The WAN Show! We've got a big show lined up for you guys this week. Lots of topics. Of course, the headline.
The PlayStation 5 disc drive requires an internet connection? Are you kidding me?
Actually hilarious.
Is that actually a thing that happened? Speaking of actual things that happened, did my LG wing arrive?
And will I be live swapping the sim from my Note 9 to the LG wing? Yes, I will.
We'll get some impressions from me, some impressions from Luke, who has never touched a wing.
No.
Not once in his life. What else we got this week?
I don't know if other people are going to find this super cool, but I find it super cool.
The IRS pilots direct filing, which is actually a huge deal. Actually for everyone. Okay? Okay, Linus?
Look, I know. I curated the topics this week. I know. It's just... Really? That's your headline, though?
I think that's huge.
That's bigger than Nintendo saying no fun allowed?
Yes, because that's just the same thing they always say.
Yeah, but it's just... It's really awful.
What about carriers turning off people's phones in Mexico?
Yeah, let's talk about that.
All right, we'll talk about that.
Okay.
Oh, right. I'm supposed to do this.
That's your job.
The show is brought to you by Green Man Gaming, Savage Jerky, and UPDF.
Why don't we jump right into our first topic?
I love that you must have been a little bit offline this week because it always makes Wancho
more fun when I get to get the genuine reaction from you.
The new PS5 Slim appears to require an internet connection in order to pair the console to its
removable disk drive.
This is according to small print on leaked images of the Modern Warfare 3 PS5 bundle.
The quote here, and I've actually got the image that I can bring up for you guys.
The quote here is,
internet connection required to pair disk drive and PS5 console upon setup.
So that's in the font.
Yeah, there you go.
There it is.
What possible justification could there be for this?
It says in our notes, this is likely an authentication step,
after which an internet connection should not be necessary for the device to function.
Who cares?
But that's a really good question.
Who cares?
Is the danger that people will find injection...
Use like a third party external disk drive?
Yeah.
And if they did, would that be such a problem?
Yeah.
Like, aren't the days of pirated Blu-rays kind of behind us at this point?
Is that really a major concern?
I don't know.
And if it was a major concern, wouldn't that happen at such a late stage in the PlayStation 5's
life cycle that it is unlikely to be a major problem?
Yeah.
Like, I just...
It seems so weird.
I don't understand what the difference is between this external drive with presumably...
I actually don't even know what interface it's using.
I mean, probably USB?
USB, yeah.
I mean, it could be.
It could be just using...
It would be genuinely hilarious if it was like Ethernet.
No, like a hot plug SATA, I think, might be more likely.
E-SATA was a thing for a very, very short period of time.
I still don't think it's going to be that.
It was super cool.
But it's not like the SATA standard doesn't support hot plugs, so there's no reason that
it couldn't actually be serial ATA.
But what I'm trying to figure out here is why this would need an extra validation step
compared to if, say, for example, you were to swap the internal Blu-ray reader of a regular
PlayStation 5.
Yeah.
Or maybe it isn't extra.
I mean, maybe this is one of those things where Sony, having learned an awful lot about
piracy of their games over the last...
25 years?
When did the first PS...
When did the PS1 come out?
96?
Let's see.
97?
Oh, man.
I am showing that I do not know my console history here, probably.
What year was it?
94.
Wow!
Was it that long ago?
30 years of PlayStation, just about.
Apparently.
American debut was 95.
That's incredible.
All right.
Yeah.
Japanese debut was December of 94.
American debut was September of 95.
Wow.
So Sony has learned an awful lot from mod chips and people burning their own PlayStation
discs over the years.
So maybe this is something that they feel is necessary from an anti-piracy standpoint,
but I still have to wonder if the long-term impact of this is ultimately going to be more
negative than any possible gain that Sony could get from this.
I don't want to be that guy, but I think people are just going to roll over.
Roll over?
Yeah.
What do you mean?
I don't think there's going to be enough of a splash.
Well, oh, okay.
No, I agree.
I agree with you 100%.
But when I say long-term impact, I mean, when this PS5 Slim that you ultimately paid more
money for, because if you want to get the optical disc add-on down the road, you actually end
up paying more than the cost of a regular PS5 with the optical disc drive included, could
end up becoming a paperweight in the future if, for whatever reason, Sony decided to turn
off their authentication servers and your disc drive dies.
And, you know, we kind of go, oh yeah, but I mean, what are the odds that, no, the odds
are really good.
Oh, I pretty much guarantee that'll happen.
I don't know when, but like.
However, now that PlayStations and Xboxes are basically just computers, I do think that
forward and backward compatibility of games is going to improve a lot.
So I don't think that it's a huge deal in the same way that if, let's say, okay, what's
a device that has been notoriously difficult to emulate?
PlayStation 3.
Okay.
Like, I don't think it's going to be as bad as if a PlayStation 3 required an internet
connection and then the authentication servers turned off and there was no way to deal with
a broken optical drive because there could conceivably be games that cannot now and maybe
can never be experienced in their full proper fidelity without functioning original hardware.
But with the PS5, I do, I do see this as being a little bit less likely.
This is interesting.
A scene in floatplane chat suggests that maybe it's the movie studios that are requiring it
in some way.
But I honestly find that pretty hard to believe because it's not like you can't still play
back a Blu-ray disc in a computer, for example.
You just require licensed software that has the encryption keys.
With that said, I haven't tried to do that in a very long time.
Can you play back UHD, like the latest HDR 4K Blu-rays on a computer?
I don't know.
I know that there's that complicated mess around watching 4K Netflix on a computer, like you
need a platform that supports Intel's, you know, latest HDCP nonsense and all of that
and you have to use a browser that supports it.
Snowpec in floatplane chat says yes, as does loading still.
Well, okay, apparently you can still do it and you would obviously be able to do that
without pairing the disc to the console.
But I pretty much guarantee you at some point when that software is configured, you will
need to do some kind of online check.
And I do wonder if this is something that is down to movie studio pressure.
That makes the whole thing make a ton more sense.
But it's, I mean, it's no less dystopian.
Like you buy a product and so what?
Someone else decides if you're allowed to use it or not?
Like, no, I buy it, I plug it in.
Is all the hardware there?
Well, then it should probably work.
And that wouldn't...
I'm surprised this wouldn't get caught by like a right to repair thing almost.
Well, I mean, it is.
That's why it's news.
Oh.
Yeah, people are super mad about it.
Or at least they think it's super stupid.
I don't know if most people are necessarily mad because here's another thing.
And, you know, back to your point about gamers just rolling over for this, like we seem to
do for everything, is who runs a PlayStation 5 without an internet connection?
Yeah.
Like, I think this will, as stupid as this is, I think it'll affect very few people.
Like, well, today, that's the problem.
That's what's so frustrating.
Yeah, down the line, it's going to wreck itself completely.
When you can't download games for it anymore.
Which will happen.
And you can't have this disk drive.
It'll literally just be a brick.
I am making a poll real quick here because I want to know if people's current-gen consoles
are 24-7 connected.
So I'm just going to set a two-minute timer on this.
Let's run this on Flowplane.
So guys, I want to hear from you.
Is your PlayStation 5 or your Xbox series connected 24-7?
Let's pull up the results.
Okay.
Are you guys just...
I think that's not true.
They're...
I genuinely think that's not true.
Why do I even bother polling you guys?
Yeah.
Forget it.
I just straight up don't believe that poll at all.
Yeah, that's...
They...
Okay.
For those who aren't able to see a teeny-weeny eye strain of vision down there, three out
of four are saying yes connected all the time.
And one quarter are saying no not connected.
I...
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I actually just don't buy that.
Even like more than a quarter.
It's 30% right now.
I think that might be some people being like, well, I turn it off and then it's not connected
to the internet or something.
I don't know.
What we mean is like...
I didn't say powered.
I said connected.
I said connected.
Yeah.
If it's...
I mean, yeah, okay.
Wireless is...
If it's authenticated, I consider it connected.
Look, you want to get pedantic or whatever.
But they might be.
That's what I was saying.
Yeah.
That's not...
That's not very useful, you guys.
That's not very helpful.
Yeah.
I never unplug mine from the internet.
Yeah.
I mean, most people wouldn't.
Like, the idea of...
The vast majority of people that own a console, it's either going to be plugged in or it's
going to auto-connect to Wi-Fi the second you turn it on.
Like, the idea of your device only connecting to internet when you need to use the internet
is so outdated.
We might as well be talking about the PlayStation 1 era at that point, right?
Like, back when we had dial-up, we had to make a conscious decision to connect to the
internet.
Like, you get all the modem connecting sounds.
I mean, ever since broadband...
I know I didn't do a good job of that.
It's fine.
Just get over it.
Ever since broadband, things are just connected 24-7 because they don't tie up your phone
lines.
So, if your console is connected at all, I'm sorry, but I simply do not believe you that
you explicitly disconnect it and then connect it when you need to use the internet.
I actually do not believe you.
That would be wild.
I saw some people in chat being like, well, I don't have a console.
And it's like, yeah...
Well, that's not what I asked.
The question was only for people that do have consoles.
Is your PS5 24-7 connected?
No!
I don't have one.
Oh, man.
You guys.
Either way.
A vast, vast, vast, I'm assuming over 90% amount of people are going to have...
When it is powered on and you own one, it is connected to the internet consoles.
That's what I would say.
Yeah, so you're right.
It's not a problem until it's a problem.
And who knows?
You know, maybe Sony will adopt a very different stance towards right to repair at some point
in the future.
And they will, you know, when they turn off the authentication servers for this, they will...
They'll do nothing.
Yeah, that's probably way more realistic.
Yeah.
That's really frustrating.
And it's not the only thing like this.
Obviously, this shouldn't be a surprise.
But I was still surprised.
Source here...
The sources here are Louis Rossman and Samsung Mexico.
And the headline is, Carriers Block Mexican Phones.
So there's some background here.
Around a fifth of phones in Mexico get bought through the local gray market.
These phones are not necessarily illegally obtained, but the sellers are not authorized
and have imported devices that were originally intended for release in other markets.
And they tend to sell these at a price that is well below the manufacturer's suggested retail price.
If you're wondering, this kind of gray marketing...
So it's not the market and it's not the, you know, opposite of the market.
I think the term for that has changed.
I don't know.
Whatever.
The point is, it's kind of in between the legitimate market and the illegitimate market
in that it's real goods.
It's not necessarily stolen or, you know, obtained through nefarious means, blackmail or whatever
the case may be.
But you might be going around intended routes for things.
So a perfect example of this is something like the discount game keys or Windows keys that
are accessible through certain gray markets where they will obtain them with actual money
that goes to the actual developer, but a lesser amount of money because it was intended to
be like a subsidized lower cost version of the software for, you know, a developing country,
say, for example, not for someone who lives in, you know, the States or Mexico or Canada
or, you know, whatever else.
It's regional pricing is pretty common.
And so one of the other major, major incentives for gray marketing, aside from regional pricing,
is tariffs.
So in those cases, you could have a real product, a real Intel CPU bought really, really from
an Intel distributor, but bought in America and then smuggled through some, you know, nefarious
means or even not nefarious, even just by, you know, carrying them on a boat and nobody
asked any questions.
I don't know.
Probably something nefarious was involved, especially if we're talking about Brazil, which
is where I'm going with this.
But they could be smuggled into Brazil where the tariffs on electronics are, I think, as
high as like 100 plus percent, depending on the category, making, you know, a gaming
computer, for example, an extreme, extreme status symbol somewhere, somewhere like, somewhere
like Brazil.
So there's a strong incentive to gray market these products, buying them legitimately, but
transporting them illegitimately so that they are somewhat affordable.
So anywho, we've got these gray market phones.
In July, Motorola announced that phones imported through the gray market and activated in Mexico
would be subject to remote disability after July 27th, making the phone completely useless
except for emergency calls.
Reportedly, they are planning to identify, or they are identifying these phones via their
IMEI number, which is a, as far as I can tell, as far as I know, and I'm, okay.
I don't spend a ton of time hanging out on Russian hacker forums, so you'll have to forgive
me if I, if I am not up on the latest, um, you know, IMEI spoofing techniques, but as far
as I know, there, it is pretty much hardware and there's not any kind of easy, convenient,
accessible way to spoof an IMEI.
Do you, do you know, is that, is that true?
Uh, I think you can, but I don't think it's like easy.
Easy or accessible at all.
And I don't think it's bulletproof.
Like you might be able to spoof it.
Maybe.
But like the way that it appears in your software, but my understanding is it's pretty low level.
I've heard of it before, but I don't know, like I'm, I'm trying to look you up right
now, but I don't know how legitimate these things are.
Floatplane chat is saying it's hard, but you can.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was my understanding, but it's been a long time.
Yeah.
Uh, Genesis describes it as doable, but far beyond most people.
Yeah.
Like, I don't think this is a thing that's going to be done widespread, even at a scale
like this.
Well, yes and no.
I mean, if one fifth of the phones in a country just stopped working, you don't think mobile
repair shops, you know, those ones that are absolutely everywhere are going to figure out
how to do this.
We're talking about how this is a gray line too.
And some people in chat are pointing this out, and I think this is true.
It is illegal.
I think wrong.
You can rewrite IMEIs on Android devices.
Um, yeah, but is it legal?
That I don't know.
Also, how is that wrong?
Didn't we just say you could do it?
Yeah, we know.
Well, we, they might be, they might be behind.
Maybe their internet connection is, uh, is not very good.
But, um, anyway, the point is it also depends on how they're handling this.
I mean, what if Motorola's approach is to have just an allow list of IMEIs?
Well, then, yeah, sure, you spoof it or whatever, but that's not going to help.
Yeah.
You'd have to find the right one.
Yeah, exactly.
And if, and if two IMEIs, um, if two identical IMEIs show up, particularly on the same mobile
network, that is definitely going to cause some problems.
Yeah, so it's, so it's not legal.
So if they're, if they're trying to like float in the gray space, that is, as far as
my understanding goes, a clearly illegal action.
Got it.
I think that would be like, ooh, we're getting into laws that I don't know, but I think that
would be like changing the VIN on your car.
Right.
Like, I don't think you can just do that.
Like, yeah.
I know you can't do that.
You could, yeah, you could visually do it.
Yes.
But it's like, not okay.
It's definitely not okay.
Yeah.
So I think it's the same.
Or like changing the cereal in a firearm or something like that.
Like nothing would physically prevent you.
It's doable.
From doing it.
It's going to be hard to do convincingly.
Yeah.
Probably similarly to here.
Yeah.
And it's illegal.
So you're not going to see a ton of it.
Not legal advice.
We are not lawyers.
Yeah.
Not financial advice either.
Burn all your money.
Wait, sorry.
Not really, not really just advice at all.
This is not an advice show.
That is not what the A in WAN stands for.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nobody really knows what it stands for.
No, it doesn't matter.
It's as far.
Canon is that it never stood for anything.
Now get this.
Samsung went even further and started disabling gray market phones retroactively.
Oof.
What?
That sucks for the people that bought them.
Okay.
This must be a typo because it says both companies offered affected customers a 30%
discount on Motorola devices in Mexico, but I'm sure that's just Motorola and maybe Samsung
also offered some kind of discount.
Maybe.
OPPO and Xiaomi also said they would block gray market phones in Mexico, but it's unclear
whether they followed through.
Interesting.
Now, one of the motivations that, you know, my imagination could conjure up for something
like this might be that this was due to government pressure because otherwise, why Mexico?
Why all these manufacturers?
Why now?
Like, maybe this is one of those things where, okay, organized crime is involved in the acquisition
and resale and, you know, any money spent on these gray market phones is going straight
into the cartels or whatever the case may be.
But actually, the Mexican government has ordered manufacturers to stop disabling regular phones
and called for the creation of a working group to address the gray market problem without
violating consumers' rights because the thing here is that the only people who are being
harmed by the manufacturer's actions are the buyers of these devices, not the people who
profited from it.
And if you expect the average consumer to understand that the phone that they're buying, which looks
exactly the same as the other phone just like it, other than it has a slightly more different
serial number that is not authorized for use in this country, if you expect them to understand
or even care that that's wrong compared to saving a hundred bucks or whatever it is, I
just, I think it's kind of ridiculous.
I think it's, I think basically all you're doing is making yourself look bad and you are
not harming the sellers.
I mean, in the long term.
Hold on though.
One of the next lines, because I was just reading, one of the sources here is,
like Samsung Mexico, and I was just reading this and I was like, this doesn't line up
with what we're saying at all.
But one of the next lines is, the Mexican government has ordered manufacturers to stop
disabling irregular phones.
I said that, you weren't listening.
Oh, okay.
Neat.
I was probably reading it.
Anyway, getting ahead of, moving ahead again.
So, in the long term, I could see this hurting the resellers once people kind of figure out
that these phones might not work.
But unless they're disabling them immediately, I could still see them, you know, selling these
devices, not, you know, connected to a mobile network, just kind of going like, okay, yeah,
look, look, it's working.
Take it home and go.
Taking people's money.
Like, I think you're just going to end up with regular consumers being scammed.
Now, Samsung claims they will no longer block these phones and they are willing to work
with the government on a solution.
Leading us to our discussion question here, which is, what's the right way for companies
to deal with gray market devices?
I don't know if I would say no longer.
