You Have Burning Questions - WAN Show March 28, 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: "You Have Burning Questions" – The WAN Show (March 28, 2025)

In this episode of The WAN Show, hosts Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere dive deep into answering their community's most pressing questions. Covering a range of topics from revenue streams of Linus Media Group (LMG), industry developments, cybersecurity incidents, to future plans for technology integrations, the hosts provide comprehensive insights while maintaining their characteristic humor and candidness.

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1. How Does Linus Tech Tips (LTT) Make Money?

The primary focus of this episode revolves around demystifying the revenue streams of LTT. Linus and Luke tackle speculations and questions from their audience regarding how LTT sustains its expansive operations.

• Revenue Streams Discussed:

  • Floatplane Subscriptions: Highlighted as a significant income source, with Linus mentioning original $3 subscriptions contributing steadily despite their lower individual value.

    • Linus Sebastian [04:42]: "There are actually factors not taken into account which can help it be higher or lower."
    • Luke Lafreniere [05:14]: "Yeah, but they don't add up as fast as the other ones."

  • AdSense and Sponsorships: While AdSense provides a steady revenue, sponsorships overlay directly on video content, adding complexity to profit calculations.

    • Linus Sebastian [19:37]: "These aren't showing necessarily all the stuff that goes into it because [sponsorships] are laying on top of the video production crew."

  • Merchandise Sales: Identified as a powerhouse for revenue, merchandise offers substantial profit margins but requires meticulous management to balance costs and earnings.

    • Linus Sebastian [14:13]: "Our merchandise contributes an enormous amount of our company's revenues."

• Audience Speculation:

  • An audience member speculated that LTT's revenue might range between $32.6 and $65.3 million based on Floatplane subscriber counts.
    • Linus Sebastian [04:55]: "Yeah, we made a decision to do so knowing that a lot of people, the ones who care anyway, are going to go and do the math for themselves anyway."

2. Company Operations and Financial Transparency

Linus and Luke address the intricacies of operating a large-scale tech media company while maintaining financial transparency without being publicly traded.

• Operational Scale:

  • Linus Sebastian [11:48]: "We have over, probably higher than you think. We have over 100 people on staff."

• Financial Management:

  • Discussed the challenges in tracking expenses and overheads, especially with a growing team.
    • Luke Lafreniere [15:02]: "We actually can't really... without adding a bunch of completely unnecessary administrative overhead."

• Decision-Making Dynamics:

  • Luke elaborates on relinquishing certain leadership roles to better focus on creative and operational tasks.
    • Luke Lafreniere [22:53]: "I can be CEO of the company... But I didn't have time to really know what everyone was doing."

3. Merchandise as a Significant Revenue Driver

Merchandise sales emerge as a critical component of LTT's revenue, surpassing other streams in profitability.

• Profit Margins and Overheads:

  • The hosts discuss the complexities involved in calculating the true profit from merchandise, considering factors like production costs, design, and return rates.
    • Luke Lafreniere [14:29]: "There's so many parts of that... every single person involved from the business team... to the editing involved."

• Impact on Overall Revenue:

  • Merchandise not only provides direct income but also fuels other aspects of the business by driving traffic and brand loyalty.
    • Luke Lafreniere [17:14]: "Wow, that's almost pure profit."

4. AMD’s RX9070XT Surpasses Expectations in Sales

The episode highlights AMD's impressive sales performance of the RX9070XT graphics card, which reportedly sold ten times more units than its predecessor in the first week.

• Sales Performance:

  • Linus Sebastian [40:01]: "AMD says RX9070XT sold 10 times more than predecessor in first week."
  • Luke Lafreniere [40:28]: "This may be true for launch week, but does not necessarily indicate a successful quarter or year for AMD."

• Historical Context:

  • They delve into AMD's long-term sales trends, noting a decline over the past sixteen years with occasional spikes that question sustainability.
    • Luke Lafreniere [41:36]: "The... 7970, which became part of the 200 series and then became part of the 300 series again."

5. Troy Hunt Falls Victim to Phishing Attack

A significant cybersecurity incident discussed involves Troy Hunt, the founder of the "Have I Been Pwned" service, who was compromised through a sophisticated phishing attack.

• Incident Details:

  • Luke Lafreniere [77:00]: "Troy Hunt the hunter has become the hunted."
  • Luke [78:31]: "He had fallen victim to a phishing attack in the form of a fake error email that purported to be from Mailchimp."

• Implications and Reflections:

  • The hosts emphasize the broader issue of human error in cybersecurity and the importance of continuous training and vigilance.
    • Linus Sebastian [80:51]: "It's like a good counter to the like, oh, but it wouldn't happen to me. It happened to freaking Hunt."

6. 23andMe Files for Bankruptcy

Addressing financial instability in the tech sector, the hosts discuss 23andMe's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

• Company Status:

  • Luke Lafreniere [81:15]: "23andMe Holding Company is attempting to facilitate a sale by filing for Chapter 11."

• Data Security Concerns:

  • Concerns are raised about the security of genetic data and potential misuse by new ownership.
    • Luke [82:41]: "If I was trying to make 23andMe profitable, I would just sell the data to the highest bidder."

• Customer Impact:

  • Assurance from 23andMe that customer data access would remain unaffected, though skepticism is expressed by the hosts.
    • Luke [82:47]: "But won't it though? Won't it though?"

7. Enhancements to the LTT Labs Website

The discussion shifts to future plans for LTT's website, focusing on integrating dynamic pricing and stock information to aid user purchasing decisions.

• Upcoming Features:

  • Linus Sebastian [47:52]: "We want the site to be more useful. Getting you to an actual purchasing decision is a very significant form of being more useful."

• Technical Challenges:

  • Addressed the complexities of integrating multiple store APIs and handling global pricing variations.
    • Linus Sebastian [56:08]: "We're still learning how to do a lot of this stuff... It's going to be practically impossible to include store information from every single store in the world."

• Community-Driven Solutions:

  • Potential features like user-inputted prices or used market data to enhance the site's utility.
    • Luke Lafreniere [57:00]: "What we could do is we could return our best result, our closest match."

8. AI Developments in the Tech Industry

Linus and Luke touch upon recent AI advancements and their implications, highlighting Nvidia's Project X G Assist and Character AI's new parental controls.

• Nvidia’s Project X G Assist:

  • Luke Lafreniere [96:22]: "Nvidia is rolling out Project X G Assist. It's an AI assistant that can run locally on your GPU."
  • Linus Sebastian [96:40]: "A lot of their April Fool's jokes have actually been fantastic."

• Character AI's Parental Controls:

  • In response to a tragic incident, Character AI introduces new features to monitor and report user activity.
    • Luke Lafreniere [96:45]: "Kids can enable the report in their account preferences which will share their daily average time spent on the platform."

9. Nintendo’s Family Sharing on Switch

The hosts discuss Nintendo's latest feature allowing family sharing of digital game libraries on the Switch, analyzing its potential impact on the gaming ecosystem.

• Feature Overview:

  • Luke Lafreniere [99:06]: "Nintendo is allowing players to more easily share games across multiple systems that are logged into the same Nintendo account with a virtual game card that can be ejected and then loaded."

• Competitive Edge:

  • Consideration of how this move pressures competitors like Microsoft and Sony to innovate further.
    • Luke [99:16]: "That's going to put a ton of pressure on Microsoft and Sony too."

10. Audience Q&A and General Discussions

Throughout the episode, Linus and Luke engage with their audience's questions, ranging from merchandise inquiries to personal anecdotes about childhood memories and managing work-life balance.

• Merchandise Queries:

  • Audience Member: "Linus, did you save any of your childhood toys to pass on to your own kids?"
    • Luke: "I have a little Galaxian... a couple of times, but mostly weren't interested."

• Work-Life Balance:

  • Guidance on managing demanding jobs without sacrificing personal and family time.
    • Luke Lafreniere [115:19]: "Set boundaries for your job. That's the only answer."

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Notable Quotes

• Linus Sebastian [14:13]: "Our merchandise contributes an enormous amount of our company's revenues."
• Luke Lafreniere [05:14]: "We have quite a few OG subs, not just hundreds, but much more."
• Linus Sebastian [40:01]: "AMD says RX9070XT sold 10 times more than predecessor in first week."
• Luke Lafreniere [81:15]: "I think that entrusting your genetic information to some Silicon Valley startup is not gonna work out."
• Linus Sebastian [77:00]: "Have I been pwned? Troy Hunt the hunter has become the hunted."
• Luke Lafreniere [96:22]: "Nvidia is rolling out Project X G Assist. It's an AI assistant that can run locally on your GPU."

Conclusions

In "You Have Burning Questions," The WAN Show effectively balances technical discussions with transparent insights into LTT's business operations. The hosts candidly address community inquiries, providing clarity on revenue models, operational challenges, and future plans. Additionally, by touching on significant industry events and cybersecurity concerns, they offer a well-rounded perspective that not only informs but also engages their audience deeply.

The episode underscores the importance of transparency, adaptability, and community engagement in sustaining a successful tech media enterprise. Linus and Luke's honest discourse fosters trust and encourages continued dialogue with their audience, positioning LTT as both a reliable information source and a community-centric brand in the technology sphere.

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

This episode is brought to you by Universal Pictures. Today's the day. From Universal Pictures and Blumhouse come a storm of terror.

[Luke Lafreniere]

From the director of the Shallows.

[Linus Sebastian]

The Woman in the yard. Don't let her in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where does she come from?

[Linus Sebastian]

What does she want? When will she leave? The Woman in the Yard in theaters now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's up everyone and welcome to the WAN show. We got a great show lined up for you guys this week. We're going to be talking about your burning questions. That's right. You have burning questions. And I want to answer them. We uploaded our how does LTT make money? Video earlier this week, and you might have noticed the thumbnail is a little mangled. That's because there's also been some new information surfacing around the whole honey thing. Oh, it's all about the money. It's all about the honey. Money, money, honey. We've got a lot of great topics for you guys. So we'll be. We'll be answering some of your questions. We're also gonna be talking about. Ooh 23andMe filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Who could have seen this coming? Who indeed? Perhaps a officer of vision somewhere, a chief of some sort. What else we got this week?

[Linus Sebastian]

You stole one of mine. But I figured it out. The AMD. AMD says RX9070XT sold 10 times more than predecessor in first week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow, that's. I don't know what's more impressive, how many they sold of the 9000 series. Let's go on rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Also the. The have I been pwned? Guy got pwned.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. Troy Hunt the hunter has become the hunted.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is honestly probably good for everyone. We'll discuss later. I'll just leave it there. I'll explain later.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The show is brought to you today by AMD along with delete me and xsplit to go with our usual rap partner, dbrand, laptop partner, Adele and of course chair partner. That way. Yeah. Secret lab.

[Linus Sebastian]

I really didn't get out of the way, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's a good thing we didn't like both go the correct direction. It could have been disastrous. Cause we're not gonna miss the WAN show. So it would just be me and Luke unconscious in our chairs for the next three hours.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wake up. Mild concussion. Keep going.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, so you guys had some questions. The how does LTT make money Video. And I'm not sure if we will answer all of them because I have not yet had a chance to read this document. I've been busy all day getting ready for our infrastructure test at Smash Champs. I guess we'll have to be talking about that because that is where Luke and I are going after this. Because what better way to test the infrastructure for a LAN facility than to play video games all night? Yeah, I mean, there's really no other way to do it. It's a tough job, but I guess.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'Ll get through there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll soldier through. We will. All right, so here we go. On March 25, Linus Media Group, Inc. Uploaded the Truth About How LTT Makes Money, a video featuring several members of the team breaking down several income streams that contribute to LMG's revenue. Naturally, this spawned some discussion in our official but officially recognized subreddit, as well as on the LTT forum, and we thought we would try to address some of the speculation. Speculation number one from you just Nick attempted a breakdown showing that they did the math because they're able to see our floatplane subscriber count and the percentage of the chart that was floatplane and extrapolate from there. Guessing that our revenue number is somewhere between 32.6 and 65.3 million million. Elijah responded to the post saying, all I will say is this. If it was this simple to figure out the number, we probably wouldn't have included that in the video. There are several factors not taken into account. Also, the range you just gave was massive. Lmao. However, I will add to Elijah's response that yeah, it probably is somewhere in that range.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's actually. There's. There's factors to it that help it be higher and there's factors to it that help it be lower. One of the help it be lower ones is that I don't think this person factored in OG subs, which are actually $3.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And we have a fair. How many OG subs do we have?

[Linus Sebastian]

Quite a few.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like hundreds or thousands.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not hundreds. Definitely not hundreds. A lot more than hundreds.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's too bad. And those $3 subs, really. Wow. Do they ever not.

[Linus Sebastian]

They don't. They don't cost us money. We make money off of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but they don't add up as fast as the other ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's. It's like delta over your costs, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

So when. When it. Yeah. Anyways, I don't need to explain that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And the $3 subs also have more overhead associated with collecting that payment because every payment has a fixed cost as well as a percentage of the overall transaction. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, a higher percentage of it is like transaction fees and stuff. Like that. So, like, it doesn't even. Doesn't even make it to us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It just goes to PayPal or Strike, basically. With how much you pay in fees and taxes and overhead, you might as well just not even run it. Why am I even here?

