah. I don't know if Mr. Besser has a way of moving this to me, so I don't know. Nah, I'm good. I'm over it. Reddit is being forced to verify the age of its UK users in order to comply with new UK legislation starting on July 14th. Oh, that was four days ago. Reddit is having users in the UK perform robust age verification, which will include an uploaded selfie and a photo of your government ID in order to access mature materials. Other sites will also need to perform this kind of check. Reddit says that Persona, the firm performing the check, has promised not to retain the picture for longer than seven days. Good. Good luck everyone. This will work. Really good. And surely this data will never fall into the wrong hands.
- [144:01]
Linus Sebastian
God, it's a terrible idea.
- [144:06]
Luke Lafreniere
In other good news, your Internet, that's right, yours is now our Internet. At least when you use some free VPNs, there's a saying that goes, if you don't pay for the product, then you are the product. And this is true of some free VPNs. The incredibly popular Hola VPN, perhaps best known as a Chrome extension for watching region locked videos, is not your typical vpn. Most people understand the idea behind a vpn. Actually, I don't know if I agree with that, but some people understand the idea behind a vpn. You send your data to a server somewhere and then that server finishes the trip and acts as a relay when things come back, allowing you to partially anonymize your data or browse websites like you are in that other location. Hola VPN is a peer to peer vpn. Instead of using centralized servers, Hola VPN instead sends your connection through the Internet of another user. This means that if someone does engage in shady activity, it could be sent through your Internet connection, meaning that authorities or rights holders could trace the activity back to you. But P2P web traffic is not always a bad thing. Tor operates in a similar manner to make data more difficult to trace. It's not anonymous, but it can help. The major difference is that on Tor, you need to choose to be an exit node where the data is unencrypted and delivered to its final destination. With the free version of Hola vpn, you don't have a choice. However, you can instead pay and use their traditional VPN servers.
- [145:30]
Linus Sebastian
If this is fully communicated.
- [145:33]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't believe that most people who use a free VPN fully understand what they're agreeing to here. So consent maybe, but informed consent, I don't know. Anyway, we have our usual VPN partner, Pia. We'll have them linked in the video description as usual. Yeah, they don't do that.
- [145:57]
Linus Sebastian
It's not super obvious. It might be detailed somewhere on their site, but it's not like shouted at you right away.
- [146:03]
Luke Lafreniere
And finally, Valve has updated their rules prohibiting content that may violate payment processor and bank rules. Valve recently updated their guidelines under what you shouldn't publish on Steam to include the content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks or Internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content. This was followed shortly by some people noticing that several hundred games were removed from the Steam store, mainly adult themed games. This has sparked several different complaints from people such as this just proves once again you will never own anything online that can be removed at any moment. And of course, how can credit card companies decide what I can and can't do with my money? That's the big one for me because I'm. I guess I'm just used to the other one. No, I'm not. No, it's still bad. Being able to remove content that I own is sucky. But I think they're only removing it from the store. They can't remove it from your library from if you already own it.
- [147:08]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, the line about, once again, you never own anything. They didn't take it from you.
- [147:12]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, no, I'm more upset about why is it that credit card companies are the moral arbiters of the Internet?
- [147:21]
Linus Sebastian
They decided we couldn't do certain things with flow plane.
- [147:23]
Luke Lafreniere
How does that make any sense?
- [147:25]
Linus Sebastian
It's trash.
- [147:27]
Luke Lafreniere
And this is not the first time this has happened. For example, OnlyFans had an issue a couple of years ago with major credit card companies pulling out as payment options because they no longer wanted to be associated with the rising sex work that was taking place on the site. But it's just like, buddy, if I go to an ATM and I use my credit card to take out cash and I buy the services of a hooker. Like, what are you even talking about? Like, quite frankly, like, I don't really see, I don't really see how it's any of your business.
- [148:03]
Linus Sebastian
I don't think they should be able to at all. I think the government should potentially be able to step in, you know, like, but they would be stepping in and like Closing the place down because they're selling drugs or something. But I don't think your credit card company should be able to police what you buy.
- [148:24]
Luke Lafreniere
We have a hypothetical scenario here. A creator wants to use Floatplane as a platform to, you know, do not say for work content. Is it hypocritical if Floatplane says this isn't okay versus the credit card company deciding it's not okay? Well, I think Floatplane, we've always been pretty clear internally that we don't actually really care what people use it for.
- [148:41]
Linus Sebastian
No, but I understand. I understand what they're saying. If we're saying that credit card companies shouldn't be able to police this, but we have a platform and we police the platform. Is that hypocritical?
- [148:52]
Luke Lafreniere
But the difference is we're nobody.
- [148:54]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Even if we were somebody, we're an individual platform. You can choose to go somewhere else. This is a unanimous thing. From effectively two companies that run Global Credit.
- [149:04]
Luke Lafreniere
No, no, no. They mean are we being hypocritical? Criticizing Valve for. For crumbling and for. For. For giving in and changing their rules according to pressure from the credit card companies?
- [149:17]
Linus Sebastian
Is that what they're saying?
- [149:18]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. And so. And no, I don't. Because Valve does billions and billions of dollars of transactions with these credit card issuers, whereas we are doing, over the time we've existed millions. Like.
- [149:35]
Linus Sebastian
I don't think that's what they're saying.
- [149:37]
Luke Lafreniere
Huh. A creator wants to use Floatplane as a platform to do something along these lines. Is it hypocritical? Floatplane decides this isn't okay versus the credit card company.
- [149:44]
Linus Sebastian
Decides the credit card company, not Steam.
- [149:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, well, okay. Oh, no. Okay, you're right. That was the question. But that's not. Sorry, that's not a relevant question because Floatplane never decided it wasn't okay. Like we. We. Yeah, I guess that would be hypocritical. But we never did that. And that.
