YouTube Killed Shorts - WAN Show April 17, 2026

Summary

The WAN Show: "YouTube Killed Shorts" – April 17, 2026

Hosted by: Linus Sebastian & Luke Lafreniere
Date: April 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week's WAN Show dives into breaking tech news and industry quirks with Linus and Luke. The headline topic is YouTube’s change allowing users to limit or hide Shorts—a small but meaningful shift after user pressure and regulatory scrutiny. They explore live how the feature works (or doesn’t), review industry moves like Allbirds’ pivot to AI, discuss game preservation legislation, major software shifts (DaVinci Resolve as a Lightroom alternative), Apple’s educational playbook, and hardware/industry oddities. As always, the show is laced with the hosts' trademark humor, banter, and candid opinions.

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Key Topics & Timestamps

1. YouTube’s “Hide Shorts” Update

00:02:08 – 00:16:41

• Context: YouTube now lets users set Shorts’ daily time limit to zero, theoretically hiding Shorts from their experience.
• Linus demonstrates the new feature live, but struggles to find or activate it. The setting’s availability appears inconsistent based on user reports (regional & slow rollout).
• Linus speculates YouTube is “percentage rolling” to avoid catastrophic bugs—“It’s way better to break 3% of your users than 100%” (05:18).
• Does it really hide Shorts?: After some chat feedback and testing, it seems functionality depends on device, region, and app version. Some users still see Shorts, others successfully hide them.
• Luke & Linus lament how easy it is to bypass time limits:

  “It’s too easy to bypass. That’s why I just uninstall them now.” – Luke (07:19)
  “That was the only thing that worked for me.” – Linus (07:24)

• Discussion on “doomscrolling” and behavioral manipulation by social media platforms, including Reddit:

  “Reddit got rid of r/all… it has completely killed my habit.” – Linus (08:14)

Memorable Moment

• Banter about Linus watching Spider-Man/Elsa videos, and the awkwardness of showing their YouTube history live (03:44).

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2. LTT Labs Testing & Article Plug – Display Brightness

09:30 – 13:40

• LTT Labs tested minimum brightness for various phones: many now achieve under 1 nit, sometimes down to a thousandth.
• Linus lauds the latest iPhone, especially for bedtime use with ultra-low brightness.
• Jokes about “being doctors” and running a “study on 400,000 people over two decades”

  “We personally ran a peer reviewed study…” – Luke (tongue-in-cheek) (11:27)

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3. DaVinci Resolve 21: Free Lightroom Alternative

16:50 – 22:12

• DaVinci Resolve gets a dedicated photo page, supporting RAW from major manufacturers and adding powerful editing tools.
• Most features are free; Magic Mask and Film Look require a one-time $295 Studio upgrade.
• Linus highlights the value compared to Adobe’s recurring fees:

  “Blackmagic, dude, they don’t do everything right, but they’re pretty based.” – Linus (17:58)
  “Do I go to our production team and basically say, are we getting close now?” – Linus (19:24)

• Linus and Luke recount the ever-increasing cost of Adobe subscriptions at LMG (“it’s a butt ton” of money).

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4. California Bill: Long-Term Support for Online Games

22:55 – 30:57

• The “Protect Our Games” Act (AB 1921) will require warning and options for customers before digital games lose server support.
• Options include: local-playable versions, patches, or refunds.
• Notable exclusions: subscription-based games, truly “free” games, and games where access retention isn’t possible.
• Discusses how this will impact game preservation and ownership:

  “Starting on the shutdown date, the operator would be required to provide purchasers with at least one of the: a new version... a patch... or a full refund.” – Linus (25:00)

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5. Apple’s Renewed Push in Education

52:21 – 63:44

• Apple is positioning inexpensive iPads and MacBook Neos as Chromebook-killers, targeting K-12 and higher education.
• Linus speculates on Tim Cook’s legacy, characterizing this as a power move to “pipeline” users into Apple’s walled garden.
• Highlights Apple’s competitive hardware pricing and the critical importance of providing real computers in the classroom, not just tablets.
• Discussion on product colorways and consumer risk aversion, with anecdotes about failed pink product launches and trend data.

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6. Nvidia N1 ARM SoC Laptops Leak

87:18 – 91:02

• Engineering samples of Nvidia’s first PC-targeted ARM SoC leak, targeting the premium Windows-on-ARM segment with powerful onboard graphics.
• Uncertainty about compatibility:

  “It’s got Nvidia-grade onboard graphics, but it will have ARM-on-Windows grade game compatibility issues.” – Linus (88:49)

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7. VRAM Management Fixes for Linux Gamers on 8GB GPUs

115:16 – 116:32

• Natalie Vock (Valve) developed a Linux kernel patch that prioritizes gaming foreground apps for VRAM allocation, greatly reducing performance drops for 8GB GPUs.
• Linus notes it's currently AMD only due to Nvidia’s closed drivers; integration pending in mainstream distros.

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8. Microsoft Game Pass “Too Expensive” & COD Drama

96:59 – 100:25

• New Xbox/Microsoft Gaming leadership admits in a leaked memo that Game Pass has become overpriced and needs restructuring—possibly inspired by rumors the latest Call of Duty won’t immediately hit Game Pass despite previous promises.
• Luke’s vindication as an early skeptic of subscription game services:

  “If everyone ends up subscribing, then they have all of the power, all the leverage, and that never goes well.” – Luke (100:25)

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9. Other Noteworthy/Amusing Segments

Allbirds Becomes “New Bird AI” (108:47 – 110:27)

• Struggling shoe retailer gives up on shoes, pivots to leasing AI compute “infrastructure,” and their stock surges.

  “That fits the classic pattern… dying companies bolting blockchain onto their names to pump the stock. And now it's AI.” – Luke (108:47)

Insane PlayStation 4 FIFA Bot Farm (93:02 – 95:15)

• Ukrainian warehouse discovered packed with thousands of PS4s farming FIFA Ultimate Team cards for profit.
• Linus marvels:

  “Imagine the investor pitch: ‘I have a foolproof plan… all I need is a small loan of 3,800 PlayStations.’” (94:14)

Concert Bootleg Cassette Archive (128:15 – 131:06)

• Volunteer digitizing over 10,000 live concert tapes. Linus ruminates on live music as a “for-the-moment experience,” but acknowledges the historical value.

YouTube Channel Transition

• Linus warns viewers to subscribe to the WAN Show channel immediately; cross-posting/VOD duplicates may force an earlier-than-planned move. (143:57)

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Notable Quotes & Banter

• On YouTube’s Shorts Limit Setting:

  “As long as you’re not me, then you may have the option to limit your shorts to zero minutes. Wow, that blows.” – Linus (04:36)

• On Monetizing Disruption:

  “I’m always going to root for a disruptor coming in and making life more difficult for a monopoly—especially one that, frankly, I feel has abused their position.” – Linus, on DaVinci vs. Adobe (20:52)

• Stealth Archer Meta in Elder Scrolls (After Dark):

  “Everything evolves into a crab. Everything also evolves into a stealth archer.” – Luke (142:58)

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After Dark Q&A & Community Highlights

• Cable Sensitivity & TRUSPEC Feedback: Linus confirms positive feedback on robust USB cables, especially for Android Auto and external storage use. (134:25)
• 3D Printing with Kids: Linus shares his children are proficient in Tinkercad, a kid-friendly CAD tool.
• Braces Pain: Linus details current mouth pain from active orthodontic work, closes the show early.

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Quick Hits

• BYD’s 5-Minute EV Charging: Chinese auto giant rolls out rapid charge for mainstream models, possibly removing a major barrier to EV adoption. (120:53)
• Google to Penalize Back Button Hijacking: Starting June, Google will punish manipulative sites in search rankings. (123:16)
• Major News Orgs Block Internet Archive: Attempt to prevent AI training/archiving could threaten preservation, marks a copyright-era struggle. (125:56)

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Conclusion

This episode spotlights shifting tech landscapes: platforms (YouTube), business pivots (Allbirds), regulatory interventions (game preservation), and advancing alternatives (Resolve vs. Lightroom, Apple vs. Chromebooks, Nvidia’s ARM laptop ambitions). It also revels in internet curiosities, practical software/hardware news, and celebrates/laments the cyclic fights for user control. Linus and Luke’s camaraderie and real-time demos (and failures) keep it honest and lively.

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Full Topics (in brief, omitting sponsor plugs/ads/outros)

• YouTube finally lets users (sometimes) hide Shorts
• LTT Labs: Minimum display brightness roundup
• DaVinci Resolve 21 as Lightroom rival
• California proposes digital games shutdown regulations
• Apple’s push to win back classrooms from Chromebooks
• Nvidia’s N1 ARM laptop SoC leaks
• Major Linux VRAM fix for 8GB GPUs
• Game Pass price hike drama, possible COD snub
• Allbirds ditches shoes for an AI startup boom
• Wild FIFA PS4 bot-farm in Ukraine
• News orgs block Internet Archive/AI crawlers, and archiving live bootleg concerts

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To catch future episodes (soon exclusively): Subscribe to the WAN Show channel!

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”So just throwing that out there. Make sure you’re subscribed to the WAN show channel, because we may have to stop streaming on the LTT channel sooner rather than later.” – Linus (143:57)

Transcript

[Linus Sebastian]

It's time to bring on the blooms at the Home Depot with Spring Garden Deals. Find savings on hanging baskets and flowers to brighten your backyard or any space that needs instant color. Then get everything you need to plant and protect them, with low prices guaranteed on soil and mulch. Dig into Spring garden deals for four days at the Home Depot now through May 10th. Exquisite supply. See homedepot.com pricematch for details. Now it's the Wan Show. We've got a great show lined up for you today. There will be no singing of that song, but what there will be is talking about how YouTube has yielded and finally is allowing not just kids but all users to limit their YouTube shorts to zero minutes, which is pretty flipping incredible. Another incredible piece of news. I don't know if this really falls in with our positive news WAN show thing that we've got going on for the month of April, but it's certainly hilarious. Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds has made a bizarre pivot from shoes to AI, which has caused their stock to absolutely explode in value.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know if that's a good News Rancho topic.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fair enough, good enough, fair enough. California Bill would require long term support for server connected games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. That's freaking awesome. At least it seems on the surface.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, other than that, I don't know. I'm gonna go with this one. DaVinci Resolve 21 is now a lightroom alternative with raw editing, tethering, masking and more, which is great because it's free.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is so cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's great.

[Linus Sebastian]

The show is brought to you today by Zero Bounce, AMD, MSI and Square, alongside our rap partner dBrand, our laptop partner Razer, and our chair partner also Razor. Why don't we jump right into our headline topic today, which is that YouTube is now allowing you to hide shorts. So if you're the type of person who just plain doesn't enjoy them and doesn't want to see them, or if you're the type of person who's on completely the other end of the spectrum and enjoys them too much and wants tools to help you with your self control, YouTube has is moving in the right direction.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because I don't think what they're doing hides shorts. I think saying it hides shorts is actually just incorrect, is it not?

[Linus Sebastian]

So it seems a little complicated depending on the coverage I've seen of it either it sounds like shorts will still appear within the interface, but they will be treated like regular videos rather than just allowing you to swipe endlessly through them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have a hard time believing that too.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or it sounds like if you set it to 0 minutes and then actually fully, like, close the app and reopen it, they should just be gone.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe people didn't reload their app.

[Linus Sebastian]

So what I'm thinking is, hey, it. We'll do it live. Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's pop over. Let's pop over onto here. I'm going to fire up my YouTube app. I've got. Yep. Okay, cool. I'm on my account with premium here. So instructions. Where do I go? I go show the camera a little bit more. Yeah, well, I'm trying to be careful just in case something incriminating comes up.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That makes sense. Linus watches Spider man and Elsa. Content.

[Linus Sebastian]

Was it. How did you know?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Show that to the camera.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. You might have to actually find instructions because I thought this would be. I thought this would be really straightforward. I don't actually see it. Purchases and memberships. Oh, time management.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There should be a short speed limit menu.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I got it. So I'm here in time management, and then all I gotta do is go to my daily limits. Short speed limit. And mine is still 15 minutes. Well, what the crap? Okay, I'm gonna close the app.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Do you need to update the app?

[Dan]

Maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, this wouldn't be the first time that I've run into issues where foldable devices do not necessarily get the best version of the app.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Let me get it installed just in case.

[Linus Sebastian]

Daily limits. Nope. All right, well, good news, everyone. As long as you're not me, then you may have the option to limit your shorts to zero minutes. Wow, that blows. Okay, how's it going for chat?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm updating and checking mine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Rocketman619 says I'm doing it on mine. I don't see the option either. Nullifier says isn't there on my graphene. Pixel crystals. Got it, though. Okay, mine is at zero.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So how does it behave, though?

[Linus Sebastian]

Headline says not me on latest iOS. I don't have the option. It worked for me, says Blake Mavericks on a Pixel 10 Pro XL. So it looks like it depends. So a lot of people are speculating that this might be a regional update, but I suspect less than being regional. It's probably just a slow rollout because when you operate at the kind of scale that Google does, you do percentage rollouts. You do not roll something out to 100% of users all at once, because you never know what something might break. And it's way better to break 3% of your users than 10% of them than 20% of them, versus just immediately breaking 100% of them. It gives you a lot more flexibility to stop the slow roll that you're doing versus, like, trying to take seas back seas. A catastrophic global rollout. So, unfortunately, we don't get to try it today. Unless, of course, Luke's works.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

It did not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nope.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan, did you try it? Oh, yeah. Oh, you got your phone right there. Yeah. All right, cool. He's mute today, I suppose.

[Dan]

No, it's not working.

[Linus Sebastian]

Dan doesn't talk anymore. You know what? I like it better this way. No, forget it. No, I'm good. Oh, no, no, I'm. Why?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you know?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, why did you. Why did you lash out at him? All right, thanks, Dan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's saying he has too many buttons and he just accidentally pressed the wrong button because he has too many buttons. So many things to do.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, either way. Either way, I look forward to this being rolled out to me because I just don't want to see many shorts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if it actually works, I look forward to it as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

While I don't necessarily know how useful this is going to be for people who find themselves quite addicted to doom scrolling and quite addicted to shorts, because I don't know if you've ever set a time limit on an app in your phone, how easy it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's too easy to bypass. That's why I just uninstall them now.

[Linus Sebastian]

I also found that that was the only thing that worked for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It worked for a long time because I just didn't do the bypass. And then there was. I think I was using YouTube for work reasons and bypass the timer and then you get the brain worm of like. That was easy.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was. It didn't hurt at all.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And then it's like, oh, no, they just have to be uninstalled now.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what was really nice for me? Do you remember I was talking. Did we talk about it on Wednesday, how Reddit got rid of R all?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, I don't use it enough to notice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, well, Reddit got rid of R slash all for reasons that the sort of, you know, community. What is their homepage then seem to believe? Well, the homepage is more algorithmic, whereas R all was just top surfaced topics from all subreddits.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so now the homepage is like curated for you.