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what pitches the headphones. Another thing that I would say, though, is. Is so. Okay, we lowered the range a little bit there. But another thing that I would say to increase the range is that we're not the only creator on the platform. And there's. There's. There's other creators contributing to that pie, some of them very significantly. So, yeah. So, yeah, Dank Pods has.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, I had quite a few subscribers. I had something upside down stuck in my throat there. It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there's actually a decent amount of creators on full plane that I like, just really actively watch their content on full plane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is, like, kind of sick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, because.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I mean, you don't have to subscribe to all of them. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you really? Okay, you.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I. If I follow a channel for technical reasons, I won't pay for the sub.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

But if I'm like, I want to support this creator, I'll. Yeah, I'll just pay for the sub. I'd have to. If it was on Patreon.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So, like, yeah, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the. It's that it's the right thing to do, I would think. Speculation.

[Linus Sebastian]

So there's. There's one. I have, at a time directly subscribed. I don't know if I am right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Now the main LTT channel, but I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have at a time been directly subscribed to Dank Pods, for instance, because there was a while where my sleep schedule was all whack, so I was awake more often when he was actively streaming, and I would just have his drum stream in the background while I was working. So it was like. Yeah, I mean, nice. I'm just actually watching this, like, for fun content, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, that's. That's understandable.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, Wade's super cool. Yeah. Speculation number two, since some channels contributed so little, that's why they were shut down. So the reference here is, of course, to the not LTT or Short Circuit or techlinks channels, because you got to remember, for most of last year, actually, even LMG clips earns more than tech Quickie, game, linked, Mac address is in there somewhere. Channel super fun. There is. Okay, hold on. I'm going to read the official response first. It is worth noting yes, Good. It is worth noting that that chart only shows AdSense, not sponsorships, which when one channel uploads 15 videos over the course of an entire year and another channel uploads almost, you know, two videos a day. In the case of LMG clips, well, of course that channel is going to make less AdSense, but there is more to the revenue of a channel than just AdSense. And that was one of the points that we were trying to drive home in this video is AdSense is like.

[Linus Sebastian]

A smaller part of the pie these days.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How does the creator economy work exactly? How do these numbers break down at an organization that isn't just a YouTube channel?

[Linus Sebastian]

And not every YouTube channel will follow. And I think we say this in the video, but not every YouTube channel will follow similar splits to what we have. No, but this is ours.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, not at all. But this is ours. Point number two on this one is the shutting down of the channels was never about the money. I made that explicitly clear at the time. And I know that there is a cohort of people that believe that every time I open my mouth I am lying. That is not, in fact the case. If I say it wasn't about the money, I can't tell you what it was about, it means it wasn't about the money, but I can't give you any more detail about what exactly it was about. At the end of the day, we made a decision to pause the production, to focus on the areas we needed to focus on and make LMG as awesome as it can possibly be. All right, speculation number three was that we should have just said how much money we make in the video. Some people said big companies show their revenue all the time, why can't lmg? And the answer is that because those publicly traded companies by law are required to disclose certain aspects of their finances for their shareholders. LMG is still a private company and we don't have to go as far as we did, but we made a decision to do so knowing that a lot of people, the ones who care anyway, are going to go and do the math for themselves anyway. And realistically, coming back to speculation number one, probably end up in the right range or so. The thing that you guys don't know, of course, is what our expenses look like, what our overhead looks like. We have over, probably higher than you think. We have over 100 people on staff. Like we went from, we went from, I think in our first year our total revenues were, ooh, I'm a little rusty on this. It was under a million dollars. Though our total top line revenue was under $1 million in our first year of operation. And nowadays, I'll say this. Oh, okay. How do I. How do I not get more than that? Nowadays, depending on which period it's for, there are regularly pay periods where. Whether it's with expense, expense reimbursements, or whatever else, I'm going to keep this fuzzy. And that's intentional. But there are regularly pay periods where the overall withdrawal from the company's coffers is greater than that. It happens. Sorry. By PayPal. Sorry. I mean a monthly. Monthly. Back then, we paid on a monthly basis. Okay. So there are months where our overall payroll expense is greater than the entire revenue for the company. In our first year of operation. Of course, in the first year, that wasn't a huge problem because the entire employee count was me, Luke, Ed, Brandon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Brandon didn't even start January 1st.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no. He started in like April or something like that. Was it just the four of us after one year or had we added.

[Linus Sebastian]

We in the new house before the end of the year?

[Luke Lafreniere]

We were so. Oh, do you want to hear something scary? It is almost Colton's 10 year anniversary. Think about what that means. When did Colton start?

[Linus Sebastian]

Right before we moved to the office. Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Look at his face. Look at his face.

[Linus Sebastian]

I was. I was analyzing something that happened and I was trying of like, yeah, I was looking at something. I was like, okay, we shouldn't do this anymore. And then I was thinking back to myself in a similar role in the past.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I was like, like, how should I address this? And I was like, well, like, I've done this thing that we shouldn't do. So I'm trying to, like, put myself in those shoes to understand what it's like. Right. And then I had the thought of like, that was nine years ago because it was 2016.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I split off to do for myself in 2017.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I looked at the date and I was like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, it's wild. Dude, it's wild. Anyway, there were some. There were some other questions that people had, some other assumptions we can talk about a little bit more. If you guys want to leave a merch message. As you guys know from watching that video, if you did merch, which I think is actually an unfair word to use to describe the products that our team creates, but our merchandise contributes an enormous amount of our company's revenues. I did see a lot of people talking about how there's a huge difference between revenue and profit. And I will say before anyone bothers to ask this one. There is a very good reason that we don't get into the profitability of each of those segments of the business. And the reason is that we actually can't really. At least not without adding a bunch of completely unnecessary administrative overhead. Like how on earth would I tell you guys exactly what the cost is of a tech. Of a actually tech Linked would be relatively easy because there's a small team that works on that for a finite number of hours every day.

[Linus Sebastian]

But what's the value of the earnings of one department floating another department while they cook for a while and then make tons of money?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, okay, that, that we could kind of figure out. But what I, where I was getting with this is how do I determine the cost of an LTT video?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's so many parts of that I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would have to log every single hour of every single person involved from the, the business team talking to clients to procurement sourcing product to the labs team doing testing to the writing team to the shooting team, to the editing involved the administrative stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like did, did they talk about this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In their, in their one on one with an executive? Did anyone in accounting have to do any reconciliations for it? Probably you could kind of try to approximate it.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the sponsor money isn't free. A business person had to work to get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And we kind of do. We kind of do try to approximate those things in order to make sure that every aspect of the business is running in a healthy manner. But.

[Linus Sebastian]

And clearly we're doing okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But if our whole goal with this type of transparency with you guys is that it's supposed to be accurate, then the most accurate way for us to, to do it is to, to give you something that we can actually trust. Something that we know is actually accurate. So one of the things that a lot of people brought up is like, you know, hey, with how much of the business is merch now? Over 50%. Why do they even bother with the video side? But it's murkier than that, right? Because a lot of that apparel sales and product sales is driven by that video production business. It's just that we've chosen to allocate the revenue into buckets this way. There are easily other ways that we could allocate it. Like if we created internal tracking links that we put under every single video, we could potentially track merchandise sales right back to individual videos and we could have like a P and L for every single video production that we do. But then, you know, we're going to have to have a team that Sits there and runs all of this stuff. Which a bigger business than us, you know, if we were 250 people or 500 people instead of about a hundred ish, yeah. Might actually make sense for us to continue to, you know, optimize and continue to do better or whatever. But right now, you know, we're, we're too busy doing stuff to analyze it to quite that degree. Another question that came up before you guys bother to send a merch message for this one is hey yo, Linus, with how little of it is actually here. Hold on, I'm going to see if I can find the, the pie chart with how little of it is actually those, those in video, like pre roll and end roll things. Why exactly do you bother including them? Can you just, can you just not do in video sponsor spots? It is a good question and it is something that I have considered. But what I will say is that you got to remember guys, this is revenue.

[Linus Sebastian]

9% of the pie really isn't nothing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So if we were to take 9% of this out, this is a very low cost aspect of our production. Right. So we would be losing 9% of our revenue. But I'm just going to look at all the rest of this stuff. Adsense sponsorships, massive section of the pie.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just cut out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is probably, other than pasting affiliate links under videos, this is probably the lowest lift part of this entire pie. So you're not really asking us to cut out 9% of our revenue, you're asking us to cut out effectively 9%. Like you're effectively asking us to cut out 9% of our revenue. That was almost pure profit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that slice is much closer to profit than practically anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whereas like, if you were to look at something like cw, right, Like a huge chunk of this piece is just cogs cost of goods sold. Like it accounts for absolutely nothing other than us buying the product before we sell it to you. Huge. Then you've got, you know, tooling and development. Then you've got, you know, human resources. All of our products are designed here in Canada by our team here. So it's not like we're using just like cheap overseas labor and we're just like silk screening our logo onto a screwdriver or something like. It's, it's not like that. We are doing real design work. There's also, you know, because of the famous trust me, bro guarantee that for whatever reason turned into a scandal, a significant amount of cost here in returns.

[Linus Sebastian]

There was a reason.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there's a reason. But the Reasons are far more complicated than just.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, you just, you just try to slip that in all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I, you know, I do. You can trust me, bro, about that. The point is that, that, that is a significant cost that we bear here. So if you were to say, okay, Linus, stop doing Creator warehouse, I don't know this off the top of my head, but I will say with some degree of confidence that the actual profitability of this is probably not that far off of this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. With that said, you could kind of say the same about AdSense. Right? Like, it's not, it's not. These aren't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Show me. Just turn that off too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, these aren't, these aren't showing necessarily all the stuff that goes into it because those like in video sponsored spots, AdSense sponsored projects, those are laying on top of the video production crew.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

And invideo sponsor spots is also laying on top of the video production crew.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So if we were just making the videos. Right. Our costs are the same regardless of whether we have AdSense and in video sponsor spots. So I have thought about it. I have never gotten as far as discussing that as a possibility with the rest of the team. Unique username says now I really want a profitability chart, but I can't because there's so many resources here. Like our, our, our talent and Culture Coordination team. Hr. Like our HR team, our accounting team. How do I allocate them? Like, the accounting team does work for like Smash Champs sometimes. Do they log every one of those hours in a logbook? Does somebody audit that logbook? Like, come on, come on. We don't need to do that. We don't have time for that. That's one of the major.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some of it kind of does work that way actually. Like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, I know some does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some of the development in particular, however, those are contractors. That's a workflow that contract developers are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, kind of used to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Used to. Like, that's just part of it. When you're just an employee for a company that shares all the same ownership team or ownership group, there's no good reason to do that unless there's like. Unless we're trying to. Unless we're trying to kind of root out waste in some way. Like, hey, is this project not making sense? Because we're like really spending a lot of time on this. Like, if we're kind of doing an investigation, then I would say that we would, we would get into logging stuff like that. But just in terms of day to day operation. No, I don't think we would feel free to. Anyway, like I said, feel free to send some more merch messages if you have more questions. We do have a discussion question here from Elijah. Can Elijah have a raise? Because he did such a good job with this video. Video. And now knows how much the company makes. Okay, so two things, Elijah. Number one is, no, you don't know how much the company makes. We already talked about that. Because you only see the revenue. And number two, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Get wrecked.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or maybe, but I'm actually not in charge of that. That was one of the big.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hasn't been for a bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That was one of the big reasons that I wanted to let go of the leadership reins. Because the reality of it was, while I've talked about this in the past, I could be CEO of the company. I didn't have time to really know what everyone was doing, what everyone was doing, how good of a job they were doing. You know, did they, you know, deserve a raise and then also be the primary host and that creative energy guy and sit on this podcast for three to four and a half hours a week. And like all the other things that I do, I didn't have time to do a good job. And so I'd be in these, like, annual reviews where we're talking about compensation. And it got to the point where I was like, if we get any bigger, I'm just going to be going on gut feel, which is not okay. That's. That's not good enough. And so, no, I do not determine Elijah's compensation.

[Linus Sebastian]

How has that been? Has it felt like a good. Because I know some. Some things. I don't know this. I suspect some things you had hoped to let go of and probably weren't fully able to just because it is how it is, not because someone wasn't doing things correctly, but I know that you were able to let go of. Has that felt like a weight off?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's been hard because there are cases where I've felt like I want to be involved, but part of letting go of something is that you have to actually let go. And the second that I have someone come to me, like, let's say you came to me and you were like, hey, I'm not happy with my compensation. The second I took that and I put my finger on the scale, now I'm basically in charge of it again.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Think about it, right? Because the second you do that, someone else is going to do that, and then someone else is going to do that, and then Taren's going to be sitting There going, okay, well, what is the point of even putting together these performance metrics and these reviews and these management layers and this budgeting? Why am I even doing any of this if Linus is just going to come in and say, oh, yeah, well, like, Luke's kind of my buddy outside of, like, the work that he does and do it this way. Like, he's blond, so, like, that's cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know, I mean, that's a problem in its own. Right. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But, like, he's sexy, so, you know. Right. Like, it's ridiculous.