They said they're going to suspend blocking them.
Hilarious.
So, they're pausing.
They're pausing and allowing some work to happen with the Mexican government to see if they
can come to some form of agreement.
And it sounds like if they don't, they'll probably continue.
But they didn't say that part because they probably didn't want to, like, put a thread
out there.
But the word suspend to me sounds like there's a resume on the other end of it.
So, yeah, I'm not sure.
So, what should they do about gray market devices?
I have an idea.
How about nothing?
How about f*** off?
How about if you can afford to sell it at that price in, you know, wherever a stand,
then you just sell it at that price.
There's an idea.
You're welcome.
Nice.
Like, I don't know.
It just reminds me of, like, region locking consoles and games.
And, like, you know, obviously, in the early days, the region locking wasn't very sophisticated.
It's, you know, a plastic notch that you can just sand down or whatever the case may be.
But I guess now that we've reached the point where the mechanisms for enforcement are so
sophisticated, we've reached the point where we kind of have to say, hey, actually, no,
that's not okay.
You can't be bricking manufactured goods just because it went from one country to another
country in a way you didn't like.
I'm sorry, but I just don't really, I just can't really support that.
I think I could potentially support them wanting to do something about it.
Um, but bricking the phones is really aggressive towards people that just want your phone, not
the resellers doing the actual bad stuff.
Um, because, like, I can understand, like, they might not be making money in some of these
markets, like, at all.
And those markets might be supported through the sales and other markets, like, we don't
necessarily know how their business is being handled.
Um, but yeah, bricking all the phones is not cool.
I mean, that, you know, raises another interesting question.
Like, should, should we then, okay, should, should I, should I be supportive of them selling
devices at cost into a developing market, knowing that I'm helping subsidize that?
You don't have to be supportive of it.
So then if I'm not supportive of it, then I guess I would take my stance, which is sell
the device for whatever, you know, your cost is, plus some margin that you presumably need
to make, and then f*** off and don't tell me where I can or can't use it.
Fair enough.
Either way, I don't support them bricking the phones.
I think that's a...
And I don't really, I don't really see an alternative.
What, what is the alternative?
Because anything...
In Brazil, we actually pay more.
That's because of your...
Yeah, that's because of your government.
Your tax.
Yeah, that's not the company.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's...
So to be clear, we are not talking about, um, situations where the increase in cost to
the consumer, the increase in price to the consumer is because of, uh, import tariffs or
taxes.
Yeah.
That's on the government and, you know, that's, that's always going to, that's always going
to be something that smugglers are going to try to get around.
And that's always going to be a certain kind of gray market.
We're talking about situations where the manufacturer has their own set regional pricing that they
are trying to prevent people from working around.
It's super...
By bricking devices.
It's super visible in video games.
Yeah.
It's a big thing for a while.
People, people would like sell accounts, like free accounts that were authenticated in countries
where they would get the games cheaper because you'd pay money for the account, but then
all the games that you'd buy after that would be cheaper.
Like there was all this like crazy stuff going on.
Um, there, there's, yeah, it's, it's weird.
I remember hearing, I don't remember what game it was, but it was some online game that
required a subscription and you could go into the online dashboard and update your address
to one of the countries that had a lower subscription rate, uh, subscribe with, uh, like an American
or whatever else credit card and everything.
Just you switch your address to there, subscribe, you buy like however many months at a time,
and then you just change your address back and everything's fine.
Like they didn't have any authentication at all.
I've had a couple people just that whose comments I've seen, I don't even remember emails,
forum posts, I don't know, uh, but have brought up that they subscribe to YouTube premium in
a different region and it costs like $2 a month or something like that.
And you'd think a company with the technical resources of Google would be able to detect
something like that pretty easily, especially because I know that when someone doesn't want
you to buy something from a different region, they f***ing can stop you.
Like, do you have any idea how hard it was to buy a Valve index?
Yeah, I remember this.
Valve was serious business.
You are not buying an index if you are not in America or wherever the other regions that
they launched it in were.
And it's like, well, I'm not going to take no for an answer.
I need an index.
I have to f***ing review the thing.
So, I will obtain one, but the only way I was able to do it, I tried shipping to an American
address with a Canadian card.
I tried shipping to a Canadian address with a USD card.
I tried shipping to an American address with a USD card that was issued by a Canadian bank
and they wouldn't even allow that.
I was paying in US dollars and shipping to a US address.
Why do they care?
And it wouldn't go through.
And ultimately, you know how we did it?
I've gotten around a few of these, but no.
We had John.
We had our writer who lives in, I was going to say in Carolina, but I'm sure that that
would be very offensive.
Well, I didn't want to get super specific, but that's fine.
It's a state.
North Carolina.
He lives in North Carolina.
I know there are two Carolinas.
Just chill.
Relax.
Yeah, north and east.
Yeah, it's just like east Arkansas and west Arkansas.
Does he know American geography?
Or does he not?
You'll never know.
It's a stalemate.
So in a chat, I hate it.
Yeah, don't forget about red Texas and blue Texas.
There's Austin and Dallas and the rest.
Yeah.
That's okay.
I know the Alaska thing.
Wait, which hand is it?
Is it this one?
It's like the state of Alaska is the shape of the back of your hand when you do this with
your fingers.
Oh, okay.
But I don't remember which hand it is.
Well, it's...
Hold on.
Can I see?
Uh, that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's that one.
There you go.
I just know the shape of Alaska.
That's not because I like remember which one it is.
Why do you not know the shape of Alaska?
It's attached to Canada.
Well, it has two thingies and I just didn't remember which one was longer.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Anywho, as a Texan, this is correct.
Anyway, what are we talking about?
Right.
How to deal with this.
I don't think there's a good way to deal with this.
I just don't think there's any way around it.
I think the answer is give up.
Just don't break phones.
Yeah, stop it.
Breaking phones sucks for everyone.
It's time to stop.
You're making e-waste and...
Bothering your customers who...
Stop.
Yeah.
...who did buy your product.
You actually did sell that product and you make money.
If you didn't make enough money, I'm sorry.
I'm not sorry.
Set a higher price next time.
I don't care.
Deal with it.
All right.
What are we doing next, Dan?
Oh, well, you still got 15 minutes left before we have to talk about merch messages, but we
could just talk about merch messages.
Yes.
Let's talk about merch messages.
That can be next.
I can't do it until you move the sign.
Okay.
It's impossible.
It's actually not allowed.
It's illegal.
Oh, thank you for freeing us.
Otherwise, they'd be gray market merch messages.
Gray market...
Somebody...
Authentic three over here.
I think all merch messages are gray market merch messages.
Authentic merch messages that were imported illegally.
These are handmade artisanal signs.
Oh.
They are not.
They're printed.
Oh, well, my side is...
No, I'm proving it.
I...
That's right.
I forgot I did that.
Why is it me?
Hi, Luke.
Hey.
What are we using this for?
Bye.
Dog...
Wait.
No.
Complicated.
You're revealing the wall that no one's supposed to be able to see.
Yeah, but this side...
I still love how the most interesting wall no one ever sees.
And then, like, probably the most boring one is one people see all the time.
It's still amazing to me.
You're not wrong.
I forgot that you guys also looked at them.
Yeah.
Ugh.
All right.
Merch messages.
Merch messages.
You gotta tell me what they are.
Merch messages?
Oh, right.
Explain.
Merch messages are the way to interact with the show.
Don't send super chats.
Don't send Twitch bits.
Send merch messages.
It's great because not only do you get to throw money at your screen so that strangers
on the internet can, you know, build a wall that nobody ever looks at.
People are saying super chats and Twitch bits are gray market merch messages.
I mean, it's more the other way around.
Yeah, it kind of is, actually.
But legitimate.
Legitimate.
Yes, yes, yes.
So what's better about them is that you can throw money at the screen and help out your
favorite creator.
Us.
Yeah.
Obviously.
And get your order in the mail.
Yeah.
So to send a merch message, all you gotta do is go on lttstore.com, pick up something
awesome.
We actually have a bunch of really good deals going on right now.
Some new products, a pretty crazy promo on our plaid flannels.
So you just gotta pick something up and in the cart, you will see a box to leave a merch
message and it'll show up down there or producer Dan might respond to you or forward
it to someone else internally to get back to you or even curate it so that Luke and I
can address your question on the show.
So Dan, why don't you show us how that works?
Sure.
I got one here.
With AMD releasing the Threadripper 7000 series for DIY users, do you think AMD will continue
releasing processors for DIY users or do you think it will flip right back to OEM only
despite Intel?
Okay.
This question requires a little bit of background.
Luke, how up on the Threadripper shenanigans that AMD has pulled are you?
They did it.
Everyone was stoked on it.
They weren't going to do it anymore and then they did it again.
Okay.
That's a very, very succinct summary, but not a very accurate one.
Okay.
So why don't we improve on that a little bit?
I'll give you guys a bit more background.
Threadripper launched alongside or I think shortly after the original Ryzen 1000.
It was the same Ryzen chiplets, but many, many more of them.
And I believe the first generation went up to, I want to say, 16 cores or was it 32?
Whatever the Threadripper 1950X was.
Let's have a quick looky boo.
No information available for this page.
Um, I, oh man.
Now I'm not going to get it right.
I jinxed it.
Nice and succinct, Linus.
I jinxed it.
Yours isn't succinct or accurate.
Okay.
I think the 1950 was, uh, 16.
Okay.
Was there, was there a 1970 though?
This is, this is like gray market, uh, Threadripper information.
Can you, can you not?
Gray market tech tips.
Can you not?
Threadripper was a CPU.
No, I was accurate.
I was accurate.
The first family went up to 16 cores and it, the 1950X.
Okay.
What was cool about Threadripper was that compared to consumer platforms, it had mondo memory
bandwidth and a ton of PCIe connectivity compared to server platforms or traditional workstation
platforms, it didn't support nearly the same amount of system memory, which was considered
kind of a, an Achilles heel because you had all these cores, 16 cores in the 1000 series
up to 32 cores in the 2000 series, which ballooned to up to 64 cores in the 3000 series, which
is flipping wild.
But the 3000 series, if I recall correctly, was limited to, I want to say 256 megabytes of
system memory.
So you had all this bandwidth, you had all this PCIe connectivity, you had all this compute,
but you couldn't attach that much RAM to it, which was AMD's way of ensuring that they would
have a way to differentiate their workstation and their server products from their enthusiast
Threadripper products.
Now, as we made our way from a 1000 series Threadripper to 2000 series Threadripper to 3000
series Threadripper, some stuff happened that was a little bit different from how AMD handled
the consumer side of things.
The first two Threadripper's were on Socket LGA, oh, balls, I can't remember, hold on.
Yeah, okay, this like summary article that I'm looking at, oh yeah, there we go.
Socket STR4.
And while on the consumer side of things, we got Ryzen 1000, 2000, 3000, all on the AM4 platform.
In fact, all the way up to Ryzen 5000 stayed on the AM4 socket.
For Threadripper, that actually changed when they went to Zen 2 with Threadripper 3000.
And we got Socket TRX4.
Now, the problem with that is that AMD committed at that time, hey, we're sorry for changing
away from Socket TR4 and moving over to TRX4.
Our bad, we know we want to have better socket continuity than Intel, and all we managed to
do was Zen and Zen Plus on this one.
We're going to do better next time.
And then they promptly did not do better at all.
Not only did we not get any new CPUs for that socket.
So not only did they change sockets on us, but we never got a single CPU upgrade for that
platform.
Threadripper 3000 never got a follow up.
And from my understanding, based on leaks, based on rumors that I have personally participated
in, it's not because they weren't done.
They were basically done, the product.
So updated Zen 3 chips for STRX4, and they just didn't release them because it wasn't nearly
as profitable as releasing workstation or server chips under the Threadripper Pro branding,
which would come later, actually two and a half years later, on Socket W for workstation
WRX8.
So what we got was Threadripper 1000 on STR4, Threadripper 2000 on STR4, Threadripper 3000,
along with a big boatload of broken promises on STRX4.
And then we got Threadripper 5000 Pro only on that workstation platform.
And they just never bothered with Threadripper 5000 non-pro, which was a giant loogie in the
face of everyone who invested in STRX4, like me, to the tune of like a dozen workstations
expecting to have upgrades available for it, which never arrived.
Because for video editing, we do need a fair amount of system memory, but we don't need
more than, I forget if it was 256, I think it was 256 gigs of RAM.
That's actually lots for us.
We're not doing simulation work or AI work or anything like that.
It's plenty for video editing.
We just want the performance and we want the PCIe connectivity so we can plug in extra devices
like high speed, you know, fiber optic network cards and stuff like that.
So what was the question again?
Right.
I'm still not certain if what I said was actually incorrect.
I think it was just way too short.
Yeah.
I didn't realize we were doing like a whole history.
Coming back to Anonymous's question here.
With AMD releasing Threadripper 7000 for DIY users, not just for, you know, workstation
integrators, do you think AMD will continue releasing these processors for DIY or do you
think it'll flip right back to system integrators only?
Oh yeah, there was a short period of Threadripper Pro where it was system integrators only.
You couldn't even buy them more broadly, but 5,000 you could buy, assuming you could afford
them because they went up to like $8,000 when the previous ones were not that expensive
because they were meant for consumers.
The answer is, I don't know.
Yeah.
Because they're lying a**holes.
The fact that AMD gets a free pass from enthusiasts for, you know, being an underdog
or whatever is, it's baffling to me.
They're also a company.
They're also interested in one thing, just like an Intel or just like an NVIDIA.
I think they're, I think they're, I shouldn't say just like an NVIDIA.
NVIDIA has got their own sort of thing.
They have a particularly brazen manner of pursuing.
Actively and openly like dislike a large section of their consumer base.
Okay.
So this is one of those things that's complicated.
Every time we kind of get into this, it's like, okay, corporately, I agree with you.
Yeah.
But I've met so many passionate individuals.
Oh, not individually.
No.
And I have as well, for sure.
I know some people in NVIDIA that are, that are great people, but just like the, the
corporate actions, the business actions are.
Yeah.
So I just, we just need to not, we just need to not believe them.
I mean, we can, you know, when we, when we do a video about it, if AMD says, you know,
yeah, we're going to support this socket for several generations and we're going to do this
and we're going to do that.
You know, we'll, we'll tell you, Hey, they say that, but we're also not going to ignore
those broken promises from the past.
And I think AMD has shown that they are capable of doing short run processors like those, those
cool X3D chips that they, that they dumped a while ago at Micro Center and, and somewhere
else.
I forget who had them in stock.
Like it is conceivable that they could offer an upgrade to Threadripper 5, Threadripper 3000
users still, but they, they won't.
They don't wish to, um, and I don't know.
I'm just, I'm, I'm very frustrated.
The good news is that these days I, I do also kind of get it now that we have consumer
chips that are anywhere from 16 to 24 cores, depending on whether you're on the Intel or
AMD side of things.
I think the necessity of a high-end desktop platform is, is less, but I am also glad to
see them make a return, even if I don't have a lot of trust that they will continue to
support it.
There, that is my answer.
Amazing.
Amazing.
LLD, do you see a time when storage servers will just be filled with hundreds or thousands
of M.2 drives, providing petabytes of ultra-fast storage in a one or two U rack?
Already exists in some cases, doesn't it?
I'm on it.
Okay.
There you go.
There it is.
So these are super cool.
These are like these tiny little slim, cute SSDs, um, that you would equip a server with,
you know, any, anywhere from typically, typically a handful to dozens of SSDs.
Right now, the challenge is fitting enough compute in that same form factor that you can actually
make full use of these things.
But I do, I do wonder if you are, if you are right, that we may see a future where we don't
worry so much about having enough compute and we just accept that the performance is going
to be kind of crap and we just pack a ton of these in because up until now, NVMe SSDs for the data
center have been, you've got these branches where they are focused on performance or they're focused
on capacity.
But even the ones that are capacity oriented are still, you know, pretty darn good performance.
But I think as we make our way into storing more and more and more bits per cell, we could
end up with some extremely cheap per gigabyte NAND flash.
And we could end up with servers that, like you suggest, might allocate as few as, you know,
a single PCIe lane per multiple SSDs and just cram them in, in an effort to go for capacity.
Hopefully you're not accessing all those particular ones at the same time.
Yeah.
And you almost never would.
Yeah.
Right?
Like it's...
I'm not completely against it, especially for certain use cases.
If you know what you're getting into, like...
Someday for bulk storage.
Yeah, I could see it being somewhat realistic, but I also do wonder if, you know, by the time
you're architecting such a specialized device, if you would be better off just architecting
an SSD that just stacks way more NAND packages on it, and then you don't need all that PCIe.
Because PCIe is going to be one of the biggest cost drivers of that entire solution, especially
if you have to do any PCIe switching.
So if you're, like I had suggested, taking a single PCIe lane off of, you know, let's
say an AMD EPYC platform.
So dual CPU, you would have 160 lanes.
So you could do up to 160, you know, theoretically, if you had absolutely nothing else, right?
Like no network card, which is not realistic, but let's just bear with me here, okay?
So you could do up to 160 SSDs off that thing if they were one lane each.
Well, you could quadruple that if you, you know, put a PCIe by one switch on it and put,
you know, four SSDs behind it.