- [150:02]
Linus Sebastian
I also don't think it would be hypocritical.
- [150:04]
Luke Lafreniere
It wouldn't?
- [150:05]
Linus Sebastian
No.
- [150:07]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh.
- [150:07]
Linus Sebastian
Which is what I was just explaining.
- [150:09]
Luke Lafreniere
If Floatplane decides it's not ok. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's three different ways that I think I managed to accidentally interpret this. So you're talking about should we be allowed to have our rules in our house compared to should our landlord be allowed to decide or not even our landlord? Like, yeah, like our, our. Our Mrs. Rochester who lives upstairs is allowed to decide, like what we do in our. In our space. That we. That is our domain. No, I think, I think this applies.
- [150:43]
Linus Sebastian
To some landlord type situation or something that we are choosing to use. The thing is, if you want to exist online as a paid platform, you have to use credit card companies. And if you're using credit card companies, if you kill Visa or MasterCard, you have ruined your ability to do business. Like they, they have an effective monopoly.
- [151:04]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes.
- [151:05]
Linus Sebastian
So it's, it's, it's actually not okay. And you can't just like, oh well, pick up your bootstraps and make your own credit card company. Like, no, that's not going to happen.
- [151:15]
Luke Lafreniere
You literally can't.
- [151:17]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. So I, I, I do not think it is, it is fair and equal. It's the same thing as like when you look at like policing moderation and, and not having free speech on like the Linus Tech Tips forum because it's like, no, we don't want the moderators to be just overloaded with constant political conversations and it's a tech forum, get over it. Talk about tech stuff. Yes, we allow off topic conversations, whatever, blah blah, blah. I'm completely okay with that. Because you have near infinite other solutions that you could use for going and being social online. There is, there is not near infinite other options for, for payment processing. And these payment processors genuinely right now kind of decide how the Internet works and how a lot of brick and mortar places work. And to be fair, the vast majority of places are going to automatically be within their policies, but if you aren't within their policies, they get to dictate what you do. We had a call with, I think it was PayPal really early on and they were like, yeah, no, you can't do X, Y or Z things. And that might have, in PayPal's defense, that might have been PayPal passing forward this from the credit card companies. Because we also had a call with Stripe later on saying we couldn't do X, Y or Z things either. Even though I think that ended up being in their case maybe actually hypocritical because I'm pretty sure onlyfans ended up being too big of a fish and Stripe went back and is handling things for them anyways. Let me see.
- [152:48]
Luke Lafreniere
Sound like a bunch of prudes.
- [152:51]
Linus Sebastian
Let me see.
- [152:51]
Luke Lafreniere
I thought you with me, Dan.
- [152:54]
Linus Sebastian
OnlyFans currently uses stripe as their payment processor. So they got over it because they saw the bag was here huge and decided to, to do it anyway.
- [153:03]
Luke Lafreniere
So I guess that's where I was going with the bit about how Valve could, Valve is a big enough fish that they could just be like, I Dare you. I dare you to turn off MasterCard and piss off literally every gamer who shops on steam and uses MasterCard. You've got to be kidding me right now. Because people would be rioting. They'd be going to their banks demanding to be able to use MasterCard on Steam. They'd be like, okay, then I want a different credit card. There's no way.
- [153:42]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I think it's one of those things where, like, I think people would actually go. I think there are some people that would demand a different credit card. But Visa and MasterCard move in lockstep on. On this. Again, effective Monopoly. So there aren't a ton of other options. There's some, but not very many. There's some, but their back ends are still. What is it? Cirrus and whatever the other one is, which is Cirrus and Moneros, which are effectively. They're just, you know, it's the same thing, basically. You can't get away from it.
- [154:10]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. So they like how the insurance industry is all dictated by the underwriters and there's like a handful of them.
- [154:17]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's. You're going to get screwed. And with something like OnlyFans, that industry was already used to sketchy alternative payment methods and I don't know, but I'm assuming that's what OnlyFans used in the past. So this was net new market. Whereas I think their argument could be that that might be enough to finally push people off of Steam to another platform so they might not actually lose those users.
- [154:45]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't know, man. I think Valve would retain those users and I think that they have this way to basically go to the Steam gaming community and say, hey, we're not going to be held hostage by this. Go to your bank, literally go to your bank tomorrow and demand to know why you can't buy games on Steam.
- [155:07]
Linus Sebastian
They'd have to pull a Epic Games versus Apple. Yeah. And you know, it would be wild is if they like offered free games to people that didn't have those credit cards or something.
- [155:20]
Luke Lafreniere
Valve doesn't campaign. I think Valve does their own thing.
- [155:24]
Linus Sebastian
They're very quiet.
- [155:25]
Luke Lafreniere
Yep. They quietly do their own thing. And Gay Ben hangs out on his yacht and does interviews with. For channels that have like dozens of subscribers, apparently. Did you see that this week?
- [155:35]
Linus Sebastian
No.
- [155:35]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, he did an interview with Just like.
- [155:39]
Linus Sebastian
Don't sound too salty.
- [155:40]
Luke Lafreniere
What? I've never asked him for an interview, but just like, he did. No, it was, it was actually another article I read that pointed out that the people he did the interview with just like were not huge. Yeah.
- [155:52]
Linus Sebastian
Like random people that email them and stuff.
- [155:55]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
- [155:58]
Linus Sebastian
I don't think so.
- [156:01]
Luke Lafreniere
Did I get an email from him at some point? Hold on a second. I don't think I ever got a response. But I did send him a whiny email once and my problem was resolved.
- [156:25]
Linus Sebastian
Sometimes that's a form of response.