[Linus Sebastian]

So it's probably good that you don't do those things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, you know, look, and it's one of those things where Luke's and my relationship is particularly complicated because we are friends, and he has talked to me about his compensation. But what I have to do is I have to basically say, okay, I am taking off my company hat, and I feel like. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like I have given you, from the benefit of my experience, friend advice that is not necessarily aligned with the corporation's best interests.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would also like to. So I agree. I would also like to put forward that I think I came to those conversations looking for that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not the other side.

[Luke Lafreniere]

100%.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I think it worked out great. It is a very weird and complicated relationship. I think it really do a pretty good job. We try, but sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what I didn't do and what I wouldn't do is take what he told me as a friend and raise it up the flagpole, which I also didn't want him take it up the chain because that's not the way that's supposed to work. The way it's supposed to work is if Luke has a concern. And I'm not saying Luke was complaining about his own pay. What I'm saying is that something to do with compensation. Luke had a concern that he wasn't sure how to approach, and he wanted to talk to me as a friend, so we did. But I can't. I can't put my thumb on the scale because it's like, it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

And this is. It's a mistake even necessarily one of those scenarios. But, like. And I have struggled with this, and I've tried to coach people who manage people under me on the same thing. I struggle with it now. I will probably always struggle with it. You have to let certain things, like, fail.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, dude, it's so hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's so painful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Think about the Number of ideas that you've either pitched me or heard pitched to me that I've been like, I do not believe this will work.

[Linus Sebastian]

But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But try anything twice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How many times have you heard me say those words?

[Linus Sebastian]

Quite a few times. Like, I don't think I could count it. You can't fit it on hands. I don't know how many times. But it's so hard and it is tough, but, like. And you have to also understand that when you're on the, like, receiving end of that, that. And I'm not saying this is one of those scenarios.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But in all of these scenarios, like, anything that Linus had to give up, I think. Can I say this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. You say anything you want. It's a free country. I think, what am I going to do?

[Linus Sebastian]

That we had.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

When you and Yvonne were holding certain positions is that you guys wouldn't let certain things fail. Sometimes too much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then that. That, like, limits people's growth potentials. Sometimes you have to, like, as a manager, you have to weigh the, like, what is the loss of letting this thing fail versus the actual real loss of this person not learning this thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, people have to learn things for themselves.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you know how many things just tell people, dude, the number of things. Okay. Okay, here's a perfect example. Here's a perfect example that completely changed the trajectory of my life, okay. When I was going into school, okay. I joined the science program at ubc. And I was like, I don't know, I'll do whatever it is that science people do. And, like, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. I just. I knew that you're supposed to have a degree because that's what my generation was told. And. And also a high school diploma was worthless by the time I got one. And so I went to university, I went to a good school and I went to science because, I mean, that'll look good on my resume, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Everyone says stem.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And my uncle told me so. My uncle says, look, you're making a mistake. Go into business, learn business, because everything is business. I went, uncle Skip, he's always pushing this business agenda, but I'm going to do science. And he was 100% right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I didn't understand what business was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, it sounded boring. It sounded like wearing a suit.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had no idea that business can be plumbing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Be like literally anything.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It could be literally anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

You can use business. Like, some of the best stuff I learned at BCIT when I was taking a development course.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Was the mandatory business courses that came along with it because, like, communications and other things, and I used those more than probably anything else I learned in that school. I never used Java. I didn't. I didn't program in Java professionally ever. I don't know. But I used all the business courses.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because, like, so to the plumber example. You can be a plumber, and you can make a salary, or you can run a plumbing business, and you can make. If you are successful, which will take some work, some luck, right? If you are successful, you can make many times a salary. And that was his point. His point was, no matter what you do, even if.

[Linus Sebastian]

Even if you go somewhere and earn a salary, you can use those things you learned in business to help accelerate your career. Like, it's working within that organization, and being useful within that organization can be amplified by understanding business stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So, yeah, that was a thing that changed my life. But I had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sorry, sorry. PK7 said, I'm going to slightly modify. Oh, no. It's exactly what he said. Or you can become a farmer and make a celery.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do the thing.

[C]

I was thinking about it. My hand was hovering.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where am I going with this? Okay. So the point is that he explained it to me. He told me everything that I'm telling you guys now. I have no new information than I had.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But what I have is knowledge, which is what I value a lot more than my car.

[Linus Sebastian]

We got some books.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We got some Star wars books. The Jedi Path on this. Why is that there? Is that yours? Did you, like, order that and forget it here?

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea whose it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why are there Star wars books? You want to get them?

[Linus Sebastian]

They've been here forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't know how long these have been here. You're sure they're not yours? I don't, because you totally read, like, trashy Star wars literature and you totally get your stuff shipped to the office.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think I would have bought this, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How sure are you?

[Linus Sebastian]

Not 100% sure. But if I did buy it, it would have been a long time ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's yours. I don't care about it.

[C]

My set deck.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He'll read it.

[C]

From the camera angle we never use.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are you sure it's not supposed to actually be set deck? Like, I feel like I should probably leave it here.

[C]

I don't know why it's in cellophane.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Then Fogel Br asks. I'll ask this here in floatplane chat. Can you empathize with Those of us who miss you being more unguarded, like you were in the past. Now it seems like with Taran being so guarded, part of the allure of getting to know Business Insider things is gone, which is one of the reasons I've been a fan. Am I being guarded right now?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't. And I don't think Taran being here would be the reason for that change. I also don't personally think Taran is super guarded.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

To be honest, I think that's a misread.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, he's not as accessible.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because he's not on WAN show every week. Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that doesn't mean he's guarded.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no. It just means he's. But. But I can understand why there's. Why they have the perception.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure. It's just not, as I'm just pointing out there, that I don't think it's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I'm pretty readily available. I am.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, whenever. Whenever I see a message somewhere about how impossible Linus is to get in touch with, I'm like, yo, you didn't try that hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, I am not that hard to get my attention. It's possible that you had a terrible, terrible idea, and so I didn't acknowledge it, but I might have seen it. In fact, depending where you put it, I probably saw it. But I'll have. Dude, I'll have people say how hard I am to get in touch with, and they literally haven't emailed the public email address on our YouTube channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They haven't posted on the forum. Like, they just. They didn't even try.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've had situations like that before with myself, and I. I don't. I don't even know if I'm as easy to contact as you are, but there's some pretty obvious ways to get a hold of me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There are ones that don't work. Like, I don't. I do not get notifications for DMS on Twitter.

[Linus Sebastian]

For instance, your DMs are open.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but I don't look at them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. See mine a little harder. My DMs are not open.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you can tweet at me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Are you just, like, too cool? Too popular? It's like, this guy, man. He's got his Steam friends offline by default because he's just too cool and popular. And people will, like, want a game with him because he's too cool. He's so popular.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I could never, like, find him in my list. You can just set you as a favorite? Yeah. Oh, so, wow. So you think you deserve to be a favorite because you're too cool?

[Linus Sebastian]

You're favorited on mine because you're too.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool and popular to be ever online.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't search for you.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see how it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

My goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see how it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

My.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's just too cool and popular. I mean, look, all we have to do is look at any kind of controversy, right? And it's like, linus, Bad Luke, cool and popular. Why does he hang out with that Linus guy?

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe it's. Maybe it's because of actions and words.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow. See? He's mean. He just does it with a big smile. So you're all like, oh, Luke, he's so funny. That was me. He hurt my feelings just now. No, I don't have feelings. I'm a narcissist or sociopath or. What have I been accused of? No, just narcissism. Right. Has anyone called me a sociopath yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Probably.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You know what? I'm gonna search the channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's a lot of words out there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna search the channel for comments that contain sociopath. You can't get out ahead of it. I'm gonna do it too fast. What are we supposed to be doing right now?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think we're still on the house ltt make money topic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay. Hold on. Eli, conversation question. Do you think being as transparent as we've been as a company has shot us in the foot?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Has shot us in the foot for the future. This applies to several aspects. Sponsor relationships, finances, product development, etc. Oh, no, not to those things, to be honest.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, just mostly community stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, no, it's just. It's always amazing to me to see people turn a W into an L, you know, and take something like that video that we did and it's fine to ask more questions. I understand why people are curious. Right. But some people seem to be legitimately angry that we didn't say more, that we didn't show more.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you do it at all, you didn't do it far enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like. Nah. Off. Yeah, basically.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Most people wouldn't have done this at all. Some people do it other. There are other examples.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, Mr. Beast is shockingly transparent. He doesn't have to be.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Is he publicly traded yet? I thought he's. Did he do a private sale of stock?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I think he sold privately.

[Linus Sebastian]

Private sale.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah, that's oh, yeah, I was going to talk about that earlier, how one of the reasons that. That we've never taken outside money is because of how much less of that internal tracking nonsense we have to do when the ownership is identical for all the companies. So I can. I can say, you know, oh, my goodness, we need a thing developed for LTT Store. Where on earth will I find a developer?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, the developers for LTD stuff, neither of them actually work for Linus Media Group.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So. And that's something that I think we're probably going to do like a. Like a restructuring. That's a really scary word. But it's not going to be scary the way that we're doing it. We're going to be doing like a restructuring at some point where we take some departments whole. Okay, everyone chill. If you work here and you're watching this, chill. I know. So we take some departments in their entirety and then we shift what organization they actually work for. I think I might have even talked about this on WAN show before, but we want to take some things like human resources, accounting, development, potentially, and make them a pooled resource, like customer service infrastructure. Is there any good reason why we have fragmented customer service, different customer service team for floatplane and creator warehouse? I mean, everyone's job on both of those teams is basically to say yes, so or say no. If people are being completely unreasonable, I.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just mean pretty rare.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I just mean the flows are pretty straightforward.

[Linus Sebastian]

We actually say yes to a lot of very unreasonable things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Just so you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know, I know. It's.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is the marching orders.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I had a long conversation with another creator many years ago. Many years ago about how obviously, you know, we'd be in a position where regardless of our stated warranty policies, we'd be insane to step out of line in any way.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And, you know, this long conversation was very well understood, very well understood by the other creator at the time. And I don't know, somewhere along the line someone got confused about it at some point and we had the. We had the Trust me bro controversy. But yeah, we. We would be. We'd be ins. I mean, look how. Look how explosive things are when we actually, like, don't harm anybody. Name a name. Name someone who didn't get warranty coverage on their backpack. Name a name.

[Linus Sebastian]

Me?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really? No, really. Oh, how many free backpacks do you have?

[Linus Sebastian]

2.

[Luke Lafreniere]

3.

[Linus Sebastian]

3. Guy, I got it wrong. Yeah. The one that I have that has the old carabiners. I think you even saw this. I'm on like a mission to not let them break. And the only time one of them even got close was a TSA agent, like, put their thumb right through it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this just you, like, kind of doing that thing where, like, you just want the rare one no matter how much worse it is? Probably okay. But.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I haven't replaced them. I totally could, obviously.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

The new bag has them on it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And they're great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, they're better.

[Linus Sebastian]

But my old ones are. They're fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

They still work.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Dyslexicstoner240 says Linus. You didn't give me a warranty. I also don't have a backpack.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, what do you want to talk about next?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, did I get it? Yes, I have the button. Actually, someone asked if I have the button. Do you have. Do you have mine? Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That invalidates what he did.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I have the button, but I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, what are we supposed to be doing, Dan?

[C]

You could do another topic, or we could move into some merch messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Up to you. No, it's not up to me. I don't decide these things.

[C]

Let's do some merch messages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm not even the CEO anymore.

[C]

That's right.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you're the vision man.

[C]

What is your vision for this WAN show? Your vision could be. Dan, tell me what to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I always call him Eyeball Officer. I like it.

[C]

I call him the Peepers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a weird thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

To call someone the Peepers is crazy.

[C]

What are the Peepers thinking about today?

[Linus Sebastian]

I've never heard that before. Wow.

[C]

How about some announcements? Let's get through those.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, we should do another topic. Yeah, We've only done one topic. How is that even possible?

[Linus Sebastian]

Who knows?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, certainly it's a show about detailed and accurate medical advice, that's for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. Amd says the RX 9070 XT sold 10 times more than its predecessor in the first week. Lisa Su dropped this claim in an interview with Asus, Tony, saying it has been a fantastic success. Actually, it is the number one selling graphics card of all the AMD Radeon generations for first week sales. By far, ten times higher.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This may be true for launch week, but does not necessarily indicate a successful quarter or year for amd. This graph from John Petty research shows a decline in sales for AMD's Halo products dating back to 2009. Basically, other than GPU.

[Linus Sebastian]

Halo products?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, GPU. Other than a little bit of uptick in the. What is this third attempt at rebrand? No, no, no. Okay, sorry. Hold on. Okay, so this is the launch of Hawaii after multiple rebrands of. Oh, man. I'm trying to remember. Which one did they rebrand? She said it's a zillion tons of.