Like you said, you wouldn't get full bandwidth from all four SSDs at a time, but you'd be
so parallelized at that point that I just have a hard time imagining that that would be a
problem unless you are divvying up the resources of that system hardware by hardware to cloud
customers or something like that, where, yeah, conceivably two customers on the same
PCIe switch could be hitting their SSD at the same time.
But if you pooled all the storage and then just allocated it in chunks, I think it's very
unlikely to be a problem with that amount of overall bandwidth available.
We're talking 160 lanes of Gen 5 on the latest Epic platforms.
It's unfathomable amounts of bandwidth.
But like, I suspect if the use case is right, I suspect you could get it to a point where
the amount of issues that you have are so infrequent that they're not that big of a deal.
Yeah, I could definitely see that.
And so, you know, that's one possibility.
But those PCIe switches would be costly.
Whereas I think that if they would be costly per unit, whereas if you were to develop a
new SSD that just loads, you know, terabytes upon terabytes of terabytes of NAND flash,
like we covered that 100 terabyte SSD a while back on the channel.
Clearly it's been done.
Well, that engineering gets done once.
And then every unit is just cost of NAND chips.
You don't have to put a bunch of PCIe switching them.
I think that SSD might have actually used some switching internally.
The point is, I think there's going to be solutions for stuff like this in the future.
But hard drives are still a more cost effective way to do bulk storage.
I think they're going to be for a while.
And the only way that you would use something like you're suggesting would be for bulk storage.
You see, they're shipping Seagate announced 28 terabyte drives.
WD also has 28 terabyte drives now.
I'm just trying to imagine a scenario.
That's actually insane.
Where I would want 28 terabytes of data at the mercy of a hard drive.
Man, so the Iron Wolf Pros, I think five years ago, were 10 terabyte drives.
And Iron Wolf Pros are now 22 terabyte drives.
That's crazy.
That's wild.
Wow.
Sheesh, man.
Yeah, I just...
Every time I...
There was a while there where hard drives were kind of...
Still could be worth a premium for the top capacities and still had some sex appeal.
Even though your boot drive was probably an SSD if you were an enthusiast.
But now, it has become so easy for me to completely ignore hard drives for...
I still like hard drives.
A year at a time.
And so I'll turn away and I'll turn back and I'll go,
What the s***?
There's 28 terabyte hard drives now?
And like, okay, like what's the pricing of...
Okay, here, what's the pricing of a 22 terabyte hard drive?
Like, that's 420.
Nice.
I just want to say one really quick aside.
This is very off topic, but I just saw the art for this.
Hard drives are getting like the old school GPU treatment.
Like, that looks sick.
It's like unnecessarily cool for a hard drive.
You know, my understanding is the person who was responsible for WD's green, black, blue branding...
They're doing this now?
...blue branding.
Because that was really good branding when it first came out.
Moved over to Seagate.
Wouldn't be surprised if it's the same person.
So believe it or not, Seagate has color-coded drives now, I think.
Oh, maybe they're not color-coded.
Yeah, I'm not sure if they're color-coded.
I don't think they're color-coded in the same way that the WD ones are,
but the Iron Wolves are red and this Exos thing is green.
I think there's some amount of like grouping logic behind it, which I think is fine.
But yeah, I don't know.
That just goes unbelievably hard for...
Oh yeah, they're definitely color-coded.
It's blue for surveillance, red for Naz, green for Exos for Enterprise,
and then ugly for everyone else, I guess.
All right.
You can update that one, maybe.
Come on.
I think that one a little cooler.
Man, it's amazing how hard it is.
I think the Iron Wolf branding is so sick.
To find anything on Newegg that is just a product.
What's the surveillance one?
What is the name of it?
Exos, Iron Wolf, and then what's the surveillance one?
Skyhawk.
Oh.
So sick!
Oh no, Skyhawk AI.
Whoa!
They're AI drives!
It's worse!
Skynet.
Um, yeah, I don't know.
I just, I don't understand how like hard drive branding is going way harder than GPUs these days.
Like, that's crazy.
I don't know.
It's kind of sick.
I just, how far GPUs have fallen.
The GPU art, both on the box and the card, used to be so cool.
And now it's just like metal and fan.
Well, that's because of NVIDIA.
Yep.
It's actually because of NVIDIA.
NVIDIA maintains very tight control over the packaging and branding of their partners.
And it's so boring!
Next topic.
Speaking of boring, why don't you pick a topic?
I'm going to do it.
IRS Pilots Direct Filing.
Okay, I did actually carry this topic.
You walked me into that one.
I know, I know.
This is great though!
If you're not excited about this, maybe you haven't paid taxes yet.
In 2024, an IRS pilot program will allow residents of 13 states to electronically file their tax returns for free directly with the IRS.
This goes against the wishes of tax preparation companies who have been lobbying against free direct filing for over a decade, arguing that free alternatives are already available.
Which is technically true.
In the most BS way ever.
Those free alternatives arose out of the Free File Alliance, a 2001 partnership between the IRS and several tax preparation companies to offer taxpayers with simple returns, a free alternative for filing their taxes.
A later investigation by ProPublica found that several companies made those options purposefully difficult to find in order to trick their customers into paying for services they could have received for free.
This has been somewhat recently called Dark Patterns by a bunch of people, including us.
They're called Dark Patterns.
Yeah.
I think that's a newer term though.
Is it?
I don't think it's that new.
It's not like this year new, that's for sure.
I've only heard it within the last few years.
I might just be late to the party.
I think you're late to the party.
It's very possible.
Anyways.
User experience designer Henry Brignall coined the neologism, neologism, neologism, I'm not familiar with that word.
On 28th of July, 2010.
So we've been calling them Dark Patterns for over 10 years.
Okay.
I definitely didn't hear about it in 2010.
This is fun.
In 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumer Reports created a tip line to collect information about dark patterns from the public.
That's cool.
Disclosure, I am plagiarizing this from Wikipedia.
Cool.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, this is amazing.
There's classifications of patterns.
One of them is called privacy zuckering.
Whoa.
Is that like, that's, that's, wait, hold on.
That's like a government recognized term?
I don't know.
Why don't you guess what it is?
You know what?
Let's play a game.
I'm going to read different kinds of dark patterns and you're going to tell me what you think they are.
Okay.
Are we starting with privacy zuckering?
Oh, we're definitely starting with privacy zuckering.
Getting people to give you their information in exchange for very little or nothing.
Tricks the user into sharing more information than they intended to.
Okay.
All right.
Good name.
Okay.
We'll go with a couple of the more straightforward ones here.
Get zuckered.
Misdirection.
It's just called misdirection?
It's just called misdirection.
Would this be like the download buttons problem?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, you nailed it.
So, you know, basically presented with a button in the fashion of a typical continuation button,
but it's actually something else and you have to look somewhere else for the one.
Like, have you noticed when Microsoft offers you the Windows 11 upgrade, you have to, like, hunt for...
For the don't do it.
Yeah, for the don't do it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
The next one is called confirm shaming.
Okay.
So, that would be when the prompt is like, do you want to continue your subscription?
Click the yes, I want to keep supporting this company.
Or do you not want to continue your subscription?
Click the no, I'm a horrible person button.
Nailed it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh, don't forget the bait and switch.
Hmm.
What's on that one?
Uh, it's, it's, it seems like you're signing up for something that's awesome and cool and
legit and then you're not, or maybe it sounds like it's free and then after you've given
them your contact information, they prompt you to put in a credit card or something.
It's, it's, you're really close.
It's, it's, they advertise something free or at a greatly reduced price, then say it
is unavailable and, uh, present similar options at higher prices or lesser quantity.
Okay.
And the last one is roach motel.
So, okay.
I've actually heard of this, but I don't remember at all what it is.
Um, no, yeah, I don't, I don't know.
This one provides an easy path in, but a difficult path out.
Got it.
So for example, a business that would require subscribers to print and mail their opt-out
or cancellation request.
Yeah.
Or like Amazon prime.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is full of different kinds of dark patterns.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I completely hijacked whatever very interesting thing you were talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was unintentional.
With me.
With me.
It was a dark pattern.
Uh, when the IRS banned these, uh, these companies from hiding their, their free filing
options, both H&R Block and Intuit, the makers of TurboTax left the agreement, which is awesome.
Uh, I personally really enjoy the process of, um, the government sending me a letter that
tells me what I need to put in the box of the piece of paperwork that the government sends
me.
Um, I think that's the dumbest thing ever.
I do think obviously some people are going to have more complicated taxes, but for a
vast, yep, for sure.
For a vast, uh, percentage of technically, yes, me as well, but for a vast percentage of
the population, uh, it's pretty simple and it's really stupid that you have to jump through
so many hoops.
Um, that you have one full-time job.
Yeah.
It shouldn't be that hard.
You should be paying $0 to process your tax return.
Yeah.
You shouldn't even like do it.
You should basically just confirm.
It should be presented to you.
Be like, does this look wrong?
I mean, okay.
Actually, I was, I was going to say, I mean, there's a lot of things that could conceivably
need user intervention.
Like if you have deduct deductions for a dependence or something like that, but then
I'm sitting here going, well, I mean, what's the point of the census if they don't know how
many kids you have?
Yeah.
Like what, what was the point of the birth certificate?
Yeah.
And it can be an opportunity to update things.
Yeah.
Like sure.
But yeah, no, you're, no, you're right.
Like confirm this information is still correct.
Cool.
We missed out on a, it's like a, I don't know.
People in chat are saying that's how it works in the UK.
Yeah.
Countries do this.
Like this is not impossible.
We missed out on a, I forget how much money it is.
It's either hundreds or thousands of dollars.
It's a significant amount of money that you can put towards your kid's post-secondary education,
but you have to apply for it before their second birthday or something.
And we missed the deadline.
And so you just don't get it.
And I'm sitting here going, well, this should just be automatic.
There was something, there was something when I was growing up where if you put money
into an account before you were, I think it was 16, the government would like match
it or something.
And it was for your post-secondary education.
But if you were 17, you, what, you're not allowed to save for post-secondary anymore.
If you're in post-secondary, they don't want to support you in post-secondary more.
Only if you're 15.
Like what, what is this line?
I, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know, man.
It was stupid.
So frustrating.
Anyways, I'm happy that at least baby steps are being taken, uh, to get away from the
lobbying turbo hell that has been H&R Block and TurboTax and all these other companies,
um, trying to just charge people money for them to pay money to the government.
Um, which is-
What a useful industry.
Incredibly irrelevant.
This should definitely exist.
Doesn't need to exist at all.
Is literally just bad for everyone except for specifically, probably only the heads of
these companies, which is just like, bruh, can we just stop?
Can we have all the people that work there go do more useful things?
That would be great.
Wow.
That's very heartless, Luke.
Nope.
An industry is under threat.
Nope, we need accountants.
An industry is under threat.
Close it all down.
And you would have those people just go get different jobs.
They will have jobs.
Brutal.
Accountants are in high demand.
Not everyone who works there is an accountant.
Boom.
Checkmate.
What about the developers who create this very useful software?
That we're hiring.
Okay, what about the evil executives and lobbyists who work on-
Yeah, they'll be fine.
They've probably made enough already.
What about the janitor who cleans the office?
Honestly, I'm sure they'll still be employed.
Someone else can move into that office.
I think they'll make it.
Yeah.
I think they'll be okay.
All right.
Fair enough.
Okay.
I'm kidding, you guys.
Relax.
I'm not actually defending the tax software extortion industry.
It's a meme.
What do you want to talk about next?
Reddit may become unsearchable.
This would actually really hurt me because legitimately a way that I Google things now
is I append Reddit, which I know that some companies actually know that and they try
to hijack the top search results of when you put Reddit on the end and stuff, but those
are pretty easy to spot.
So it's okay.
But Google has become so like unusable that I actually do do that.
So this will suck.
But Reddit is reportedly threatening to block web crawlers, including from search engines
like Google and Bing.
It cannot reach an agreement with generative AI companies to pay for data collected from
the site.
Sources inside Reddit report that the company believes Reddit can survive without search.
I actually disagree.
Me too.
The amount of organic browsing that I do on Reddit compared to the amount of, oh, I came
across this article by searching, oh, I'm on Reddit and this is an interesting thread.
I'll read for a bit.
Okay.
Goodbye.
Is like...
I don't just go to Reddit personally.
Yeah.
I never just go to Reddit.
I almost always end up there by accident.
Yep.
I don't know, man.
Reddit, on the one hand, has weathered some serious storms and has demonstrated...
...that they are quite resilient.
On the other hand, there's a fine line between resilient and confident and arrogant and hubris.
Over 500 news organizations, including the New York Times, Reuters, and the Washington
Post, have installed a blocker that prevents their content from being collected and used
to train AI.
I have bad news for them.
That isn't working.
So, cool.
And I guess the difference between those news organizations and Reddit is that Reddit's
management is tech-savvy enough to know that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know what to tell you.
I can't remember what it's called, and this isn't a topic, but I was reading a discussion
the other day about how some sites are honeypotting junk data in order to wreck the data sets
that some of these AI crawlers have.
Interesting.
So, they're creating a bunch of false information so that anything that crawls their stuff without
permission is going to have bad results, if that makes sense.
Interesting.
It's an interesting idea.
Yeah, I think it's a matter of time before the crawlers figure out how to work around
that.
I mean, as someone who was recently tasked with creating a crawler...
Oh, you're talking about me.
Yeah, sure.
I don't know.
Like, I mean, would you find a way around that?
Yeah, but then it's like...
It's slower.
Yes.
Because you have to hide where the traffic is coming from.
You have to take a more subversive approach to collecting the data.
This is one of those arms race situations where, like, you could get a whole bunch of websites
that report on the same thing to agree to put, like, one piece of junk.
And then if none of them have agreements with these things and that piece of junk ends up
showing up in results, it's like, okay, we got you.
Then you can use legal action, stuff like that.
Yeah, but, like, realistically, a lot of these crawlers are going to be coming out of places
like China or Russia where...
It just doesn't matter.
Realistically, what are you going to do about it?
Nothing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What, you're going to sue someone in China for using your data incorrectly and, like,
okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good luck with that, right?
It's been an interesting thing to watch.
I'm of the opinion that, yeah, I don't see any way that you're really going to stop it,
personally.
I don't think it's realistic.
Yeah.
If people want to take it, they're going to take it.
And this is the same conversation we had before where I was saying that even though there's,
like, chip restrictions going into China, I think Chinese AI developers are not necessarily
at any bigger disadvantage than North American ones because there's more legal pressure here.
So they have, like, hardware restrictions and over here we have legal pressure.
Well, they also have their governmental restrictions in terms of, like, my understanding is that there's restrictions on the outputs of large language models over there.
You have to be really careful about those sorts of things.
That don't exist over here in sort of the land of the free as we are familiar with people referring to themselves.
I think there's still some.
Well, there's some that I know have been self-imposed by some of the larger ones, but I also know that there are much smaller LLMs that will output anything.
Oh, yeah.
That's definitely true.
And I know that you can access those here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Effectively, there isn't really a limitation on if you're willing to dig for it.
Yeah.
Anyways, that's a developing and sort of an uninteresting conversation for most people.
Should we do the wing?
Can we jump to that?
SimSwap?
Well, actually, before we do that, yes, we're going to do the SimSwap.
Let's have some fun with the wing.
But first, I want to talk about some cool stuff that's happening on the store.
Ah.
Cool.
Where is it?
Dang it.
Why can I not find this?
I can make more surprise noises.
There we go.
Yeah.
Okay.
We're launching our premium sport joggers.
They are $49.99.
Nine?
Why did I say that?
$49.99.
They feature a nylon spandex blend, and they have super cool reflective taping on the side.
Yeah.
Actually looks pretty sick.
I have been demoing these for quite some time.
Actually, yeah, I've had a pair of these for almost a year now, and they look and feel flippin' awesome.
And this stripe here is like a reflective rainbow.
Were you wearing these in Taiwan?
Yeah.
That's actually kind of cool.
I noticed you were wearing some, like, you know, not Costco jeans.
And I was like, hey, those are actually, like, pretty sweet.
And I wasn't sure what they were.
And apparently they were these.
Yeah.
So, they're super stretchy.
They are not, I would say, the most ventilated.
So, if you are expecting to, like, go hard in them, they are not the most ventilated.
But if you are, if you're, oh, yeah.
See, that's a.
That photo, I have that one up on my screen right now.
Yeah.
That photo's really cool.
That's a really good shot of how cool they look.
Zipper Pockets, because I flippin' hate losing stuff.
It drives me absolutely crazy.
But, yeah, they're super comfy, super stretchy.
I think they look awesome.
Those are launching today.
Also on the store today, we've got Backpacks are back on the store,
now featuring standard zipper pulls instead of the weak carabiners.
So, our original stock is all gone.
New orders will ship as soon as our new delivery arrives.
That should be in the next couple of weeks.
We're apparently advertising by November 20th.
And you will be included in the list of people who will get the new updated carabiner pulls,
along with the little piece of hardware for swapping out the standard pulls.
So, when I say standard pulls, I just mean like any normal zipper pull.
That's on there now, and then we'll get you once we've got everyone with the old weak carabiners updated.
It's just taking a lot of time in production.
We're going to get those out as soon as we possibly can.
This is interesting.
We created a new promotional mechanism.