[Linus Sebastian]

So the prevailing theory is that it's to get you more algorithmically hooked and siloed and deliver more personalized content to you, rather than just have a convenient no sign in required spot that you can go and just check what the top upvoted stuff is today. It has actually been a blessing in disguise because I was spending a little bit too much time just like browsing stuff on Reddit and them removing R all has pretty much completely killed my habit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nobody tell them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I'm actually very, very thankful.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't tell them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good job. Good job Reddit. I have.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Don't tell them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably cut my time on your site by about 90% because I'll just check on, you know, what's going on in our most relevant subreddit. I also quite like Wall street bets just because I find their. I find their attitude delightful. Yeah, I enjoy. I enjoy a good lost porn as much as anybody else does and that's about it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this loss?

[Linus Sebastian]

Sometimes it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'll check. I'll check like the LTT subreddit, see how Lucas's posts are doing. See what people's comments on them are.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, why don't we jump right into that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

In yet another what is becoming a common LTT Labs win? Yeah, Lucas uploaded an awesome article this week here if you want to find the topic, I'll load it up on the site.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure, yeah, I'll read what the notes are. I'm interested. I don't know if. Yeah, Lucas didn't write this. Okay. So in a new article from LTT Labs this week, we examine testing for minimum display brightness, something that's becoming a selling point with a variety of different brands. It's not part of our current test suite when we're like reviewing phones or anything, but we are equ to test down to fractions of a nit. So we tested a half dozen common phones and found that they were all capable of impressingly low brightness, dimness, whatever you want to call it, of a single knit or less. We found that one of the phones tested was able to get down to just thousandths of a nit. And if you want to learn more about our test equipment, the process, see the results, all that kind of stuff, go to the article. It's on LTTLabs.com you can navigate to LTT Labs.com and then it's just in the sidebar if you want to see all the articles that come out, it's in the sidebar if you want a feed of them. There's a variety of different feed options for for getting notified about them or they also get get posted sometimes Lucas generally posts them to the Reddit but to like the LTT subreddit. But Some other people post them on other subreddits around the, the, the Reddit and the Internets and all those fun things. But yeah, check it out. We're trying to do cool stuff over there. So.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it's really cool. I mean, I don't know about you, but really low minimum brightness is an absolute game changer for me in terms of like my wind down late at night. I like to have all my lights down.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It makes sense. It's light emission from devices is supposed to be bad for your brain trying to fall asleep. Right.

[Linus Sebastian]

So if you lower it, your circadian rhythms get kind of mucked up from, from. From light, supposedly. Look, I'm not going to make any kinds of health claims with respect to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know this for sure. It is, it is definitely a fact. We personally actually ran a peer reviewed study of 400,000 people and their sleeping patterns for two decades and know this for sure. This is a health podcast. We are experts and scientists.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, doctors, for anyone listening right now, I was furiously mashing the doesn't know button. So everything that he just said was completely nullified by that. I just want to make sure I get out there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. As Noki said as well, every single one of those test subjects only ever have used Firefox. They've actually never used Chrome, never used Edge. They would install Firefox off of like USB drive.

[Linus Sebastian]

They might not use Edge, but do

[Luke Lafreniere]

they Edge when using Firefox? Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, that makes sense. Using Firefox can be very exciting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anywho, was that it for that topic?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so we're just kind of pointing people there. We can talk about the article if we want, but I also think it's just like, go give it a read.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, go give it a read. Okay, I'll spoil one thing. I'll spoil one thing. With a certain combination of settings. It was the latest iPhone that was able to reach a thousandth of a nit. And actually I learned something reading that article because I already knew about some of the tweaks that you can use to push the display brightness even lower, but I didn't know about all of them. And so one of mine and Yvonne's like, wind down is we'll sit and play wordscapes in bed sometimes. And I honestly, it doesn't work for me as well as it does for her, but like, if we play wordscapes in bed, she's usually snoring within about like four minutes afterwards. So we'll sit and we'll play like a few rounds of Wordscapes and having it any higher than absolute minimum. She's. She's on an iPhone right now. And then also turning down the like white point. There's like a white point setting in accessibility. It's just like a, it's just a stupid word jumble. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It has really obnoxious ads. I'm not recommending it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I play the. Every once in a while we'll dabble with. We use one phone and collaboratively play the New York Times games like wordle and all that kind of stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Crystal apparently tested the time limit. New time limit doesn't hide them, just gives you a limit that you can immediately bypass.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. So I'm just not going to have the app installed still. Well, I guess because it's like a Google device. It's still installed but it's disabled here.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's see. Okay, so there's a short.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a short.

[Linus Sebastian]

If I click it, you've reached your limit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So when you go to scroll it says you've reached your limit and there's just a big glowing button you can press to watch them anyways. Yeah, so they didn't do jack. That is, that is useless. But it's good news. Wancho. So on to more things. And you can also just not have it installed.

[Linus Sebastian]

I.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So that works.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Talon says no, it actually worked for me. It's not showing Shores

[Luke Lafreniere]

inconsistent. Okay, Talon, Crystal, can you use the app and. And restart it? Potentially even restart your entire phone and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, hold on. Hunter Daw says my app shows no shorts.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Interesting. Because not showing the short would be enough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, that would be huge.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. If it's not like, if it's not like just enticing you, you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. I'm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Mine shows zero shorts. There's a number of people saying that it shows zero shorts.

[Linus Sebastian]

I am choosing to be cautiously optimistic.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Not because I think Google suddenly developed a conscience, but because I think that the recent ruling determining that they had created their apps intentionally in a way that harms the development of miners. We talked about that either one or two weeks ago, maybe pushing them to swing the pendulum back the other way a little bit in terms of how aggressively attention sucking their app design is and you know, we should be encouraging of anything they do in this direction.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes.

[Linus Sebastian]

No matter what, incentivize them to ultimately move this way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. If it behaves the way it did in crystal screen capture then I don't care about it at all. But if it isn't showing shorts then that's fantastic. And if you like click a link to a short and it opens up in the YouTube chat in the YouTube app, and then you decide to scroll. I. I don't know, whatever. If it then warns you, like, hey, you're out of time. You set your time limit to zero and you decide to bypass at that point in time. You've done so many things to go around the setting. Like, you know, at a certain point

[Linus Sebastian]

we have to be accountable for our choice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, exactly. So like, I don't expect them to go like way above and beyond. But if you say, hey, I don't want shorts, it shouldn't advertise them to you. It should, it should actually stop there.

[Linus Sebastian]

In other good news, it removes it

[Luke Lafreniere]

from the main feed, but you can see it in a creator's channel if you go there.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I think that's fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's also fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think that's fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

In other good news, DaVinci Resolve 21 is now a Lightroom alternative. Raw editing, tethering, masking and more. Blackmagic Design announced this at NAB 2026 and the biggest surprise is the dedicated photo page that turns Hollywood's Go to Color grading suite into a direct Lightroom competitor. The update supports RAW files from Canon, Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm and brings Resolve's node based color tools to still images for the first time. The photo tool includes album management with ratings and filters, AI Magic Mask for one click subject selection, and AI Ultra Sharpen for upscaling, tethered shooting with Sony and Canon cameras and the ability to import existing Lightroom catalogs. Most of the photo page features are included in the free version only. AI magic mask and film look creator require the $295. One time studio upgrade. One time. One time. One time. One time.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, that's so good. One time is no problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Blackmagic, dude, they don't do everything right, but they're pretty based while they do some things wrong and most things right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

And that's okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They've been winning with DaVinci for a long time. I've had a number of conversations with people in the video creative space that are talking about how like. And I think I've talked about this on my show a couple times, but the kids coming out of school are all using DaVinci.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So like the, the industry's shifting.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pretty heavily right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

And why shouldn't they? For context here, Adobe charges $10 a month for Lightroom, which adds up to $120 a year with no end in sight.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's just Lightroom.

[Linus Sebastian]

And with the way that Adobe is going, no realistic future where that's going to become cheaper rather than more expensive. DaVinci Resolve's free version now covers most of what Lightroom does. And the full studio license is a one time purchase that never expires. For hybrid photo and video shooters, having everything in one app with matching color tools across stills and footage is a genuine one workflow game changer. And man, I'm almost afraid to say it, but it feels like finally we are getting to the point where maybe Adobe is going to have to start to acknowledge that they have competition. Like, do I go to our production team and basically say like, okay, hey, are we getting close now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I have asked.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was four, it was four or five almost five years ago. I think that I did that video where I the thumbnails like me holding out all the money and I'm like, I pay $10,000 a month to Adobe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. If I remember correctly, it's like more than a full time employee you're paying to Adobe. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And it's not like I'm getting a full time employee's worth of like attention from Adobe, that's for sure. Hold on, let me see if I can find this Linus Adobe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, here it is. And you can see how many people this message resonated with. Like 4.7 million million views. Why do I pay Adobe 10,000? Oh, was it a year back then?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, pretty sure you spend a lot more than that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a lot more than that now. Sorry, it's not $100,000 a year, but I think it's. Is it closer to like 60 now

[Luke Lafreniere]

or something like that? I think it's around there or above.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't remember when we did. How does LMG spend money? I remember it being either number one or number two for the software solutions that we pay the most for.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Very highly up there.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, for freaking. And that's us. That's US dollars, if I recall correctly. So it's, it's pretty yucky.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The number I've seen might be CAD.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, so that would be like a 40 uplift on yours.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Either way, it's a butt ton.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's crazy.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a ton that's so big I don't even know if it would fit in your butt anymore. It's a greater than greater than, but

[Luke Lafreniere]

depends on denomination, I think.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, right. That would make a big difference. Hundred dollar bills would be a much bigger butt ton than fives anyway. Trick or Imperial? Asks the chat. Not the point. The point is I'm always going to root for a disruptor coming in and making life more difficult for a monopoly or a de facto monopoly, especially one that I frankly feel has abused their position. And I'm, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Adobe recently had to settle that thing around their billing practices and I still remember how outraged I was when I found out that you can't just like they, they treat it like signing a contract with them every seat that you add to your organization. Absolutely ludicrous. And I think they might have changed some of those practices now, but not until they were four forced to. Yeah. Hiding fees, preventing customers from easily canceling software subscriptions. It's like, don't you have enough money? Like can't you just, can't you just have the customers who willingly pay you? Like that's, that's mafia, you know,

[Luke Lafreniere]

I'm getting the number.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, it doesn't matter that much. It's fine. It's, it's more than 10,000, less than a hundred thousand. I think that's, that's a fine enough sort of, of nebulous spot to leave it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right,

[Luke Lafreniere]

we're still moving.

[Linus Sebastian]

What are we doing? That just says headline topic. Dan, we finished the headline topic like 15 minutes ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's going to put up, he's going to put up two more topics. He's just going to make us. Yeah, you guys can't see it, but he just put up a side that just raw says more topics. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, it seems right to me. It seems totally right to me. Wow, wow, wow.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't even want your cue cards. I'm all for it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think they're very informative.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's talk about a California bill that would require long term support for server connected games. Stop Killing Games is backing California bill AB 1921, introduced by state assembly member Chris Ward and expected to be up for debate in the assembly soon. Tm, the Protect Our Games act proposes new regulations that would apply to digital Games released after December 1, 2026. I don't like it, but I do understand it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know. I get that.

[Linus Sebastian]

I get it. I get that there's an entire, there's an entire epoch of games that could end up lost because this will only go into effect for new games going forward. But I understand why you can't just change the rules midstream after companies have already.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This will still be changing the rules midstream for some people.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, but I get it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At least they get a little bit of a heads up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Under the act, digital game operators would be required to provide 60 days notice before they shut down any services or servers that are necessary for the ordinary use of the game. They must provide details about which features will stop working. They must explain how the user can continue to play the game after the shutdown and warn of any security issues that might arise from the shutdown. Notice would need to be provided both in game and on the operator's website. And as originally written, the game operator would also have been required to seize sales and distribution of the game at the 60 day notice. But this has since been changed to the shutdown date as the bill has worked its way through reviews, which I actually, I think I kind of get. Because if for whatever reason you're still able to use it in some way afterward, then if I was like, oh, that sounds pretty good, I want to buy it, I wouldn't want to be prevented from doing that. It should be my choice if I want to buy it or not. Sure, I could see making a warning mandatory. Hey, this game is shutting down on this day. These are going to be the changes. But just telling me I'm not allowed to buy it, I mean, that seems like it's punishing me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I can even think of certain games like a Titanfall 2, I don't think. I think there's a community server mod, but I don't think it naturally had community servers on launch. I could be wrong with this. I don't really remember, but I would. It costs like $4 now when it's on sale and it's like always on sale. And I would highly recommend people buy it for the single player and if the multiplayer doesn't work like whatever, like it's still worth buying the game. So like, yeah, as long as there's some flag. Like by the way, the multiplayer doesn't work anymore. If you want to make that decision, I think that's still fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's 40 Canadian dollars right now that,

[Luke Lafreniere]

yeah, it's just on sale like practically all the time.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, only buy it on sale for sure.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it goes, it goes on like 90% off sales all the time. So I'll just wait for one of those.

[Linus Sebastian]

Starting on the shutdown date, the operator would be required to provide purchasers with at least one of the. A new version of the game that can be used without the operator. Services based.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

A patch for the existing version of the game that works without the operator. Services.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Fantastic.

[Linus Sebastian]

Based a full refund of the purchase price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That also works. I don't prefer that one.

[Linus Sebastian]

But.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it works.

[Linus Sebastian]

What this does is it gives companies an out if they're in an absolutely desperate situation.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Can't do the previous two for some weird legal reason or whatever else, or

[Linus Sebastian]

for, or for cost reasons. Sometimes that might not be practical. What was that, what was that Sony game Concord? Or was that the one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I mean that's the like one of

[Linus Sebastian]

the games, the enormous game that they had that they shut down after like a couple of weeks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One of them. I feel like they did it to more than one, but that is one of them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, so like for a game like that, where the entire problem with the game is that they've poured all this money into it and then practically no one bought. May actually make more sense because practically

[Luke Lafreniere]

no one bought it.

[Linus Sebastian]

For them to just issue like a few tens of thousands of dollars of refunds or even a few hundred grand worth of refunds and basically just go, okay, forget it. We just, we put this in the dustbin of history. But in that case we're talking about a game where there's not gonna be nearly the same degree of like loss of shared experience and loss of gaming history necessarily compared to something that people played for many, many, many years and then just, you know, is turned off and can no longer be accessed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, because there's still, there is still loss, but not the same scale.