[Linus Sebastian]

All the Radeon generations, though, so that would be all the way back to 2009. So this is a, like, over fourfold increase.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm trying to remember. Which one was the one that they rebranded like a zillion times.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm trying. I'm trying to remember this. They rebranded once, the 480 to the 580. But I thought it was the 7970, wasn't it?

[Linus Sebastian]

I thought it was 7970 or 7950.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Didn't that count?

[Linus Sebastian]

Was it a Halo product that was rebranded?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, Was it the 50, 58 70? Come on, help me out here, guys. There was one that got rebranded like three times. Someone's saying RX380, man. How do I not remember this anymore?

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of rebrands, too. Yeah, but that's before this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the 290 did have a lot of rebrands. There was. There was one before that, though. 7970 became the 280X. 7970 to 280. To 380. Oh, that's right. That's right. It was the 7970, which became part of the 200 series and then became part of the 300 series again. Like that GPU was around flipping forever as a current part of their lineup. Oh, Atomic brain fart says 380 was different. I really thought. They are really. I really thought it was part of it. 7970, December 11th. And then became the 280X. The most rebranded as the R9. 280X. Essentially the same GPU, Radeon R9. 3. Okay. Someone copy pasted something into the chat, but it seems to have been truncated.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it got cut off.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's really helpful. All right, well, either way, cool. Anyway, so, yeah, they've been in a long, steady decline, according to John Petty Research, for literally, like, 16 years. However. However, I see hope. I see hope. Like, you can. You can see it just in publicly available data, like the number of reviews on products. Like, back in the fury days, you'd look at these cards on Newegg and like, yeah, technically there's listings for them and there's like a couple in stock, but there'd be like six reviews and that's over a span of like six months. So in effect nobody was buying these cards. But that does not seem to be the case with the 7000 series. It is worth noting that while the 9070 XT is likely the top end card from AMD this generation, it's not meant to be a top of the line competitor like some of the other cards that were highlighted on that graph. With that said, it's a higher end competitor than Polaris for instance, which was meant to be more of a mid range card. Man, but that's. Oh man, I don't know. Is this meant to be positioned higher than Polaris Because Polaris launched at like 250 bucks or like 199 or something like that. I don't, don't quote me on those numbers, but it was like affordable. But then is like 549, 699 or 649, 699. Is that like, is that mid range now?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think disgustingly, kind of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't just hear that sigh, I felt it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Anyway, like actually bothers me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The current.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because low range users have kind of been priced out like the 60 series. Like so there's, there's kind of two things that have happened at the same time. One is the prices of graphics cards have massively ramped. Another one has been that like, I don't know about you, but when they first shifted to talking about like, you know, 60, 70, 80 kind of series cards, we're talking about like after the 9800 series. Sure. So starting with the 200 series of cards, the 60 series was like, it had a lot of focus. I feel like it generally won price to performance. Like it was a very reasonable card to get. It was pretty solidly priced. It got you a really good step up in generation every time. It was, it was, it was good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was a good, good thing to buy. Just. Yeah, if you just want to like game at 1080pmedium to high, just like buy that every time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know when that started getting eroded, but it feels like it has been.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well the two, the 2000 series didn't even like, oh no, they got a 20. The 2060 kind of sucked though because the main highlight of the 60 series was or the 2000 series was that it had ray tracing. But the 2060. Yeah, you can play Indiana Jones and the great circle on it. It's actually okay, but like barely so you were compared to the 1660. Right. Which was the non RTX from that generation, but it's 16 series instead of 20. I don't know, whatever. Whatever they were doing with that branding that was. That was honestly a way better value if you didn't care about ray tracing. And the, the 2060, even if you did care about ray tracing, it was barely really capable of it anyway. So that was to me where the 60 series kind of lost its luster. But for me, the bigger conversation is like, what the F happened to the 50 series?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

50 also used to be a great value.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Solid card, like back with like Maxwell. Right. Like a 950 TI or whatever was like a pretty solid card. Like the 1050 was like a 1050 ti. I believe there was a 1050 ti. Hold on. I'm pretty sure. And I'm pretty sure it was pretty solid 1050 ti. Yeah, there was a 1050 ti. Yeah, that thing was solid. And like, what was the MSRP when it launched? It was US$139.

[Linus Sebastian]

A solid card for 139.

[Luke Lafreniere]

39.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is what we lost.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at the cooler. Like the cooler even looks cool. If that's actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That wasn't. I don't think that ever existed. Yeah, I never saw that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know. I'm pretty sure Those existed for 1060s and I think. No, it says 1050 on there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. No, 10, 1060s definitely. You could buy ones that looked kind of like this, but this is. This effectively did not exist. It was all partner cards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Someone says they. Well, they still use 1050 TI in slot machines. Nice. Nice. Anyway, speaking of somewhat maybe affordable cards, B580s are in stock and this is not $250, which is what it was supposed to be. $250.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But $90 over MSRP feels less ridiculous than some of the stuff we're dealing with these days.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do you want to have a. Do you want to have a labs website feature discussion?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would love to.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we've been, we've been figuring out getting pricing on the site.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because there's been this. The discussion for quite a while now is like, how do we make. How do we. How do we get people. Not that we even really profit off of this, but we want the site to be more useful. Getting you to an actual purchasing decision.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is a form of. A very significant form of being more useful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So one of the problems that we have is we want to include pricing. We haven't traditionally included pricing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. And We've talked about this. I mean, going way back to the original, like, roadmap meeting for the labs website between me and Luke, we've talked about pricing, but it's not there yet, obviously.

[Linus Sebastian]

But. And there's a big reason why a lot we. Like back when I was testing graphics cards, every single time in the review there'd be price, performance. It was the graph everyone cared the most about. It was a graph that, like, we cared the most about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now it's completely irrelevant because the price, the msrp is just meaningless.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Or it's not irrelevant information. It's irrelevant for us to create that graph based on numbers that aren't real. Yeah, numbers.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're not going to be paying that price to buy the card, so it doesn't matter. So we're like, okay, we can get MSRP on the site, but like, does that really solve anything? So we're working on. We have one of them right now, a store where they're sending us their information so we can see if it's in stock. We see the price, stuff like that. It's not on the site yet, but we.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, but we have API access today.

[Linus Sebastian]

We got that from one of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, and does everyone have that?

[Linus Sebastian]

Or, like, seems like most stores do, but not. Not all of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And is that something that we have to, like, pay to access or, like, what's the dealio?

[Linus Sebastian]

Seems like sometimes yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or is there like a rate that's free and then over a certain amount.

[Linus Sebastian]

We'Re going to try to talk to people because I suspect when we talk to people, it's going to be free. But I think by default, most places that want that type of information are not like public info sites.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's something else. Okay. So anyways, we'll figure it out, but so far it's. It's been fine, it's been free. But something we're wondering about is like, okay, cool, so we can have some store information. But then it's going to be practically impossible. Like, we have a global audience. It's going to be practically impossible to include store information from every single store in the world. So if we want to be able to build a price performance graph, which I would love to do, like, do we do like a bring your own price setup.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, interesting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Where, like, you could plug in, because one thing that I like about that, and I'm wondering what you think about this is you could do that for old cards too, then. Because you could put in the used market price and then you could Compare like a used market price 30 90.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Based on your local market like a listing that you found.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could just plug that number marketplace.

[Linus Sebastian]

In and then you can compare that against.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe an MSRP card that is out right now and check the price performance based on those numbers. Like is that, is that interesting? Would you. If you think back to I don't know like NCIX era pre insects.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would use it so hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

If that's true.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Should we go that I use it super hard.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think we should meet but it takes development time. Right. So yeah we have to balance against like what else could we do?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we'd probably have to have both. I think you'd have to have a default because realistically something like depending on whether we're talking Creator, Warehouse or LTT the US market is somewhere between 40 and 65% of our of our base. Right. So like us is probably just default to USD because it kind of works for any market that derives pricing from USD MSRP as well. Like Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like Canadian pricing for consumer electronics is almost without without exception just US pricing times the exchange rate. There are. There are industries that don't operate that way. Mobile phones for instance will have their own Canadian msrp sometimes game consoles. But when it comes to the IT industry almost all of it is purchased in US dollars. So it's just marked up from whatever the cost is in US dollars. That's just how it works because almost all of it is imported through La McBain asks tariffs. Tariffs are a completely separate conversation from.

[Linus Sebastian]

That because our tariffs usually slept on in cart.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well Canada doesn't have any tariffs on electronics that are imported from China through the US Yeah so it wouldn't. It wouldn't matter. So basically for the US and Canada you would just have to convert to your own currency to get an approximate idea of what the price to performance would be for. For stuff like Europe man. It gets really complicated though because like they do include their taxes and their pricing and like over here we don't and okay. Would the idea be potentially to try to have like at least one store partner for like you know I want to have few currencies.

[Linus Sebastian]

I want to have ideally like a bunch of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. So this is not an or so you're. We are definitely going to have because like I mean the lab's website is like fairly likely to lose money forever. But we do want to have affiliate links for people. So those would have to have store prices effectively.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well no, they. They wouldn't have to. We have them. We have them already. And we don't have store prices.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'd be way better.

[Linus Sebastian]

It would be better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It'd be way better. So like it's in the retailers. It's in a retailer's best interest. For us to have a functioning affiliate link.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And for us to have functioning stock and pricing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because effectively they win.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we can already have functioning affiliate links, but people are clicking on them blind basically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Right. Which is like stupid.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's not ideal. So, so that's, that's probably happening anyways. You can't rely on scraping, though. We're not planning on scraping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. We will never scrape anything. We are good boys.

[Linus Sebastian]

We definitely didn't already do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope. No, we wouldn't. Yes, we would not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, not ever. And like some people are pushing back on, like. Well, what does the MSRP even mean though? Because you can't buy a card at msrp. That might be like true. But that's true right now. And that's also not true for a lot of other verticals. It's mostly just a problem for GPUs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, you can buy CPU for MSRP right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we're making a site for more than just GPUs.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Shiraf2k asks, what about a calculator for price to performance where you can put your local pricing. Yes. You're all caught up with conversation. What a great idea that we're in the middle of.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love that. That's fantastic. I think this was, I think this was like Liam's idea or something on the, on the labs web team. But yeah, I think it's pretty sweet. There's. There's been a few other like, interesting ideas on how we can deal with like pricing stuff on the site because we're trying to. Yeah. Make it useful, make it good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Angry Panda asks, why would you not scrape? Well, it's against the terms of service to use the data on people's sites in ways that they don't authorize them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not technically, some of them, but yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some of them, though most I'd say. And you know, it's just, it puts additional load on their server for non human traffic that is in violation of their terms of service. So if for no other reason other than that it's rude, we would never do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Full Blood's a different company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Linus Media Group would never do it. Sorry. Something in there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway. Yeah, no, that sounds super cool. I would just, I would want it populated with something by default. And then I'd want to have like an override. Okay, riddle me this.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not sure how it would look.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Could we. Things we're working, could we implement like, like a high, low, high, low median of ebay sales prices? Because that would, I mean, that would tell us what is readily available secondhand.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're still learning how to do a lot of this stuff. Like, I'm talking about. Oh, we got like a pricing thing today. It's super far from landing on the site because we're probably not going to want to land it on the site with only one partner. So we're probably still waiting to go through, like, communication negotiations with other partners. We also have to figure out, like, how we're going to lay this stuff out. Like if we show multiple stores for the price performance thing, which might be a thing that we do. And we also make it so you can bring your own price. And then we also make it so you have high, low, medium for ebay. But then eBay is very like, location specific.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is starting to become the kind of thing that I'd want to like, save my session for. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, it starts getting like, really, like we're. We're scope correct creeping feature. Creeping the heck out of it. So it's like, that might be cool, but then we're already like, again, we've never done this stuff before. This is new to us.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How about this?

[Linus Sebastian]

We're looking at all this data from. From even these stores. Even the stores are really weird about how they list and label things sometimes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, because marketplace. And like, so you'll have something that's a better price, but the shipping is like $45.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's like we, we were. When we were looking at Amazon, at one point, I found a SSD listed under graphics cards with like, the specs, like smashed into each other sort of. Like, some of them were GPU specs, some of them were like, you pull some really weird data out of there. So we have to try to figure out, like, how to match this up with reviews on our site and all these other things. And like, there's that. I think it's more complicated when you go to somewhere like ebay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I would love to think that you could kind of crowdsource something like that. Like the, like, valid links to the right. The right part number. But then sometimes those things can change. Companies can rev stuff silently. And so all of a sudden that information becomes out of date. Not because anyone in the community did anything wrong or because our site did anything wrong, but because there Was just. There was a silent revision and nobody knows.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. It's interesting. There's. There's a lot of different ways we can approach it, but I think this will be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I would, in my perfect world, I would select my country and then I would say I want to buy new.

[Linus Sebastian]

Even that. Like just. Sorry to cut you off. Just even that. Allowing country selection, we're now either excluding a ton of people or we're scaling to an incredible number of stores to support right off the bat.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We would. Well, we would start with one or two countries.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then we would add as needed. But it's just in terms of like how I configure my view. I'd want to select my country because otherwise what are we even doing here? Right. And the US Would probably be the default.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'd want to select my country.