We can now do free shipping with your entire order when you buy a specific product.
I think we did this with the Luxe Backpack launch.
Oh, did it not work?
Oh, that's right.
It didn't work then.
So, we did it manually because it was a very, very low quantity.
Now, we can do it automated, and we're running a quick test.
So, today only.
Today only.
Because we have no idea how many people are going to redeem this.
We're not 100% sure how much it'll cost.
So, we are, we are, you are our guinea pigs.
For today only, if you buy a plaid flannel, not a mystery plaid flannel, good gravy.
Where's the plaid flannel?
Okay, there it is.
You'll find it eventually.
You get free shipping for your entire order.
Plaid flannel.
Woo!
It looks nice.
And it's available in a bunch of different colors.
Very good reviews.
Very nice shirt.
Good quality.
Thomas Harper.
Oh, wait.
No, top quality.
It has pockets.
It took me 30 days to notice it has pockets.
All right.
Thanks, Andrew.
You know what the weird part is?
I did the same thing when I was just reading in my head.
Yeah.
I was like, Thomas Harper.
What?
Yeah, why did I?
Okay.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
The point is the plaid flannel.
Free shipping for your entire order.
And finally, we are taking sign-ups for our long-teased magnetic cable management product.
Yes!
Why do they have these stuck on wood?
They're not.
They're not.
They're not.
They're on the magnetic plates that you can screw into things.
So we've got a bunch of really cool cable organization stuff.
All you got to do is go to this page, which I will post in the chat.
There.
That is all the updates for the store.
And now we can do whatever it is that you had wanted to do, Luke.
The wing.
The wing.
Your SIM swap.
Oh.
Yeah, let's do that.
Yeah, yeah.
After we do sponsors.
Got them.
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In the famous words of a certain hooded merchant, what are you buying?
I actually don't get the reference.
Do you know that reference?
Resident Evil, I'm pretty sure.
I have never played a Resident Evil game.
What are you selling?
Do you want to know something funny?
I know the reference.
Neither have I.
Really?
Yep.
You've never played an RE game?
Nope.
How's Final Fantasy 6 going?
I have been playing Final Fantasy 6.
Are you still enjoying it?
It's been pretty good, actually.
Okay, we'll talk about it more later.
Yeah, yeah.
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Nope, we'll do that later.
Dan.
Pausing.
Sorry.
I'm pausing.
You can't do the white horn.
Alright, I gotcha.
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Savage Jerky!
Let's go.
Oh, we get to pick one from the bin.
Well, I'll be taking...
Oh, hold on.
Oh, there's a whole bunch.
Okay, my mouth's already watering.
I want my maple buffalo bacon.
You get to pick one from the bin, grabs four.
Well, no, I'm looking at them.
I want to look at them.
Okay, there's sizzling maple.
Is that yours, then?
Is it just renamed?
I hope.
I hope it's the one, but maybe it's a new flavor.
Okay.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Sizzling maple.
Okay.
There's, ooh, bourbon glazed bacon?
That's also bourbon glazed bacon.
There's blazin' warrior bacon jerky.
Hey, they sent all bacon jerky.
That's hilarious.
Oh, no.
There's one beef jerky.
There's also salt and pepper patriot.
Okay, so I am assuming...
You know what?
I'm not going to assume anything.
I'm going to let you go first.
No, assume.
I thought you were going to go salt and pepper.
Oh, okay.
It was between two.
Can you get the second one?
Because that was one of them.
Let me see.
Oh, I mean, blazin' warrior.
Yeah.
Can we be less mind-belded?
Because that would actually make our conversations a lot more interesting for me.
Yeah.
If I just didn't know all of what you're going to say already.
What's the point of us even talking?
We should just sit here on WAN Show and read the doc together and go,
Hmm.
Yeah, that's what I think.
Also, that's what Luke would think.
Cool.
Yeah, it'd be a lot less fun for you guys to watch, I guess.
Yeah.
Okay, which route are you going?
Um, I'm going to go with bourbon glaze.
I'm sorry.
Am I supposed to be doing talking points?
Um, not every cow or pig can turn into savage jerky.
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If you're a braver man than me, you can even try their California Reaper, which offers
up seething heat up to 2.2 million Scoville.
The question here is, should Linus try this next time on the WAN Show?
I have, have I done their Reaper or have I done their Ghost Pepper?
I'm pretty sure we've done both.
It is extremely hot.
Very hot.
It's very hot.
Very hot.
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All right, bourbon glaze.
Let's try it out.
Um, in the meantime, why don't we move on to our next topic?
Oh, we're supposed to do merch messages.
Oh, we'll do the full thing after.
Let's do three merch messages.
No, no, we'll do it.
We'll do it at some point.
He just doesn't want to switch his phone.
I really don't.
I, like, really don't.
I've been hands-on with it already, just to get all my apps loaded onto it and stuff like
that, go through the setup wizard, and it's...
Well, I'll let you experience it.
Okay.
Okay, hit me, Dan.
Sure.
It was good.
I like this one.
Uh, what features have been removed from modern computers that you still can't understand?
Windows search being awful does not count.
Hmm.
Oh.
They took the easy one.
How about IR?
IR file transfer.
Did you ever use it?
No.
But I was pretty young and had no reason to quickly beam, you know, a file from one thing
to another.
Okay.
And to be clear, I mean, it's not like Apple doesn't have an equivalent now with AirDrop,
but on the Windows side of things, how the f*** do I just get a file to someone really
quick?
We've talked about this on Wayne Show before, yeah.
Yeah.
It's incredibly frustrating.
I mean, okay, okay, crossover cables.
There's another one.
They do technically still exist.
You technically could just take two computers and connect them and manually configure a bunch
of bulls***.
But why is it?
Honestly, though.
Really, really.
I would like the networking people to come at me like I'm five.
Why is it that we haven't just built functionality into Ethernet adapters such that the default
behavior when I just connect two Windows computers to each other isn't to act as a crossover
cable?
Because my understanding is you don't even need to use a proper crossover cable anymore.
You can use any cable as a crossover cable.
That's my understanding.
Don't quote me on that.
But why isn't it that when I plug in a crossover cable between two computers, they aren't just
immediately like, boop, here's the shared folder and I can just drag and drop a thing.
It's like ridiculous.
So people brought this up last time we complained about this too, and I forgot about it until
now when they brought it up again.
Oh, Windows Nearby Share.
Does it work?
Let's try it.
Yeah.
Nearby Share.
Here, Nearby Sharing Settings.
I don't know if it's going to start detecting things and stuff that you want to stream.
Okay, it's on.
Now what?
Here, I'm just going to hide my screen for a second.
It's a Nearby Share.
Did you turn it on?
Yep.
You just clicked the thing and it's working, right?
There's no like confirm?
I don't know.
I didn't have a confirm.
Yeah, I just clicked it.
Okay.
Now what?
Yeah, where do I go to do this?
Okay, here.
Let me just make sure there's nothing incriminating here.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure across devices.
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything that incriminating on my screen.
So what?
Like I just...
Share?
Share with Skype?
Share.
Okay.
Is this going to work?
Maybe.
That'd be cool.
Is it actually this good?
Can I go to your screen?
Sure.
Did anything pop up?
I think it said it was going to go to downloads.
It's called D7SHRPYXO.
No.
Yeah, I don't really see anything there.
No.
Oh, wait.
Is your date modified oldest to newest?
I mean, I looked at the whole thing.
What is it called again?
D7SHRPYXOAA-XXB.
It's not here, bro.
Okay.
I'll try sharing it again.
I want to see the internet.
What are you sharing it to?
I'm sharing it to...
Because this should be WANSHOW2-laptop.
Yeah, WANSHOW2-laptop.
Okay, I clicked it.
Okay, let's see what happens.
Is there any indication on your side that anything's happening?
Nope.
I just click it, and then the dialogue goes away.
So is your nearby sharing configured to be on?
Yeah, look.
Everyone nearby.
Looks like it.
Save files I receive to downloads.
But it didn't prompt you in any way?
This is the wrong downloads.
Let's go users.
WAN2.
It shouldn't be.
That should be the right downloads folder.
Yeah, so I know.
I'm just, you know, someone's gonna try to point it out.
Okay.
It's definitely not there.
Well, really good feature.
Sick.
Maybe we're doing it wrong.
Check notifications.
Check notifications.
Chat's blowing up.
They want you to check your notifications.
Well, it should have given me a notification.
I would argue that.
Oh.
No, that's...
I started a live stream.
Oh, we could watch WANSHOW.
Oh, we could watch garbage stream.
Garbage drum stream.
Mm-hmm.
Full plane exclusives.
Giving away...
I mean, hey, that's basically the picture I tried to send you.
That thumbnail.
The system works!
Okay, so Do Not Disturb is on in their defense.
So I wouldn't have gotten the thing.
Because Do Not Disturb is on.
So, okay.
But it's also not in there.
I don't have to concede that, but yes, there's...
Is Bluetooth on?
People are helping us.
This is great.
Live troubleshooting.
If that's a problem...
Okay, first of all, yes, it's on.
And two, if that's a problem, it should prompt you that.
Yeah.
And I shouldn't have been able to select his computer and share to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It should tell him or both of us, turn off D&D.
Why does that matter?
I mean, do it.
Do it.
Do it, you coward.
Well, it's on because we're live on a show.
Like, there's a reason.
Okay, it's off.
Okay, I'm sharing with you again.
Okay, so here you go, guys.
Live demo.
WAN Show 2 laptop.
Okay, it just goes away.
It gives me no information whatsoever.
I did get a thing.
Save and open.
Okay.
With photos.
No way.
Hey, you up?
Okay, so it works as long as you're, you know, don't have D&D on.
Okay, not bad.
Not bad.
Can you share with me?
Probably.
Something that's kind of funny is I think there's a setting in Teams to turn on D&D anytime you're on a call.
So literally Microsoft's own software is going to block Microsoft's other software from working?
I mean, you say that like it surprises you.
I actually want to, okay, hold on.
Do not disturb.
Okay, so do not disturb is back on.
Can you try to send me something again?
Yeah, I sure can.
I mean, I didn't realize we were doing a detailed investigation into the, uh, reliability of-
Yeah, well, we are now, okay?
Reliability of-
Anything to delay the wing?
What?
Okay, it just sent me a notification anyways.
So, I don't know.
Um.
Wait, are they all coming through now?
No, this just told me that it finished.
But I, I turned D&D on and what I was hoping was that if I just manually opened the notifications panel, maybe it would show it in there.
So, like, if D&D is on but you know a file is going to be shared, you could grab it.
Um, but then it just sent me the notification even though do not disturb is on.
So, that's cool.
Uh, now I'm going to send you something.
Am I the only one who absolutely hates that Windows even has a notification shade at all?
No, not at all.
I use them for absolutely nothing other than to get in my way when I'm trying to click something in the system tray.
You want to know something really fun?
I learned that it has a notification tray thing, uh, right now.
I've never used it before.
I had no idea it was a thing.
People said check notifications and I was like, this is probably where it's going to be.
And then, yeah, it was right there.
Cool.
Yeah, occasionally I'll get like, um, okay, I turned on my, my VR machine for the first time in like three weeks or something.
Um, at some point, like this was not recent.
This was a while back.
And that machine is signed into float plane so that I can monitor chat and so I can stream to float plane or something.
Like it was signed in for some reason.
And I literally couldn't use my computer to click.
I was trying to click something in the system tray.
I literally couldn't access it for over a minute because of every float plane upload that queued up.
Sorry, am I supposed to see something?
Yeah.
But you probably have D&D on.
I don't even know where to set Do Not Disturb in Windows.
Just search Do Not Disturb.
I got it though.
I'll find it.
You know what's interesting?
My side gave me a little thing.
No way.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let me, let me do this again.
I'm going to send it to you again.
Share.
With Wancho Laptop 1.
And then see the bottom left, right hand corner?
Oh.
Sharing to Wancho 1 Laptop.
Download.png.
Waiting for Wancho 1 Laptop to accept.
That's totally fine.
Did it not do that for you?
No.
What the heck?
So it has the ability to punch through Do Not Disturb.
And it might just not inform you that it's waiting for a transfer or something?
You're Windows 11.
Are you Windows 10?
I am.
Oh.
Maybe it got better.
Interesting.
I thought we both got force upgraded to Windows 11.
I just showed up one day and it was Windows 11.
Probably someone accidentally clicked it.
I mean, that's what my kids did with the computer downstairs.
I was really annoyed because as far as I can tell, there wasn't an easy way to go back.
Hot take.
I like it.
I've run Windows 11 at home.
I've never looked back.
Really?
Yep.
Do go on.
I just haven't had a single issue.
Literally never.
What?
Yep.
Zero.
I also noticed you didn't even bother to move your start menu to the proper position.
Nope.
And it's in the middle at home.
And I like it.
What about the f***?
Okay.
Are you taking the p***s?
No.
What about combined taskbar icons?
I would lose my mind if I couldn't expand them.
I've actually been combining them since like Windows 7.
Yeah.
How do you guys work effectively?
I didn't know that was new with Windows 11.
I've been doing that for a long time.
I'm an executive.
You think I do real work?
Hmm.
It's all emails, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Valid.
You got your email client.
I'll have teams and Slack and Discord for talking to a few creators and a browser.
Actually, probably a few browsers.
And then a few windows of each browser.
And then a ton of tabs in each one of those windows.
And then I just like wreck my RAM.
And that's, there we go.
I'm free browser Windows and Teams.
That's my quadrants.
Yeah.
Yep.
It's inefficient.
What do you mean?
Oh, I guess if you have them open at the same time, always.
I have three monitors.
Yeah.
Got to use the screen real estate, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have a big monitor.
I miss, I miss my multi-monitors.
I like actually, I think I'm an outlier on the third monitor productivity step.
Really?
I think I actually use it more than most people do.
Hmm.
Oh, I mean, I was a big third monitor guy when I was at NCIX.
Yeah.
I had four actually.
Because they say like the second monitor is like a big productivity step, but then the
third monitor is supposed to be this like tiny single digit percentage one.
I needed all four.
So the, the three where I had, um, I had our internal system, which I think you probably
remember, like our internal, like content management system and like product management
system.
And then I would have, um, one monitor would have a second one of those so that I could
refer to and utilize both.
And then would also, I would have as like my alternate view on that one, our live site.
And then the third one, I would usually have like manufacturer, uh, product info so that
I could, uh, or I would have our Canadian and our U S internal systems.
And then I would have manufacturer product info.
And then my last monitor was for, uh, internal, uh, intra-office messages, uh, which some people
used MSN, some people used other things, I think, but basically like internal comms.
I have, I have stuff like, you know, in teams or in my situation more often, but I do also
do it in teams, uh, your, your call window is a new window.
So I have a dedicated spot where that goes.
Whenever I'm in a live call for teams or Slack that goes in one dedicated spot, I never put
anything else there.
That way I can always see everyone that's in the call is my mic open or not all that
kind of stuff.
It's, but if I had two monitors that would take away extremely valuable real estate, but
because it's on a third monitor, it's nowhere near as valuable real estate.
So I can dedicate room to that.
And then I'm never hunting for it to mute and unmute my mic, which is immediately notable
time save.
You should get good and get a hardware mute button.
Yeah.
Got them.
For a while there.
I don't know if it's possible now, but for a while there, you couldn't rebind it in Slack.
And it was a really annoying key bind that I never mind.
Remember I, I, this is, this was a long time ago and I've never looked at it since.
This was like a very long time ago.
It's very possibly changed ever since.
Linus is going to yell at me, but I should look into it again.
Go XLR.
Like legitimately.
Go XLRs.
I mean, there, there's a whole thing now though, Dan, like they're not getting driver development
anymore.
They've like abandoned it.
They're like kind of sketchy.
No.
Um, someone in chat, if I can find it, where'd it go?
The name was Archangel of Death, um, which was really intense.
Fringe.
You're making fun of float plate people's usernames.
Come on.
Maybe, maybe they just are.
You don't know.
Um, okay.
I can't find it, but they were saying that windows 11 has an annoying bug where when you
put, uh, windows explore windows behind something, they have a, uh, they, they pop forward.
See, like I've, I've never had that happen.
I've had like no issues with the windows side of things.
I don't know.
All right.
So just so you know, I'm also windows 11 at home.
I also have no problems.
Jeez, man.
I actually finally reformatted my system.
So why do you wait?
Why do you resist that one changing?
I don't know.
Habit.
Just, I just don't care.
Like, honestly, it's more that I just, um, I'm not, I'm not keen on putting in the work
to reopen all the tabs that I like open.
Yeah.
It just, that's how little difference windows 10 versus windows 11 makes to me on a machine
where all I ever do is look at these three side by side things.
So honestly, I feel exactly the same way.
One of my systems force upgraded and I was just like, all right.
All right.
And I'm like, it's not worth the time to me to force this back down to windows 10 when
I could just single button click on all the rest of the computers.
And now I'm just running windows 11 with me.
It was that I finally upgraded.
Um, I finally got rid of the bad ancient windows install.
Remember I talked to you about this when we were doing the AMD challenge.
My windows install is messed up.
It's been through multiple platforms and most importantly, it was installed on an NVMe raid.
So even though I'm no longer running NVMe raid for my boot drive, I have to have NVMe raid
drivers installed or it will blue screen instead of actually booting.