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess it's scale of loss, Importance, importance. And so, and so having that, having that, that pulls that pull cord that they can basically just go, okay, for whatever reason, we cannot do this. If it is because. No, I don't think any company would want to choose to refund every copy of a game they ever sold. Yeah, like if you were to tell Rockstar, you know, yeah, GTA 5, you can do a new version of the game that can be used without your services, a patch for the existing version. So it'll work without your services or a full refund of the purchase price, which one you think they're going to pick.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is also like just, just as a note, this is long term support. I don't think this is necessarily forever support.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of course there are exceptions. These new rules would not apply to subscription based services that are clearly advertised as only offering access to a game for the duration of the subscription. So something like wow would not be covered by this MMOs in general, it does not apply to free games. And this is where things get a little bit hazy for me, because if you've spent $300 on, say, for example, league skins.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. One skin. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Are. Yeah. Is that a free game? Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. A lot of. A lot of free games people spend more money on than games. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. So I'd be interested. As this makes its way through the drafting process, I would be interested to see how they're gonna tackle that. And then the third one is that games that the seller can't revoke access to after the sale. Games that the seller can't revoke access to after the game. Not quite sure what that means, but the first two were pretty.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what that means. For games that require server connected.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So maybe that's just for games where it wouldn't be relevant. In other Stop Killing Games news, the EU Parliament held an introductory hearing yesterday on the European citizens initiative Stop Destroying Video Games. Organizers were able to present their initiative to Parliament, but a parliamentary response is not expected to come before July. You can find video of the hearing on the European Parliament YouTube channel. This is far more momentum than I expected Stop Killing Games to get. Oh, yeah, I'm impressed.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

On the one hand, you know, maybe my pessimism was partly rooted in a belief that there are really important other things that the world kind of needs to deal with other than, like, video games and stuff. And maybe I just. Even though it's something that's very near and dear to me, I expected, you know, stuffy octogenarian lawmakers to just look at the whole games thing as just video games and not care about it. But then, on the other hand, there's enormous amounts of money at play.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a lot of money at play. Art is important. And I think. I think there's. There's different people that do different things. There's different people that have different expertise, and you can. You can do more than one thing at once.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. No. Key says. And all it took was for one guy to speak out against the movement. That's what popularized it. I don't think it's that simple. Although it did definitely.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I do think it had a pretty big impact.

[Linus Sebastian]

It definitely did shine a lot of light on the movement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Speaking of big impact against your will. I got the numbers.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's before tax, $62,000 for Creative Cloud. Just Creative Cloud and before tax. And then before tax, just for Adobe Acrobat Pro, it's $4,500.

[Linus Sebastian]

So why the do we need Adobe Acrobat Pro? What the.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Why do we need $4,500 worth of it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Who's doing PDFs?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know we get PDFs signed.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'm anti PDF files. Both of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hey, me too.

[Linus Sebastian]

That shouldn't be a controversial statement.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We do get PDF signed, though. I think it's very convenient to have like, the cloud version of PDF signs K. Is it convenient enough to be $4,500 a year?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know what people use them for. I don't use it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, if it's an alternative to like, facts, then I. I haven't used

[Luke Lafreniere]

Adobe Acrobat in a long time.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've recently been using only Office. It's pretty easy, right? Seems fine. It's free.

[Linus Sebastian]

Is that that website where you just go and it's pictures of people in suits? Mm,

[Luke Lafreniere]

no, it seems to be like.

[Linus Sebastian]

That was Canadian dollars.

[Luke Lafreniere]

By the way, the, like, Linux Pro Open Source thing. That isn't LibreOffice. There's like, both of those exist. People in chat are saying LibreOffice. Someone said some other thing up above. I don't know where I saw it. I don't remember what it was called, but there's like, there's lots of options for PDFs. You can sign PDFs with the free version. I think people at work have. Yeah. PDF Dash Exchange. I've never heard of that. But a few people are saying that. I don't know why we have the Pro one. I. I suspect it's for the. You can email someone the link and then they can sign it digitally in their browser and it gets like receipts for everything in both directions and stuff. And it's just. I will admit it's very professional.

[Linus Sebastian]

I would have to guess that that's probably the business team that uses that. Or accounting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Business accounting, HR for like, getting people hired and signing employee contracts and stuff like that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. $4,500 to, like, seem professional to people that you do outreach to in those contexts. Probably.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It might matter.

[Linus Sebastian]

Probably. Maybe. Possibly. Makes sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I suspect one of the reasons why it might be so expensive is we probably have a bunch of dead subscriptions. Because they do. They do the seat thing, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's supposed to be good news. My end show.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

You're not allowed to talk about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, the good news could be that we might get away from that. Hey, you might maybe possibly save money.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a reach. Good news. That's a reach.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good news.

[Linus Sebastian]

It's a reach.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good news, everyone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Other good news. Okay, Dan, I apologize for what I did before. Can I please have them back? Thank you. All right, we're supposed to do the CW announcement this week. We've got. Oh, lordy, I scrolled too far. We're hiring. We've got a few open roles on our site, including a junior fashion designer and a purchasing manager, both for creator warehouse as well as a contract role in inventory and warehouse management, based out of Atlanta, Georgia. If you think you'd be a good fit for these roles, we want to hear from you. Head over to linusmediagroup.comcareers to apply. Yay. This week's product launch has the variety and has quite the. You know what? This week's product launch is pretty exciting for me personally. This is something pretty different from what we've done in the past. If you love motorsports, the Moto T is for you. I'm gonna fire up. What are you doing over there? You shopping for Adobe subscriptions? I saw those Adobe subscriptions. You're supposed to go to LTT store.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh,

[Linus Sebastian]

this show is such a disaster.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, look, it's really cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

If you love motorsports, the Moto T is for you. It's a race inspired jersey, but instead of sponsored patches, they are tech inspired patches and 3D puff prints. It's designed on a 100% cotton top so it's breathable and feels premium. And you can get yours at LMG GG Moto T. Very, very different kind of design from what we've done in the past. Super cool. The pink and green is obviously inspired by the old Lambo color scheme. Isn't that cool?

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's a cool photo.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I know, right? Of course, you should never ride your motorcycle without a layer over top top of a cotton tee or long sleeve like this. But hey, you can. You can still look the part when you are not actually on your bike. That's a great shot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that just actually her bike?

[Linus Sebastian]

Did they actually bring Natalie's bike into the studio?

[Luke Lafreniere]

It looks like maybe.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, my gosh.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's pretty sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Cool. Okay, next up is. That's a great shot.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sweet.

[Linus Sebastian]

Next up is the shirt that Luke is wearing. If you're a frequent viewer of the WAN show, you might recognize this character, Sir Ability to can.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, wow. He's everywhere.

[Linus Sebastian]

He disappears whenever something really ridiculous happens and I can't anymore or I lose my ability to can. He's super cute. It's a. It's bleach printed so it has kind of this vintage Washed look and is very crack resistant. And you can get yours at LMG GG Ability to can. Do you want to show the back of it? Luke's actually wearing this shirt right now. There you go. Missing sir ability toucan. It's a bird. Don't worry about it. It's more of just like a WAN show inside joke, but it's also kind of a fun shirt design.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pay Linus for making puns.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty much. I mean, yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time. Last but not least, for those who just want something basic, we have our blank baseball cap. It's the same design as our LTT hat. It's adjustable, doesn't have the top smarty or button whatever you want to call it. See? Are you going to. He's going to bring it up. He's working on it. He's working on it. There we go. Nope. No. Is it, is it, is it missing LMG blank cap. Oh, there we go. It's adjustable and it's in medium and large sizes and it doesn't have the top smarty. So if you ever like, you know, bump it on anything, you won't have that to deal with. It's really comfortable and is now available in black and kangaroo. You can shop now at LMG GG blank cap. And this is one of yet another products that is coming into the LTT store with creator warehouse branding that could ultimately. Hey, if you're another creator out there and you're looking for branded apparel opportunities, be a rebranded to something else. Ooh, interesting. Any who if you're looking for a good reason to send in an order to LTD store, as always, the best way to do so is to wait. When we're live. Oh man, my brain is so fried today.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When we're live, go to the store, go to a product, find the one you want, click, add to cart. Then this little thing will show up. This is the easiest way to do it, but you could also just click on this and then this box will be here, probably looking like that. And you can click this little checkbox and be like, oh, I want to say something. You can make your name anonymous or not and then you can be like, whoa, car shirt.

[Dan]

Cool.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Thanks man. Smiley face. And then change your color because you feel like doing that. Opt in for email communications because you're like, by the way, where my order screwdriver no show up. Please help that. Thanks. And then the customer support people can message you because you did this thing and then you check out and then it Shows up on the stream. Thanks.

[Linus Sebastian]

All right. It goes to producer Dan, who will either show it up on the stream or reply to it, or he will curate it for me and Luke to respond to. We feel this is way better than just people throwing their money at their screen and then hoping something good will happen. We like you to get high quality merchandise in the mail instead. Or in addition to. Dan, do you want to show them what a curated checkout message looks like? Did I call it a merch message? Yeah, I know you're not saying anything because you're in the same room as me.

[Dan]

Dan, am I allowed to say things yet?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes, of course.

[Dan]

Fine. Hey, lld. But mostly Luke. Everyone else can answer, I guess. What is your favorite version of boy kibble? Simple carb plus high protein. Other than just chicken and rice.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, well, it's already actual.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actual kibble. I know, I know. People that go really hard. They'll make. They'll make like a, like, ground beef mixed with, like, egg and maybe some. Maybe some spice, and that'll be like, the predominant portion of their meals for a week. They'll just make one big trough of, like, me. Something I've been going for lately is sticking with the chicken or really potentially. Or potentially having steak instead. But try to make that more rare, I find.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then cook it less.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. I did. I didn't mean that. But, you know, don't overcook me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Whatever you do, don't make the chicken rare.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I don't do that. But then I've been mixing the other things up. So go for, like a sweet potato instead of rice or. Or instead of broccoli, do, like, cauliflower or spinach or kale or something else and just keep changing things up a little bit. I have heard that if you just eat the same thing all the time and it's really boring, that it can act as an appetite suppressant. So if you're trying to lose weight, maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. Contrary to what I said earlier in the show. Not a scientist, not a doctor, but, yeah, I've been. I've been mixing up the. The carbs that are included, basically, but keeping the proteins pretty basic. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully that's an answer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nippolis Cage in Floatplane Chat asked us to make the hat that Jay wears in Jay and Silent Bob. It's a baseball cap without a brim. And literally no one sells one. Sell me one. I. Are you sure? Are you sure we need this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, really? There's no brim.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I never noticed it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think I always just thought it was on backwards.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, this is the seat of the. This is the car seat behind him. There's no brim on it. How did I never notice that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's just a beanie. Say people. I thought. I thought this is what Americans call a beanie.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, like. No, that had, like, the.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is a. This is a baseball cap line things in it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know.

[Linus Sebastian]

But without a brim.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It has the seams and everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

Scrappy. DP says, we do not want that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't think anyone does.

[Linus Sebastian]

We want a double brim hat, too, says Minji. No, you don't. You are so lying. You do not want a double brim hat. That is not a thing you want. All right, Dan, hit us with another checkout message.

[Dan]

Hey. LLND for the same price.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, my God. Hold on. There's a. There's a whole company that sells them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Of course there is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No. No brim company.

[Dan]

Oh, my God.

[Linus Sebastian]

That kind of has a brim, though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It really does.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, it has.

[Dan]

They saw this. Squeezy Jibs. One original.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No brim. Brimless hats.

[Dan]

What about the long brim? I saw a long brim on there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wait, long brim

[Dan]

somewhere. What was on there? Homepage.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think you made it up.

[Dan]

Might have been. Might have been the previous one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you're a liar. Yeah. Anyways, that's funky.

[Linus Sebastian]

Speaking of funky hats, I searched for double brim, trying to find what I think, you know, obviously would have been, you know, one in the front, direct one in the back, but instead I felt this. That's the one.

[Dan]

I saw it on your screen.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the squeeze super brim, dude. I love how the dude wearing the hat just looks completely normal. Yeah, I don't think that's this hat.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's no way that that's this hat. I. I was actually. I was actually working on my notes for the Megane X8K VR headset, and I know it's one of those things that doesn't really affect your ability to make a good quality product, but bad, or not even necessarily bad, but, like, clearly fake product photography just really puts me off of something. And this is a classic example. Where. Where is she? Oh, where'd she go? Dang it. Okay, well. Oh, here. Here she is. She is not wearing that headset at all. Like, look at this. This is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Somebody tried a little bit, though.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is the fakest. She's not wearing the headset. This is not even a picture. This is a render of the headset on her face. And it gets worse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They put a little shadow on there.

[Linus Sebastian]

It gets worse. Oh, no, here it is. This is the exact same photo. You can tell from the pixels of the hair that this is exactly the same photo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He inspected the pixels.

[Linus Sebastian]

See it in that. You can see it in like the little flyaways and stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He's a pixel scientist.

[Linus Sebastian]

That it's the same picture just with the like. And here's the, here's the same picture three times. Three times the same picture on one page. Hold, hold on. Two more times the same picture. Well, come on, man. Come on. It just feels so, it feels so low quality. I, I don't, I don't, I don't like that. I, I haven't actually tried the product yet. So don't take this as a judgment on the quality of the product itself.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It just the, the quality of the product page, though the quality of the

[Linus Sebastian]

product page is not great. Anyway, in other news, I had to go to AliExpress, but I did find a double brimmed hat and it is exactly as amazing as I hoped.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yo, Inspector Linus, should we, should we

[Linus Sebastian]

do one of these?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Inspector Linus? You could wear that in your next Secret shopper or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Sorry, Mr. Best, did you want to hit us with another checkup message?

[Dan]

Hey, LLND. For the same price, I could get a 77 inch LG C5 OLED or a 100 inch C Samsung QLED mini LED. Why do we say QLED and LED? It upsets me. What would you do? Bigger or OLED?