[Linus Sebastian]

List of countries with the U.S. like you normally have with like keyboards and languages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then I'd probably want to go new, used, and then custom checkboxes or. No, this would be like a mode.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

New, used and custom.

[Linus Sebastian]

So custom is bring your own price. Used is like ebay, Craigslist, whatever else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then new is just msrp. No, no, is store price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Store pricing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. Would you have an MSRP option just to like chip away at graphics cards now? Just to make fun of graphics cards?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah, it's just like.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's just what you buy it for now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you show like, what if, what if something is completely out of stock practically everywhere? We have like a warning.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean, almost nothing is. Tell me something, tell me something. 50 90, 50 90. I'll find it in stock right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't checked at all. I have no idea. But I mean, there will be a scenario where there are none.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so if you have $5,000, you can buy a 5090 right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you said new, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's new.

[Linus Sebastian]

But this is on ebay, so. So does new include ebay? Because people aren't always truthful about new things on ebay. Sometimes people sell pictures of things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm just, I'm just saying there's always a price. So what we could do is we could return our, our best result, our closest match. Like I'm. I'm willing to bet if I go on. Okay, here, let's. Let's try Amazon.com I bet there's like a third party seller that has a 5090 for like $6,000 or whatever. Here we go. Add to cart one left $4,000. 50 90. Boom. I'm not saying you should buy it. I'm just saying you can.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's such a. Yikes, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Was that American Amazon?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. You better believe it, buddy. That is like, wow, what does that. What does that actually work out to? So an additional $450 per thousand dollars. So that is like a 6,000 Canadian dollar GPU that is going to cost like over 10% of the median Canadian income for a GPU, if I recall correctly.

[Linus Sebastian]

So absurd.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Median Canadian income a little under 10%. Wild. Wild. Anyway, what are we supposed to be doing right now, Don?

[Linus Sebastian]

We do need to kind of turbo through.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we're. We never finished that topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

What one even? Was it even? Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. No, there's not much more to say there. Okay. Yep. Cool.

[C]

I think five topics was fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, maybe let's cap off our week with end caps. Oh, that's right, folks. Dang it. I always get this wrong. From now until Monday when you add both a precision screwdriver bundle and a precision end cap set to your cart, we are going to give you the end cap set for free. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we have designed the end caps of our precision screwdriver to be interchangeable. That's right. You can just put a little thing here and I think I got it. It's easier if you have a wrench. The point is you just hold this spot right here and you can screw off the end cap. So then you just got the little, little bearing piece right there and then replace it with one of our other end caps. We have also flat topped black one. Okay. Oh, wait, what's going on here?

[Linus Sebastian]

Would you call that color copper? Not really.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know, Orange. And then we also have a concave one and a convex one. So if you're the kind of person who prefers to, you know, put your finger like this, you might prefer the concave. If you're the person, kind of person who wants to kind of palm it, then you might prefer the convex. I think what's the default? Is the default flat?

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm checking right now.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, man. They've. Well, they've like changed all of these, I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but I'm checking the store listing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the default is flat orange. Yeah, the default is flat orange. And then it also comes with a matte black flat top one. So anyway, you get an end cap set for free. We don't have that. So not only do you get. Oh, wait, you get it oh yeah. So not only do you get a 10 discount or $10 discount by purchasing both a precision driver and a bit set. So that's for the combo. You also get another $10 value with the end cap set. That's $20 of value. The deal is available now until Monday, 10am Pacific Time. And it will automatically apply if you add the precision screwdriver bundle and end cap set to your cart. There's also some updates here. Quick float plane update. Dan, do you want to bring that video up? Dan and Smash Champs general manager Jim Peng did a little tour of the currently soft launched Smash Champs. It is now up as a float plane exclusive. Dan may have struggled a little bit with the word, well, the name Sisyphus, but other than that, absolute banger. There you go. You can watch from 7:55 and stop after Sammy says. One must imagine Dan happy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we have audio?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whatever that means.

[Linus Sebastian]

The things that people do at a gym.

[C]

Look, Sammy, I'm syphilis or whatever that guy's doing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We have a towel service now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh my goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can watch the rest of it at LMG GG Floatplane. In other floatplane goodness news, Sarah whipped up a new design live on stream this week with suggestions from the chat. They've created Derpy Dinos Volume 1. And yes, it is exactly as adorable and silly as it sounds. What am I looking at here?

[Linus Sebastian]

Do we get to see it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, is this it? Oh, streams with Sarah Art Print three Streams with Sarah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, there's a dry folder link I don't have access to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. Oh boy. I bet I don't have access to it either. I do not have access.

[Linus Sebastian]

So cool.

[C]

All right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So cool.

[C]

I will. I will throw that on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Dan's working on it. Sarah's still doing some last minute touches like shading, but the outline is final and you can expect to see that by the end of March 31st. Also, if you remember the content cosmos. Oh, that is super cute. They're not derpy. They're exactly the way God made them. Derpy.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's fantastic. Do they all feature bread or is it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think, I think that's a cupcake. A source over on the left there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And baguettedactyl at the top.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep, I got that. There's a flow plane in the back. Right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a. I don't actually see any bread on the like weird bird velociraptor thing.

[C]

Like gingerbread mint.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Where?

[Linus Sebastian]

Just above the rock on the right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, No, I see those. I'm just wondering about the bird raptor there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. The very bottom middle one. Unsure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also, is that. Is that little chicken in the egg in the bottom left, like growing out of a loaf? Oh, I don't know. Maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unsure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The missing link. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's how that works. Also, if you remember the Content Cosmos design she did in December, the one with the very legally distinct pyro kitsune, that one's been remastered to take better advantage of color usage for a poster. Oh, my goodness. This looks flipping awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

What size is that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is so cool. And oh my goodness, there's a shirt. There's a color shirt. Oh, dude. Dude, that's fire. That is like actual fire.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's super cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Super cool design. Anyway, both the Derpy Dinos shirt slash poster and the Content Cosmos poster are available until April 14th at LMG, GG, StreamsWithSarah. And hey, just.

[Linus Sebastian]

That shirt isn't available though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just to sweeten the deal, the very first print of the poster is signed by Sarah, Dan and Sammy, and one random buyer is going to get it included with their order.

[C]

It's marked one of one on the back also.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. By the way, Derpy Dinos will get a remaster too. It's just taking a bit. Art takes time. It actually, like, has a value because it actually does take time. That's. That's how. That's how these things work. Well, what? No. People think art should be free. It's not. Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, dude.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Tell you what, tell you what. Hypothetical, let's say someone maybe, let's say YouTube content creator, okay, released an app where you could buy wallpapers. How mad would people be if they had to pay for wallpaper?

[Linus Sebastian]

Peeved.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would it be a big scandal?

[Linus Sebastian]

There was other problems. Yeah, there were just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

However, there was a not zero number of people that were simply outraged at the idea of paying for ours.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's the current status of that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

What was it called?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Panels or something?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have no idea. I almost immediately stopped caring about it completely. Yeah, I have not changed the wallpaper on my phone in as long as I can remember.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just had my current one for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Whatever is the default wallpaper. And I give zero cares beyond that. I'm sorry, I just can't care about. It still exists.

[Linus Sebastian]

It currently has a rating of 4.7 stars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, there you go. How many reviews does it have?

[Linus Sebastian]

Almost 10,000.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow. Okay. Well, then apparently it's doing great. Go panels. That's what it's called.

[Linus Sebastian]

Right, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Panels. There you go. Panels.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way to go.

[C]

And do you want a couple merch messages?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, right. Yes, merch messages. So if you buy any merch. The best something. No, wait. If you want to interact with the show, we don't do twitch bits or super chats or anything like that. We. The way we see it, if you're going to throw money at your screen, you should get something in return. So we do merch messages. So all you got to do is head over to lttstore.com and find something you like, Whether it's the precision screwdriver bundle that we were talking about earlier, where you can get a free end cap set, or whether it's just one of our recent products, like the reversible bomber jacket. Would you believe that this jacket and this jacket are the same jacket?

[Linus Sebastian]

What? What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just one's in some way. Which one's inside out? Oh, oh, oh. Here's a debate. Dan.

[C]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which one of them is inside out?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I know.

[C]

Depends where the seams are.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which one's inside out?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think there's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, here, hold on. I've got.

[C]

I think the orange one's inside out.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was wearing mine today. I was wearing mine today, so I have it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think there's an answer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. Which one. Which one is inside out?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think the orange is technically the inside because that's where the label is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because you haven't ripped it out yet, so you can still tell.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, now which one's inside out? Boom, boom.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think it's still the orange. Because knowledge of the label originally being permanent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think the.

[Linus Sebastian]

We are evolving. Evolved.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The correct animals, the correct hack would be which side has the zipper the right way. Except that our garments are just random.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. So that doesn't quite count.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So the reason for that is that it's different in Commonwealth and American countries. And in Canada. We're. We're. Man. We just. We have no idea what's going on in terms of, like, imperial and metric and, like, color with a U.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why not both?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Color without a U.

[Linus Sebastian]

Aren't we pretty solidly on color with a U?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I regularly see Canadians spell it without a U. Regularly.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fair enough.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And, like, most of our spell check is going to default to American English.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I correct it all the time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No color, no neighbor.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm like, a little. I care too much about that, and I suspect most people don't. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. I get it. I get it. So anyway, that wouldn't work for that the answer is that there is no answer. The point is, all you got to do to send a merch message to interact with the show is pick something up on lttstore.com like say for example, our terminally online hoodie. Get it? Boop. And then you will get in your cart a little box for a merchant message. Look at that, we are live. I would like my purchase to appear.

[Linus Sebastian]

As a merch mess message.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So you can go ahead and send a little message and it will go to producer.

[C]

Oh my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what they sound like it will go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's what they sound like. It will go to producer Dan, who will throw it down there or respond to it himself or curate it for me and Luke to respond to. So Dan's going to show you guys how the curated ones work. Sure.

[C]

From Drew. Hey, Dll, do any of you or anyone at LMG have plans to attend NAB this year? I've been wanting to go since 2019, but I finally managed to pull together the money to go this year.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think we are, I expect somebody sending a contingent. We don't really cover the show. We've done it a couple of times, but the truth is it just plain doesn't perform on our channel. The overlap between camera geeks and tech geeks is there, but they, I don't know, they kind of, they kind of float in different orbits and we just don't find that it performs the way that, you know, we would need it to to justify the cost of attending a show like that. As you pointed out so well, it's not free to go to nab. We have had, we have had times when we've attended just to like see what's coming down the pipe.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that sounds like a saying. It's not free to go to nab.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't think it's going to catch on. No, I'm not planning to go, but I always like, you know, reading the news about what comes out of there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Have you ever been?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have never been to nab.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, me neither.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's often cool stuff like there was what's. What's her nuts. I think like ASUS had a modular display there one year and then I think, yeah, hey, what happened to that? We were supposed to like get our hands on it or something and then that just never materialized. Maybe that didn't end up being a real product.

[C]

All right, up next. Hey, LLDD, have you thought about doing a wanathon, a 12 hour stream with guests and you all just playing video games? If I'd personally watch the VOD three times just to add to the views.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I don't think I have ever thought about doing a wanathon.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't do that. Don't actively sit there and watch Wayne show three times, please.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They can if they want. No, it's a free country.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, go outside.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You could do it outside.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. If you're gonna do that. Fair enough. Fair enough. My God. Oh, man. Imagine watching 12 Hours of Wan show and for 2/3 of it, having heard everything before, man, I. I feel like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The quality would really go down after the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

After the. The natural ending of WAN show because we don't have a hard end to WAN show. No, it just ends when we have somewhere to be or we run out of stuff to talk about that we feel is interesting enough. That's why sometimes it ends kind of abruptly where I'm just like, all right, well, see you next week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Because, like, it. Sometimes the. Near the ending might actually feel like the highlight of the show, but once we're out of gas, we're like, pretty out of gas. So it's kind of time to go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. And we'd, like, legitimately have to really make certain people very angry and eat on the show. If we're going for 12 hours. Like, there's no way I could survive. I'm already hungry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've been exercising more again lately, though, so I think that's a big part of why. And I've only eaten borscht for the last two days. Every once in a while, my aunt does, like a giant bash batch of borscht and brings it over to my house with, like a giant loaf of sourdough. And then I just eat nothing but that for. Until it's gone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, dude, I love me some borscht. Ukrainian style. Ukrainian style.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't know there was a difference.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure there's a difference. I'm pretty sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Borscht.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Borscht.

[Linus Sebastian]

Someone said batch of what? So I just repeated it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Borscht.

[Linus Sebastian]

Borscht.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Borscht. It's the world's most polarizing soup stew thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

People either love it or hate it. I don't think I've ever found someone who's kind of tepid on borscht. I mean, feel free to. Feel free to let me know, guys. Maybe the worst word in existence, or at least the ugliest. Yuck. It's the best. It's yum. Okay. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There you go. There you go. All right, what are we supposed to be talking about? Ah, yes. It can happen to anyone. Yeah, okay, you're trying to spin this as a good thing, so why don't I get through the topic and then you can explain your indefensible position.