And that has been inconvenient a couple of times.
Um, so finally I, I treated myself to a really stupid boot drive.
I picked up an Optane boot drive cause this is my last chance to run Optane.
I'm like, you know what?
I'm going to see if I can find a scenario where it like matters at all.
And maybe it'll be a video or something, but I'm going to, I'm going to run Optane.
So I have a single Optane drive instead of, you know, rated stupidity.
Um, and as I was installing windows, doing a fresh install, I realized that the drive
that I had put in to install from was a windows 11 drive.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Like I could take 20 minutes and I could, with that said, I have had some problems with windows
11 on other machines.
My kids upgraded the VR machine to windows 11 unbeknownst to me and undecided by me because
they probably just clicked on it.
And then the issue that I had was that it wouldn't go to sleep anymore.
So I had to go in and I had to play around with some, I think it was an, it ended up being
network driver kajiggery in order to get the thing to stay asleep because it would just
immediately wake up because for whatever reason, the network driver was kind of bugged in windows
11 or something like that.
So I'm not saying that every experience is going to be perfect and smooth like Luke's was
or like mine was on my personal rig.
Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not suggesting it necessarily.
I just, I run it on my work PC.
I run it on my work laptop.
Yeah.
That I'm not sure if you're supposed to do.
Is that approved internally yet?
Sure.
Approved.
What?
Got them.
Running windows 11 on your work stuff.
Yeah.
I thought we're all windows 10 still.
Why does it matter?
Why would, why would it matter for Luke?
Well, just Noah because, well, okay.
Because no way this came up.
This came up in conversation.
I asked you about this, Luke.
Didn't I?
Somebody, somebody actually asked me.
Okay, mine show is turning into a meeting again.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Somebody asked me, is it, is it okay if I install windows 11, which was actually beautiful.
I really appreciate that.
And I think it was, do you know you're going to like it?
Mine was another unintentional situation.
I didn't want it to happen.
It just did.
I personally disabled TPM modules in the motherboard bias on my computers at home so that it can't
automatically upgrade itself.
That sounds like such a Dan thing to do.
I hate, I hate windows 11.
I can't work.
It destroys my productivity.
Here's a question.
Okay.
Pull them out with a pair of pliers.
You know, you can't uncombine taskbar icons, right?
That's new.
Yeah.
So I might switch, but.
Okay.
I mean, it made me extremely angry when, um, initially Luke, if you bring up your, bring
up your start menu or your taskbar, right?
Click it.
Just the taskbar itself.
Oh, when task manager wasn't here and look, I know, I know control shift escape, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
My, but that is actually not a very natural position for me.
Whereas my hand is almost always on my mouse, right?
Click task.
Like that's muscle memory for me.
Do not take that away.
They brought that back.
Clearly that happened so fast.
I think it was an exec.
So that's my theory.
Someone really high up was like, what the fuck?
Give me this back.
Put it back now.
Cause they didn't put back anything else.
I don't remember the exact timeline, but I think it was my work laptop that flipped
first and I didn't switch any of the other stuff until they implemented that.
And then I switched everything.
Cause I drove me nuts.
Right, right.
When you told me to right click it, I knew where you're going with it.
Cause I remembered that.
That was so annoying.
Here's a question though.
Yeah.
Is your, is your icons, are they centered or left, left aligned?
Oh, left.
You left aligned everything?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I decided that I was going to try it for a while.
I was like, I, I'm almost certainly going to left align these, but you know, some designer
out there thought this was a neat idea.
Let me try it for a little bit.
Yeah.
Back in 1998 or whenever the heck Apple started putting them in the middle.
Like it's not cool today.
It's not trendy.
I just don't care.
The windows search is so useless.
I pretty much never opened the start menu.
Like actually I manually find my stuff these days.
I open file explorer and I go to the thing that I want instead of trying to type it in.
If it's a windows setting, if it's a windows setting, I'll type it in, but that's very
rare.
For me, it's more about landmarking my mouse position because I will, I will, I won't windows
E for file explorer.
I just click it.
So I, so I, I, I go down all the way down to the left.
I don't have to think about it.
I don't have to look at it.
And then it's like over a bit.
Cause you're a single monitor person as well.
Interesting.
I wonder if that's part of it.
Why don't you pin it to the taskbar?
Cause I can't do the same thing.
It would slide onto my side monitor.
I do pin it to the taskbar.
I pin it right next to the start button.
Okay.
So I go all the way down landmark and then it's right there.
So, so for me, it's more just that I, I, I putting it in the middle means I have to like
figure out where my cursor is and carry it to where it needs to go, which is stupid.
Why am I doing that?
With multiple monitors though, I don't have a huge, I could like digitally raise the side
ones to make a, a trap or something.
But like that is such a stupid workaround.
If you ever did that, I would feel bad for you.
Yeah.
I did not do that.
I wouldn't even like you anymore.
That's it.
That's the line.
That's actually the line.
I took my three monitors and I digitally configured two of them to be three pixels higher than the
middle one so that I could trap my mouse in a little monitor trough so that I could, no,
that is just.
It's a solution.
I didn't say it was a good one.
I'm losing so much respect for you.
For me, I didn't even do it.
Just the, just the idea.
What do you mean?
The idea, I'm going to need you to move offices.
Oh my God.
Uh, we have one more merch message to do if you, uh, if you want.
I can't believe how much shame I just got for literally not even doing something.
Well, I mean, for me, it's the fact that you thought of it.
I mean, I'm probably going to leave just because both of you use Windows 11, so I don't.
They, they brought back uncombined tasks.
Also, I will say it's, it's prettier.
Yeah, but if you want pretty, you should just run Vista.
Best looking, controversial opinion, best looking Windows.
I feel like tons of issues with that.
Well, yeah.
Why does your operating system being pretty matter?
I mean, that's a really good point.
What do I do with my computer these days, bro?
I just use Chrome.
I should just have a, a Chromebook.
Who cares?
Everything is just Chrome.
I mean.
That's, that's the future Linus thinks it's going to happen.
Can we arch Limnix?
I think it's coming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's scary.
I don't like that.
You've officially Colden'd.
I, I bet you our workflows, I bet you my current workflow is more similar to Colden's than
most other people in the company.
Really?
So like you.
He probably spends most of his time in like.
You clean out your desk every day?
Like.
He probably spends most of his time in like browsers and messaging apps.
Yeah.
And that's what I do.
I almost exclusively live in browsers and messaging apps.
Script review.
I still tend to do in Word.
That's how work works.
Alex brought me a, a script in Google Docs today and we ended up doing the review in Google
Docs and it was mostly okay.
What did you not like?
Um.
Because we have found.
Yes.
Oh no, he pointed at me.
What now?
Uh oh.
We have found.
I don't know if this is applicable for Linus.
I'm just saying.
We have found that some people don't like certain solutions because they just don't know everything
that you can do with them.
I know how to use Google Docs.
Yeah, but do you though?
Yes.
Maybe we could show you the magic of Google Docs.
I know how to use Google Docs.
Okay.
All right.
So what can I do?
Did you know that you can live collaborate?
So one of the problems with Google Docs is that your settings are on a per document
basis.
So if someone brings you a doc that doesn't have the correct spacing set.
So one of the things that really bothers me is automatic double spacing.
I don't like pressing control enter in order to get a single space.
And so and the reason is not just like an irrational hatred of double spacing.
It's because it's not efficient on the prompter.
And usually when I'm editing text, it's for a teleprompter.
You can change default settings.
You can.
But what?
I think that's per user.
Yeah, it's per.
No, it's per document.
No, you can change your default settings.
Sure, but that doesn't help me.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
That doesn't help me if someone brings in a document they created.
Okay, new solution.
We can use the API to force a change to everyone in the organization.
There's a template.
No, but I don't think that's that unreasonable, to be completely honest.
Really?
To make it so that you can't have double spacing?
Yeah, screw them.
I'm with Luke on this.
I mean, okay.
I hate double spacing too.
Double spacing sucks.
It's so dumb.
And if they want it, they could go change it on that document.
But we could change on an organizational level the defaults.
Are you 100% sure that you can do that?
I'm genuinely, like, I'm going to say 92.5% sure.
Hold on a second.
There's some pretty powerful things you can do in the Google admin.
All right.
Hold on a second.
Okay.
Bringing up my Google Docs here.
The thing, the hills that we choose to die on are just magical.
You've got to live a little sometimes.
It's true, though.
This one's not doing it.
It must be something that other people do then.
Yeah, your employees are wrong.
But there was...
I swear to you guys.
You know what?
No, I think we figured out what it was.
It was from someone pasting something into Google Docs to the point where even when we...
Oh, just paste without formatting.
Yeah.
Control-shift-V.
I didn't paste it.
Long enough.
So, to the point where even if we changed the...
So, even if we went into format, line and paragraph spacing, and changed everything, it wasn't fixing that chunk of it or something.
Like, it was really annoying.
Alex figured it out after he left and messaged me, and I was like, oh, that's interesting.
That's a solution.
But there have been things that have been a little bit annoying.
I really don't like the way that Google Docs handles many, many comments on a document.
But then I also hate the way that Word does it now.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
I don't have a lot of experience with Words, but I notably dislike how Google Docs does it.
So, like...
It takes up way too much space.
I need better density.
There's a lot of wasted space.
I wish there was almost just like a view option.
You know how they have like comfortable and compact?
Yeah.
Let me have that view option for comments.
Yeah, Microsoft Word commenting has been a complete cluster for like the last few years.
It was really good before, and now it takes that sort of collaborative cloud editing approach,
even though I'm not collaborating, and this is not in the cloud, where you have to...
I think that's them trying to not have a huge amount of differentiation between standard Word and SharePoint Word.
I get it, but I don't want to close out editing a comment every time.
I want to just click away from it and start working on another comment and not have it tell me,
no, you can't work on this comment while you still have an open comment.
That's utterly ridiculous.
Yeah, that's annoying.
It makes absolutely no sense.
I didn't know that was even a thing, but that's annoying.
Yeah, it's really frustrating.
That actually feels like very like old school cloud collaborative, not new school cloud collaborative.
Yep.
New school would just leave it there and you could come update it when you want.
Yep.
No, it's extremely frustrating.
That's working.
Yeah, I mean, I am familiar with Google Docs.
I use it very regularly, including writing scripts in it.
I do find sometimes it's little things like cursor and selection handling.
I do like the way that Word does it better.
It's not perfect.
That might be just a matter of being a little bit more used to it.
I won't say their name because I actually really like this person.
I genuinely just think it's funny, so I don't want to throw them under the bus.
I won't say their name, but I asked for a SharePoint demo from a Microsoft rep that I know.
I was like, hey, we're thinking about using this thing internally, but it takes some IT setup on our side.
And I really just want to let some people dip their toes in it.
I didn't say all this, but I said, can I get a demo?
We want to see how it works before we do the work to set it up.
Yep.
And he sent me a CD key.
And I was like, what is this?
And I got roasted because I guess he thought I didn't know what a CD key was.
And I was like, bro, no, I wanted a demo.
Like, I didn't want demo software.
Like, not a demo disk.
Yeah, I wanted a demonstration.
And then it just never went anywhere.
Oh, that's extremely unfortunate.
I was like, oh, all right.
Okay.
That's fine.
Okay.
Cool.
Dan, what are we supposed to be doing right now?
You have to answer the third merch message.
Oh, okay.
What was the question?
I don't remember what the last one was.
Hey, LLD, I get to watch a birthday WAN show.
Yay.
Hey, happy birthday.
Being the water cooling nut you are, what do you think is missing from the water cooling
space that you would make to make it easier?
Oh, that's a good question.
I mean, okay.
This has been attempted time and time and time again.
And I think with additive manufacturing, maybe we're finally going to get there pretty soon.
But do you remember, do you remember D-Tech Unisyncs?
Well, there's a, uh, whoa.
Is this very old?
Yeah.
I think so.
Yeah.
Uh, here we go.
Let me see if I can, let me see if I can find a picture in this article.
Uh, here we go.
By the way, lots of feedback in the full plane chat about how awful SharePoint is.
So sick.
Yeah.
Maybe we'll, maybe we'll just be going with Google Docs.
This is a Unisync.
Yeah.
It's a heatsink designed to go onto your GPU along with a, um, I mean, this is not going
to be great quality.
Okay.
No, we're not going to be able to zoom that far.
There we go.
Along with a GPU block that handles cooling the graphics processing unit itself, uh, to
handle the RAM and VRMs and all of that good stuff.
Uh, let's go ahead and go to installation here.
So the finished installation should look a little something like this, a block to handle
the actual heat generating components, and then a big heatsink fin array that shouldn't
need too much airflow over it in order to handle the rest.
Now, I think with modern GDDR6X, and I mean, presumably whatever's coming after that, it may
be optimistic to handle those components with basic heatsinks like that.
So maybe, maybe a future like this will, will, or maybe I shouldn't say a future like
this, maybe something like this will never be possible again in the future.
But I think it would be absolutely incredible if we could go back to non PCB specific GPU
blocks and just use a standardized block, just like we do on CPUs with a hold down plate that
you can swap out if you get a new GPU and then just, uh, I don't know whether it's, whether
it's like, you know, a company that designs these, these unisyncs, these, these cooling,
these aluminum cooling plates or, you know, whether they design them and stock them or whether
they measure everything.
And then, you know, they just 3D print them out of, you know, aluminum on demand.
I'm not aware of anyone who's doing additive manufacturing with aluminum just yet, but I know you
can 3D print in some metals and then you just order one and they basically print it kind
of, you know, sand down the bottom so that it's flat and offers a good, you know, mounting
mounting surface.
And then you, you just get it in the mail or whatever it should be.
It should be theoretically a fraction of the cost of these all copper machines from a giant
hunk of metal, uh, single GPU solutions that we have today.
Uh, and I, I would love to see that return because it's one of the things that makes water
cooling so expensive.
A pump you can carry forward to multiple builds, a reservoir you can carry forward for multiple
builds.
I used my last D5 pump for over 10 years before it finally gave up the ghost and a reservoir.
If you maintain it properly, there's no reason that you couldn't use it longer than that,
especially if it's a good reservoir that uses O-ring seals rather than just, um, gluing
together acrylic panels.
So CPU block, unless you must have another degree off or two degrees off or whatever,
you could still be using a CPU block from 10 years ago.
Nothing would prevent that.
The one piece that you have to spend $150 on plus every time is a GPU block.
So if you could just spend, you know, 70, 80 bucks on one once, and then every generation
you spend 20, 30 bucks on a new all in one heat sink, I could, I could see it being more
accessible because it's still a gigantic upfront investment, but at least it's something where
you are carrying forward the vast majority of these components as you continue to upgrade
your system over the years.
So that, that's something that I, that I think I would change if I could.
Apparently there are some rocket and defense companies that are doing aluminum additive
manufacturing.
Okay.
So yeah, maybe we're, maybe we're not that far off.
That would be super cool.
Is it time for me to pick a topic?
Yes.
No, no, no.
He almost got me.
No.
It's too quick.
Illegal.
No, quick.
Not allowed.
All right.
It's wing time.
I think you mean it's morphin' time.
Dude, that's so weird.
Okay.
So here.
Why did they ever do this?
I used to really like LG phones.
Okay.
Are you really not going to hold it up to the people?
It doesn't have anything confidential on it right now.
I guess it's signed into my email.
That's a surprisingly smooth action.
You can just do it with one thumb like that.
No problem.
No, you can.
You can't?
I have really small hands, Luke.
Okay.
You can't just simulate having small hands.
It's slippery.
Grab it with a couple pencils.
It's extremely slippery.
It's also really heavy.
Dan just keeps getting me today.
It is fairly heavy.
But my Pixel Pro is also pretty heavy.
I can't tell a big difference between them.
Show off.
Wasn't my point.
I was stunned at how heavy the Pixel Pro was.
Pixel 8 Pro was.
Hmm.
Hmm.
For me, it's less about the heaviness and less about the ease of flipping the thing.
It's more about what the f**k would I ever do with this?
Yeah, why?
And they provide a little, there's like a little tutorial actually playing right now.
Make sure you don't swipe that away so that I can kind of capture it.
Yeah, yeah.
Sort of introducing Swivel Home, software that definitely was worth developing.
Someone's actual job, like someone's actual life force was consumed to create this.
At the same time, this is why I wish LG was still making phones.
Because like, it feels well made.
And it works.
Yeah.
Like, that's kind of crazy.
Whether they sell like 50 of these or something like.
I just don't know.
And they went through the engineering of making it feel like an actual, like very solid, real product.
Yeah, the fact that this made it past creating a functional prototype and going.
Is insane.
It's kind of mind-blowing to me.
That's probably why they're not in phones anymore.
But like, they made good phones.
They actually did a good job of making the phone.
Yeah.
I just don't, the business guidance was a little questionable.
I can't believe that this thing is still getting software updates.
Yeah, like that's why.
I didn't think they were going to be able to get me to use it because.
You have to do it like that.
You can't do it.
Are you sure?
Look, so the problem is that it's hard for me to hold on to this without slipping on it.
When I am, when I'm like, yeah, I can.
But it's hard to, it's hard to reach up high enough.
Dang it.
Oh, the gesture controls also on a phone with basically no chin bezel.