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, this is a tough one. Samsung has a lot of QLED TVs and there is a wide range of quality depending on how many local dimming zones they have and how bright they are. With that said, at the same price, I could have a 77 inch or a 100 inch TV. It depends a little bit on the space. If you have a smaller room and just, you know, sitting farther is not an option Anyway, the C5 OLED is going to give you a better picture. It's going to give you a poppier, punchier, more exciting picture. However, if you're in a large space and you want to have a big group, the bigger the tv, the wider you can spread your couches and chairs, the more you can have people kind of, kind of spread out and eating snacks over there and whatever, the more people you can kind of gather around it and, and Even if you have a smaller room, the more immersive the the image is going to feel. If it was me, and I guess it is, I would choose the larger display over the OLED in my theater room. I could have, if I really wanted, a 97 inch OLED. I have chosen not to. Instead I have 115 inch mini LED. So that's what, that's what I would choose. However, if for whatever reason the size of my display was constrained, then it would be hard for me to say no to an oled. At least that's the case today with RGB backlighting coming. That's the one I'm more excited about. But it sounds like you're getting a deal on a last gen tv, so that's not going to be necessarily relevant to your purchasing decision. Anyway, I hope that helped. I didn't really give you an answer, but cool. What would you do? You'd do smaller oled, I would think, right? Probably that's what you did. Yeah, yeah. So it's not even hypothetical. I went bigger tv, he went smaller oled.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I also have less viewing distance, I guess like it's one of those like, you know, shotgun apartment hallway room things and you just have like standard couch position, standard TV position. The throw distance is really not that crazy high. So I'd rather just a way better picture.

[Linus Sebastian]

100 inch would be a little bit ridiculous at that seating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think so.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I'd rather just have a better picture.

[Linus Sebastian]

Genesis 8925 says if money wasn't a problem projector, but man, I have a really hard time getting behind that like the, the wife acceptance factor of a projector just from my experience seems to be much smaller and I don't know what it is, but it's like they don't look good. Yeah, I mean they can, but there's so many other things you have to align that, that the life acceptance factor starts to decay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then the second someone gets up to go get popcorn in the middle of the thing and there's a. And they interrupt the image or you have to tell your young kids, hey, that's a laser projector. Don't look into the lens. And you know, there's like eye safety concerns and then you accidentally leave a door open. And so there's like a weird kind of like bright spot across half of it where the shadow of the couch covers it. Like it's just, it's not as friendly. And there's something just kind of intuitive about the TV being the thing you like, press a button on in an emergency if you forget versus, like, going to the back of the room and like pressing a thing on the ceiling if the remote has the batteries dead or whatever. Like, there's just so many little things about a projector that are more, you know, bearded dude and less family friendly. No offense, Dan.

[Dan]

I painted my wall just an entire. The entire wall is gray. You've seen it. There's no white factor there.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Wow.

[Dan]

You also can't go anywhere near it or put anything in front of it or touch it ever or it's ruined.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Get a tv.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's what I'm talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Get an oled. She'll like the colors.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. She probably won't care.

[Dan]

Put a lot of plants in front of me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. All right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

She likes the colors.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay. Mine doesn't care. It's whatever is in the most.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I know exactly where he's going.

[Linus Sebastian]

She will be in the family room where there is an OLED TV and she'll be like doing yoga on a mat or something and she will be watching on her phone and I'm just like, really? Oh. Anyway, let's talk about Apple launching.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually where I thought that was going.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apple Education after giving. After giving up significant education sector ground in recent years decades question mark says our notes. Apple appears to be making a new push to engage potential users as early as possible with Apple Education. A redesigned landing page highlights the benefits of various Apple hardware and software for lifelong learning, starting with low cost iPads and MacBook neos and airs for the K12 crowd and then moves up through the product line for college and postgraduate studies with all the essential productivity and specialty apps for your field. The site also offers special Apple care packages and flexible financing for educational institutions. And that's that right there is the big one when it comes to hooking them young. I mean, I have talked for

[Luke Lafreniere]

ever

[Linus Sebastian]

about how Apple like f ed up allowing Chromebooks to become a thing and it looks like they finally figured it out and they are making a concentrated effort to just un Chromebook the world.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And I kind of think these stomp on Chromebooks.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, dude. I mean I've been daily.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Not close.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I've been dailying the Neo for over two weeks now. I think I can't remember the time, but basically it's not bothering me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I feel like you would remember the time if you hated it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Because you'd be like counting. It's the same thing as this Linux challenge compared to the Last one? Yep, the last one. We were all checking in with each other and how many days were left. And this one, I think the timer

[Linus Sebastian]

passed and no one cared.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, yep.

[Linus Sebastian]

Apple also unlike Google with their Chromebooks, seems well positioned to keep users in their ecosystem after school. Is out with a redesigned Apple business landing page that launched about a month ago. So our discussion question here is did Apple make the right call in seemingly abandoning the education market after the emac. And I mean, I think I've made my position on this very clear over the years. No, absolutely, absolutely not. That was entirely the wrong call. Apple went from being the only computers in one of the like elementary schools that I attended to be basically becoming utterly irrelevant in schools in a span of like what, five years, 10 years, something like that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Almost nothing.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was just, it was just all PC and then it was all Chromebook and Apple became just a complete non player outside of, from my understanding, very affluent educational organizations. But now, man, this thing, this thing changes everything. Because an iPad is only useful for certain stuff. For a lot of things. I'm sorry, but you just plain need a keyboard.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is the difference right now between a Neo and an iPad with a keyboard?

[Linus Sebastian]

The fact that it's running proper desktop software to me is a big one just in the day to day usability of the device. Or did you mean in terms of price? No, yeah, that, that to me is the big one. The fact that I'm not just limited to ipados apps and I can run any software that I want on it because there's just, I mean, it's inherent to the App Store model that these apps are designed to be less open. You know, Apple dictates what's in the App Store. They take a cut out of everything that's in the App Store, which, you know, whether you believe that that's a monopolistic practice from them or not, is a tax on the developer's ability to operate within that ecosystem. There's just, there's things about it that are just plain not as budget friendly and not as user friendly.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I find it interesting how open they are. Surprising price. Yeah, like, yeah, it is a surprising price from you. Yeah, it's also a surprising price for just the general quality of the laptop.

[Linus Sebastian]

But do you think this is Tim Cook wanting to go off on a high note? Like there's been a lot of discussion around his legacy. Yeah, there has been over the last

[Luke Lafreniere]

couple years because he's getting close to probably retiring. Like hasn't he been pretty open about.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And so it's just, it's been this open conversation, like, what is Tim Cook's legacy? Because it, I mean, I'm sure he would love if it were not the, the Apple Vision Pro. Right. And you look at like there's a lot of things that he has un. Undeniably done incredibly well. Apple is, is a logistics monster. The way that they, the way that they handle messaging and their launches is perhaps unparalleled. They're just so good at it. But what product did Tim Cook oversee? Because even, even AirPods was before his time, was it not?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Was it?

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, maybe not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think EarPods might have been before his time, but I don't think AirPods.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, I think you might be right. Who's in China? Tim Cook? No, yeah, Tim. Tim cook was. Yeah, AirPods was well after made the

[Luke Lafreniere]

thing that kind of murdered the entire audio industry.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Which is pretty impressive.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that was relatively early on in his tenure. And then towards the end, if he oversees the creation of the laptop computer, that basically murders the entire entry level business and education laptop segment from everyone else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I also think there's an angle which

[Linus Sebastian]

is what a punctuation mark to put on your career.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Apple spent a really long time basically fighting with chip manufacturers. Like they got in this huge war with Nvidia. They, they got in a bit of a tiff with Intel.

[Linus Sebastian]

A bit of a. Yeah, like they,

[Luke Lafreniere]

they really were not being very friendly with chip manufacturers. They came up with the M series chips. Those chips are just ma. Everything.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're fire.

[Luke Lafreniere]

How do they pipeline people into their. Like, okay, we figured out bailing on the other chip manufacturers now, but the pipeline into Macs is not necessarily the easiest and it's not exactly the cheapest. So how do we get people kind of re interested in Macs? We've. We own the world of audio, we own the world of phones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, the North American world of phones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But yeah, yeah, we own the world of spending money on lots of phones.

[Linus Sebastian]

You know what's really interesting to me though is like, what will Apple take away from this lesson? Will they take away. Oh, we could have charged more for the Neo. And will they go back for higher margins or will they take away. Holy crap. We have been leaving so much volume on the table by pricing things out of reach of normal, ordinary people. And do we get like a really aggressive iPhone? Like, do we get like a $400 iPhone? Because if they can build this computer for $500 to an educational customer. Right,

[Luke Lafreniere]

Convince me you can build a cheaper phone.

[Linus Sebastian]

Convince me they couldn't do a $400 iPhone if they really wanted to. They've got their own silicon for the processor. They've got their own silicon for the modem. Now even the Qualcomm tax is. She's a hefty tax. Tell me they couldn't do it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, they absolutely could. I, I think this might, this might piss some people off. I think their gamer move in the future is to basically only ever have. You know they have two SKUs for this one. They have like the higher storage plus touch ID and the lower storage and no touch ID. I don't think you ever expand beyond that.

[Linus Sebastian]

It. Oh for this one?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

For the Neo.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you keep NEO tier laptops as like there is maybe two options. Maybe in some generations there is one and it's just the cheap laptop you can get from Apple. Yep. And then everything else is you're jumping into M chips and it's like performance laptops.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I, I actually, I like that they gave it a really unique color because it clearly identifies me as a scrub who you know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But it's a good.

[Linus Sebastian]

Didn't buy a real MacBook still. Yeah, but it's still, it still looks good. It has, it's had. It has its own very clear identity.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The thing on the bottom is a dbrand.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah, that's a dbrand skin.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Just so people know.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, sorry about that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's this you're looking at like

[Linus Sebastian]

that's what we're looking at.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Greenish yellow.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really like what they did with that. I could see them continuing to do that. That's something that they have done in the past to differentiate otherwise very similar looking.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can still get it in silver and pro.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yes. But I would actually like to see them lean into this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I see most people, that one is the most popular colorway I've personally seen is like the yellow. But I've seen most people get colorful ones which I have to say like thanks. God it's been so boring. Everyone just always picking the most boring possible color options for everything. And seeing a bunch of people get the colorful neos brought some hope. I think it's like oh wow, the world can not just be gray again. This is great.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nah, don't get your hopes up what it's going to. Nah, everyone else is full of hopes. The only reason Apple can do that is because what they sell 8 million of these things.

[Luke Lafreniere]

High hopes.

[Dan]

Oh,

[Linus Sebastian]

so Apple.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So all the other ones are sold out. So you just had to buy well,

[Linus Sebastian]

no, I just mean Apple can afford to do a gray one and a yellow one.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, I mean people's selection.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, sure. I just mean they'll. But Apple's the only one who has the volume to gamble and do a color.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because they can. Even if the color bombs and only 1 in 10 customers selects the color one, then they are still gonna sell 800,000 of them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So they're fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I hear you. I just, I think like, I think you just see people who have a selection of colors always going like gray, white, or black.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And that's just kind of boring.

[Linus Sebastian]

They're just safe. I mean, I was, I was talking to the creator warehouse team about commuter

[Luke Lafreniere]

bags or hey, this shirt. The Lambo shirt's so cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

So commuter bags.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's so sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

I've been rocking this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

Kind of like olive, like tactical green one for a little while that I really like.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And we were just, we were talking about, you know. Yeah. What would, what would a future look like where we have like a range of colors of bags and we were talking through what the minimum order quantities are for each of these colors with fabric sourcing and factory time. And one of the things that Dave brought up is that we have access to, you know, industry trend data and sales data and basically it becomes kind of like a self perpetuating cycle because the only thing that actually sells is black and gray. And then that's the only thing anybody makes. So then it's the only thing that anybody sells. And it's a huge financial risk. Unless you're Apple.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's why I'm saying I just appreciate that people are not just buying just the, the silver one is like the more you make it so that people don't just buy only ever just the black one. It's like, oh, sweet. Okay. We can like actually have more colors of things in the world again.

[Linus Sebastian]

And like. Okay. Oruk in floatplane chat says I would totally get a pink backpack. But it's tough because we'd sell like 10 of them back when. Back when Steel series. Let me see if I can find. Find steelseries did like a pink.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Logitech has more success with this. I would say.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah. I just. The reason I brought up steel series is just because they did it a very long time ago before everyone else did it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, true.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I can't, I can't find it. Probably because it didn't sell like 2010. Yeah, it was, it was really old and I remember I either was the product manager or I sat next to the product manager for it, and it was an unmitigated disaster. We sold like three of them or something like that, and then we had to liquidate the rest of them. That has changed to a degree. Right. To your point, things are a little different now, and Logitech seems to have done better with it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think Logitech has also succeeded in, like, it's not just hot pink. Like, they'll. They'll do colors like this or like, it's a. It's a nice, like, soft purple that you don't have to like. They call this one Heartbreaker, and it's the pink one, but it's not just like glowing hot pink either. Like, I think they. They played with the colors a little bit more.

[Linus Sebastian]

I hate, though, that to be a trendy girl who uses a computer, you can only have a tastic mouse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, this is just the first one I clicked on. I'm pretty sure there's. There's a. Like, I just was scrolling down and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Do they have like a high performance mouse like that?

[Luke Lafreniere]

The. Okay, I probably have to go watch G. Hold on. Yeah, I think it's like a different site.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think they do have some pretty cool colorways.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The Super Strike I'm pretty sure is just black and.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Gray. Oh, my God. Go away.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pop ups are so annoying. There it is.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Magenta.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's a pretty aggressive pink.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is a pretty aggressive pink.

[Linus Sebastian]

I found the thing that I was. I found the thing that I was thinking of. I didn't find the mouse, but I did find the mouse pad. So Steelseries had their Iron lady brand, which was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's pretty rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

Pretty cringe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That is pretty rough.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was pretty cringe.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's what I mean, though, is like these Logitech ones, not to glaze Logitech too hard, but the Logitech ones, like, kind of look nice. And they don't say Iron lady on them, which.

[Dan]

Here we go.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I found it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I found it. There it is. The Iron lady gaming mouse.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

See, that's Akari. That's kind of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yikes. And then look at this. This is the one I was actually talking about. The G203. Pretty good mouse. Lilac. That's actually looks nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's pretty cute.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, cool.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyways, it's time to talk about our float plane announcements. Linus, try to guess what this means. Dan, show the free shipping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's pretty obvious.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. What? Why did.

[Dan]

Don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

Don't don't. Don't applaud me for being not.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Good job, Linus.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay.

[Luke Lafreniere]

He did it. He's our good boy for next week.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, man. It. Okay, how ridiculous is it that, like, a few months ago I was talking to the Creator Warehouse team and we were discussing, like, our sale calendar for the year and we had decided that after the success of our Shipstorm sale event last year, that we should do a repeat of it. We should do a Shipstorm sale event. And we were like, talking about it and we're like, well, yeah, but, you know, that whole thing was precipitated by, you know, the actions of a certain one of, you know, the countries. Hold on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Story spoiled.

[Linus Sebastian]

So anyway, it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They're all. They're all Gen Zers. Gen Alpha, whatever. They don't have time. They already know where the story's going. I'm just helping.