[Linus Sebastian]

You will agree with me have I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Have I been pwned? Creator and Microsoft Regional director Troy Hunt has been pwned in a blog post earlier this week. Hunt revealed on Tuesday that he had fallen victim to a phishing attack in the form of a fake error email that purported to be from Mailchimp that stole approximately 16,000 records from his Mailchimp mailing list, including the email addresses of both active and lapsed subscribers. He realized his mistake almost immediately, but before he could change his password, the automated attack had exported his mailing list and created a new API key which, if it had gone unnoticed, would have given the attacker persistent access to Hunt's Mailchimp account. Hunt notes that Mailchimp does not offer a phishing resistant 2fa option and that the attack site simply relayed his one time password as soon as he entered it. JB Jordan Block adds the entire blog post is an interesting read, though many of the concerns he has about mailchimp's data retention can probably be answered with because spam laws.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that makes sense. That's interesting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Luke's take on this is that it's a good thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. Go the fishing. The have I been poned Guy got fished. There's always, I mean you've had multiple experiences with this. There's always when, when somebody gets pwned. When somebody gets pwned, there's always the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, oh, but like he does know.

[Linus Sebastian]

That I would have noticed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh sure, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's like, yeah, you know, in this case you might have, but you also don't know the exact scenario that the person was in.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't know what was he in the middle? Was he tired? I think it was. I read his blog post, but I read it earlier this week.

[Linus Sebastian]

He said something. I don't actually remember what it was, but like to me it's like the reason why I don't even remember is because it's not even like super particularly relevant because everybody's got their thing. Like most cases that I know of and it's not ubiquitous, but most cases that I know of, when somebody does get phished or whatever, it's because they're, I don't know, they're checking their phone while they're being driven somewhere or barbecuing Having a conversation with someone you were barbecuing, like there's some amount of distraction. There's something going on in the middle.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Of like a family barbecue.

[Linus Sebastian]

You probably. Troy. Many other people, they're not. They get too many emails to be fully paying attention to every single one they ever receive. And like, pixel peeping every letter, like, it's. It's just not really gonna happen. So I think this is a pretty good counter to the like, oh, but it wouldn't happen to me. It happened to freaking Hunt, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So your argument is that it will help destigmatize.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Getting pwned and making it so that we talk about it more, which will spread awareness of ponedness.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And a lot of the comments that I've seen so far are actually like, oh, wow, it happened to him.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which I think is like a good takeaway from this. It's like, yeah, I mean, it happened to him and I wouldn't shame him for it. The stuff happens. And like, we have. I mean, we have training now here and all this other kind of stuff. It's still possible that it could happen to us. Hopefully the training and whatnot will reduce the amount of times that it happens by making people more aware. But you're never going to be 100% on the ball all the time. Now if someone here fails their, their training, like multiple times or they make mistakes multiple times and it's the same person, then that starts to be like, okay, like, you need to take this more seriously because we're going to send out like phishing tests again. We did one. We're going to do more in the future. And if the same person keeps coming up, that's a red flag. But if you make like one mistake, ideally it's on one of the tests and then you don't make a mistake again and then we're golden. But yeah, I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I was so ready. I'm so ready.

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't even gonna say it. Then I saw your hand queue up for it and I was like, I'm in. I'm totally in. Dive for the content. Yeah. So ultimately, I mean, it wasn't a good thing that those people's emails linked. It wasn't like those things, of course, but it like looking at how many times this stuff happens, the chance of those people's emails LinkedIn leaking, I mean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Somewhere they could lose a lot more than just their emails. 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 23andMe Holding Company is attempting to facilitate a sale by filing for Chapter 11. The company was briefly valued at $6 billion in 2021, but has more recently been valued at 50 million after failing to turn a profit after all this time. Co founder and CEO Ann Wojcicki. I've never heard it pronounced like that. I always heard it. Wojcicki when it was YouTube. Susan is the same spelling. They're sisters. Oh, or were sisters. RIP Susan Ann announced her immediate resignation and is making an independent bid for the company. The company intends to keep operating through bankruptcy proceedings and says that customer access to data and subscriptions won't be affected. But will it though? Won't it though? Yeah, but won't it though? Man, I am so freaking not happy about being right that entrusting your genetic information to some Silicon Valley startup is not gonna work out. And I freaking called it. I'm hard too.

[Linus Sebastian]

I got a lot of pushback.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm still extremely upset with a relative of mine for selling me and the rest of our entire family from now until forever down the river. For what? Out of idle curiosity? That is such a stupid reason to do that. I don't blame anyone who didn't know, but in this case, I explicitly laid out why it's a terrible, terrible idea and was ignored. That's different. The Verge has a great guide on how to delete your 23andMe data, so I would recommend you guys check that out. And our discussion question here is if you were the new owners of 23andMe, what would you do to become profitable? And I think that's the. That's. I guess I kind of jumped to the end of that conversation when I said, hey, all this data is effectively just. It's out there now. Because the first thing that I would do if I was trying to make 23andMe profitable, and I was unscrupulous, is I just sell the data, sell it to the highest bidder, give access to insurance companies. Give access to. I mean, yeah, insurance companies are the ones that would probably ongoing most interested.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because a lot of this information is useful for the entire family.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I've heard, dude, I've heard. I've heard a ton of Americans in our chat being like, they're not allowed to. They're not allowed to use that for coverage. Dude, insurance companies are already using information that they're like not allowed to use when it comes to evaluating how much to charge you for things. Like, it's just a matter of when and how they're going to be busted and whether your watchdogs are going to have any kind of teeth to fight back when it happens, which right now is not looking good, quite frankly. So, yeah, this blows. This absolutely blows. And to be clear, I don't care that 23andMe is going under. I just think this really sucks for the families of people who gave data to this company and are now able to be exploited. Sucks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. This is interesting. GM wasn't allowed to share your driving data, but did without consent to your actual insurance provider. And that data is permanently housed in third party databases that all insurance companies have access to. Yeah, there's precedent for this stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. If you disagree with me, you're actually wrong. So cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Enjoy being wrong, though. I mean, some people like it. Some people like it a lot. You know what? Some people don't like it. Oh, wait, I should talk about our sponsors first. The show is brought to you today by AMD Massive shout out to our longtime partner and sponsor, AMD. You might have seen our AMD $5,000 ultimate tech upgrade series, but if you haven't, you can check out the most recent episode where we upgraded Arty's setup. Dude, how much do you love that Geek Squad helmet I found?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's great.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's his dad's. Yeah, I went spelunking in his basement or in his crawl space. Oh, did you watch it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, dude, his crawl space is epic. I wanted to, like, make an entire channel where I just crawl around in people's crawl spaces and find tech stuff. It would be an amazing show. Anyway, it says, talk about the experience with Arty. Oh, cool. I did that. And highlight one of the most challenging upgrades. Oh, I mean, they're always really fun. I don't. I don't really know. I don't really know what's challenging about them. I. I actually am. The ultimate tech upgrade is one of the few times that I get to spend one on one time with our rank and file team members. I almost never get to hang it. Like, I was. I was. I was noticing this as Bridget and I were filming hers yesterday. So Bridget is. There you go, Bridget. Which camera? That one, Right? Yes, that one. Bridget leads the fashion team for Creator Warehouse. And I was like, dude, we like, never talk anymore because, like, we just have merch meeting, which is like a group meeting. Like, we never, like too many layers. Yeah, we never. We never talk anymore. And it was cool because, like, we haven't like really had a long conversation in like three years or something like that. Like, she's been here for years now. So, yeah, it was. It was cool because we got to, like, reconnect. So that's. That's one of the things I love most about it. I don't. I don't really. I don't really find any of them that challenging. Anyway, now's your chance to win a sweet, sweet treat from amd. And you don't even have to work at lunch. Media Group or Creator, Warehouse or Floatplane.

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

And this treat isn't just sweet. It's the hottest new Radeon 9070 XT graphics card. Did that say signed by Dr. Lisa Su?

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I saw that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You've got to be kidding me. AMD is giving away three 9070 XT's that are signed by AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. That's super cool. Just head to the link in the video description to enter.

[Linus Sebastian]

The picture has four I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's three. Cool, dude. That's so cool. Okay, well. The show is also brought to you by Deleteme. Imagine a stranger buying your personal data. Your address, phone number, email, even your marital status without you even knowing. This is not a fictional horror story. It's happening every day. Data brokers are making money. Yes, like that. They're making money off your personal information. But you don't have to let them. Our sponsor, Deleteme, can help remove your data from hundreds of data brokers. Their team of experts tracks down your information and sends requests to get it wiped from these sites. So just sign up and chill on the couch and they will handle everything. In just seven days, you'll get a detailed report showing where Deleteme discovered your data and how much was removed. And it doesn't stop there. DeleteMe will continuously scan and delete your info, keeping you protected all day year long. Check them out at the link below today and use code when to get 20% off. Finally, the show is brought to you by XSplit. Does your live stream look like a mess? Oh, come on. I did. I set that up myself. All I had was my webcam. Or even worse, is your important live presentation falling apart? Our sponsor, XSplit, makes it easy to create a professional polished stream. No panic required. Setting it up is a breeze. With XSplit's layout wizard, you can easily set up different presentation formats like full split screen, four way split and more. And all you gotta do is drag, drop and resize videos, gifs and images to make it your own. And you can keep things smooth with slick transitions and easy scene switching. For you gamers, you'll love the In Game hud which lets you control your stream recordings and even add widgets like chat and stream status without ever tabbing out. Want more? Get premium for multi platform streaming, no watermarks and unlimited scenes. You can get 30% off your first purchase or subscription with code WAN SHOW30 at LMG GGXSplitwan or by hitting the link in the video description all right, so I didn't expect this, but buildzoid uploaded an apology video last week and I was very surprised. Basically what he said is, hey, I wasn't wrong in my criticism of the way that Linus Tech Tips presented their information about the the combining of the 12 volt pins on the non founders edition 5090s. But what was wrong and not cool was just the aggressive tone. It was unnecessary, it was uncalled for and I want to be better. And I guess here's what I have to say. Maybe the original video was clout chasey. If it was, I don't care because nothing is irredeemable and a simple apology and retraction is all I have ever asked of anyone. In that spirit then I could have brought my concerns to BuildZoid directly as well, rather than talking about it on WAN show. I could have made my case that it felt like a bad faith move for him to criticize in public before reaching out. I could have said that I didn't and I'm sorry for that as well. I think we can all do better. And I don't know, I guess for my part I'm feeling just so done with this whole thing where I get shots taken at me and I get held to the standard of perfection in public that I never set for myself, that I never set for anyone else. But like my baggage here is not his fault, that's not his problem. And I gotta say, like his refreshing willingness to take responsibility for his demeanor.

[Linus Sebastian]

When his critique deep and extensive when.

[Luke Lafreniere]

His critique wasn't wrong. Right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But still taking apology, taking accountability for just being like kind of a dick about it though has restored some of my faith in the ability of the technique to work together.

[Linus Sebastian]

So speaking of his critique not being wrong, I was happy that in the video he pointed out that he wasn't going to not critique in the future.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is like cool. Yeah, that's fine. We don't want to be wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So like yeah, I would rather you correct it so that we're not wrong. I would like to update things so that we're not wrong.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. We want to continue to be less wrong. Yeah. As time goes on, everyone should want.

[Linus Sebastian]

To, to be like, that's the whole idea with scientific things. Right. Is that other people look at it and question it and, and come back at you with, yeah, so, like, we, we do want that. That is good. And like, yeah, I don't know. I'll leave it there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So as far as I'm concerned, water 100% under the bridge. I'd. I'd love to have opportunities to work together in the future. And you know everyone who speculated under his video that it had anything to do with us sending any kind of legal Fred or anything like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, not at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yourself?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because I don't think we had any direct communication.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, of course not. Yeah, I'm. I don't know, dude. I'm so tired of people making assumptions about us. What if someone was kind of a dick and realized they were kind of a dick and they shouldn't, and then they apologized and then what if the person that they were kind of a dick to realized that they were kind of a dick too and was like, hey, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. And then what if they found a way to, like, work together and that was just cool for everyone?

[Linus Sebastian]

Based. Based. Based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. What if it was just. What if the world was just actually that simple and actually that healthy?

[Linus Sebastian]

What?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not allowed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know. Anyway, so I thought I, I was like, blown away.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I braced so hard. So hard. You didn't message me at all. You just Google shared me on a doc, like something, something apology. And I was like, oh, no, I'm ready to go. And then I open it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm like, oh, yeah, it's chill.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cool. Yeah, everything's chill. Yeah, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

We want the collab.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And just.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think, I don't think we're.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just to clarify, not only did I not threaten any kind of legal action to build, I have made it very clear many times in the past, I am not a litigious person and I have never sued anybody.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so we weren't, we weren't going to do that in the first place.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because that's like.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's obviously the wrong move.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Stupid. Yeah, it's like, actually stupid.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think even on like a strictly, like corporate hat on sense. I'm gonna back you up on this a little bit. I think this ties into the whole backpacks thing a little bit. Like not taking care of people if they had backpack problems would have Just had the community turn on us immediately.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, yeah, of course.