- [156:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Basically I said that our PR rep was completely useless and pointed out that we have literally the top viewed piece of media on every piece of Valve hardware ever. And it's an embarrassment that we not only were not seeded something, I couldn't even buy it and they weren't able to accommodate me buying. I think this was the index.
- [156:48]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, it sounds like the index.
- [156:49]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. And it's just like guys, I'm willing to buy it and you're not able to accommodate getting this thing into my hands so that I can cover it.
- [157:01]
Linus Sebastian
Come on. I forgot about this until very recently actually. But that's, that's very related to how I ended up getting Palmer Lucky's contact is really raged out at one point on Twitter, back when it was Twitter about how like the amount of work that I've done since like the very beginning and like the quality level of our reviews at that time and all this kind of stuff and I still couldn't get actual emails back from anyone at Oculus. I still couldn't get good samples. I still could. I was, I was. We were just buying things up front, often getting them super late and all this kind of stuff was still happening and he responded and then that's. That's how we ended up getting stuff in the future. Was just talking to him directly. I don't know if you remember that.
- [157:54]
Luke Lafreniere
That's hilarious. Well, we'll probably never get anything from him again. So that's all.
- [158:00]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Yeah. Probably not. Dan's like, uhuh. I want. I want my like border crossing radar thing. Whatever.
- [158:17]
Luke Lafreniere
Poor Lucky.
- [158:18]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. How did Noki have that immediately available? That's.
- [158:23]
Luke Lafreniere
What is it?
- [158:26]
Linus Sebastian
Apparently there was a Reddit thread from.
- [158:27]
Luke Lafreniere
Oh, nice to go. That seems like this kind of thing. No key would.
- [158:32]
Linus Sebastian
No he would do immediately had it. But yeah.
- [158:40]
Luke Lafreniere
Man, I, I do not think I'm going to be able to. I don't think I'm going to be able to find this.
- [158:47]
Linus Sebastian
What are you trying to find?
- [158:48]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm. I'm trying to find the. I'm trying to find my whiny email. They've been. They've been really good lately. I mean they're Valve. So they're like not super communicative or whatever. Like they're good in their valve. But before that they were like my contact was utterly useless. Like you. You'd have to be just completely not doing your job to not notice. Like the media outlet that literally has the top performing video on every single hardware product you've ever released. Like come on.
- [159:24]
Linus Sebastian
Noki was like, tell Linus to give me his email credentials and I'll find it. Lol.
- [159:30]
Luke Lafreniere
He could. You'd find all kinds of stuff in there.
- [159:33]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah.
- [159:41]
Luke Lafreniere
Are we in After Dark?
- [159:44]
Linus Sebastian
I think maybe. Is there anything else? We are in After Dark. Hooray. Huzzah.
- [159:56]
Luke Lafreniere
Here we go. No, I've got it. I've got it. I knew this is going to be hilarious. This is from 2021. So I emailed my. My press contacts. I said the subject line is steampal. We're very interested in covering this and would love to get access ahead of time so we can have day one coverage. I sent a follow up three weeks later, which I think is a pretty reasonable amount of time to send a follow up. Hi, name. I haven't gotten replies from you the last couple of times I've emailed. Is it possible my emails are getting filtered again? Which I'm. Which means you're ignoring my emails, you piece of. Can you please pay attention and at the very least reply to my email and tell me you're not interested? I know you're getting my emails, but that's like, that's like corporate Nice speak for I know you're getting my emails. Can you please respond? Hold on. I accidentally just pressed the power button on my laptop, so I know I get to.
- [160:49]
Linus Sebastian
Way to go.
- [160:50]
Luke Lafreniere
Use Windows Hello. Okay. And then another three weeks later, which again I think is a very reasonable amount of time to wait. I cc'd Gabe and I said, I guess it ended up being called Steam Deck. I read about it on the Verge today. No pre briefing, no mailing list email, no communication at all. I don't like throwing people under the bus. So last time I had to. Oh no, I did email him and I did get a response from this guy the time before last time I had to email you to get a response from person. I spun it as maybe my emails are going to his spam. Lol. Oops. At this point I've waited years for a change. So it's time for some honest feedback. This guy is one of, if not the worst and least responsive media relations reps I've ever encountered. Is there anyone Else at Valve we can work at work with if there is. I'd love to start that conversation. If I'm stuck with him, can you please gently remind him that we are among the highest viewed media outlets in the world for basically every piece of hardware Valve has released in the last few years. Link, link, link, link, link, link, link. Even if we weren't completely ignoring emails is just rude. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day. And I got a new rep immediately.
- [162:02]
Linus Sebastian
I wonder, I wonder stuff like this. Like, he probably has someone who monitors his inbox. I don't know if he never even saw it and it just got taken care of.
- [162:11]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, that last interview I read it, it was really good. And he just said, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you could take people's words with a grain of salt, right? But he says he just loves to work and he just works day and night and he just loves what he's working on. He's got like, that neural implant company and like, he has some like, ocean stuff and like Valve and I don't know, whatever. If my job was that cool, I'd probably. I'd probably think it was pretty cool too.
- [162:38]
Linus Sebastian
Apparently he said a bunch of times that he's the only one that reads his emails.
- [162:41]
Luke Lafreniere
Hamnetics says you didn't throw him under the bus. You threw him in the bus that was thrown into the Grand Canyon. Well, like, look, the guy ignored me for six weeks on the most important hardware and software product that Valve has probably ever released. In terms of the impact this is going to have on the industry, I wanted to be part of it, to support it. Like, it's not like he was like, trying to shield Valve from like an unfair critic or something like that. Like, I am an ally, pun intended, of the Steam deck and the mission of SteamOS. Like, come on, man.
- [163:21]
Linus Sebastian
Ah.
- [163:24]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Anyway, Dan, it's after dark. Should we do some merch messages? Yeah, let's do some merch. Karen Linus Law. Well, sometimes you have to be a Karen to get things done, man. I don't make the rules.