[Linus Sebastian]

So we decided to do a ship storm sale event on the anniversary of the first ship storm. We had no idea that the certain world leader was going to do a thing again that was gonna completely f. Global logistics again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You probably could have relied on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

I. I guess we did. So anyway, the Shipstorm sail event is coming back and we have something very excited for our floatplane supporters. Everyone on floatplane will be getting their usual 24 hour early access to the event. And additionally, LTT supporter plus tier subs will have a $50 lower threshold to get free shipping for their entire order worldwide.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's 13 bucks to save, not spending $50 more, but still qualifying for free shipping.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's awesome.

[Linus Sebastian]

But that's not all. LTT Supporter plus tier subscribers on floatplane will continue to have free shipping on LTT Store if the minimum spend threshold is met even after Shipstorm is over. I'm going to say for some time. I am not locking into that forever. I don't know who wrote this. This thing in my notes, but I'm putting an asterisk here for some period of time. Tbd. Luke, how are we making money off this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. I warned that it might be a problem.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, cool. Anyway, when we announced our price increase earlier this year, we said we'd make an effort to add benefits to our float plan subscribers. So we're looking to deliver, pun intended. And I guess this is part of it. So if you're a frequent shopper on lttstore.com this could be worth considering. And you get to watch some amazing floatplane exclusive videos like Cutting Room Floor. Like the heavily divided $20,000 PC extras, and also sometimes early releases. So I'm just gonna go ahead and launch a couple of videos. Hey, guess what do you know about this?

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is nearly 700 exclusives, by the way. Do I know about this? No, I don't.

[Linus Sebastian]

We were sponsored by Red Bull.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sort of. Someone else was sponsored by Red Bull and Red Bull had us build computers for them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Also sick.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Right. So that's going live.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Red Bull does cool stuff.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And then we've also got another video that's going live. Right.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh. Oh, boy. This one is going to be a little controversial, probably. And you can watch it early on. Floatplane. It's gonna be.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What is it?

[Linus Sebastian]

The highest PC build ever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, so you. Wait, what? Why?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's going to be at 40,000ft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

No, I get it, but why is it controversial?

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, seriously, have you not been following smoking drugs, the community drama over the last couple of weeks?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, because it's in your plane?

[Linus Sebastian]

Because it's in Linus Media Group Incorporated's plane. Yes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Who owns that company?

[Linus Sebastian]

Me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it's in your plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, it's okay. You know better than that. I can only use it for work unless I like, it's a taxable benefit, etc. Etc. But. But yes. Elijah came with me on the data center tour to Equinix in Virginia. And this is a small, small spoiler. He forgot the case. He left the case on the ground.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's pretty funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you just film it on the way?

[Linus Sebastian]

So we were supposed to film it on the way while we were filming, while we were flying during the day. And then that was supposed to be our work day that day. And then we were supposed to sleep and then get up super early our time because we're three hours ahead now, do the data center tour and then sleep on the way back. But instead, Elijah had to abandon me for the data center tour. He had to go to micro center, buy a case, and then we had to shoot it on the way back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Did you shoot the whole thing on the way back or did you do part on the way there?

[Linus Sebastian]

We had to shoot the whole thing on the way back. There was like almost nothing we could. There's almost nothing you can do without a case. You put the CPU on the motherboard and, like put some RAM in and then that's it, you're done. Whereas, like the bulk computers. Yeah, right. Oh, apparently I told everyone last week. Well, whatever. I think it's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I forgot the detail on. If you did part of it on the Way there, or part of. Or all of it on the way back.

[Linus Sebastian]

Anyway, the video's out. It is. It is. Controversy aside, an absolute banger. It is so funny. It's just ridiculous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think you've already been like, I. I. People might not like seeing the plane, but, I mean, it's just a computer. I don't think it's controversial.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some people. You know what? There's some. There's some people that are upset about it, but most people seem to be enjoying the window into something that otherwise we would have absolutely no access to hear about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Ford.

[Linus Sebastian]

I did. I did. Okay, so, key difference. So we had a politician, A Canadian politician is in hot water right now for using, and this is incredibly important. Taxpayer money.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

To acquire a private aircraft.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Way more expensive.

[Linus Sebastian]

Way more expensive private aircraft for. And I'm having.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The reasoning was so funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

I didn't see the. What's the reason?

[Luke Lafreniere]

He was like, other people have planes. And he pointed at, like, some other politicians that have access to planes. And he's like, I want one, too. It was so good. I actually started laughing reading the article. I think it's something like, Quebec has a plane or something. He's like, they have a plane. I want to play, too. It's like, really, bro? Right now, Canada's on fire. Do you actually need a plane? I don't know. Oh, it was funny. It was good. It was a good time.

[Linus Sebastian]

And I can say with 100% certainty that he could have done it on a tighter budget than that. Also, the plane that he chose is so unnecessary for what he would be doing. It's a Challenger 650. That's like, dude, he's a provincial politician. Where is he even going?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Opposition leaders dub it the gravy plane.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hold on. Challenger 650 range. This is hilarious. So the Challenger. The Challenger 650. Hold on. Where's Guardian Jet? Here we go. CL 650. No, I don't want the brochure. Online tools. Range rings. Here we go. Okay, here's our range map. So what's an airport? So let's say Toronto. Sure, whatever. Mark them. It doesn't really matter. Bombardier. Yeah, Here we go. CL650. So this is. This is what you got? Oh, shoot.

[Dan]

I screwed up.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh, no. I screwed up again. Oh, man. I'm such a boomer sometimes. Toronto, Seriously. Come on. Okay, so Markham. Yeah, here we go. Check this out. So CL6, CL650. This is the range of that thing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, does a provincial politician ever need to fly Nonstop to Ecuador. How often do you think that comes up for context? This is Ontario.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. The what, what I read was that he was mostly going to be flying within the province of Ontario.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, yeah, he's a provincial politician.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sometimes going to the states to deal with tariff stuff. Okay, that was like it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Even that. Who would he be talking to? He would be talking to bordering states. So like here. Or he'd be talking with, you know, maybe Washington, which would be like, whatever. In here. In here somewhere. I don't remember exactly. There you go. Or in like D.C. dude, he could be on a prop plane and make these flights. Like, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to have a Challenger.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So here's the. One sec, here it is. The statement issued by Ford's office contrasts the price of Ontario's plane to $107 million. It says Quebec paid for one used and two new Challenger 650s and 753 million. The federal government paid for six new Global 6500 jets.

[Linus Sebastian]

Okay, I will say this. You know, if Quebec spent that much, that's also ridiculous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's. That's the only thing that stood out to me on that was like, oh, wait, why, why the heck did Quebec spend $107 million on private jets?

[Linus Sebastian]

I can understand why the federal government needs them in terms of like federal statecraft. You actually have to travel internationally. You actually cannot just put your entire like cabinet on like a commercial flight to, you know, Madrid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And if they have.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's kind of ridiculous.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe you can borrow one now and then or something.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You can charge harder one from them.

[Linus Sebastian]

I doubt it. I mean, I don't see again, it comes down to taxation and who actually owns it, which is where. Yes. The distinction between a person and a corporation or.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sorry, do you own the corporation one

[Linus Sebastian]

level of government and another level of government actually does matter. Like it does matter in terms of moving funds around and who is paying for the wear and tear and how. All that's accounted for. Like, it legitimately does matter. So you can't just be like, hey, federal Canadian government. You own this thing, therefore I can use it. Right, right. Like it. No, it actually doesn't work like that. But besides, you wouldn't need a global. What was it? A Global 6500 or something like that. That the federal government.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's the federal one.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't need that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Six new one. They bought six brand new ones.

[Linus Sebastian]

Why do those need to be brand new? I mean,

[Luke Lafreniere]

and they spent 753 million.

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, they would cost that probably. That's the. That's what brand new ones go for, which is why that was never going to happen. That's why 1990 was, was a good year for me.

[Luke Lafreniere]

They have, they have Rolls Royce Pearl engines.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that's just common. That's not like having a Rolls Royce engine is just like it's a thing. There's only so many efficiency. There's only so many turbofan engine manufacturers. Honeywell, Rolls Royce. I'm trying to think of who else. Yeah, ge. Thank you, Dan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

At least it's Bombardier. So they bought it like from Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I would have, I would have loved to go Bombardier instead a little bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh. I mean, if it's a government purchase, you'd kind of hope it's from Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yep. I kind of wanted to. I kind of wanted to rep Bombardier, but it just, it didn't make sense. It didn't make dollars. Actually, it was a lot farther off than not making sense.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It made too many dollars.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, all the, all the dollars. Anyway, so those videos are up. The. The highest PC build is supposed to go up on April 20, lol. But for people who want to watch it a little early, you can head over to LMG Floatplane. You can also get free shipping, early access and extras a bit little. All right, we got a couple sponsors for the show today. It's brought to you by Zero Bounce. Email marketing is one of the many ways people use to grow their business. But what happens if your messages are not hitting inboxes? Well, they. Nobody sees them. Well, Zero Bounce has the solution. They stop the guesswork by offering a bunch of validation tools to make sure that your delivery rate stays high and your bounce rate stays low. All you have to do is punch in an email or upload a whole list and Zero Bounce will let you know which ones are worth your time and your money. Because sending emails is not free. 0bounce says that over 28% of emails go bad every year from people changing jobs, growing out of accounts, or even just creating a fake email just to sign up to win an SUV at the mall or whatever the case may be. That's a lot of wasted potential if you hope to grow your brand. Plus, Zero Bounce is SOC 2 type 2 certified GDPR compliant. And because they want to know that your data stays your, they want you to know that your data stays yours. Period. And for fans of the WAN show, you can use code 21 at the link down below to save 20% for a limited time. You can also check out this QR code. The show is also brought to you by amd. Another month, another spectacular AMD ultimate tech upgrade. This. This time we upgraded Sven from the business team thanks to amd. Not only did he get some cool stuff for his retro gaming hobby, but he also got a brand new 9800x3D processor for his gaming system. You should definitely go check out that video after the WAN show. Sven's a chill and charming dude. The only risk for you is that you might be a little bit jealous. I was blown away by how much cool stuff he has. Did you watch Sven's video?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I did.

[Linus Sebastian]

He has so much cool stuff.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Does have a lot of cool things.

[Linus Sebastian]

He has cool crts, place looks like

[Luke Lafreniere]

it'll be fun to hang out in

[Linus Sebastian]

and cool games and all the cool consoles. And he got a cool new upscale.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sounds like a good boyfriend.

[Linus Sebastian]

He got the RetroTink 4k for. For his OLED and like. Yeah. And he. And he took care of the girlfriend. He got some.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Some cool stuff he had already taken. Like she has a gaming computer.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, that wasn't hooked up to anything but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But because she doesn't play games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So he got her a more appropriate device. He didn't just get salty about it. He just got her something that she would appreciate. What a good boyfriend he got.

[Linus Sebastian]

Good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

What a good guy.

[Linus Sebastian]

What he did. Also, if you go check out the video, you're going to want to check out the link in the video description because there's a chance to win your own 9850x3, which is the fastest gaming CPU on the planet. But at the moment, big asterisk because hold on a second. Is have they. Have they? Yeah, they've officially. Hold on, I can't remember. Because there could be rumored to be something else coming at some point. Anyway, the point is, as usual, AMD has a little bonus question for us, Luke. When it comes to your setup, do you prefer running everything on one powerful do it all machine or do you like to split things up with dedicated systems for like gaming, content creation, server stuff, Home lab?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I like just running everything on one, but it's not really the answer. And as I progress forward, I'm going to be splintering into multi multiple devices. I see within a year probably having at least three. At least a hard. At least two. Definitely at least two systems, but very likely three before a year's up. I'm kind of delaying right now. I'm just hoping you're seeing RAM do that. So I'm trying to. Hoping I Can wait a little bit more and get some cheaper ram. But, yeah, I want to move. I have a few services that I have kind of running all the time. Not that many. And I want to have a lot more. But what's been holding me back from having a lot more is that they're all running on the same system, and that just kind of sucks. So, yeah, time to split off. Time to have a powerful NAS that can do a variety of things.

[Linus Sebastian]

Basically, what you shouldn't do necessarily, is go as far as Mr. Nick Harris. I was at his house yesterday.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've seen pictures of his setup.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nick runs software development for the lab. He also just is sort of general manager of things for the lab. He. He has some people who report to him. He also oversees Mark Bench, like, benchmarking. He also just sort of bench. He also just. Oh, yeah, I know it's. It's got a new name now, but I still call it markbench. Deal with it. He also just kind of like, is a. Is a voice of reason. You know, when you. When you have a group and you need to have a conversation, he's just kind of. That. He's a. He's a presence is, I think, the best way that I could describe him. Because, you know, having him around is a gift. So the point is, I was at his house yesterday. Though. I. And I cannot emphasize this enough, I had difficulty navigating his spaces due to the unprecedented level that I had heretofore never seen before of tech clutter. The. In the intro. In the intro, I talk, the line is, how do you upgrade the setup of someone who has not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, but seven computers? And the worst part of it is that after we did the intro, when I was doing the part where I, like, poke around in people's living spaces and we kind of get to know them a little bit, I found more computers.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Were they all running?

[Linus Sebastian]

No. The one I found was apparently a dedicated machine to run his bass pedal. He literally had a dedicated machine for pretty much every function, was his story. And then I found out that actually one of them is a Proxmox box. And he does have virtualization running. So he's got, like, more than 10 dedicated computer functions in this place. I just can't fathom it. But, hey, that's the kind of person that you want, you know, in your testing lab. Someone who enjoys the pain of tinkering and troubleshooting and experimenting.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When we were going through the interview process. Yeah, in one of our video interviews, I kind of talked about like, you know, this was a long time ago, but I talked about the idea of this benchmarking software that we would have.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, Mark Bench.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well, at the time, I don't think it had a cool name and much of an idea, really, but I talked, we talked about, like, the concept. We kind of bounced ideas back and forth on the concept. The next video call that we had, he had built like a prototype, and I was like, all right, there's the job. Basically, dude's based.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the GG right there. Not that we're saying that you should do unsolicited and unpaid work for a job you're applying for. That's not advice. However, it certainly got our attention. Yeah, I'll say that much.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It showed, like, passionate interest in the subject, which I cared about a lot.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, we'll do that later. Nvidia's mythical N1 SoC has surfaced on a real motherboard, and it's packing 128 gigs of LPDDR 5X. Nvidia's long rumored N1 SoC has shown up on a real motherboard for the first time, spotted on the Chinese resale platform Goofish. Before the listing was taken down, the board appeared to be a laptop engineering sample described as an Nvidia N1AI book, and was packed with eight SK Hynix LPDDR 5X memory chips totaling 128 gigabytes running at 8533 mega transfers per second. The N1 is supposed to share its silicon with the GB10 superchip that powers Nvidia's DGX Spark workstation and reportedly packs a 20 core ARM CPU designed with MediaTek alongside a Blackwell Architecture GPU with up to 6144 CUDA cores, which would put it roughly in RTX 5070 territory. This would be Nvidia's first crack at a consumer PC chip after years of Tegra SoCs for mobile devices, phones and consoles like the Nintendo Switch. All signs point to a Computex 2026 reveal in June, with Dell and Lenovo reportedly already testing laptops with the N1. The chip is designed to compete directly with Apple Silicon AMD's Strix Halo, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite. In the growing Windows on ARM space,

[Luke Lafreniere]

it feels like a predominantly Strix Halo competitor.