[Linus Sebastian]

And go like, going after for something like this, legally, everyone would just hate us immediately. Yeah, because.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, well, they hate us for doing it even though we didn't do it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How dare you do this thing that I made up that you did. What are you even talking about? I don't. I don't actually think a lot of people know why they hate me.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's. It's fun. It's something to do, I guess, cut down the tall stock or whatever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That weird hobby. Dude, that's a weird hobby. Something to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

DAN laughs like you haven't heard of some hobbies.

[C]

Oh, I was laughing at your cutting down the tall stock.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Oh, wait, that's a good reason to hate Linus.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought that's what you said. That's why I was like.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is what I said, but I didn't mean it as in like his actual height.

[C]

Speaking of dicks, I was also talking about the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The clothes too.

[C]

You went there. Oh my God, I thought you did.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's my bad. That's really mean.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's very sensitive about his diminutive status. Why don't we talk about. Why don't we talk about some AI things this week?

[Linus Sebastian]

I wasn't even talking about the clothes either. I was. Oh, man, whatever. It's fine.

[C]

See? Fun hobby.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let's talk about some AI things. This week. Nvidia is rolling out Project X G Assist. It's AI assistant that can run locally on your GPU and is apparently named after the company's fake AI assistant from their April Fool's joke in 2017. I remember that.

[Linus Sebastian]

The little.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I still have one of these because I thought these were so cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

These were really cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, the little. The little usb. The little USB drive that looked like. Yeah, this was awesome. That's super cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of their April Fool's jokes have been. This isn't one, I don't think, but a lot of their April Fool's jokes have actually been fantastic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Running locally on your Nvidia gpu, G Assist can do normal AI stuff like answer questions, but it can also control some third party accessories through API integrations and change some performance related settings instead of just telling you how to do that. That means that somehow Nvidia made a more useful AI assistant for Windows than Microsoft. Wow, good job. If only you could afford a GPU that used it. In other AI news that's actually worth mentioning, Character AI has announced a parental controls feature in the wake of a 14 year old user. Oh wow. Unaliving themselves after being encouraged to do so by one of the company's bots.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a. That's another one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In addition, shortly after this incident, multiple bots impersonating the deceased 14 year old had to be taken off the platform.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is this, Is this. Did the incident happen a while ago or is this new? Because I know this happened.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. In the wake of. I don't know if this is okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

So this is. Hopefully not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I didn't look. The new feature is called Parental Insights and lets users under 18 send a weekly activity report to their parent or guardian if they want to.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're never going to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kids can enable the report in their account preferences which will share their daily average time spent on the platform, the top characters they interacted with, and the amount of time they spent with each character. Character AI says this is a first step in providing parents with information about their kids use of the server. Why would. Why wouldn't you just take start with.

[Linus Sebastian]

Putting the parental controls on the parents side?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What are we.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the first step. That's stupid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like if you're the kind of kid that's like voluntarily being like yes, I would like to send a usage report to my parents. That's not the kind that we need this for. Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

My goodness.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. In other news, Nintendo this is cool. Adds family sharing to switch digital libraries.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whoa.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In an uncommon w consumer friendly move by Big Red, Nintendo is allowing players to more easily share games across multiple systems that are logged into the same Nintendo account with a virtual game card that can be ejected and then loaded. Game cards. Whoa. Can also be lent to different accounts in the same Nintendo family group. In order to lend a virtual game card, both consoles need to be connected to the same network and Internet during the sharing process. And the lendee to the Internet for the initial game launch. Wait, what?

[Linus Sebastian]

What? And the first time they load the game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. Has to be connected to the Internet for the initial game launch. After that the borrowed license will last for 14 days without requiring Internet access.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then I wouldn't be surprised if you could do it again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think what they're saying is you could use it mobiley for 14 days so you could be on other networks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is so cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's actually like pretty sick. So in chat said thanks Gabon and honestly sometimes I like to dunk on Steam because people are like too nice to Steam sometimes. But I think that's fair.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think this is going to put a ton of pressure on Microsoft and Sony too. Yeah, like that's been a huge thing. I mean, we made a whole video about it earlier last year where we talked about digital versus physical games and the whole resale and lending being a huge plus for physical games. But this changes the calculus quite a lot because most people, I mean, you're still not able to sell them, so they're still room to improve. Yeah, but most people that I would lend a game to are people that I could pretty easily be on the same WI fi as. That's super cool. And this seems like it'd be pretty easy to fake just saying. Oh yeah, like trivially easy.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

To pretend to be on the same network.

[Linus Sebastian]

But you're right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

But yeah, most people won't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very cool. Do you think that this is less to do with Valve and more to do with Nintendo, recognizing that they have real competition in the handheld space now, including val, because remember that. But. But also including piracy of their own games because remember, one of the biggest deterrents for pirates is making legitimate ownership better and better. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's why movie piracy is coming back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Our, our, our discussion question here is have you ever had a hard time getting a digital game to work on a secondary switch? I have. While traveling. The plane ride sucked. F you past Nintendo and thank you, current Nintendo. Okay, who did this topic? I don't even know.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know what that means. I also don't know what that means.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They weren't online and they couldn't. Yeah, they couldn't get it working on their secondary switch.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't know that was the thing at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I only have one switch, so I didn't either. Yeah, but apparently it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Canada is freezing rebates being paid to Tesla and barring them from any future rebate programs. Yeah, this is after Tesla filed an unbelievable number of EV rebate claims, including almost $20 million Canadian from over 4,000 auto sales at one Quebec City dealer in a single weekend. Actually, I saw an article about this where someone did the math for like how many cars they would have had to sell one of cars per minute. Yeah, it was like every two minutes they would have had to sell a car. Car. And there's like just no way that happened. Yeah. Yeah, Ridiculous. So the Canadian federal government has frozen 43 million Canadian dollars in rebate payments until each claim is individually investigated and determined to be valid. Transport Canada has also been directed to change the eligibility requirements for future rebate programs to ensure that Tesla's no longer qualify while the illegitimate and illegal US Tariffs are imposed against Canada. Fascinating. Oh man, it's. We are. We are headed for very interesting times.

[Linus Sebastian]

Isn't it so cool being in a trade war? No, I love it. I mean, other things that I love include YouTube tests turning off channel notifications for overwhelmed users. YouTube says it's running a small experiment in which it turns off notifications to certain channels a user subscribe to. The company says the test will impact viewers who are subscribed to a channel and have set notifications for that channel to all, yet haven't recently interacted with those notifications. Actively engaged users with push notifications enabled will continue to receive them. YouTube wants to prevent users from turning off all notifications from the YouTube app entirely, which may. Which they may often do when they've opted to receive all notifications from many channels. Yeah, YouTube would prefer users to update their channel specific preferences in the app instead, but they were never going to do that. So here we are. YouTube says channels that upload infrequently will not have their notifications affected, although it didn't specify what qualifies as infrequently. YouTube is of course interested in taking measures that will encourage user engagement, but it also says that users choosing to disable notifications entirely can negatively impact creators. Discussion. Question is, where do you draw the line in terms of the actions platforms can take to protect their metrics? Does disabling notifications for specific channels count as a platform change or interfering with user autonomy?

[Luke Lafreniere]

What user Autonomy? I mean, YouTube's been fully algorithmic for years and years and years. So long.

[Linus Sebastian]

I honestly thought they already did this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This. Yeah, I was surprised to read that this was news.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I guess that's all I really have to say about that. Why don't we flip over to After Dark?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it does annoy me a little bit because I wonder how they measure this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because you know what annoys me? The fact that I have LAN gaming to do and you're dragging out this last topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

One small additional thing to say. I don't really like watching YouTube on my phone, so I'll sometimes use it as a notification engine, but I'll swipe it away and then go watch that video later on my desktop.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, interesting. Fascinating. Okay, now it's time for After Dark. Hey. Hey, Linus.

[C]

A while ago I got a survey due to an LTT purchase on wan. You said you disagree with it fundamentally, but you are acquiescing to the team. Do you have any outcomes or thoughts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

About any of this? Yeah. So the Part that I fundamentally disagreed with was how much we paid for it. Yeah, it was expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember the exact amount, but it was with, like a fancy. Do you want to just tell them?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Go away. We're not always transparent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What now I'm curious.

[Linus Sebastian]

Fight me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I.

[Linus Sebastian]

You don't know it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I. Yeah, I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Can't get out of me. Nice try.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a weird. What a weird thing to get aggressive.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was so much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it was a lot of money. It was definitely more than $10,000. I don't remember how much it was. Yeah, okay. Well, the point is that I felt a lot of the things that we were asking were things that were fairly easily ascertainable by just looking at past sales data and, you know, looking at customer profile data that we kind of have from just our YouTube viewers. However, the argument that was made to me was that our YouTube demographics are not necessarily identical to our creator warehouse demographics and that if we ever want to have any hope of growing beyond our current customer base, we should work to understand things about them other than that they watch ltt. And so I basically said, okay, maybe there's something useful that we obtained from it. I think that at some point in that conversation, I basically said, okay, well, yeah, I'll write the check, but I would like us to define what success for this is, and I'd like to see if it was successful. I don't know if I ever. I don't know. It's possible. I saw that. I don't remember seeing it. So maybe it was good and maybe it was stupid. Scrappy. DP says you don't get to make those decisions anymore. You are right. I mean, I do get to make decisions about which checks I sign. I actually do get to make decisions in that case.

[Linus Sebastian]

That is a. That is a yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Even at the very highest level. And I'm talking. Taryn and me, we. We have checks and balances for, you know, how much you can spend without, like, talking to somebody. Right. Like, the only person in the company who could spend a literally unlimited amount of money without talking to someone is Yvonne. And she wouldn't. She's so cheap. I don't mean cheap in like, like, her. Her last name kind of way. I mean, like, I don't. I mean, like, she's frugal. Dan, quick change the subject.

[C]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hi, Dll.

[C]

How do you go about weighing cost of new systems versus the benefits? We have the opportunity to use a fantastic, progressive new tool. But there is pressure to save money and use a subpar tool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sometimes it can make sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh man. There's a lot of intangibles though.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was asked to all of us.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. What I would say is sometimes it can make sense to use the cheaper tool, but something you have to measure is like, what loss is there, what other losses there from using the cheaper tools? It's not worth it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And losses are not always measurable. Like they're not always in terms of money. Like you can have, like you can have someone using, you know, an old 5 by 4 12, 80 by, you know, 1024 LCD and they could probably do their job, but are they going to like jump at the next opportunity to move somewhere else? Maybe it's like worth it to just give them a, you know, an ultra wide. Right? Like that's, that's such a simple example. But there's so many things that are like that. I think a lot of the time the best way to answer it is through talking to people. Like, if Creator Warehouse came to me and said, you know, hey, we really want a lathe, okay. I'd be like, okay, a lathe is this many dollars. If I told you you can only have this many dollars, would you still spend it on a lathe? I can afford this many dollars, sure. So that's not the conversation. Is there anything else you'd rather have and that would impact your productivity and your happiness more? You know, tell me about that. Tell me about the pros and cons so we can make a decision together. I mean, collaboration and communication is almost always the answer. It's just that humans, in spite of our brains being evolutionarily advantaged for those things, still kind of suck at it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sometimes you just want to do the lizard thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, lizard brain, let's go.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, but I mean like Airtable, you said communication, collaboration. Airtable is a decent example. It's not the cheapest option, sure. But we're trying to go for it because we think it'll be a very significant improvement. I think it will. The amount per user that we're paying I think will be easily covered in the like time and issue savings that we'll have from running it. So at that point it's like, whereas.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The same company might have made a different decision 10 years prior, 10 years prior, I would have said, I don't have time to figure this Airtable thing out. The very cost, no way we would have done it. The very cost of figuring out how to use it would not even be worth it, let alone the ongoing cost of running it. Use a Google sheet, Especially at the.

[Linus Sebastian]

Scale that we were at.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like we didn't have the same type of problems.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, no.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. But to a much smaller degree. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crystal says you technically can make those decisions. I technically can't. Back to the approval limits. I literally don't even know where the checkbook is. I would have to talk to someone to know where it is. It's not that I couldn't. It's not that I couldn't have a conversation with Yvonne and go, hey, I need to be able to spend money at a moment's notice without you knowing anything about it. I don't think that would like. I think she'd be like, why? And that would be. I wouldn't have a good reason for that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Especially with the precedent of that never being required.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yeah. But no, I literally cannot spend unlimited amounts of money without any. Without anybody else knowing about it. All right.