- [163:38]
Linus Sebastian
The root word of Karen is care.
- [163:41]
Luke Lafreniere
Thanks, Luke. No problem.
- [163:44]
Linus Sebastian
I got you.
- [163:44]
Luke Lafreniere
Care to ruin your day? Hey, dll, this question is directly towards Linus. Do you ever plan to do any other interviews? Any social media or television media? Personally, you should make an appearance on Hot Ones. I mean, I would have loved to go on tonight's show with Stephen Colbert. Too bad it's canceled. Let me try and Think, like, where else would I love to go? We've talked about what it would be like to do, like Joe Rogan, for instance. I just don't know what I would. I don't know what I'd talk to him about. I don't think he'd be interested in me. I think is he's had other YouTubers.
- [164:22]
Linus Sebastian
Huh?
- [164:22]
Luke Lafreniere
The main. Yeah, but interesting ones. Whereas, like the. The Late show format, I think is.
- [164:28]
Linus Sebastian
What other YouTubers has he had on now? Because now I want to see. Because now Linus thinks they are more interesting than him.
- [164:36]
Luke Lafreniere
Well, it's all about your particular interest. Like, I know he's had like the Paul brothers on, but they're like, into fighting. I'm not like, what. What are my overlapping interests with Mr. Rogan?
- [164:53]
Linus Sebastian
I'm pretty sure he's had Marquez. He said Mr. Beast.
- [164:58]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, but Mr. Beast is literally the face of YouTuber. Marquez is way more mainstream and trendy.
- [165:06]
Linus Sebastian
Like, come on, does that mean more interesting? Are you conceding that he's more interesting than you?
- [165:12]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm conceding that Joe Rogan would find that more interesting and a more mainstream audience would find that more interesting. I mean, look. Hey, look, the metrics are out there, right? Like, I think Marques's average views for video is like double or triple what we do. Quadruple, somewhere in that range. Like, in terms of raw numbers of views on the channel, it's higher, but we're more prolific uploaders. Um, so in terms of, like, what's the. What's the audience breadth? I think it's. I think it's higher. Especially with some of the. The very moment products that he gets early access to. Like, Apple Vision Pro would be a great example to twist that knife a little bit more for you. Luke was very upset that we were late on Vision Pro.
- [166:00]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, we shouldn't have been. See, I will not concede.
- [166:07]
Luke Lafreniere
See how bothered he is. Tell you what, let me make it up to you. Let me make it up to you. Do you want another chip?
- [166:13]
Linus Sebastian
I could, I could. I could use another chip, maybe.
- [166:17]
Luke Lafreniere
Because I could give you another chip.
- [166:19]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, well, give me a second. I'm preparing to receive another chip.
- [166:26]
Luke Lafreniere
What do you got to do? You got to get your, like, melt saliva warmed up or like this. Now you're making it kind of weird. I don't. I'm not sure if I want to give you the chip anymore.
- [166:34]
Linus Sebastian
Here, just do it. Give me.
- [166:35]
Luke Lafreniere
All right, all right. Here's your chip. Okay.
- [166:39]
Linus Sebastian
Thank you.
- [166:40]
Luke Lafreniere
You're welcome. I Forgot to drop my chip.
- [167:01]
Linus Sebastian
You screwed it up.
- [167:02]
Luke Lafreniere
I don't like making messes. I'm still gonna eat it.
- [167:10]
Linus Sebastian
It's actually really smooth.
- [167:15]
Luke Lafreniere
Anyway, I'm. I'm down to be invited to things. I often don't get invited to things. I'm a little bit dorky. I get it. And that's cool. I like that YouTube acknowledges me now. I appreciate that. For a long time, they didn't. They, they, they, they had this thing where they, like, went really far away from tech. They were trying, like, not to be tech, even though in the early days of YouTube it was, like, very tech. Like, tech was on the front page. We had a category and everything. And then they were like, we don't want to be tech. No, we're cool, we're cool, we're cool. And then so they, like, didn't want to engage with not just me, but, like, a lot of tech creators. And then now they're very acknowledging of their tech creators. I think they do a much better job of it. So that's good enough for me. And if I'm ever feeling sad about people not inviting me to, you know, more cool formats, like, you know, late shows or Hot Ones or Joe Rogan experience or whatever, then I'll just cry on my play buttons. I'll be okay.
- [168:14]
Linus Sebastian
It would be pretty painful to wipe your tears with play buttons, but she could find a way.
- [168:23]
Luke Lafreniere
No, I don't know about painful. Not very effective, mind you.
- [168:32]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, fair enough.
- [168:33]
Luke Lafreniere
Dan.
- [168:38]
Linus Sebastian
I was gonna say, can we, like, mute mine when you're talking? Because I think that's the problem.
- [168:43]
Luke Lafreniere
Quality.
- [168:44]
Linus Sebastian
Oh, but I think people are also hearing you twice. I think they're hearing you through mine.
- [168:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Should we just have Dan sit next to Luke? That's an idea. I'm just pitching ideas. I'm just pitching ideas.
- [168:55]
Linus Sebastian
I don't actually.
- [168:57]
Luke Lafreniere
You don't have the dashboard open, you guys?
- [168:59]
Linus Sebastian
No, I don't.
- [169:01]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean, I can. I. I can read them. Luke, you can read them. I'll read them.