[Linus Sebastian]

However, it's in a bit of a weird spot. It's got like Nvidia grade onboard graphics, but it will have ARM on Windows grade game compatibility issues Potentially, unless Nvidia has done some blackmagic wizardry. Which you know, after seeing what Valve and Apple have done over the last five, six years, I wouldn't say is impossible. You know, the migration from intel to Apple Silicon was incredibly smooth. And the way that, I mean look, that demo that I saw at Valve HQ playing on the Steam frame like playing an x86 windows like direct 3D game on an ARM CPU on Linux blew my freaking mind, man. Obviously it won't work on everything, but I mean being on Windows. Here's a question. Does like kernel level anti cheat work on Windows on arm? Is it architecturally?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No idea.

[Linus Sebastian]

Similar enough that it just like it's, it's, it's the Windows ness that matters. Did they bother to port that? Like are you even gonna want a 5070 class GPU on a Windows on ARM laptop? Like is that something anybody is asking for? Because do the games matter? Chad even seems like so unsure about that. It's like it's a question nobody seems to really be asking

[Dan]

me.

[Linus Sebastian]

Balrid says a kernel level anti cheat is just a driver. And like yeah, fair enough, but it's a driver that needs certain permissions and I just, I'm not sure if anyone has bothered to integrate it on Windows on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

As far as my googling is showing, this is all, this is all true, but it's. Not everything is compatible with it because not everything has drivers for it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, okay, well anyway, good, good luck with this Nvidia.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In other Nvidia, apparently EA is expanding anti cheat to arm 64. Okay, so like some companies are working on it.

[Linus Sebastian]

Maybe this is part of Nvidia laying the groundwork for. Exactly, exactly this.

[Luke Lafreniere]

If, if they're starting to do stuff like that, that might also help the

[Linus Sebastian]

Linux crowd, but I, I kind of doubt it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Indirect. Well, I already closed that article, but it mentions something along the lines of like Linux also potentially being included in. In their expansion of anti cheat compatibility.

[Linus Sebastian]

I'd love to see it. I read a really long article and I think it was Ars Technica talking about the sort of inherent challenges with anti cheat on Linux and how it's just having the user, having the user by its very philosophy in control of the kernel is just going to kind of make it not a thing forever.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My I think counterargument is that they're barely catching stuff at all right now anyways.

[Linus Sebastian]

Unless they are like that's the thing. How do you know that even more rare people wouldn't be cheating if it was even easier or easier for me,

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it's past the threshold.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think so.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So it like doesn't really matter. There's just such a high percentage right now that it's already so bad that it being worse I don't think would significant significantly changed my life. But that being said, the main game I've played that is a competitive shooter in the last while, which I have not played very much of at all, like genuinely less than five matches, is Counter Strike and that is compatible with Linux. And that had like the biggest and worst story of cheaters I've heard in a while, which was fairly recent. So I don't know. But as far as my understanding goes, a lot of those cheaters were actually just farming skins, right?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Oh, oh, did you see the. Did you see the news about the. The huge warehouse full of PlayStation 4s that was farming FIFA stuff?

[Luke Lafreniere]

No.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is hilarious.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh my God. Ukraine warehouse packed with thousands of PS Fours was actually a FIFA ultimate team bot farm. What?

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I. I don't. I don't quite. I don't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't know. FIFA Ultimate Team works. Understand this 3800 PS4S, but this is

[Linus Sebastian]

so funny to me to play with,

[Luke Lafreniere]

with all those fans.

[Linus Sebastian]

Look at the fans in the windows. You got to cool the PS4s, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Would all of those need whatever PlayStation Online subscription is? Would they all need those?

[Linus Sebastian]

I guess so. Ultimate Team cards. Card Farming operation. Something something. FIFA Ultimate Cards. This is so. This is so funny. So if lucky, purchased cards contain one of the rare cards which can be sold at a huge profit. With so many consoles set up to automatically play the game, there's a good chance a few rare cards will be discovered.

[Luke Lafreniere]

This is.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is like, man, imagine. Imagine the investor pitch. It's like, okay, bro, I have a foolproof plan. I have a foolproof plan to make

[Luke Lafreniere]

lots of money as long as they don't patch it.

[Linus Sebastian]

All I need is a small loan of 3,800 PlayStations. What are you talking about?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, man.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like the kind of money that's involved in the startup of something like this and like the kind of the janky operation they're running. Like, imagine the legitimate businesses that you could start with a warehouse and enough Money to buy 3800 PlayStations. Not to mention the ongoing monthly expense of 3800 PSN subscriptions.

[Luke Lafreniere]

In the business chaos of doing that Ukraine, just to also put that out

[Linus Sebastian]

there, you could just do something else. Just an idea. I don't know, it seems crazy, but you could just do. You could just do anything else.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's pretty wild.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like hey, you could put your effort into shocking the Linux community with a game changing vram hack for 8 gig GPUs. This is pretty cool. Natalie Vock, a contractor on Valve's Linux Graphics Driver team, has developed kernel patches that fix how Linux handles VRam on eight gig GPUs. Previously, when VRam filled up, the Linux kernel didn't know to prioritize the game you're actually playing, so it might accidentally evict game data to slower system RAM to make room for background for like a background browser tab, which could cause stutters and frame drops. Voxfix tells the OS that the game is in the foreground and that should get first dibs on vram. If memory fills up, then background tasks are the ones forced into system RAM instead. In her Cyberpunk 2077 tests on an 8 gig GPU, the game's VRAM usage climbed from about 6 gigs to nearly 7.4 gigs, while spillover to system memory dropped by 53%. The patches currently only work on AMD GPUs because of Nvidia's closed source drivers that don't allow this kind of memory management modification and Cashios is already integrating the fixed and the patches are awaiting merge into the main Linux kernel, which

[Luke Lafreniere]

is I think what we talked about last week, the Cache OS part.

[Linus Sebastian]

This does not apply to integrated GPUs like those in the Steam Deck or handheld PCs because they're using the same graphics pool anyway. Well, not quite. I mean, okay, the Steam deck would be, but I think for something like Astrix Halo, it's a static allocation, so maybe it would, would. Okay, TBD. TBD on that last bit. What else we got, Mr. Luke?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Xbox game Pass, apparently the. What is it the new CEO? Yeah, new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma said in a leaked internal memo that Game Pass has become too expensive for players and that Microsoft needs a better value option. Microsoft hiked Game pass Ultimate to $30 a month last year, up from $20, which was itself already up a bump from 1699. That's two price increases in 15 months, and there was price increases before that as well. As far as my understanding goes, Game Pass now runs from $10 for Essential to $15 for Premium and $30 for Ultimate. Sharma says the long term plan is to evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system, though the details are pretty vague. The memo also comes days after rumors surfaced that call of duty 2026 could skip game Pass entirely, which would be a major shift Given that adding COD to the service was widely seen as the reason the price hikes happened in the first place, that would be wild. Might also be the reason why she's saying it's overpriced if they're not doing that anymore.

[Linus Sebastian]

The whole point of Game Pass was supposed to be that I subscribed to it forever. And like, you know, that sucks, but you're giving me a good value in return for it. And that's like the deal is I

[Luke Lafreniere]

get all the cool games, the Microsoft games.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. And it's a one all you can eat for the price of.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Kind of feels weird saying that COD is a Microsoft game.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know, right? Sorry to just wasn't there also, like that whole thing around the conversation for the Activision Blizzard acquisition where, like, they weren't going to do all kinds of. With COD and which platforms? I mean, I guess. I guess not having it on Game Pass would ultimately be satisfactory to some

[Luke Lafreniere]

of the main thing was they didn't want to have it taken away from Sony. So this still doesn't do that.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, well, okay, so this. This is fine.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't remember. It's been a while.

[Linus Sebastian]

But is this kind of a killer for Game Pass if you're not getting the hot new game?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think it will be for some people. Yeah, definitely.

[Linus Sebastian]

Because to me, that's the whole point of Game Pass is that I'm entering into kind of like an understanding, especially

[Luke Lafreniere]

a podcast where, like, there's a new one every year.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's the kind of game you subscribe to. Yeah, like, that's the agreement I have. Right. Is I give you money for Game Pass and then I never think about it again, I can just play the games. But if all of a sudden all my friends are playing that game, that one game, and it's not on Game Pass, what is even the point of Game Pass? I might as well just buy that one game. And then I could see that kind of shifting people's mentality going like. Like that could be the kind of thing that just makes me mad enough to just cancel. Cancel the subscription.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

And then give you my money another way

[Luke Lafreniere]

ultimately. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So Microsoft will probably learn nothing, but hey, it'll be interesting. At least Luke is. At least Luke is winning a small. A small, maybe not decisive, but small battle here. I mean, you've been adamantly anti games as a subscription since the entire concept arose. And at the. In the beginning, I think I actually argued quite, quite passionately with you that at that original pricing, it made a ton of Sense. But it has ultimately was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

The entire argument too was that if, if everyone ends up subscribing, then they have all of the power, all the leverage, all the. And that's like literally never goes well.

[Linus Sebastian]

And the best way to play it was still going to be to, you know, subscribe when it was cheap, play single player games or play experiences that you would never want to have again. And then once it's not cheap anymore, start buying games again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But I still go and play Civ 5.

[Linus Sebastian]

But not everyone operates that way.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Or like not. I mean, not everyone operates the way that they play a game and then they're done with it. Yeah, I, I used to be more of a, like, go back and play a game that I haven't played in a long time guy. But I'm not anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I don't do it often. But it's also nice to just. I don't know. It's nice. Okay. So 10 billion years ago I did this stream for one of my birthdays. I don't remember which one it was, but it would be kind of tough to do this now. But I think I was 28 or something and I did. I played one game for one hour for every year that I had been alive. So I was born in 1990. So I played a game that released in 1990 for an hour.

[Linus Sebastian]

I remember that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It was cool. It was awesome. It's actually really fun. It did really well, for sure.

[Linus Sebastian]

I think I suggested a couple of the games that you played. I forget if you liked them though.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Anyway, I don't remember, but it sounds likely. But that was really fun. I was largely able to play a lot of those games because I've had the same Steam account for most of my life and I just launched it from Steam. Some of them I had to go get, of course, especially the like 1990 era ones. But like, there was a lot of games that I just launched on Steam. It's nice that I can. I think I value the ability to do so a lot, even if it's not something I super commonly do.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's one of the things I actually brought up. I wrote the Microsoft's Year of Humiliation script earlier this week. So that was my kind of video essay video this week. And that specifically was one of the things that I brought up as my, hey, I'm not a hater. There's a lot of things that I love about Windows. How about the ability to like click compatibility mode and run software from my childhood? That's crazy. Yeah, do that on your PlayStation 5. Like, come on.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's the thing that's been eating me up the most about the Linux challenge going really well is the frustration with Windows. It's, it's, it's like almost been time

[Linus Sebastian]

for the weekly Windows really needs to do better.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Bit.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's mostly been kind of sad. I don't, I don't even know. Like, I'm more sad about it than I am angry. Like, it's like, dang. I actually really liked Windows for a long time. Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 was just such a great series of operating systems. Assuming you didn't have a. Assuming you had a powerful computer when, when Vista came out. Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

So are we here now?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think like maybe 6.5. Okay, so we're definitely spent a long time in three. I think I skipped four entirely. Four and five, I skipped entirely. And then now I'm like six and a half right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, all right.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, it's just. Why don't you list eight? Because when eight came out, it was trash. 8.5 was like, pretty. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, 8.1, but.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yes, one. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but yeah, when eight first came out, it was like just.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was comically.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like the worst initial release of an OS that I had experienced at that time. I'm not saying it's the worst ever, but it's the worst I had experienced.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you hadn't experienced Millennium Edition even. I barely did. Like I was in. I was in grade eight or nine or something like that. When, when Millennium Edition was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

My dad would have had it, but I don't think I was exactly forming opinions on operating systems at the time.

[Linus Sebastian]

A lot of people skipped it.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, well, my dad like messed with computers. Like we had two or three computers that time and, and he would get random software all the time. Remember for one of my birthdays I received a. I think I've told you about this before. It was awesome. Actually. I got a. A like writable CD that just had Sharpie all over it with like 20 different games. It's like, here's your birthday gift. It was awesome. Yeah. Anyways, it's just, it's frustrating that it's that it's so frustrating to use right now.

[Linus Sebastian]

Hey, speaking of things from the late 90s, while attempting to reduce the size of a 600 plus gigabyte backup of a Discourse server, engineers at Discourse discovered that a 1.6 megabyte GIF of Jennifer Aniston's Happy Dance was duplicated almost a Quarter million times. This isn't really good news. It's just funny news. While trying to fix the duplication. While trying to fix the dupli. I'm so tired this week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Duplication. We're good.

[Linus Sebastian]

While trying to fix the duplication problem with a single instance of the GIF and hard links in the file system for each time somebody tried to upload it again, the admins discovered a limitation of the extra for file system that they previously didn't know about. A file can only have 65,000 links pointing to it. So instead of one copy and 250,000 links for all the duplicates of it, they got one copy, 65,000 links and another 180,000 duplicates of the file. Dan, if you could throw the link to the blog post, that would be pretty funny. The blog has a bunch more detail including their eventual fix and you can check it out if you're into that sort of thing. But these are the kinds of, I guess, bugs that are really frustrating and can be sometimes be scary because when you're working with. Anytime you're working with data loss, it can be very frightening.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Loss.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, not. You understood what I meant. Data loss can be. Can be very scary, can be very frustrating.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, I didn't mean it that way. It's a meme.

[Linus Sebastian]

I know.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is this loss. I know. Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

No, no, I know.

[Dan]

I just mean.