[C]

Okay, next, with the current turbulent in quotes economy, what do you think of hardware startups doing crowdfunding instead of seeking traditional venture capitalist investment? For example, crowdfunding a prosumer version of your product?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that it's, I mean, it's the same trade offs that crowdfunding has always brought. Right. You are essentially asking for like venture capital and you're not giving up any equity. So, you know, as. From a company standpoint, I totally understand why you want to do that. You, you'd want to do that every time. But from a, from a, from a, an investor standpoint, I use that term extremely loosely because you will not get a return. You have not made an investment. There is basically no advantage. You are, you are extremely disadvantaged and you will, you know, maybe get something that is really great. I'm trying to think of like a, like a Kickstarter that turned out great. Like, okay, Ayaneo did some cool Kickstarters like way back in the day. Or maybe you will get something that is like kind of what you thought it would be, but ultimately disappoints like a jibo. Or maybe you will get nothing like Luke's Coalhammer. You have no way of knowing. So what do I think about it? I think you shouldn't buy that, but I totally understand why companies are into it. Right. Are you asking, like, if we would do that? Oh, eg, crowdfunding a prosumer version of your product. I could see us crowdfunding something at some point, but we wouldn't do it on anything where we don't have an extremely high degree of confidence that we can bring it to market. And we also are also just like, funded by our, our daily operations and cash flow. So at the end of the day, if it, like, didn't work out with the money that we raised through crowdfunding, we would just push it over the line. So I, I just, I just don't. I don't know. I'm not saying. I'm not going to say never, but especially given the way that I've advocated against pre ordering, I don't see how we could really like a prosumer version of our product. Like, if it was a variant. I don't know. I. I could. Yeah. Like, I could see us. I could see us crowdfunding. Like a version of a backpack.

[C]

I was gonna say Lux.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There are things where I could see it making sense where there's just.

[Linus Sebastian]

Would it be crowdfunding, though, or would.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It be like, presale almost? Yeah, but that's what a lot of crowdfunding campaigns are, right, Is they're essentially just gauging interest so you produce the right number of them so you don't overstock or understock. Right. Maybe Nvidia should crowdfund their GPUs so they produce enough of them. Just an idea scam.

[C]

All right, let's see what else? What's your advice? To balance a time consuming or demanding job, but not sacrificing time for family or yourself on a daily basis.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Set boundaries for your job. That's the only, that's the only answer. You know, try to waste less time commuting. It's really important to me. I commuted like almost two hours each way when I was in school, and then I commuted like 45 minutes each way when I worked at NCIX for the first little while. And then I think it was down to like 35 once I. Once I moved in with Yvonne, but it was too much. I'm. I'm quite a bit less than that now. Still feels like too much. And as much as it's a huge decision to, like, move if you're really secure in your workplace, I would say that's one way to gain back time every day, is to spend less time commuting. You might also be able to talk about, like, hybrid work. Like, maybe you can work from home partially. That's another way to cut down on your commute. Other than that. Yeah, that, that's about it. You're just gonna have to. You're just gonna have to set boundaries and you're gonna have to recognize that setting boundaries may have consequences that you aren't happy with. Like, depending on your workplace, you may get passed up for a promotion for someone who just, like, puts in 12 hours a day, and you may kind of go, well, like, but, like, I can't do that, and your boss might not care, and that just might be what happens. And I'm not saying that's right. I'm not saying it should be like that. I'm not saying that that's fair, but it is. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

When looking at places to live, I don't know, especially around here, having some pretty fat commutes to be able to get cool places is very attractive until you, like, break down. Like, okay, that's. How many hours a week am I driving? How many hours is that a month? How many hours is that a year? Once I've lived here for five years.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How many have I life to drive my car? Dang.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[C]

Hey, Narcissist doesn't know. And, Dan, love your stuff and your tech video side projects. What's the difference between the blank and labs blank T shirt? I can't figure it out from the product pages.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of them is a shirt, and one of them is a shirt that we have to sell enough of to register our trademark.

[Linus Sebastian]

Did we? Nice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I mean, yay. It's a good shirt. Just. It just says. It just says labs in the. In the back. Like, literally, it is not even visible on the outside of the shirt.

[Linus Sebastian]

Totally blank.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I get such a kick out of it. I saw another one of these recently when people are like, yeah, I would love to buy your merch, but I just don't. You know, I don't like really prominent branding on stuff, and I'm like, what the are you talking about? Like, what even is this? What are you talking about?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, this one has circle back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, barely.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, it's a lot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, never mind. That's not. Okay.

[C]

Yeah, we don't do logos.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's unfortunately a very bad example.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ignore that. Ignore that. Okay, fine. How about the one I'm wearing then?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there's just a little tiny logo there. Like, and honestly, most of. The. Most of the shirts that I wear.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Has even happened in the back.

[Linus Sebastian]

Practically nothing. And, I mean, we also sell blanks and have, like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw. I saw someone complain.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not tall ones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I saw someone complain that the commuter bag ignored.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, that's, like, super was branded. What are you talking about? You literally couldn't find a bag on earth that has more subtle Branding than our commuter backpack. Get real. All right.

[C]

Hi, three wise guys. What's the deal with the RGB shirts? I'm an autistic person, and they are the one of the few shirts that I can consistently wear all the time. I need more. They're getting threadbare.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. You might want to forward this one to the CW team and maybe they can get an answer.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. Dear cw, cannot. My tall shirts are getting thread, but they're not. They're actually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, you can't do that.

[C]

They've not checked the box, so I will do it manually.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, okay.

[C]

Linus, would you think of selling your precision bits individually instead of his sets? I broke one and I need a replacement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes. We've wanted to do individual bits ever since we launched the original screwdriver. The logistics of maintaining accuracy with little bits, like little bits is really hard, and we haven't gotten there yet. We've just had so much more pressing fish to fry. I really, really, really want to do it. In the meantime, reach out to customer service, and maybe they can arrange something one off for you. But I'm not promising anything.

[C]

Hi, Linus. I was wondering if you have any background experience with programming.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[C]

Nothing?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[C]

What if you had time?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, here's the thing. Time equals money. I have money, so therefore I do have time. But that's other people's time. So if I needed something programmed, what would I do? I don't have literal time, like this kind, but I can buy time. I. I remember having this conversation with a buddy of mine who runs another badminton center in the lower mainland, like. Like years ago. And he was giving me a hard time about, like, spending way too much on something, and he's like. And I'm. And I'm like, look. Money, yes. Time, no. So that's why I made the decision I made.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then the thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, he says that to me, like, every time I see him now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Money, yes. Time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, yeah. That is humor. Money, yes. Time, no. Why do you even talk to you, man?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, yes, the CEO PC is still deployed. Jacob Framework in floatplane chat. Of course it is. We don't. That's the thing. I get called a liar all the time.

[Linus Sebastian]

So weird and chaotic. Every time I go into his office.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He has this crazy blown up computer. Yeah, I loved it, though. But we just like. Oh, wait, we didn't talk about Honey, says Jack Logan.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't think you're right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It never ended up in the doc. So one of the co founders of Honey did an AMA this week and basically outlined that Mega Leg's video was. Aside from not being entirely in good faith, which was pretty obvious to us, and aside from being old news, which was pretty obvious, that was very true. Given that a lot of what he talked about was stuff that had been covered by videos years prior. So maybe that was what he meant by a multi year investigation was that someone else had made a video about it years ago and he finally watched it. Aside from all that, it appears and I, I, I, I, I. Look, I'm not going to get between them on this. I'm just annoyed that I got dragged into it at all because the whole thing is ridiculous. But basically he outlined a very compelling case for how Mega Leg doesn't appear to have been entirely forthright and appears to have gone with a. An overly negative conspiratorial conclusion that is at best not well supported by the data that he collected.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't read this thing at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have.

[Linus Sebastian]

I can't comment.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I read the whole thing. Yeah. So cool. And really my question is how many times do I have to turn out to not be the asshole for that to stop being the narrative? It doesn't seem to matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

At least at a minimum one more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At least once more. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then that time it will be at least one more time again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What's that? What's that reference? That's a.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a. That's a reference. I'm pretty sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Disturbed Freak says, Luke, you're looking bored. Surely you're not tired already.

[Linus Sebastian]

I woke up at like 5 today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

But I'll be fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice. I can't wait to see what happens with all the performative lawsuits about it. Yeah, whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And everyone like asking why I'm not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because I'm not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Man. It's really interesting how little traction this thing got.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, I know. It's amazing how little traction the it turns out that the explosive allegations weren't true. Gets like amazing the amount of damage that can be done by a bunch of assumptions and how utterly impossible it is to undo the damage. It's really frustrating.

[C]

Got one more for you here. Are you still comment?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, just me. It just makes me want to. Just makes me want to actually give some, give people something to be angry about. Like what could I do? What could I do? We could do Linus Coin.

[Linus Sebastian]

You could do anything, really. The, the ama.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I took that as permission. Really? Anything.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, people need jobs, especially right now.

[C]

Well, I mean that was. That would cause outrage. What if we just dissolve the company.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That would be pretty good. That'd be a good one.

[C]

That would be excellent.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. I could do it live. I could live stream myself, like, joyfully terminating everyone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wow.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Like, one at a time.

[Linus Sebastian]

You have to add joy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Like, no, I'd have to be, like, enthusiastic about it. I think that would pretty much trash my reputation forever. Then again, it does. Nothing seems to matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Someone out there would be like, that's based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. It's like, why is. Why is being an asshole cool?

[Linus Sebastian]

There will be at least one person on your screen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Seriously, why is being a dick to people. People cool? It's not.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why do. Why do we treat it like it's a good thing? It's not.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You should, like, be a reasonable human.

[Linus Sebastian]

And engage in good faith negativity is attractive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know. Because we're humans.

[C]

Big ape, monkey, leader of tribe.

[Linus Sebastian]

He said thing. Oh, there you go. Have I said it once? This whole stream?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but you did it intentionally.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[C]

Paying dividends.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, go ahead.

[Linus Sebastian]

I haven't used mine. I need to use mine more.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, you should pivot to selling Aries tech products. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If I wanted to make the real money, I think it would probably be in. Actually, I. I probably just shouldn't say. This is going to make people mad. Okay, go ahead.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's interesting that the. The Reddit thread for the honey thing was, like, downloaded to oblivion. It's currently at zero.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Really?

[Linus Sebastian]

But his replies are not. It's almost like all of the replies are positive.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's almost like haters, I think they just don't want to have their narrative challenged.

[Linus Sebastian]

My question is, I suspect people didn't. I haven't read it, but I also haven't voted on it. But I wonder if people read it or if they just downloaded it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, there's no way that they read it and then downvoted.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then maybe the reason why all the comments are being upvoted is you would have to actually go in and find them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I guarantee you 100% that that's what happened. Because people don't want. Because if they brigaded and if they were a complete asshole, they don't want to have to face that. It's way easier to just go, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. They're bad, they're bad, they're bad. Down vote, down vote, than to find out what actually happened. That's way easier, like, on your psyche. So it's. It's just such a coward's way out.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hmm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, Dan.

[C]

Hey, lld Love the show, love the products. Linus, did you save any of your childhood toys to pass on to your own kids? I saved a giant bin of K'nex that my son and I now build together.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I have a couple of things. I have a little Galaxian. I'm trying to remember what it's called. Yeah, I have one of these. And my kids played with it, like, a couple times, but mostly weren't interested because my house is also full of better video games. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I have a little toy piano that a couple of my kids kind of played with a little bit. Oh. Oh. I have that weird wrestler dude figure that I sent you That's. Apparently someone was trying to sell it on Facebook marketplace for, like, 80 bucks or something, and I was like, really? I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Stretch guy, right?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, no, no, it wasn't Stretch Armstrong. It's just, like, a weird wrestler.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, right. No, I remember that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some 80s guy in a. In a Speedo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, I mean, they look similar, so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly. Dude, I wish I had a Stretch Armstrong. Listen, things were worth money at one point. Yeah, mostly. I don't. I lost almost all my, like, kid, kid childhood stuff when I moved from my dad's to my mom's, including my Super Nintendo and all my games. Like, I just. I just, like, grabbed the clothes on my back and, like, left. So I have almost nothing from before that. And then, like, after that, I was mostly into video games and computers. And I'm not super sentimental about most of that stuff, so I haven't really. I haven't really, like, held on to any of it. I've. I've reacquired some stuff. Like, I. I reacquired the Top Gun joystick that I spent all those hours and hours and hours playing Top. Playing Tie Fighter with before I moved. But that's. It's not my original one. It's. It's. It's a reacquisition. Brandon M. Asks Evil man and the Saints, have you guys ever considered branching into electronic toddler toys? I'd love to see an LTT gaming PC akin to a leapfrog or one of those overtly kitty controllers. No, I can tell you right now, kids, products are a ton of work. There's a ton of regulatory hoops to jump through in terms of value. You got to validate every paint that goes on it. You got to do this, you got to do that. Getting the shape sorter to market was a nightmare. I'm not sure we could ever have any hope of making money on it with all the time and money that we spent validating that stupid thing. And then on the flip side, anything with electronics in it? Oh, actually, I think it's the wireless communication that's the hold up. So have you seen that little, like, kind of rubber old school CRT with a tower under it thing that has, like, a screen in the front?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And it's a lamp.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you can boop the top of it, and it changes the color and stuff, and you can, like, communicate with it wirelessly. That's been in purgatory for, like, a year. So anything? Electronics, Bunch of hurdles. Anything, Kids, A bunch of hurdles. We ain't combining them no time soon. No time soon. And yes, that is evil. That is my devious plan to not make any kids electronics. Thanks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Very good. No, that's just who he is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, we'll see you again next week. Same bad time, same bad channel.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or not. I don't know. Bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right, time to go. Game.