- [169:05]
Linus Sebastian
I. I literally just said, I don't have them.
- [169:08]
Luke Lafreniere
Jared W. Spent $309. Good Lord. And said, good idea, Linus. Find a solution to his HDMI CEC constantly swapping to shield. If so, what was it? Solutions online. Don't fix it for me. No, I didn't. I went and I bought an old Harmony remote and I'm gonna install it now because that's what I know how to use, and I am old, and I like just using things that I know how to use. So that's I'm going to turn all the CEC stuff off on everything and I'm going to use a universal remote again, even though that is ridiculous. Oh, right. I guess I read merch messages now. Sorry, I forgot. Let's move on to the next merch message. This is throwing me off. Jonathan E. Says, hey, lld bring back the bite blocks. No. Do you have any tips on dealing with other teams that lack accountability and often push blame onto others for their own actions? Love the WAN show, as always. Oh, I think at the end of the day, the only possible solution to that is forthright, honest conversations. And part of the challenge, and I've been running into this a fair bit lately, is everyone's version of the honest truth is a little bit different. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's malicious. It can just mean that our. Our individual lived experiences are.
- [170:43]
Linus Sebastian
It doesn't even necessarily mean it's wrong.
- [170:46]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah.
- [170:46]
Linus Sebastian
Which is a fun one.
- [170:47]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. Yeah, A hundred percent. Because so much of how we communicate is not just the words. It's tone, it's body language, it's. It's the past history that we have with that particular person or with those particular people that can color any future interactions. It can be really challenging to arrive on a single universal one truth that we can all agree on. And so your perception might be that that team lacks accountability, but their perception might be that you have unrealistic and unreasonable demands. And so digging in and finding the answer to that is it. It's really tough. It requires unflinching honesty and introspection and leadership on both sides. And if the other party is not acting, good faith in good faith. That can be damn near impossible. I wish I had a better answer for you, Luke. If you have some other stuff that you'd like to elaborate on that with, then go for it. But I. Yeah, I just don't really think I have anything for you.
- [171:50]
Linus Sebastian
Mediation can often be helpful.
- [171:51]
Luke Lafreniere
That's a good one.
- [171:54]
Linus Sebastian
But it's.
- [171:55]
Luke Lafreniere
That's why we have Dan here. Otherwise, not.
- [172:00]
Linus Sebastian
It's not. It's not a easy problem to solve. It can sometimes come from people just reacting too quickly. So if you're. If you're gonna try to, like, work with somebody to resolve this, I wouldn't go into it just full accusatory, even if it fully feels that way on your end. Because again, the truth can be different. It's very difficult, but still, because, you know, maybe they don't think that they're wrong about themselves shirking blame. They don't think it's actually their fault, but that's because they don't have the perspective of other parties or, or they think a certain process is maybe supposed to work a certain way and nobody else actually thinks that or whatever else. The situation might be more complicated than it seems on the surface and I would recommend leaving room for that to be true or honestly just leave room for them to save face on the way.
- [172:53]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, kind of like how my, my, my email. Hey, are my emails going to your spam filter?
- [172:59]
Linus Sebastian
It might be in your spam and then they could be like, oh, yeah, sorry, it was.
- [173:03]
Luke Lafreniere
Give them an out.
- [173:04]
Linus Sebastian
Wasn't. Whatever let them. You guys are moving on.
- [173:06]
Luke Lafreniere
Give them a path forward that doesn't require an apology is a powerful strategy for resolving differences. It does mean that you just have to high road it and, and just, you know, deal with that. That transgression is never going to be addressed and you're never going to get an apology. But if it gives you a path forward, then that's great. And if it ultimately doesn't work, hey, pack them into the bus and huck it into the Grand Canyon.
- [173:33]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I am equipped to read them now, but this one is to me, so.
- [173:39]
Luke Lafreniere
Question for Luke from Andrew H. You've spoken before about how you worked hard to get yourself into better physical shape. How did you motivate yourself to not give up? Do you have any tips for people looking to do the same?
- [173:54]
Linus Sebastian
I'm actually on a, on a down track right now, which is unfortunate. I find this. I get sick like way too often and I find that I don't actually have an insane appetite unless I'm sick. A lot of people lose their appetite when they're sick and my appetite goes through the freaking moon. So I find it hard to regulate weight while I'm sick because I tend to balloon unless I'm like really policing myself. So I've been struggling a little bit lately just due to sickness and travel cycles, but I'm definitely still motivated and the, the strength portion is still decently high because that, that doesn't have too many issues. The motivation is. It's not, it's not. I've talked about this before. It's not motivation anymore. It's. It's an internal demand. It's. I don't go to the gym because I'm motivated. I go to the gym because I have to. And it helps that I tend to enjoy it when I'm there. But I am a person who struggles with mode shifting. So once I'm doing a thing, I want to keep doing it. I've described this before as like, you know, every time I try to preface this before I say it with I take showers every day, but I never want to get into the shower. Once I'm in the shower, I could genuinely happily stay there for like an hour. I like to keep doing the thing that I'm doing. This also creates a problem where like, I never want to go to bed, I never want to go to sleep. I could stay up for so long and have no problem. The problem will then be that once I go to sleep, I don't want to get up.
- [175:29]
Luke Lafreniere
Hear me out. Maybe this is a chicken and egg problem. If you could lose more weight, you could solve your inertia problem. Maybe, maybe it's just a lot of work for you to change. Change what you're doing.