Getting all the way down there is killing me.
I need buttons.
So what happens is, I don't know, maybe part of it is just the way that I hold phones.
But this is sliding on my pinky right now.
So it's hard for me to push the front screen without it interfering there.
And like, yeah, I can, I can get it.
Can you see it really quick?
I want to see how I do it.
I have a, I have a question.
Does it open the other direction?
No.
Oh yeah.
I'm left-handed.
I could not use this phone.
You go like this, right?
You do pinky under.
Yeah.
So I do pinky to the side.
Okay.
So pinky to the side.
Well, how do you, how do you, how do you touch the bottom of your screen?
Cause I can't, I can't touch the, I can't touch the bottom of my screen like that.
So yeah, I think I must just have a different ergonomic strat.
Yeah, no, there's no way I could reach that.
Like not even close.
Oh.
Yeah.
Like that's as close as I can get to the bottom of my screen with my pinky here.
So I have to hold it at the bottom so I can get my hand lower.
And that's the only way that I can get almost all the way across to the icon on the far left
side.
I'm just getting rid of my notifications.
Yeah.
So I can do that.
Yeah.
Like that.
So, so small, small hand straps.
I didn't actually realize that was a thing.
Like I can do this one handed ish, but it's like.
Oh yeah.
Putting it back feels like a.
Like a high risk maneuver.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Anyway, I promised here on the show, I would do the official SIM swap.
The SIM swap.
I was fidgeting with my SIM tool earlier.
It's lucky I'm able to find it now.
All right.
Out it comes.
Oh, rip, uh, rip SD card.
Man, gotta love those Note 9 things.
Best phone.
Um, actually the best phone.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Uh, do you want to see something wild?
Yes.
Oh, hold on one sec.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
It looks hilarious watching him use it.
When you have it like this.
Okay.
You either need to enter your pin here or you can unlock with your fingerprint.
Oh, that's so goofy.
Just put it on the back of the phone.
That's, that's my biggest gripe with this actually.
Um, is that there, the, the, there's no, like I got so used to my previous pixel where
unlocking and also, okay, my biggest, my absolute biggest gripe out of everything with this
phone was with my previous phone.
You could swipe down on the fingerprint reader on the back and it would pull down your menu
from the top.
So you didn't have to adjust your hand at all.
You just go, and now I can't do that.
Yeah.
You can, you can, uh, pull down the menu from like not being on a particular, I don't really
want to show my screen.
It's something that Google doesn't do a great job of.
It's just sort of continuity of features across their product line.
Like that, that within the first day of using it, I like hated it because it didn't have
that feature.
Yeah.
And now it's, I would say it's acceptable just because it isn't broken.
Just because it isn't this.
And, or that.
Like, I'm holding this phone.
What exactly is the utility of this carousel up here?
A small toy axe.
What did I even, oh wow, this is hilarious.
This is a video.
This is a gimbal mode.
So you can record your video at a, you know, fraction of the quality.
Wait, why?
But pan around inside it with digital zoom.
Um, because you're a big dumb idiot, I guess, is a reason that I could think of for that.
But that's not actually what I wanted to show you.
Uh, what I wanted to show you was this.
Um, but why is, why is anything that I'm looking at happening right now?
Where's just, where's just regular old camera mode?
That's a good sign.
Okay.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Okay.
You ready?
Yeah.
Whoa, pop-up camera!
I forgot that this phone had a pop-up camera, like the OnePlus, whatever the crap it was.
Pop-up headlights, dude.
Love it!
Wow.
So it has, um, yeah, cause it's, that's one thing I do like about it, is that it's all
screen all the time.
Tiny forehead bar, tiny chin bar.
I like the pop-up camera.
Just all screen, baby.
I was wondering what that slot out at the top was earlier, actually.
Slot out?
Like the, the, the, the, up here, where the camera comes out.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know what to call it, but yeah.
Um, door?
I guess.
Sure.
I don't know.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and put it in.
No way.
It does have a micro SD slot.
I, I, I would love, love if this story ended with you being like, I think it's pretty cool
after using it for a while.
Luke, we know that's not gonna happen.
I don't think it's going to.
Even just.
But it would be so cool.
Even just picking the stupid thing up off the desk.
Like I'll go to, I'll, I'll, I'll go to, particularly with my left hand, I'll go to grab it and like
it'll slide, it'll slide apart a little bit because in order to have the hinge be loose
enough that you can easily activate it, it also just is like kind of all over the place.
Like it's, yeah, it's an absolute joke.
Oh boy.
I'm not even gonna bother putting my SD card in here.
I don't have anything on it anyway.
I never use it.
Which is a cool feature and you wanted to use it?
Yeah.
It's just, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm going to get the full value.
Out of my phone.
Yeah.
I'm more glad that it, you know, has it or whatever.
Yeah, for sure.
Uh, but, uh, I, I, I got some, some Intel from a phone menu from someone I actually trust
at a phone manufacturer.
And he's like, honestly, the reason that it's gone is not because like that space mattered
or because like people like hated users.
Um, a big part of the reason that it's gone is because micro SD cards tend to be the cheapest,
crappiest NAND tend to be very unreliable.
And if they break, people are gonna be mad at the phone.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Um, and, and so he was like, yeah, it's one of those things where the vast majority
of users are like, are chill and understand, but for the rest of them, why are we doing
this?
We're creating extra tech support and extra negative brand perception for what?
Yep.
Um, so that we can not sell phones that are more expensive because they have more internal
storage.
Like this is, this is actually harmful in every way, but that makes me not blame them
at all because I totally get it, but it's just frustrating that that's the reality that
sucks.
Yeah.
Um, I, I don't think that that is the same excuse or I don't think that's the same reason
the headphone jack is ultimately gone.
Um, that just seems to be, you can change the back to double tap to open notifications.
What, what part of it just, you just tap the back of it.
How do you even do that?
I actually tried to look for this because I saw, I noticed that the G is like a different
texture.
It's partially mirrored.
And I was like, that could actually be a touch thingy.
Gestures.
Yeah.
Like right now, if I, if I tap it, nothing happens.
There's no indication that anything could happen.
Nothing's going on.
So how do I even find gestures?
Now everyone's going to see how dumb I am with phones.
Okay.
I just had to add some notes to my wing, to my wing review, like using the fingerprint
sensor in wing mode is hilarious.
What's up?
Oh no, my system is four days out of date.
Nice.
I'm still getting software updates.
It's actually crazy that it can be even four days.
Install update to keep device secure.
Here, install now.
Installing a security update.
Oh wow.
This is a T-Mobile update.
What?
I don't see this option.
At T-Mobile, our customers, privacy, whatever.
Okay.
Well, sure.
I mean, that's not a T-Mobile SIM.
You know what?
I don't actually know if this thing works on my carrier or in my region.
Welcome to the new video calling dialer.
Support.tmobile.com.
I mean, I'm not on T-Mobile.
So let's see.
I'm going to call Luke LaFrendo here.
Oh no.
Oh gross.
Okay.
So one of my favorite features, as I think many of you will know, is T9 dialing.
So instead of me bringing up like a text search box and then typing with a keyboard, I can just press 5853 and that will bring up Luke LaFrendo.
And on my Samsung phone, they support swipe right to call, swipe left to text.
So I'll just go 5853, swipe right, and I can call Luke in like actually under a second.
On this one, you click the name and then it completes filling in the phone number.
So then you still have to press call.
Go all the way back down.
Yeah.
One more interaction, which is basically my kryptonite.
I hate unnecessary interactions and interfaces.
They are terrible.
I knew that about you very quickly when like one of the first few days we worked together, you went on this huge rant about the internal software at NCX because they like added a button click.
You're like, how could you possibly do this?
Well, it didn't serve any function.
No, I'm right.
It didn't do anything other than just be.
And it's more mad at the time.
No, it's more than just the button click.
It's the fact that there was a slow loading time associated with the extra button press.
And it was one that I had to press f***ing a hundred times a day.
Yeah, actual notable productivity loss.
And the people who spec the change never use these tools.
They touch it once a day.
Just they don't actually work with it.
They just watch other people work with it.
And so they didn't understand what they were changing.
So it was stupid.
Yeah.
That was my problem.
And it did nothing.
I have bad things to say about the back button thing.
First of all, on my previous Pixel, it was slightly indented.
So you could find it with your finger without looking, considering it's on the back of the phone.
This has nothing to it.
You can, I can sort of maybe tell that it's there because there's like slightly more grip for a second.
But it's really hard to tell.
Also, before, all I had to do was slide my finger down like that.
Very natural to bring down a tray you pull down.
Now I have to tap twice on something that I don't know where it is.
So I'm just going like, duh, I can't find.
I genuinely, I'm genuinely trying now.
I'm genuinely, I still haven't got it.
Where is it?
Okay, now I got a feel.
Got a feel.
There it is.
That's not working.
There we go.
I got it.
Like what?
No internet, no phone calls.
I might have to do some stupid kajiggery.
I hope it supports my bans here because I really want to use this phone for a month.
Just tap anywhere.
Okay.
If it's just tap anywhere, then it's horrible.
It sounds like the, it sounds like the kick sensor on the trunk of my car.
Theoretically.
Oh, dude, you just have to like bash it.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
You can't.
No, that's also not working.
Hey, Dan.
This is, this is bad.
You're on the clock, hey?
Yes.
Yes.
Uh, what are the odds that you want to set up my, um, my, my stupid APN settings and
stuff?
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
That seems like a thing Dan could do.
I, um, I have a lot of practice because I buy Chinese phones and they don't necessarily
work in Canada.
Okay.
And it drives me mental.
Um, cool.
Um, because I don't want to do it.
I can do it, but I have to like learn how to do it every time.
It's one of those things where I only do it once every like two years.
There's no sensor on the back of the phone.
It's an accelerometer.
Oh, shut up.
That's what, that's what chat's saying.
This phone's really slippery.
Apparently you just actually have to bash it.
That's so much worse.
And now because of that, I feel like it's just going to open when I don't want it to
all the time.
Awesome.
So I'm just going to end up turning it off anyways.
Hey, Robin C just bought a Luxe backpack.
Hey.
Joining the crew.
Luxe backpack crew.
Let's go.
Do we have reviews for those yet?
No, we haven't shipped any out yet.
Oh, right.
It's like a.
It's a presale basically.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the same backpack, but in a different material.
So we were, we decided we were okay with it.
It's fair enough.
Okay.
What are we supposed to be doing right now?
Topics.
Oh, topics.
You got a half hour till the hour.
I want to talk about Activision's confidential arms deal.
Yeah.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Activision made a secret deal with arms maker Remington
to feature its adaptive combat rifle in 2009's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
No money was exchanged, but both parties agreed to keep the deal confidential.
So why do we know?
Well, the deals that, well, the details of the deal were outlined in internal Remington
documents that were uncovered during a lawsuit that was filed by parents of victims of the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.
Remington settled that suit last year for $73 million.
These documents outline a strategy on the part of Remington to increase its appeal with younger
audiences.
This is a quote.
With increasing urbanization and access to shooting and hunting areas in decline, a primary
means for young potential shooters to come into contact with firearms and ammunition is through
virtual gaming scenarios.
That is the most corpo speak way of describing games have guns in them.
That I think I have ever heard.
One memo noted that while the company would not allow branded weapons in games where players
can shoot at non-military bad guys, it wouldn't oppose replicas of its guns in those games
because, and this is a quote, previous experience tells us people will seek out the brands of
the guns.
A lack of direct branding helps to shield us from implications of a direct endorsement while
still receiving benefit from inclusion in the game.
So, we have some discussion questions here, but the thing that I really wanted to talk
about is, in this case, no money changed hands and, you know, it's, yeah, no money changed
hands.
So, I would say that it's not the same as other product placements, but the fact that it could
go completely undisclosed raises a lot of questions for me about, I don't know, everything I see
in a video game.
Because certain types of advertising are actually reasonably well regulated.
Like, influencer product endorsements, for example, now are, at least from a rules standpoint,
very well laid out.
You can't say anything you don't actually believe.
So, you can't disguise advertising talking points as personal opinion.
You can't disguise paid content as organic content.
You have to disclose in ways X, Y, and Z, at least Y amount earlier in the content.
And there's all these rules around it.
But it seems like somehow, whether we're talking about movies or TV or video games, product placements
don't seem to have any of the same kinds of guidelines.
Yeah.
And sometimes, like in this case, I'm sitting here thinking, I don't know, like we have,
we have LG laptops, right?
Like, what about this jerky that we could eat?
Yeah, but that is a pay.
But that was just, that was disclosed.
That was, yeah.
We have LG laptops.
Yeah.
Your LG logo is viewable.
Is it?
Probably not the most easily.
I mean, I have, oh, oh, I put a verified sticker next to it.
Right before it, but not on top of it.
So you can see that you have an LG laptop.
Now, if you had a discussion with LG and were like, can we call these LG laptops instead
of ZP laptops?
Yeah.
And they were like, sure.
And then you never talked about it.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess that's...
Because no money exchanged hands.
Yeah.
And like, it's a game with firearms.
So they, like, I don't know.
But a clear benefit took place.
For sure.
And a clear benefit is happening for LG.
So for you having an LG laptop on your desk.
Well, there's no benefit to me in this case.
But in the case of the Activision Remington deal, there's a clear benefit to both sides,
especially in modern gaming where they're going to sell skins on these guns.
So we're not talking about, like, an insignificant...
People are going to be way more interested in an officially licensed, you know, like...
You think that's true?
Like, properly modeled...
Because, like, almost every gun that has...
Sorry, almost every game that has a Glock in it...
Sure.
...just calls them, like, something ever so slightly different.
But it's obviously a Glock.
And they sell a ton of skins, because everyone knows anyways.
Anyways, I guess that's true.
But then I'm thinking of, like, okay, you know, thinking about, like, a game like World
of Tanks, where one of their schticks is the super accurate modeling of that exact, you
know, model of tank or whatever else.
So I see your point.
But I also do think there's a clear value to accurately modeled weapons and vehicles.
So, you know what?
I don't think you're completely wrong.
I feel like we're running into a handshake moment.
Yeah.
I definitely understand both points.
I don't think it's completely...
I think the value is very unclear, but...
It's not measurable.
Yeah.
But it's, it's like an intrinsic, it's an intrinsic value.
I think there is value.
Like, I know that, I know that the relationship between racing game developers and car manufacturers
is complicated in much the same way.
Where some of them, there's deep cooperation.
And in others, you end up with these sort of unlicensed lookalikes.
And for, and that's a space where I can tell you 100% that there is a strong preference
from gamers for the cars to be authentic.
That one I do know.
And handle in an authentic way.
Yeah, for sure.
That one is very true.
I don't know, I know people, okay, here's an example of a company that just has never
cared at all, as far as I can tell, and just did it anyways.
Battlefront.
But no, Tarkov.
Yeah, isn't that Battle, or Battle State.
Yeah, yeah.
Battle State.
Oh, Battlefront.
Sorry.
Yeah, I meant to say Battle State.
Yeah.
But they're in Russia.
So, like, who's going to enforce it?
And I do think that community sees some benefit, but honestly...
Oh, that community 100% cares.
I don't think it's talked about that much that the brand is correct.
I do...
Well, that the characteristics are correct.
The modeling and the characteristics being correct is very important.
That matters a lot.
And hotly debated.
But if it was a smlock instead of a block...
Smlock?
I don't think anyone would care.
No, people would be mad about that.
Because it's just a stupid name.
Smlock.
I don't know.
Yeah, anyways.
There's definitely value.
Sure.
I just want to...
I guess what I want is more clear disclosures around product placement.
Or...
I want our team to sell way more product placements.
Yeah, one of them.
Because if we could just take money from everyone and not have to disclose any of it, then sure, that sounds great.
Guys, chill.
What I find...
We disclose things, okay?
I just mean it's...
It just seems like...
Okay, fine.
I wish it could be this way.
But if it's not going to be this way, then I should at least be getting paid, too.
By the way, no.
The answer is no.
LG does not pay for this placement.
The reason these are here is because nobody wanted to use them internally.
Which is ironic because they're Grams and the main point of them is that they're super light and they never get moved.
And they sit here and never move.
And they sit here and never move.
Yeah.
The Gram was a really, really great concept when it first came out.
And then I feel like just over time, they iterated and iterated and it got like a little bit better.
And then everyone else kind of caught up.
Not going to lie.
Anyway, this thing is way less stupid than I initially thought.
This like all-screen foldy-majig.
You saw me using it in a meeting the other day, right?
Oh, yeah.
Wait, it looked different, though.
Yeah.
Looked like it had a way bigger screen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, I see what happens now.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
I understand.
It's pretty cool.
I was expecting to kind of dunk on it.
See, this might happen with the wig.
This might happen with the wig.
We can believe.
It's not booting.
We can-
It's not booting.
All right.
Maybe not.
It just-
Oh, wait.
It's booted.
Oh.
It's been sitting there for like three minutes.
It might work.
There's hope for the wig.
The screen also just goes black sometimes, though.
Oh.
No, no.
It just does.
Like, I'll unlock it with my fingerprint.
It'll just like go black for like three seconds.
No, we're saying T-Mobile for like ages.
Oh, nice.
I need you to unlock it again.
Okay.