[Linus Sebastian]

I just. Yeah, I was memeing back at you. Of course not. Yeah, it can be very frightening. But this is. Doesn't this feel like the kind of thing that is like, this is why we play the game.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh yeah, I know.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is fun to like to find stuff like this because. Oh yeah, because of course there might be a. A limit to how many link backs because whoever did this, however long ago they designed this, must have gone well. Surely nobody will need more than 65,000 link backs to a single file.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oops. Jennifer Addison jumping.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't know. It's not really good news. I just thought it was really funny.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's funny. I like that they made a blog post out of it because it's.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Sharing the knowledge with the community.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Speaking of things that are funny, struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot from shoes to AI and their stock explodes in value. Allbirds, the wool sneaker company, announced it's leaving shoes behind entirely. I think they even sold off everything and is rebranding as New Bird AI, an AI compute infrastructure company. Because why not? Stock went from under 3 bucks to about 17 in a single day. I got this from Atrioc. But look at the much bigger view. Go many years instead. Oops. The plan is to buy GPUs and lease them out for AI compute customers who can't get reliable access from hyperscalers.

[Linus Sebastian]

What a plan.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Secured $50 million in funding to get started. Oh, boy. CNBC's Jim Cramer. Oh boy. Called it ridiculous. So maybe it's actually really high value.

[Linus Sebastian]

So I guess it's a really good idea.

[Dan]

Time to invest.

[Linus Sebastian]

Time to invest. Okay. Not financial advice. Not financial advice.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Pointing out that it fits the classic pattern seen during the crypto boom. Dying companies bolting blockchain onto their names to pump the stock. And now it's AI. And this goes back super, super, super, super. Far beyond just the blockchain push as well.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Don't forget.com and.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And others.

[Linus Sebastian]

The classic 90s bubble.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Allbirds was a public benefit corporation championed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah and Obama. The pivot includes dropping that status entirely with filings stating the company would be Silicon Valley circles.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know, man.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's like a. Almost a flex.

[Linus Sebastian]

I have no idea. This is the kind of thing that again, wasn't good news. But it was just. It was.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, it's funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

It was too funny for me to not talk about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Maybe it can be good news and things that are funny.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like seriously, if I was. If I was less. If I was less principled, man, just an IPO with just Linus Media Group. AI.

[Luke Lafreniere]

AI infrastructure in Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

AI infrastructure come to the north.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Cooling's easier here.

[Linus Sebastian]

We're going to be making videos about our AI data center build out. We're going to have. We. We do this like pitch video offering unparalleled transparency into the. The AI data center build out in the frozen north.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We've solved cooling. Just put it in the arcade and

[Linus Sebastian]

we've got all the, we got all the energy and you know, blah, blah, blah, like you go, you. I don't. I don't know who the gullible people giving Allbirds $50 million are, but I secure a meeting with them somehow. Like, I just. It just seems like the playbook is so simple and so dumb and just so easy that I feel like it couldn't be that hard. It couldn't be that hard. Oh, man. Dude, did you see the one where that, that woman got a $5 million refund from the CRA on her taxes? So this is just, this is just classic, you know, scammers are not that smart kind of lore here. So what she did, the ones you know of what she did. Yeah, right. Well, she reported $9,999,999 in foreign income on her tax return. Reported to the CRA that she had paid income tax on it, and then said that she was entitled to a $5 million refund. Hold on. The next part is the funniest part. And I want to make sure that I don't get this wrong because it's so funny. Here we go. Court records say that auditors later became suspicious after realizing that Wallace, the person who filed this claim, was claiming status both as a resident and as a non resident of Canada. Wallace, they noted, submitted a vague two word explanation in tax forms for the claimed foreign income. United Nations. What does that do? This got past two reviews. They wrote the check. A third review that got flagged because it was an outlier refund, found it and was like, yo, what is this? And they froze her assets, but already hundreds of thousands of dollars are gone. And like, this is the kind of person that you gotta look at and go, they got no shot whatsoever. There's no way they didn't waste that

[Luke Lafreniere]

money, pull that off. You gotta get it overseas and move out of Canada.

[Linus Sebastian]

So that's the thing is like, she didn't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, that's crazy. That's like, you gotta bail, you're done here.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's crazy.

[Luke Lafreniere]

And you have no time, you gotta leave.

[Linus Sebastian]

Like, that's. That's the kind of scam that like, seriously, I would, I would be a criminal. I'd be a criminal mastermind compared to some of these people.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, but again, she got caught.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I guess that's.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's a big part of it.

[Linus Sebastian]

But like, I would have skipped town. I'd be gone. I'd have gone to Costco and bought all the gold bullion.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or you'd just be running a bank.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, or I'd find a legal way to be a criminal. I just. I just. I don't get it, dude. I don't get it. It seems so. It seems so simple. It seems like we could just like if someone says they paid $5 million in taxes, you'd think there'd just be like an AI check. That's like. Did you though? No, well, it's not in our bank account. You know, like this is like that thing I went through when, when we got like wire frauded a while back. You remember that? When our. When our pool contracting company details.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, I know it happened.

[Linus Sebastian]

Our pool contracting company got their email server Infiltrated. So they were able to send us emails from our pool company and then intercept accept our responses. Was. Was what happened? And then. So we wired money, like, from a bank to a bank within Canada, and then we did ultimately end up getting it back, but there was, like, a high risk that we weren't going to be able to. And I'm sitting here going, what is the bloody point of electronic fund movement if it can't be reversed? If it turns out that it was

[Luke Lafreniere]

a f. Criminal, like, obviously fraud, and

[Linus Sebastian]

like, how hard is it to go, hey, that was fraud. When the person shows up to take it out, just handcuff them. Like, I. And I must be missing something here because I'm.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I believe, genuinely, I also don't get it. So I feel like we're both missing something.

[Linus Sebastian]

Law enforcement, probably, for the most part, like, you know, tries pretty hard and stuff. I've met some very hardworking law enforcement people, but it just seems like sometimes it really is that simple as just, hey, you know, that it was taken, you know, illegitimately. So just wait on the other side and go get them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay. So willing spy said, lol @linus. Wait till you find out how credit card security works. There's a reason why mythbusters couldn't do an episode on it. I know about that, but my understanding of that is that's why the, like, honestly, ability to get your money back from credit card fraud is so easy. It's because they know it's kind of crap, so they just cover you.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, no, I. And then that's just part of what you're. Like the 1 1/2% or 2% merchant fee covers is just.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Like, I had. I had my card skimmed once, and I just had a call with a guy, and he was like, okay, let's go through your thing and just basically point out all the ones that seem not legit. And I did. And he's like, yep, seems right. And just sent me all the money. Like, it was super easy because of that. So that's why this scenario is weird, is because that part isn't super easy. There's no insurance, obviously, fraud, because every

[Linus Sebastian]

day on every transaction, you're paying for transaction insurance.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. If you use. At least in North America, if you use a credit card.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Say no more.

[Linus Sebastian]

How it works here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I hear you. But, like, it doesn't matter. If someone wants to rip off credit cards, credit cards, they can do Internet research for roughly five seconds and figure out how to do it. Like, it's. It's Us talking about it on the Wan show is not going to move the needle. That's one of the reasons why it's like, fully acceptable to make content about doing stuff like that, about security tools and whatnot on. On YouTube, on the Internet, publishing books about it, doing whatever is because, like, oh no, I'm better to educate people about how it's done so they can protect themselves than it is to no key.

[Linus Sebastian]

Noki just posted Veritasium apparently made a video, this is their most recent video on how you can make a payment with no upper ceiling and stole $10,000 from MKBHD.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Dude, what's up? Veritasium is making a ton of like, hacking content.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Where did that come from? It's been doing really well.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's been great. It's just a surprising pivot. But yeah. 3.7 million views exposing a flaw in tap to pay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. I mean, good for Derek and the. And the acquiring company like they seem to be. He seems to have found the way to divest of the channel that he founded without it completely losing its soul. And the acquiring company seems like they are. They are. They have a strong interest in being good stewards of. Of the channel that they. I. I'm not sure what amount of it they acquired, so just take this for. For what it is. I was not involved in the deal in any way, but it seems like from the outside that it's going pretty good. Avion says the new host is hard to watch. I mean, part of it might just be not being used to. Used to them.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I thought they were fine. Yeah, I. I do think it's probably not being used to them because I think they're fine.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. Valerid says they've gotten the kind of deal that Linus refused and now there's many writers doing many kinds of topics and 9 out of 10 videos is like, legit good. Yeah, that's. That's cool. I mean, if we. If we could find someone who was willing to do it the same way as that, I might consider it again. But it would have to be. There were. There were a lot of factors. There was. There was the team as well. Like, I was. I was very worried that they would not only not be good stewards of the content, but they wouldn't be good stewards of the team. And I'd have to see what the proposal would. Would assure as far as all of that goes. We do have some more sponsors to talk about though, if you're looking for a new gaming computer. But don't Know where to start? Our sponsor MSI has a whole catalog, or should I say codecs of gaming computers for you to upgrade. Upgrade to. Each system comes out of the box ready for you to play the latest releases like Pragmata or Resident Evil Requiem. And that's because each system comes equipped with up to a 12th gen Intel Core i7 processor and MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. They also include MSI's LED button, which gives you more customization options with over 60 different lighting effects. Just press and hold for Mystic Light software compatibility. And every system has RGB cooling so you can keep your system temperatures low in style. And every computer is assembled in America with standardized components, making upgrades and adjustments easy. That's actually a pretty compelling selling point for a lot of folks. I'm a little surprised MSI is doing it that way, but kudos to them. So grab your own MSI Codecs PC today by hitting up our link in the video description or checking out this QR code. The show is also brought to you by Square. There's a lot of things to juggle when you're running a business. Things like payment processing, inventory, your staff and schedules, and so much more. A lot of the time, the tools needed for these kinds of things don't always interface well with each other. One system for payments, another for payroll, and so on and so forth. Well, our sponsor, Square offers a single connected system to handle it all. Whether you need to take payments in person or store online. They can help as well as tracking inventory automatically and getting analytics to see where you actually make your money. Square isn't just fast, it's smart, transparent and built for the way people actually run their businesses. Because some people operate on the go and others at a traditional pos. And hey, some people operate, you know, at their work desk. They want to make it easy and transparent for you to get started. That's why they have no contract, no hidden fees, and no complicated installation. If you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage and grow without slowing down. And right now you can get up to $200 off square hardware at square.com/, go, slash. When that right there. There it is. Look at that. And it's also linked down below. All right, we've got a couple more topics here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You've got three minutes.

[Dan]

Oops.

[Linus Sebastian]

BYD is now upgrading some of its top selling EVs with 5 minute flash charging. This is nuts. Absolutely nuts. This is. So this is going to be starting with the Yuan Plus. So it's sold as the Atto 3 outside of China, which was the 13th best selling EV globally in 2025. And it first debuted in BYD's luxury models like the Yangwang U7 and the Denza Z9 GT. They claim it will charge from 10% to 70% in five minutes, 10% to 97% in nine minutes, and only add about three minutes to those times in extreme cold temperatures like down to minus 30C. BYD has already built out over 5,000 of their 1.5 megawatt flash charging stations and is aiming for 20,000 by the end of the year in China, with a European European rollout now underway as well. Dude, is this it? Is this the last obstacle to widespread EV adoption?

[Luke Lafreniere]

5 minutes maybe

[Linus Sebastian]

the weight still sucks.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's interesting in North America because like, okay, so there's come Chinese, there's some Chinese EVs coming to Canada. That's going to, that's going to move the needle here quite a bit. But apparently I've heard that you're not even going to be able to be allowed to like road trip through the States. Like you might not be able to enter America at all in a Chinese cv.

[Linus Sebastian]

Really?

[Luke Lafreniere]

I've heard that might be a thing.

[Linus Sebastian]

There's no way that will last longer than the next 2.75 years though. Let's be real.

[Luke Lafreniere]

We'll see. They might, they might still want to protect their automotive program no matter what. Who's in admin?

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't see how preventing someone from road tripping into the States will help American automotive manufacturing.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think their idea is you can't enter the States with them so they can't be like left there. Like if you drove down and then happened to fly back up or something, you just left your car there and now there's a Chinese EV in, in China.

[Linus Sebastian]

You mean in the US? But yes, yes, there's lots of Chinese EVs in China.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Quite a few.

[Linus Sebastian]

Quite a few. I saw them, saw them with my own eyes.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Next topic. Quick. Google will begin punishing sites for back button hijacking in June.

[Linus Sebastian]

I love this so much. I love. I freaking. Some sites will do it twice. Yeah, like you'll go to go back and it'll not. It'll just like go to some sub menu thing and you'll go to go back again and it goes to some other thing. I meant back.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Google is adding a back button hijacking to its spam policy starting June 15. Sites that mess with your browser's back Button trapping you in loops, redirecting you to pages you never visited, or shoving ads and recommendations in the way when you try to leave. Will face ranking penalties or manual spam actions.

[Linus Sebastian]

This should have been done ages ago.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah. Google is giving sites a two month heads up and notes that some of the worst offenders may not even know they're doing it since the hijacking can come from third party ad scripts or recommendation widgets baked into the site.

[Linus Sebastian]

That's brutal.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Actually, I don't care.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, I don't care either. It needs to go away.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yep. And like, you're gonna have to be responsible for the ad scripts and stuff that you put on your site.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It is what it is.

[Linus Sebastian]

Now the next thing I want is a single close button on all mobile ads because I play Wordscapes with Yvonne like almost every night. I have had more exposure to mobile ads in the last like three to six months than the previous my entire life combined. And they are so annoying. My ad block works to a certain degree to the point where I could tell you very few of the things I've ever even seen an ad for. Like, I can't.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, you're not actually running out of block. You mean your brain's auto.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, like, I can't. I don't care what it is or know what it is. But what I do care is that like sometimes the exit is up here and sometimes it's over here and sometimes you have to wait for a circle to complete and other times you have to like go open it on the ads app store and then go back and then exit it. And man, there's this one really obnoxious one that the X never appears until you just like press somewhere on the screen. And it won't open the ad, but it will make the X appear. So you have to like press it and then X and then it brings up another thing and then X again.

[Luke Lafreniere]

One X. I find, like I, I mentioned I play the New York Times games. It's been a while, but I play them every once in a while, sometimes by myself, usually with Emma. They're. They have ads, right? They're going to have to have ads to do whatever.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

But if you notice, you can make it perfectly, perfectly go away.

[Linus Sebastian]

Nice. Solid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's just gone solid. No problem. I don't mind that at all.

[Linus Sebastian]

Solid.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think that's, that's totally good.

[Linus Sebastian]

What's a little less good? This is the one exception to the Good News WAN show this week. Major news outlets are blocking the Internet Archive, Wired Reports that in an effort to limit AI agents accessing historical data for training, 23 major publications, including USAT, USA Today, and the New York Times, are blocking the Internet Archives. Crawler is Dash Archiver bot. The abuse of fair Use policies in the training of LLMs is a serious concern for both copyright holders and the Internet Archive Organization. The. Yeah, hosting massive amounts of data and for the Internet Archive organization, because hosting massive amounts of data has bandwidth costs associated with it due to LLM bots accessing it over and over and over and over and over and over again,

[Luke Lafreniere]

often in an incredibly inefficient way, because they don't care.