- [175:47]
Linus Sebastian
I was do. I was doing pretty well in the first little bit of the year. And then the, I was, I was down 18 pounds before the Computex trip and then traveling for three weeks and then I was sick for travel. And the combination was I was out of the gym and having issues with eating because of either being sick or being travel or traveling. And that like six plus weeks of being out just set me so far back. It's, it's really disappointing. But I don't. The disappointment doesn't demotivate me because again, it's not motivation that's driving me. It's a, it's an internal requirement. I have to do this. That's 100% a spectrum marker. Yeah, I'm somewhere on it. I don't really care. I'm happy with how I operate, so I don't care to deal with it. But I, I'm going to go regardless and I'm going to do these things regardless. So I'm not worried about that. That it, it sucks and it's disappointing to have lost progress, but it in no way impedes my desire to keep moving forward. It's just my, I am further back from the goal that I wanted by the end of this year than I would have liked to have been at this point. That does not mean that the goal that I have for the end of this year is impossible. And even if it was, okay, just commit to improving habits, moving forward and push the goal back a little bit to a reasonable point and genuinely push towards doing that. That's how I've always kind of aimed for this. I had a bunch of strength goals and then I got brutally sick for like six months. This was A while ago and a lot of my strength goals fell back, so I just deferred them and then eventually hit them. And I just. You just keep moving. You have to be relentless with it. I think, like, I hit a certain age where it's like, to be healthy, it is a requirement that I need to be in the gym. I don't necessarily know if this is as true for everybody, but I. I'm experienced. If I don't use my body, yeah, I get mentally depressed. That is a truth for me. I'm not necessarily saying that is a truth for all of you. That is a truth for me. I have to be out there and I have to do things. I'm sure I could replace the gym with any form of sport or physical activity that actively used my muscles. I don't think it has to be the gym. I'm sure I could help people move every day and maybe be fine. Because for me, I think that's really the. The point is that I have to move.
- [178:08]
Luke Lafreniere
I think you'd actually thrive on that. You, like, help people and like, you like physical activity. I think you'd be.
- [178:14]
Linus Sebastian
I don't think it's the gym in particular. Yeah, I like, try to. I was. There's a move happening at LMG right now and I'm actually sad that I'm not helping. I was going to volunteer to help this weekend.
- [178:27]
Luke Lafreniere
We have a couple of departments that are moving around.
- [178:28]
Linus Sebastian
I'm here. I was like, why is it this weekend? I actually wanted to do that. Um, but yeah, a big one for.
- [178:37]
Luke Lafreniere
Me is accountability buddies as well. Um, if you're on a team or if you have a group that does whatever it is that you're doing, that's physical activity regularly, that goes such a long way. Like, last night I had badminton training. Like, I like sparring. So not like with an instructor or whatever, but one of our guys who works at Smash Champs. I saw him like, recording one of his games and I was like, yo, you never record your game. What are you even doing? He's like, oh, man. No, I was, like, really motivated when badminton insight came out and like, we got to play against them. And just like, it was really inspirational. And I want to, like, get sweaty. I want to. I want to improve again. And I was like, oh, that sounds sick. Like, we should. We should have like, badminton improvement dates. Let's. We'll spar. We can run drills and stuff like that. Because badminton's a sport that's nearly impossible to train by yourself. There are some things you can do. You can just go on a cord or on an. In an empty parking lot. And you can, like, do footwork drills or, you know, you can hit against a wall and stuff like that. There are things you can do, but, like, if you really want to play, you need someone to hit the shuttle back to you. And so last night. So, okay, let's back up. So on Wednesday night, Yvonne asked me to feed her, which is what it's called when you have a really weird dynamic in your relationship around food. No, just kidding. She asked me to feed her, which is what it's called when you, like, grab a whole row of shuttles on your arm and you, like, toss them up and hit them so that someone can work on their consistency. And instead of just going and feeding Yvonne, I fed her for like an hour. And then I was like, oh, well, okay. You know, you're probably. You're probably too tired to do drills anymore, but do you want to, like, do you want to go play, like, a couple mixed doubles games? We have a grand opening tournament coming up, and Yvonne and I are going to be playing together. And she was like, okay, yeah, we can go play a couple games. We ended up playing, like, five games, and they were, like, super intense and I was running a ton. And so last night, Thursday, I was bushwhack, dude. Like, I did not feel like it, but, like, what? I'm gonna bail. Don't be a flake. You know, you can't be.
- [180:47]
Linus Sebastian
That's another thing, dude. If. If I, I, my. It's a. It's a bad cycle because I, I will start again. I mean, I'm. I'm. I'm literally in the middle of doing well with it right now. So it's not that. But I'm saying in general, if there's a down cycle, I get sick or I'm traveling or whatever, I will start again. It's no problem. But it is always the worst because my energy is the lowest when I'm. It feels so, like, counterintuitive. But if I'm not going and expending large amounts of energy, my average energy level will be very low.
- [181:19]
Luke Lafreniere
I feel it too. And I get, like, irritable. I get, like, cranky.
- [181:23]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah.
- [181:24]
Luke Lafreniere
And I'll be like, wait, I haven't, like, played badminton in two weeks. Like, I haven't done anything.
- [181:29]
Linus Sebastian
The most zen I will literally ever be is if I have a genuinely maximum effort leg workout on the drive home. I don't think I will ever be more calm than, like, in that moment. I'm so relaxed. It's.
- [181:45]
Luke Lafreniere
It's actually wild elemental exposure asks shuttle versus birdie. So the official term is shuttlecock. In a lot of the western world, people don't really like the whole cock tee hee thing. So we call it a shuttle and filthy casuals call it a birdie. You're welcome. So if you said birdie, I would assume you mean like a plastic one, you know.
- [182:16]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah. Honestly that makes sense to me.
- [182:19]
Luke Lafreniere
When Bingo Chronified says I say we call it a shuttle dick. You know what, I could get on board. You want to smack, want to smack the dick around?
- [182:30]
Linus Sebastian
Make it so that the foam.
- [182:33]
Luke Lafreniere
So if I go to feed Yvonne, I'll be feeding her.
- [182:37]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds good. Should I read the next one?
- [182:42]
Luke Lafreniere
Sure.
- [182:43]
Linus Sebastian
Okay. Where do you see car automation going in the future? Will there eventually be a government led open source software that all cars will have Will have so they can communicate with each other on the road?
- [182:58]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean that's a pretty cool utopian dream, but I don't know if it's compatible with the current sort of capitalistic structure that we live in.