Nintendo says, no fun allowed.
Oh, yes.
Again, very cool.
Nintendo has released strict new guidelines for community tournaments, which is to say
tournaments without an official license from Nintendo.
Highlights from the new guidelines include that tournaments must be run at or below cost,
that organizers must publicly disclose costs and revenue, that there may not be any sponsors,
any selling of food, drinks, or merch.
There may not be spectator fees for online tournaments.
There must be a cap of 200 participants in person or 300 online.
There should be no prizes exceeding a market value of 5,000 euros total.
And those are the ones in the dock.
But I remember there being a couple of others that just felt utterly ridiculous.
Hold on.
Where's the dock?
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Here's the Nintendo.
I don't know.
Whoops.
Well, whatever.
The point is, they must have reached the legal age of majority, may not.
Oh, I remember.
One of them was that they capped.
Here we go.
Here we go.
For in-person community tournaments, organizers that have reached the legal age of majority
in their jurisdiction may collect an admission fee from spectators of not more than the equivalent
of 14 pounds or 15 pounds per person.
Which one is it?
I don't know.
So, I guess, based on how restrictive the rest of this is, I would err on the side of
caution and go with 14.
Yeah.
What is a community tournament?
A community tournament must meet the following requirements.
Nintendo's copyrighted games will be used in the tournament.
Nintendo, that is actually not the f*** how this works.
Yeah.
I don't think this should be legal at all.
And I'm actually pissed off.
So, the Smash community is such an incredibly dedicated, surprisingly small group of people.
I've been, like, vaguely paying attention to it for quite a few years now, just because
it's, like, fascinating to me that it still survives, despite all of these constant attacks
from Nintendo.
I was in, like, the StarCraft scene for a while.
My brother was a caster.
I really enjoyed playing.
I watched a lot of the professional games.
And it was fascinating how robust of, like, infrastructure and community was formed around
this game that had zero support from Blizzard, oftentimes Blizzard being antagonistic.
Yeah.
And then I have since been out of the StarCraft scene, and it's been interesting watching
the Smash scene, because I see a lot of similarities, but it's way worse.
Because Nintendo is not just, like, mildly antagonistic.
They are very antagonistic.
Like, what are you even saying with all this?
First of all, I don't think it should be legal for a company to even do this.
And then second of all, like, screw off, dude.
People want to play your game and have fun around it.
Let them do it.
And if some people make a bit of money...
Who cares?
Holy f***.
Calm down.
It's actually okay.
That should be a good thing.
What do you mean?
Like, what?
If it builds up a grassroots scene, and you can ultimately turn it into, like, a bigger
thing or something at some point.
Like, how are you so short-sighted here?
And, like, okay, yeah, we get it.
People are talking about it's not copyrighted.
It's that you own a license of the game, but not actually the game.
So what?
The difference between...
If everyone owns a license of a game, the fact that someone can come in and dictate
how many of us can be in one place and f***ing play it...
That's absurd.
That should be illegal.
It is...
It actually...
You should not be able to do this as a company.
Makes no sense.
It's completely BS.
You know what?
You know what?
Luke?
Are we hosting a Smash tournament?
We're hosting a Smash tournament.
Let's go!
Okay.
Sick.
When we have the Land Center open...
Yeah.
We will host a 201-person Smash tournament.
I will break as many of these guidelines as humanly possible.
I'm pretty sure I know people that would cast it.
And I challenge Nintendo to come after me.
Okay.
Fuck you.
Do you want to cast it?
I don't...
Yeah.
Of course.
I'll work on it.
Like, I just...
There is absolutely no feasible way.
There is no possible way.
This makes...
This makes no sense.
Like, listen to this.
Listen to this.
You can't have a tournament in which participants are paid a performance fee or other expenses.
I can't...
I can't pay someone.
I can't be like, yeah.
Why not?
Yeah, you can have some food.
Why not?
Why do you insist...
Who cares?
That people want to...
Why do you insist that people that want to professionally play your game have to, like, be poor?
That's what you're doing.
I don't get it.
Like, that's so stupid.
The tournaments cannot receive goods or money from third parties such as sponsors.
How is it any f***ing business of yours if I have a sponsor for my event?
I will have sponsors.
I promise you that.
I promise.
You want the event hosts to make money because if they make money, they're going to keep trying to do this thing.
And you should want them to do this thing.
All the right incentives are there.
Some things make sense.
Look, you can't use the Nintendo logo to promote your tournament.
No problem.
Yeah, that's your trademark.
Even if you didn't want them to use, like, the Smash Brothers logo or, honestly, even the name of the game.
Who cares?
You can't put Mario all...
You can't draw your own Mario and put it all over your website because it makes it seem Nintendo-sanctioned.
No problem.
Some things make sense, but some of them are absolutely ridiculous.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
The part...
Oh, they have...
In their Q&A, they have stuff about, like, school tournaments.
Yeah, but no one who doesn't go to the school can participate.
F*** off!
Who cares?
Why can't it be two different schools going against each other?
Why can't I go to the school and have my friend come?
Yeah.
Who cares?
Yeah.
It doesn't matter.
None of this is enforceable.
Like, you can write this thing all you want.
Like, what are you going to do?
You're going to ban me from Smash?
What are you even talking about?
What gives you the right?
What is up with this company?
I don't get it.
Super bullshit.
What do I mean?
Meegor asks, can we get Yuzu as a sponsor?
Yuzu?
Yeah, they make an emulator.
I don't think they have money to spend, but, like...
Rough.
Yeah.
As long as they do a dollar.
That would actually be hilarious.
If sponsorships cost, like, a hundred bucks.
And we just had, like, as many sponsors as humanly possible.
Like, sponsored by Daniel Besser.
I would do it.
I'll spend my money on it.
I'd buy that for a dollar.
Well, look, we could take all that.
Like, look, it's not that I want Daniel Besser's money.
We could put it in the prize pool.
Because we're going to have f***ing prizes.
Yeah.
Obviously.
Yeah.
And I need at least one that's $5,001.
So that we can exceed the limit.
So we need some money.
I would sponsor this tournament.
I don't know what it would be.
But it just...
I don't know.
It'd just be me.
Or I would do it in, like, the name of...
Doing it in the name of Floatplane is maybe not a great idea.
I mean, we're doing it as a...
I don't know.
Either way, I would put in $100 myself just because this plan sounds amazing to me.
Yeah.
No, I think this is just the kind of thing that we have to do because it's the right thing
to do.
This is...
If you guys read through this doc, I'll be giving you some highlights.
But you'll be more angry than I am right now.
This is not how you treat anyone, let alone your paying customers, especially not the ones
who are so dedicated that they spend actual real time, considerable time out of their lives
to master your product, to master your game, to get together with other people in the community
and share their love of your product.
That's...
It's broken.
It's the only way that I can describe the manner of thinking that could possibly lead
you to create this document.
It's broken.
I just want to read this message out because it's hilarious and the name is also great.
It's from Clapped K24 Accord on Flowplane Chat.
It says, I work construction in Ontario and I would buy a sponsorship on behalf of my
employer just for the memes.
Oh my goodness.
I gotta...
Should I contact dbrand now?
This is great.
We need to know when this is and stuff because there's like...
Especially if the...
If there's prizes exceeding five grand, there's like players that are going to want to come up.
I bet you.
Well, yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I have to find at least one high-profile player and pay them an appearance
fee.
Yeah.
Because like...
That's one of the rules.
That's one of the rules.
I will...
Luke.
No, I believe you.
I will break every rule humanly possible.
We need to have like a checklist to really make sure we hit everything.
To be clear, we're going to...
No, we're going to check with the lawyers.
We're going to make sure that anything that is a real actual f***ing rule, like according
to the f***ing law, we're going to make sure that we don't break those.
Like, I'm not going to have a single Nintendo logo in the venue.
Yeah, I was going to say, we won't use their IP stuff like that.
Absolutely not.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But to imagine for a second that you can tell me in my f***ing building, with my f***ing
event, that I'm allowed to charge X amount for admission.
No, the admission is going to be 15 pounds and one pence.
I actually do all the transactions.
People have to pay an exchange rate to pay us, then we have to exchange it back to like
actually use the funds.
Just to make it worse.
It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
So we'll check into it.
And you know what?
To be clear, if the lawyer comes back and says, you know what?
They actually probably can get you for this.
They can bury you.
Yeah, I'm going to bail because part of my, and I'll tell you guys, I'll give you guys
the update because the premise for me is that this does not appear to be in any way legally
enforceable.
It seems to be just ridiculous customer hatred for no apparent reason.
Just Nintendo, pure Nintendo arrogance.
But if I'm wrong, I'm not going to be the arrogant one.
I will stand down.
I doubt that I'm wrong.
Yeah.
For someone to tell me what video game I can play in my building.
You've got to be kidding me.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
And hosting a smash tournament would be sick.
So why not?
Yeah.
Heck yeah.
Oh, we're talking about, we're talking about names now.
Whale Smash.
Whale Smash.
Oh, I don't know.
Yeah, that sounds not great.
It sounds too similar to seal clubbing.
Okay, now I like it.
Yeah.
We're back on track.
Oh my goodness.
LT Smash.
Yeah.
That's actually not bad.
Yeah, that's not bad.
That's not bad either.
Yeah.
I mean, I might want to just, just to be, just to be, just to be snarky.
Whale Bros is not bad either.
I might avoid Bros.
And Smash.
Probably get it.
Yeah.
Whale Smush.
Whale Mash.
They did the mash.
They did the whale mash.
Cartoon Digital Fighting Championship.
Oh, name it like LTT Store.
I love it.
Digital.
Digital fighting game.
Adequate video service.
Leather backpack.
Hey, what did we call the new pants?
Did we, did we break off of it?
Oh.
No.
Break off of what?
LTT Premium Short Joggers.
Nope.
Sport Joggers.
Sport Joggers.
Yeah.
That's what they're called, isn't it?
It's what they are.
Yeah.
The names are what they are.
I know.
So this is Digital Cartoon Fighting Championship.
We'll get that at some point.
With Digital Cartoon Fighting Championship with sponsors and prizes.
Dot com.
Oh, boy.
You guys.
Um, anyway, this made me really mad.
And I'm surprised you didn't think this was a topic.
Because I was, like, very excited to talk about it.
I shouldn't say excited.
I was very passionate to talk about it.
I honestly, this is another one of the things, like, okay, so the first topic, you were like,
oh, you must have been offline, the PS5 thing.
I saw it.
I just thought it was a meme.
I didn't believe it.
And then with this, I didn't, I just saw, like, oh, Nintendo's being jerks again.
And I didn't really read into it.
I didn't know it was about tournaments.
Um, I just thought they were, like, hammering on some streamer for playing their game or
something.
And I was like, oh, Nintendo's back at it again.
Um, but yeah, rough.
Hey, we gotta mention the Folding Competition, November 1st.
Yeah.
Um, it's once the 6th?
Okay, I don't know what any of that means.
But it's Folding Month, starting November 1st and running until December 6th.
6th.
Um, sign-up information is available now on LTT Forum.
There are lots of prizes, including...
What?
Gift cards.
I just read something Conrad said.
And it caught me pretty good.
Are you gonna share it with the rest of the class?
Did you see it?
Did you find it?
No.
Dan just found it.
Mm-hmm.
Linus Media Group presents Smash Me Bro.
A Super Smash Bros tournament.
Very funny.
Oh, yeah, I think...
The evolution of Trust Me Bro.
Yeah, I get it.
The relationship has expanded.
Yeah, we, uh...
We're close.
Who are you gonna get as a title sponsor?
We're really close with our customers.
Oh, I assume dbrand's gonna want a piece of that.
Yeah.
I haven't actually heard back from them yet, but it's almost certainly something that they'd
be down for if they don't think they can...
They're actually going to get buried by Nintendo over it.
Oh, I like this evolution as well.
I'll just call it Sumi Bro.
Sumi Bro.
But maybe it's Sumi is one word, so it has kind of like a...
Yeah.
Sort of like a Japanese vibe.
Sumi.
Oh.
Sumi Bro.
Yeah.
Sumi Bro.
Yeah.
Um, okay, anyway, so, uh, check it out, uh, the forum, blah, blah, prizes.
Okay, are the prizes actually, are the prizes actually listed in the thing?
Okay, here we go.
Uh, fulling month, six, uh, worst prizes.
Here we go.
Uh, $20 Steam codes, PC building simulator code, possibly more to come.
There better be more to come.
Oh, yeah, okay, well, there, there's like two grand in LTT store gift cards.
Okay, we, we did some stuff.
Wow, actually, like community members are donating prizes.
Yeah.
Man, the fulling community...
This has been a thing for, yeah.
...never ceases to amaze me.
Um, maybe we can, maybe we can get some, maybe we can get some hardware in there as well.
That would be pretty cool.
Uh, I'll have to, I'll have to check with Chewy and see if, um, see if we can do something
like that.
Uh, if you wanna, if you wanna handle the next topic while I send that memo so I don't forget.
What do we got left?
Um, 82% of the states sues Meta.
41 US states are suing Meta, also previously known as Facebook, uh, for designing its platforms
to encourage compulsive behavior in young users through addictive features such as infinite
scrolling and persistent alerts.
I'm gonna take a pause here from what is written in the doc to say, uh, that's cool.
Wow, really?
But they should sue a ton of other people and not single out Meta.
I'm not trying to defend Meta here, but like, what?
Infinite scrolling and persistent alerts?
Is this not every social media platform?
Like, cleave them all.
Don't just go for one.
What's, it's weird that they're going after one.
Well, remember, part of it is precedent.
So if they win this...
So they need to win this one.
There's precedent.
If they do this one...
You don't wanna open up battles on every front at the same time, then you're Germany.
Fair enough.
That's how, that's how you lose.
Um...
You lose heart.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
So if they do win, then they need to keep going.
Um, because it's, it's, it feels weird, like diving in front of Meta, who I don't like
or care about at all.
Um, but...
I don't know.
Have you tried the Quest 3 yet?
No.
I've spent some time with it.
Adam, who's working on writing the review with some contributions from me, like we're kind
of working together on it.
He spent some time with it.
It's really good.
Okay.
Okay, okay.
It's like really good though.
Either way, I just think if you're, if you're gonna go for them for what they're saying,
they're going at them for, you need to go after more places, including TikTok.
Like, come on.
Um, the lawsuits allege that Meta knowingly ignored the product's effect on children's
mental health for the sake of profit, and that its algorithm pushes vulnerable teens
towards content glorifying self-evies.
Can I stop you for a second here?
Um, knowingly ignoring the harms in the pursuit of profit, are they suing Meta or are they
suing capitalism?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is kind of my point though.
As a capitalist, as a filthy capitalist, isn't that just, isn't that just capitalism?
Yeah.
Kind of.
Okay.
Carry on.
As long as it's within the extent of the law, whatever.
Uh, many studies, including Meta's own internal research indicate that heavy social media use
is associated with depression, anxiety, and lower self-esteem.
This is a reason I'm going on an aside again.
This is a reason why I have very specifically been engaging less.
And actually it's been great.
I have seen zero downsides.
I even know less topics when I show up for WAN show and Linus finds that more entertaining.
So if anything, only benefits.
Uh, anyways, especially in younger users.
Meta argues that the benefits of increased connection outweigh these harms.
Hmm.
Disagree.
Anyways, uh, discussion question.
Are there popular social media sites that don't encourage addiction?
I don't know of any, uh, could a non-addictive alternative to Instagram even compete?
No, no, no, it wouldn't.
Yeah.
Social media is inherently this.
Eyeball ownership.
Yep.
Um, in other words, speaking of ownership,
Digital Rev just deleted the entire YouTube channel that was active between 2007 and 2019.
That means hundreds of videos from their catalog are gone without warning.
At the time of writing, only nine videos remain.
The channel's former host, Kai, and former editor, Locke, are still making photography-related content,
but they were not informed that the deletion would take place.
The deleted videos include years worth of reviews, how-tos, and photography tips.
Um, several commenters cited Digital Rev as a formative influence in their decision to get into photography as a profession or hobby.
And the discussion question here is, is there any reason to delete an archive like this?
The answer is...
Oh, go ahead.
I've been kind of wondering about this kind of stuff because what's with the war on, like, camera reviews?
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, why?
It's so weird to me.
Well, it's not profitable.
Yeah, but why take it all down?
So that, that, back to, back to the question, the only reason I can think of is if the channel had a complicated licensing agreement with the producer of the content.
Because otherwise, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to, for you to private a video that is, that is as non-controversial as Digital Rev.
Yeah.
Um, you will still collect residual revenue on every view on that content in perpetuity.
Um...
Even if it's not very much.
Even if it's not very much.
Five bucks is five bucks.
Like, I, I can't, I can't imagine a future where I would take down any LTT video, even if everyone, everyone was gone, um, and the company didn't exist anymore,
and I had, I had no interest in making videos, I'd been canceled or something, or whatever, right?
Like, I can't think of any reason...
Their own community posts are pointing towards videos that they've taken down.
Brutal.
Speaking of things that should be a crime, like, I just, I, I, I don't know, man.
Like, I, I get it if there's, if there's a license agreement or something in place and they, they can't, they can't have them up.
But, like, why these nine videos?
Or ten, or whatever they are.