[Linus Sebastian]

This is really bad news because the Internet Archive has only grown in importance as the world has increasingly abandoned print journalism and the archives maintained by libraries and and news organizations have fallen into disrepair. It used to be that you could go to your local library and pull up a microfiche of the newspaper of any given day in history and you could go read it like you could go read the newspaper the day that you were born, for instance. This has gotten very difficult. In spite of pushback from copyright holders, courts have established that the archives actions are legal and that creating a searchable index without making copies of the materials is impossible. But I can also understand why copyright holders are doing what they're doing, because just having AI agents trained on their stuff is also not good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Wayback Machine director Mark Graham is reportedly in talks with several outlets. So the archiver's bot could gain access to the websites once more. But right now is an uncertain time for archiving important information that otherwise could just be lost. On that subject, rare bootleg concert recordings are coming to the Internet Archives.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You don't have to go.

[Linus Sebastian]

I do. I just have to, I don't know, do a couple more topics. One more topic.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Linus Sebastian]

Music superfan Adam Jacobs has built a collection of more than 10,000 cassette tapes by attending and recording concerts since 1989. After Jacobs was featured in a documentary in 2023, the Internet Archive reached out. And now, once a month, a volunteer named Brian emrick picks up 10 to 20 boxes stuffed with tapes and transfers the analog recordings in real time to digital files that are sent to other volunteers to clean up, organize, and publish. So far, almost 2,500 tapes have been digitized and added to the Adam the Adam Jacobs Collection on the Internet Archive. The collection includes rarities like Nirvana performing in 1989, two years before smells Like Team Spirit was released as a single. Wow, that's cool. They. So they recorded Smells Like Team Spirit. Oh, that's so cool. Unreleased tracks by Tracy Chapman and previously unknown recordings of Sonic Youth, R.E.M. fish, Liz Fair, Pavement Neutral Milk Hotel, and a host of others. This is maybe a controversial take, but I have never really felt the need to record a concert. I thought you're not really supposed to. And I've. I've actually come around to the idea of a concert being an experience for the moment and not something to be recorded. But maybe I'm. Maybe this is it. Kind of goes against my general stance as just like a data hoarder and everything should exist forever. But I don't know, I. Maybe I just grieved it already because there were really great experiences I had live that I was never able to recall again. And I just was like, okay, well, I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I think there's also certain things that you shouldn't be distracted by the camera. You should just experience. I also remember I went to Blink 1A2, had a concert in Vancouver, and my brother and I went, yeah, I remember I recorded it on my phone and sent it to a buddy because I thought he'd like it. And then a few days later I went back and watched it and was like, why the would he like this? Yeah, because I just sent him a really crappy recording of Blink 1A2 playing a song that he's heard before in a good recording. So, like, I don't know. I do think, like, I have heard live recordings, professional live recordings before of songs that I prefer the live recording of the song. I think also, like, as a piece of history, to have some recordings from concerts from bands is cool. Do I think every single person in the audience needs to have their cell phone out recording aggressively?

[Linus Sebastian]

No.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah, just enjoy the dying concert when you know there's 40,000 other freaking phones in the audience out. Maybe you don't need your individual POV and could have someone who's one foot to the side of you. It's going to be possible. Post it on the Internet anyways and just use theirs and enjoy it yourself.

[Linus Sebastian]

Part of the experience to me too is like, I wish the performers could be themselves a little bit more and not have to be worried about everything from the concert just immediately being published. One of the funniest concert experiences I ever had was with Michael Buble, of all people. He did an outdoor performance in Vancouver about. Must be about 20 years ago now. And Yvonne and I attended it. We just like kind of randomly got tickets for it. I think my aunt Might have gotten them for us or something. I don't know. Anyway, the point was we went. Neither of us were huge Michael Buble fans, but we had a really great time. And one of the funniest moments was when he, like, was interacting with the crowd that was, like, right up next to the stage. And this. I couldn't see her because I was, like, way back. But presumably young, young lady, like, you know, handed him, past him, passed him, like, a note, and he made, like, an offhand joke. He was like, you're, like 12. You're. You're a little young. And everyone, like, laughs because that was, you know, not. I guess that was pre Epstein files when, you know, we could kind of

[Luke Lafreniere]

go like, yeah, famous person saying no to that was common at that time.

[Linus Sebastian]

And. And just like, you know, the idea that he might say anything other than no was funny. And it was just. It was. But it was. It was like, hilarious. And he just, like, kind of. He kind of, like, burned. He burned her in front of, like, 10,000 people. I don't know. I don't know if you can get away with that anymore.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Well,

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah. All right. All right. Time for After Dark. What do you got for us, Mr. Dan?

[Dan]

Sure, let me just push some buttons here. Okay. And. Yeah, I've got a couple for you today.

[Linus Sebastian]

Sure.

[Dan]

I really need to, like, make this one single button. That would make my life easier. There we go. Hey, when hosters. Linus, any update on the GPD win 5 review? Also, did the WAN design backpack sell well enough for a restock? Keep up the great work. Love your products and the work y' all do.

[Linus Sebastian]

I don't know if I'm ultimately going to end up doing a review of it, but I do end up talking a little bit more about my experience with it in the upcoming short circuit for the onexplayer Apex. That's a competing Strix Halo handheld. And both of them have their own unique selling points. Both are very expensive. This one actually can be configured with liquid cooling.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is that us?

[Linus Sebastian]

Which is pretty. Oh, yeah, of course. Which is pretty wild liquid cool. I mean, the people who have it apparently love it, but is that two reviews?

[Luke Lafreniere]

Oh, no, nine or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

It's. It's a pretty wild little device. And I talk a little bit more about the win5 and my experience daily driving it in there. As for the WAN backpack, I don't know if we're restocking it. You might just have to send in a message to customer. Care to ask about that.

[Dan]

Hello from the uk. My Android Auto seems very sensitive to cable quality. Hoping this cable is the solution. Have you had much feedback on the type of problems the TRUSPEC cables have solved?

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually, yeah, there's been a ton of feedback about them. If you, if you look at the reviews on the site, people, some of them, I think people are actually wrong in misunderstanding like what a cable does. But there are also a lot of them where people do seem to know what they're talking about.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Is there like some that says their audio sounds better or something?

[Linus Sebastian]

There's some stuff like that. Which, look, if it makes you happy, then I like, guess, whatever, I'm glad you're happy. But that's not really how it works.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Digital signal.

[Linus Sebastian]

But there are, there are people that are like, oh yeah, no, like I was getting transfer issues with my high speed external storage and now it's consistently faster or the, the more robust build quality is making it so that when my Roomba runs over it, it's less likely to, you know, get destroyed. Like, people are really enjoying this product. So I'm just, I'm glad they are. We had a small restock earlier this week. They're like almost all gone now. If you want to get a true spec cable, you are going to need to sign up for a notification. Like if you do not click this button, you are not going to get one for a while. Our manufacturer increased their capacity just for us to make more of these cables. It is still not even close to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's A to Cs.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, there's short ones.

[Luke Lafreniere]

There's a few short A to Cs and a really long A2C and all the ones in the middle are still.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

For you, Luke, what's your go to?

[Linus Sebastian]

Can you do Luke's after? Yep.

[Dan]

Hi LLD. Hey, Linus, now that your kids are getting into 3D printing, what CAD software do they use? Also, did you teach them how to use it or how did they teach themselves it?

[Linus Sebastian]

They learned Tinkercad at local sort of stem mostly computer kind of study thing called codeninjas, which seems to be working pretty well for them. They can make just about any kind of basic thing that they want. My daughter did something for, for our project for school earlier this week. Yeah, they're just, they're still having a really good time with it. Both just, you know, using it as a toy factory and also to do legitimately useful things.

[Dan]

Tinker is great. I think Grasshopper is that free. Can we get them into Grasshopper?

[Linus Sebastian]

I mean, I guess, yeah, they know it better than I do at this point.

[Dan]

They could go work with Seb. Hey, Linus. My five year old just had his first dental work and managed to chew his lip up due to the anesthesia by accident.

[Linus Sebastian]

Aw.

[Dan]

How sore are you these days? Is the end in sight?

[Linus Sebastian]

Actually really sore today. It's really hard to talk. I don't know when I'm not getting enough sleep. They like dig in extra and then they put in a super strong wire for the one tooth that like stubbornly stayed really twisted after the first rounds. And like the bracket was not quite in the right place and stuff. So this tooth here.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Yeah.

[Linus Sebastian]

Turned like maybe 15 degrees with this wire. Like a lot. Okay, maybe 10, but like freaking a lot. Which moved like everything. And it's like you can really tell when they're moving a lot because you'll like kind of press on the racket and you can like, you can like feel them like moving and like it'll go like they'll like kind of reshift and stuff like, like in real time if there's a lot of tension built up. And then the, the wire for this one, you can see there's a long fan of wire just like slices the inside of the lip there. And then there's another one on this side that's doing the same thing. I'm actually like in extreme discomfort right now. The WAN show is not a lot of fun when my mouth is as sore as it is right now. I have to bail. Luke's gonna have to do his thing. I really gotta go. Family thing. Bye.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Bye. Have fun. Don't forget your bag. I see you walking past it.

[Dan]

Say the line. No.

[Linus Sebastian]

Well, you can call me.

[Dan]

Oh yeah, I forgot we can do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Nice.

[Dan]

Luke, what's your go to character build when you play morrowind? Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. Question mark, please. No stealth archer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Okay, well, I have to defend myself a little bit.

[Dan]

It's stealth archer, isn't it?

[Luke Lafreniere]

To defend myself a little bit?

[Dan]

It's stealth archer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

When I was. I was a wee child and I played Morrowind and I didn't look up things on the Internet of how to do stuff.

[Dan]

Still ended up with stealth archer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

I still ended up with stealth archer. But stealth archer was not Skyrim level op back in Morrowind.

[Dan]

I watched a video today, I think that was talking about how Skyrim pushes you through into being stealth archer.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It kind of does.

[Dan]

It kind of does.

[Luke Lafreniere]

So I liked stealth archer before then. And then in Skyrim, I actually didn't. I don't think or I Did a mix or something because it kind of did feel too overpowered. I always liked being martial. I found spellcasters in those games are just like always too overpowered. Especially Morrowind spell casting and more. You're just a God. Like it. Especially if you, if you start getting into enchanting in Morrowind. Like I remember one of my characters I, I made, I think it was a ring and I called it like, I think I called it the God ring because if you just use the like activatable ability on the ring, everything just died. So I would be like, oh, I can't get past this quest. I'll go grab that and put it on and just win the game. So I found it more engaging to work with like block or parry mechanics. I, I generally like having a shield because I feel like fighting with the shield is like kind of more fun. But yeah, I was always more into Marshall stuff. I liked the archery in Morrowind because Morrowind doesn't play around if you end up in a two high level area, it's just too high level and they'll just wreck you. But it's also Morrowind, so there might be a way around it. And the AI is really dumb. So like I wanted to like you know, kill everything in an entire city because I was 14 and that's sick. But the guards and stuff are way too tough for me. So I just brought an incredible amount of arrows and stood on like this weird part of a building that they couldn't get to and just shot them for like an incredible amount of time until I killed every single guard in the entire city and then got all their super high value loot and stuff. So I, I liked archery and stuff early on, but always focused on, always focused on Marshall builds. I'm planning on doing a thing. I was kind of dabbling with it a little bit in the Oblivion remake, but I'm gonna wait until the fan remake mod version called skyblivion comes out and then I'm going to actually try to do it because I'm much more interested in skyblue and then just the official Blizzard remake. But I'm going to do a thing where you know how in the game you pick a class, you pick what sign you were born under, you do all that kind of stuff. I'm going to pick warrior for every single option because you can pick the warrior class, you can pick the warrior sign, you can pick the warrior, whatever. So I'm going to do as many selections as I can. It's just warrior and then the only magic that I'll use is restoration magic. And I'm gonna see if I can beat the game while kill on sighting anything that ever casts a spell that isn't restoration magic. If you. If you use any school of magic other than restoration, I will have to cleanse you from the earth and I'll see if it's. It's literally possible at all. I don't know.

[Dan]

You're doing it with like punching or sword.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Or sword and everything. Yeah. I'm a holy knight and if I see you casting a darn spell that isn't restoration magic, I gotta put you down.

[Dan]

I told you about my punches and drugs. Skyrim build character.

[Luke Lafreniere]

That's surprisingly possible in Skyrim. Because Skyrim has some really good. That's why it's possible.

[Dan]

It's also super broken. It's just like high level bracers and then you just punch dragons to death. It's like. That's my.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's high levels. You can like rift in or something, right? Oh yeah. You just remember this.

[Dan]

You just sit there and you just make bracers and then you just punch everybody to death because you're unarmed and your braces are really good.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Crafting in those games are always a mess.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Blizzard remake. Oh sure. Bethesda.

[Dan]

That's my stealth archer. I can't not to do that.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Sure. Yeah, there's. There's fun ways to play the game. I even think stealth archer can be fun. It's just fun.

[Dan]

One time I think what happens is people want to play something different and then they just accidentally.

[Luke Lafreniere]

It's like crabs. Everything evolves into a crab. Everything also evolves into a stealth archer. Pretty much like it's. You usually have it as a fallback. It's just because it's so overpowered. I always wish actual stealth was like a little bit more viable in those games. So you could be like a dagger build. That was more. Yeah. Viable, I guess. But yeah, usually I end up being some form of Marshall. Either like a two handed weapon or one handed weapon and a shield or just both. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. I guess we can call them.

[Linus Sebastian]

Yeah.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hold on a second.

[Linus Sebastian]

Let's see.

[Luke Lafreniere]

All right. We're trying

[Dan]

to.

[Luke Lafreniere]

You like my Dbrands game?

[Linus Sebastian]

Hello. Hello.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Hello. You gotta sign us off.

[Linus Sebastian]

Oh yeah. Before I do, we gotta figure out the details around the Wan Show Channel. I think we may not be able to have the transition be as long as we had originally intended because there's just like duplicate VODs. I think we might have to accelerate this. So just throwing that out there. Make sure you're subscribed to the WAN show channel, because we may have to stop streaming on the LTT channel sooner rather than later. We'll see you again next week.

[Luke Lafreniere]

Same bad time on a different channel next week. Wow. Okay. All right, bye. Okay, see ya.

[Linus Sebastian]

Some Follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's true trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].