- [183:12]
Linus Sebastian
Yeah, I would love Nuclei and flipping chat just said hahahaha. And I think it was in response to this.
- [183:21]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, I mean government controlled and open source already sounds like it's not going to be a thing. All cars communicating on the road sounds like it's not going to be a thing. That would just be rife with potential for abuse. I would love cars to have like transponders or something like that that give each other situational awareness of the actions that they're taking and the actions they intend to take. I'd love to see like an open framework for that that allows interoperation. Excuse me. I don't know who is going to be motivated to drive it though. Pun intended.
- [183:58]
Linus Sebastian
Next merch message.
- [184:01]
Luke Lafreniere
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Br Jedi says government controlled, dot, dot dot. Utopia. Well yeah, but that's the whole point is that in a utopia you would have a benevolent government that would do stuff like this. But like that's why we said ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Come on man.
- [184:24]
Linus Sebastian
Hey Wan dll. I triggered the paint rant a few days ago when I made my first purchase a few years ago. Linus, right? Yeah. Anything new Linus wants to rant about?
- [184:36]
Luke Lafreniere
I mean we just did our tech gripes video. I don't know if I have the energy to rant right now. My lips hurt. But hey, thanks for your purchase. Enjoy your style. Blue. Whatever it is that you bought. Oh, three items. Oh. Precision multi bit screwdriver and bit case and a jerryrig razor knife. Okay. What is that? But style blue. How does that make any sense? Oh, for the thing on there.
- [185:03]
Linus Sebastian
That was their message.
- [185:05]
Luke Lafreniere
Yes. Yep, that makes sense.
- [185:08]
Linus Sebastian
I had to look for it for a sec.
- [185:11]
Luke Lafreniere
Okay, see, there it is. Blue style. Nice.
- [185:16]
Linus Sebastian
Most esteemed Dananite order humbly requesting an update on the sacred bike. Also at Linus visiting Vancouver in September. Any must ride roads for a loyal two wheeled pilgrim. K, thanks.
- [185:33]
Luke Lafreniere
I am going to. I am not going to ride in July. Oh, I reached out. I said, hey, on Wednesday. Actually, I reached out, are we still on track for me to ride this month? And buddy has not been feeling well. So I basically said, don't worry, man. At this point, the delay is 96% on me, so I don't want you to lose any sleep over it. So I'll get it when I get it.
- [186:00]
Linus Sebastian
More than 96.
- [186:01]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah. You know what? I've had enough of your. I've had enough of your crap.
- [186:07]
Linus Sebastian
The fact that he stored it in his place this whole time is wild. But. All right, next message from Xi Chao. Oh, hopefully I said that right. How is the new door lock working for you? The wireless charging seems like quite interesting for me to consider it for my future. Smart lock.
- [186:34]
Luke Lafreniere
I really like it so far. It is a door lock, but smart and wirelessly charges. It does exactly what it says on the tin. I actually didn't know that that video was up yet. I wonder how it's doing. I have no idea what people's appetite is for, like ludicrously expensive door lock. Apparently pretty good. It's a two out of ten for the channel. That's hilarious. I mean, I guess it's. I guess it's a good title. I waited seven years for a zero battery smart lock, which I did. That company. I first saw them at Computex and then we first collaborated with them seven years ago. They actually flew out here and showed us their technology. It's infrared wireless power transmission. And it's. It's super cool. Why charge? And we actually talked about the Munwan show a little while ago, which was what prompted them to reach out and offer to send this door lock over. Because Luke and I were talking about them and I was like, they still exist. Like, did they. Did they make it or what? And they were. They emailed me. They're like, we very much have survived. Thank you for mentioning us. Also, are you interested in checking out any of our new stuff? Pretty cool.
- [187:50]
Linus Sebastian
All right, next one. I'm not necessarily sure what this means, so hopefully Linus knows. Hey, lld, could Linus touch in more detail about the all sales final thing? Don't know what that is. Is the mystery screwdriver bought for Lime day still under warranty? It would be great to see the power outlet in the US as well.
- [188:10]
Luke Lafreniere
Yeah, all sales final doesn't mean that you have no warranty necessarily. It means that you can't like just change your mind and be like, oh, yeah, I. I don't want it anymore. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Unless you're talking about like the be stock stuff. Like, if you're just like, oh, yeah, I. You know, I didn't realize that this used item was gonna have a little scuff on it. Then it definitely wouldn't cover that. Hold on a second though. I just wanna, I just wanna check something. It is possible that some of the. Hold on. Used, like new pictures contain. Oh, wait, no. So, okay. I don't know what you're asking here because it's explicit on these items. Power outlet purchases are final. No returns, exchanges warranty. They are what they are. So there you go. Pictures contain examples of cosmetic wear. Read the fine print questions, Please read our faq. What is the power outlet returned and like new gear available at reduced prices while supplies last. It is only available to consumers residing in whatever. Can they be returned or exchanged? No. No exceptions, meaning refunds and exchanges will not be granted for these products. There we go. I'm glad we got a very, very clear answer for you. They are sold as is and are excluded from warranty coverage. You're buying these things for a fraction of the price, in some cases for a fraction of what we paid for them. So it is what it is. And enjoy the deal. Would be great to see the power outlet in the US as well. Yeah, it would. But I don't know when, if ever, that'll happen because I don't even know if a lot of stuff gets returned anymore. I think there's been kind of a sea change in. In E commerce where things that ultimately are not able to be delivered just end up being destroyed rather than being returned to us in many cases. So I don't even know how much, how many returns we're going to get these days. But you know, if it happens, it happens and it'll be a good deal for people who don't mind buying something. Final sale.
- [190:19]
Linus Sebastian
Interesting. Okay. Hi, Lunas. Like and lan. When are bonus bin items coming back? I was looking Forward to getting a sticker sheet or a pin. The shoelaces would also be cool.
- [190:34]
Luke Lafreniere
We are looking at the bonus bin and trying to get some stuff going on. We've been extremely bogged down with just global logistics being an absolute shit show with like tariff stuff and everybody and their dog trying to mass import stuff before tariff stuff. But then tariff stuff goes away and like, we've had less bandwidth for the things that we want to do to delight our customers because we've had to waste so much of it on just horse shit. So we're not the only ones that are feeling it. So I'm not asking for anyone to like feel bad for us or whatever. We're just. You're. You're seeing the cracks form.
- [191:19]
Linus Sebastian
I'm just gonna read the next one anyways. I feel like it's easier this way. Luke. I used to play Pogo or Pokemon Go, but don't have the community anymore. Instead I've started birding. I get walking, I get community and I find critters without the screen. Have you ever thought about trying birding? Not so much. Being a bird person of sorts. I. I do enjoy seeing birds when I'm out, but I. I have not thought of going birding. Something that I do these days with Pokemon Go to look at the screen less is I got those. What is it called again? A Pokemon Go plus plus. So you don't even have to have your phone unlocked. You can have it locked and in your pocket and either the thing will try to catch stuff automatically for you, or you can press the button on it and it'll like buzz if it detects something. And if you press the button, it'll throw a better ball at it. So sometimes I'll do that. So I can go to a community event and never actually even look at my phone and then just walk around the whole time without doing this, which sounds a lot better. It feels nicer on my neck. I will inadvertently do things like notice birds more and stuff like that. That defeats the purpose of Pokemon Go. No, it doesn't. Because the thing will buzz twice. The detecting that something is there. You press the button and then it will attempt to catch. It'll go like, just like the Pokeball going. And then be like, oh, you got your Pokemon. It will. It will do buzzes that mimic that. But if you get it, then it'll go like. So it indicates that you got it and it'll do the attempting to catch thing. But if it fails, it'll go so you know that you failed and when you're out at a community day, it's usually the same Pokemon every single time, so you don't need to see it on your screen. And there's a bunch of the hyper nerds that are out playing that are doing, I think it's called speed catching or something. And they barely even see this stuff anyways. So, like, I. I don't see a difference personally. And I am not playing that game. I have said this before. I think Pokemon Go is actually a very bad game. That's the only reason why I like it is, is because it gets me outside and this is an evolution that gets me outside and looking at my screen less. What a banger. That sounds great to me. I don't like the actual gameplay of Pokemon Go is so bad. The PvP is terrible. The PvE is terrible. Yeah, the gameplay sucks anyways. So why do I care if I'm. If I'm getting little dopamine hits from walking? Because my thing is buzzing going, look, you caught the thing that is going around right now or whatever. Then sweet. I'm accomplishing the same thing. My brain is happy because I'm playing a video game, but I'm playing a video game without looking at a screen, which is sick. I have personally found a way to gamify this in a way that benefits me heavily and I enjoy. Therefore, I think, cool, there you go. You look at your Pokemon when you get back. I will search for four Star and if I don't find any, I transfer all of them. So it takes me like seconds. I don't care. Yeah, I think that's. Oh, there is. There's an incoming, but there's no more curated.
- [194:55]
Luke Lafreniere
I'm already forwarding that incoming to the relevant parties. I don't know if we're going to be able to fix their issue in time. They ordered the wrong size for a Power Outlet item and they want it changed to the right size before it ships. It's possible that we'll be able to catch it before it shifts ships and just give you a refund, but I don't know if we'll be able to like, change it. Like it. The whole thing with Power Outlet is all sales final, see you later. So we might be able to catch it and cancel it, but I don't know if we'll be able to like, change it to something else that might go out of stock before we're able to look at it. Like, it's. It's 9pm on Friday and the warehouse during heavy times, like Lime day is sometimes packing things over the weekend when our customer service is not in office. So I don't, I don't know if I can promise you I wanna, I.
- [195:52]
Linus Sebastian
Wanna throw out another gamer move that you can do with with Pokemon Go, because I think I've. Man, I've said this forever. I think a lot of people play games incorrectly. They. They only go for the incentives that the game tells them to go for. They don't do things beyond that. They don't find their own ways to create difficulties. They don't find their own ways to have fun. They just find, follow the byline or they follow the achievements that the game lays out or whatever else. And Pokemon Go is one of those. Pokemon has a not very popular feature called routes. But a route could be like a trail that you can walk and when you get to the end it gives you like an extremely minor reward, which is why it's not popular. But if you don't care about the reward so much and you do it because there's at least a little bit of reward while you walk along the route, there's a slightly increased Pokemon spawn along the route while you're doing it. So you can walk, you can literally go for a little hike, you can go with someone else, whatever. And you don't have to be actually distracted conversationally or anything or be staring at your phone because you can just press the little button or just let it go off in your pocket automatically and you're literally not interacting with it at all. And you can still have your little goopy goblin gamer brain gaining little goopy goblin gamer brain little bonus nugget things and be out walking, enjoying nature, head up, not staring at screen, potentially conversating with another person. It's freaking sick. Don't just do what the game wants you to do. Do the thing that you want to do and have fun with. Cool. Nice.
- [197:22]
Luke Lafreniere
All right, well, that's it for the land show. Oh, my nose sore. I didn't talk for a little bit there and the braces got all like stuck into the like ragged flesh inside my lips. We'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.
- [197:38]
Linus Sebastian
What a visual. Bye, Mama.
- [197:59]
Luke Lafreniere
Papa. Mikorpo creses bacos de la vuelta classes Amazon.
- [198:11]
Linus Sebastian
Amazon Gastamenos sonrimas.