Well, no, like, these, these are playlists that when you click on them are just empty.
Oh, if you go to the channel, there's a handful.
No, no, no, I know.
I'm just showing how, like, it, this was done, like, quickly and not cleanly.
They, they ripped these videos out, didn't look back.
This is all the videos that remain.
These are...
Okay, Elijah in the chat asks,
Why am I watching this show right now when I'm supposed to be in recovery and not looking at screens?
That's a good question.
Sorry, Elijah actually asked,
Okay, would you take down all the LTT videos for an enormous sum of money?
But the answer, like, but the thing is, who would pay for them to take their videos down?
Nobody.
There's no incentive for that.
Like, I just, I, I, I can't.
People are saying storage costs money, right?
But yeah, to Google.
No, it doesn't.
To Google.
Yeah, exactly.
It actually costs nothing.
Yeah.
There is no benefit to taking this down.
And if, if anything, the, if you don't want to store it locally anymore and you don't care about it at all,
just delete your local files and leave them on YouTube because it's not costing you anything.
Sure, sure, fine.
I don't know.
CS2 players banned for spinning.
Several Counter-Strike 2 players have gotten VAC banned apparently for moving the mouse too fast.
Players were able to replicate the problem and successfully get auto-banned by setting their
mouse sensitivity at 10,000 plus DPI and spinning in place.
Some were able to incur a ban within a single match.
To see a demonstration of one of these tests, see this timestamp.
You should check the video out yourself.
Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm teasing that.
You can see the rest of it.
Yeah, you can see the rest of it.
It's from Tabby and Dump.
And let's see what else is going on here.
But yeah, basically people, if you crank up the DPI in your mouse and spin around, you can get banned.
And, okay, I feel a little weird about this one, but this is a thing people do sometimes.
Yeah, just to goof around.
A sign of frustration or just goofing around is just whipping your mouse around in Counter-Strike.
This is like actually a thing that happens.
Yeah, VAC banned.
VAC banned from the server.
It's in the video.
But, this is also spin botting.
It's one of like the most old school versions of aim hacking in Counter-Strike we've ever had.
So, I understand why they would try to have something that detects a rotational speed that they believe is not really achievable by a human.
And then go, okay, let's ban this player.
Now, in my opinion, the really big issue with this is how like not that easy dealing with Valve customer support is.
Because if this was like a detection thing and they just bomped people out and people could appeal it and be like, oh, they're just messing around.
And then Valve had the ability to watch the match and see like, oh, this is just someone like sitting in spawn, derping around before the match starts.
Then, whatever.
I don't think it's that big of a deal.
But...
Hydrox777 asks, explain spin botting, please.
Spin botting.
So, I don't actually remember.
It's been a long time since I've looked into this.
But I don't remember the reason why it needed to spin so much.
But it would essentially just anything that appeared on your screen would just die, basically.
Because your character was spinning around and ready to fire or actually firing.
I don't remember the exact details.
But yeah, you're just like aiming everywhere, able to shoot everything.
I never ran one, so I don't know 100% how it works.
Got it.
Yeah.
You were a death machine.
You would spin around and everything would die.
In other news, what if you were a freedom machine?
Oh, it was probably to detect more units.
Yeah.
What if you were a freedom machine?
What does that even mean?
Freedom phone 2.0, baby.
This is interesting.
Unplugged.
Oh, here.
Do you want to read it?
I'm going to screen share.
Unplugged is currently taking pre-orders for what they call the UpPhone, which runs their
proprietary Rust-based OS, LibertOS, not to be confused with LibertyOS, and features a
physical kill switch that unplugs the phone's processor and sensors from the battery.
The phone comes with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 108MP 4K camera.
It likewise features an always-on VPN, ad blockers, antivirus, and a suite of apps that
Unplugged say definitely won't mine user data.
Unplugged also claims that they have hired cybersecurity form CySecurity as an advisor,
as well as hiring independent auditors to conduct periodic penetration tests on our platform's
security.
They also have white hat programs with prizes as a bounty for reporting vulnerabilities.
Unplugged has gotten some criticism from the past from cybersecurity experts for using
terms like impenetrable and government-grade encryption in its marketing because no device
is truly impenetrable, and governments don't really have access to encryption that private
entities do not also have access to.
Unplugged, well, theoretically.
Unplugged has, however, stepped away from that language.
Unplugged, notably, was founded by Eric Price, who was the founder of private military contractor
Blackwater, then known as something else, now known as not that.
It sounds very different.
Blackwater, renamed.
Academi.
Oh, wow.
Okay, that's a different name.
Yeah.
Sounds extremely different.
They've rebranded a couple times, been trying to get away from, because like everyone in
the world knew like, oh, Blackwater is scary.
Right.
So they're like, Academi, we'd read books or something.
Yeah.
Security, or sorry, discussion question.
My brain just did that.
Is it possible that this could succeed, where every previous ultra-secure phone idea has
failed?
No.
Yeah.
I mean, it could be an improvement if these weren't things that you were just already
going to do yourself.
I mean, you could just have a VPN.
Yeah, exactly.
You could just, I mean, one of their talking points is uncensored.
You can download any app you want.
You can do that today.
You can just sideload an APK.
Sideload the app.
Yeah.
I'm interested in what the Libert OS actually is.
I'd be interested to know what it actually is.
The problem is I don't think it actually is anything.
We talked about this in writer's meeting, and that's where this lead came from, because
we were thinking, oh, well, we should do a review of it.
And the issue with doing a review of it is that right now they're taking a crowdfunding
approach to getting this thing out.
And I don't think since we looked at it, it has made any progress.
If I was them and I knew that I needed to sell 6,000 units of this thing before I could
move to mass production, I probably wouldn't put this bar on my site.
Also, is this to scale?
I don't think so.
I was just wondering that myself.
I don't think so.
Do I need to MS Paint this?
I had to squint there, because I was like, is that supposed to be a 9 or a 0 at the start?
Because either of them feel wrong.
Okay.
You know what?
We're doing it.
We're doing it.
We're MS Painting it.
Because it should be a 6, basically.
And it doesn't look like it is.
Okay.
So we're going to take one of these.
I'm sure there's a better way to do this.
Why did you include the back of the circle?
Well, it's not that much.
Oh, hold on.
It might be to scale, Luke.
You know what?
Oh, I see what you're doing.
I think it's to scale.
6, 943s.
Yeah, that would be about that.
Okay.
Wow.
So we both suck.
All right.
We both just...
It's an optical illusion.
We collectively suck.
It's an optical illusion.
Yeah.
Okay, Dan.
Is it APN fixed?
I'm so sorry, but I managed to do it.
You managed to do it.
Oh, good.
Thanks, Dan.
I'm so happy.
It took all of that time.
It took all that time?
You will not get Wi-Fi calling, and you will not get voiceover LTE, so you can't have 4G
calling.
So every time somebody calls you, or you try to make a call, it will drop back onto
the GSM 3G network, and I had the issue with my previous phone, because it was a similar
thing.
You just won't get phone calls.
It just won't work properly.
Oh.
Unless you're in a very, very good service area.
Oh.
Okay.
Well, that's...
No, this is not...
Not good in my line of work, but...
This is my rant about the Canadian mobile network system, because the phone supports
every single band in Canada.
Oh.
But our carriers do not support the phone.
I'm sorry.
It's like carrier now.
A bunch of them just merged.
By the way, people did inspect Element and found that it is 15.7% of the bar, which is
actually exactly 943 out of 6,000.
So it is definitely correct, and we were definitely wrong.
Cool.
Well, I can admit when I'm wrong.
Yeah.
And when the up phone, or whatever they're calling it, unplugged phone, up phone, exists,
I will admit that I was wrong that it will ever exist, because I am telling you now it
will never exist.
Very cool.
They're done.
They're out.
Okay.
I tried to call Luke, and it didn't work, though.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, wait.
So I can't place phone calls?
Only if you have 3G connection.
If I have 3G cellular...
Which they're phasing it.
So it's not as prevalent as LTE.
I don't think you could actually use it if you can't do calling.
No, you can, but just not very well.
Yeah, but he needs his phone to work.
Yeah, it's not triggering the proper carrier provisioning.
And it should, because the 100% of...
It's even got most of our 5G bands.
But you can't use Wi-Fi calling.
You can't do voiceover LTE.
I ended up having to just get a new phone.
I tried to rewrite the Broadcom modem, because it was driving me mad.
I'm like, Linus loves his fold, and I love my Sony's, but they just...
Canada hates anything that's not a Pixel.
So...
Um...
Okay.
Uh...
Hmm.
I see.
Let me try to call you.
Well, on the plus side, I'll get a lot fewer spam calls.
I just want to get any calls.
I see this as an absolute win.
Okay.
Well, what?
I got a call from you.
Yeah, so that worked.
But wait.
Can I actually talk to you?
Oh, what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you get the call...
If I get a call, I can...
Well, what the crap?
How does that make any sense?
Well, because it was able to drop onto the network properly.
I mean, try and call Luke now.
It might work.
Oh, no.
Out of service area.
It just dropped.
Yeah?
No, I hung up.
Oh.
Yeah, so...
Well, why did it say out of service area?
Because what it did is it went, okay, now I have to drop the 3G network, and now reconnect
to the LTE network.
And then, so when you try to make a call, it has to drop the LTE, get onto 3G, and then
place the call.
So it's very intermittent, depending on your service quality.
This is stupid.
Emergency calls only.
That one always makes me really mad, because if you can place an emergency call, you can
place the other call, if I have an active subscription.
Uh, okay.
Top Gear and Flowplane, no, they will not.
They will absolutely not let you do that if you bring your own device.
They go, sorry, that's, it's not supported on our network.
Go away.
You can buy one of our other phones.
You can place emergency calls with it.
That's fine.
Yeah.
Apparently, emergency calls mostly use 2G.
Is that true?
I think there's actually, like, government allotted, uh, bans for emergency calls.
All right, fine.
Yeah.
I didn't want to rain on your parade, but I think that's a thing.
I'll allow it.
I'll allow Wancho After Dark as well.
Oh, let's go.
I'm going to push the button.
I'm just stoked about this Smash tournament.
Nice.
Sounds fun.
I don't know what...
Just the most irreverent tournament of all time.
Yeah, like, I don't know what I'm more excited for, like, the Smash tournament itself or just
what it represents.
I think I'm more excited about what it represents than anything else.
Like, man, I'm going to play in the tournament.
I might even pay myself an appearance fee.
Not because I'm any good at Smash, just, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
Promoting the event.
Can I sponsor players?
I don't care.
Can I, can I, uh, I'm going to sponsor a player.
I think that's, that's cool.
I'm going to have shirts made.
Nice.
Nice.
This is, this is sick.
You know who you are.
You better learn how to play.
Actually, no, it's just like a top, top percentile.
It'll be great.
Okay.
That sounds good.
I love it.
Hell yeah.
Um, let's go.
All right.
Okay.
Okay.
What do we got?
Uh, let's see.
We already read that one.
Linus, have you had any experiences with the Amazon One Palm Entry stores?
How do you feel about the palm reading technology?
Do you see this spreading to other companies for different applications?
Palm entry?
Oh, like, like you use your palm to enter the store?
Sorry, I haven't even heard about this.
I have no idea what they're talking about.
Amazon's been testing some really weird stores.
I mean, I don't see why it's necessary.
You use your palm to pay, present a loyalty card, enter a venue, or badge into work.
Why palm?
Oh, it's contactless.
Oh, because the characteristics of your palm are so much easier to read at a distance compared
to the characteristics of your fingers.
Well, if it wasn't for not wanting them to have a database of my, of my biometrics, because
unless this is, yeah, this doesn't sound like something that's stored locally on a device
and then, like, encrypted, um, like, if it wasn't for that, that would be super cool.
Right?
But it, but that is the thing, because if it's just taking an image and then going to a central
server, that's super bad.
Yeah.
And I don't like that at all.
Yeah.
Huh.
Time to chop off people's hands and steal stuff.
Oh, boy.
Oh, now that's a future.
Yeah.
Um, wow.
That is, uh, that is, uh, a thing that could happen now.
Cool.
Cool.
Current year gets worse.
Uh, okay.
Dan?
Yeah, do you want another one?
Yes.
Uh, okay.
It's stupid hard to find all cotton clothes in North America, especially sweats, especially
long sizes.
Thank you for the dropout.
Why do you think it's so rare and not as, oh, sorry.
Uh, why do you think it's so rare and is there more all cotton coming?
Um, oh, I don't know.
I mean, honestly, a big part of the reason that for me is that I don't actually prefer all
cotton clothing.
I, um, I don't find it as comfortable as blends and I find that it shrinks a lot.
And so it's really, really difficult to get the sizing right so that it can be worn out
of the box and also worn a year later once it's been through the tumble dryer a couple
dozen times.
Um, that's, that's my own take on it.
I also know there are benefits to cotton.
I know that it's easier to, um, repurpose once it's done being clothing.
Um, yeah, it's, I, that's, that's all I know personally about it.
Hey, Luke, how do you like your Pixel 8 Pro?
Watching LAN live for the first time.
Heard your notification go off.
Thought it was my phone.
Oh, sorry.
Um.
Me.
I, I think I'm a very boring person to review phones.
Um.
Yeah, I tried to have him do it before.
He wasn't very good at it.
Wow.
I think one of my Pixel reviews is actually pretty good.
So there's that one line of phones that you kind of like every third one and can do a
good video about.
Well, that's really good.
You should be a professional phone reviewer.
I never wanted to be, to be clear.
Just wanted to cover Pixels.
I would, I would probably watch that.
Oh, we got the Pixel 8 Pro.
Eh.
Tune in next week.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
I just like pretty much everything I do on my phone is on my home screen.
It's like float plane, chess, email, calling, basic web browsing.
That's it.
Um, it's heavy.
The camera bump is like enormous and really annoying and doesn't fit very well in your
pocket with anything else in your pocket.
Um, the fact that I don't have the menu thing on the back now, you can slam your finger against
it and maybe it'll do something sometimes, uh, is not an acceptable replacement in my
opinion.
Um, I had a button before that was also a fingerprint sensor and you could also swipe
on and you could find it easily and it was a lot better.
So I lost some functionality.
Um, oh yay.
It's faster.
Yeah.
I don't care.
I play chess and send text-based messages.
It doesn't matter to me almost at all.
Um, but it's an Android phone that has pixel features and it's not broken.
So it's an upgrade over what I had before and that's how I feel about it.
Good job.
Honestly, if I could have my previous phone and it was not broken and it was still supported
with security updates, I would rather just have my previous phone again if it just wasn't
broken.
So like, I don't know.
If you had to buy 60 TVs, all the same size and brand, where would you shop?
Costco.
Do they even let you buy that many?
I mean, it's Costco.
We bought like, man, I think we, we looked for quantities up to 200 gallons or something
like that.
And Costco was the cheapest place to buy isopropyl alcohol.
Don't ask why.
They also sell a barrel drums.
Didn't we buy like a pallet of UPSs from them as well?
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
That's the thing we did.
Will there ever be an option to purchase signed items?
For instance, the children's book autographed by Linus.
Um, we have a plan for getting rid of all the crap from the tech shop.
We're planning to list it on the site as a loot box.
You get a random item.
We have no idea what you're going to get, if it works, if it doesn't, but it'll be signed.
So it's a, it's a piece of memorabilia.
Sure.
And then we're just going to do like a cost averaging thing so that we kind of don't
completely lose our shirts on it.
But people have a chance of ending up with something cool.
Um, and you can just have a piece of video history.
Maybe even a cool piece.
And you might, yeah, you might get some.
Probably a random crappy cable.
Probably garbage.
Probably garbage.
But signed garbage.
Yeah.
So I'm going to have to sign, I think it worked out to about 600 items.
Nice.
Yeah.
That's going to take some time.
Can you forge my signature?
You want to help?
I used to be able to.
It's been a long time.
Really?
I did it at.
Are you, okay.
A, really?
And B, are you going to, you're going to talk about this on camera?
No, you knew.
Oh, did I?
All right.
Yeah.
Wait, you actually forgot?
I guess.
Oh, wow.
We had a conversation about this at one point.
Cause you knew I did it for a while.
And then at some point we had a sit down conversation.
You were like, you know, we're like an actual company now.
You should stop doing that.
And I was like, okay.
And you were like, yeah, like, I'm not like, I knew you were doing it.
I'm not like mad.
We just should probably stop doing this.
And I'm like, I'm going to have to bug you more often.
And you're like, yeah.
I was like, okay.
Nobody got paid for six weeks.
Someone knew that story.
Cause we've told that story on Wancho before, which is why I'm surprised you don't remember.
But someone knew that story at LTX and asked me to forge your signature at LTX.
Yeah, I know.
They brought it to me and you did a bad job.
So I fixed it.
But I didn't have like a visual representation at the time or anything.
I had to do it from memory.
And I was like, wow, I don't know.
All right.
I don't know.
Sorry.
What was the question?
Luke's phone review in under five seconds.
I don't know.
All the videos are going to be the same.
I'm just going to go, eh.
Every time.
Almost every phone is just fine these days.
Yeah.
They're all pretty good.
There are exceptions.
I can't even use it.
I'm left-handed.
I actually bet you if the calling wasn't an issue, I wouldn't even mind that.
It's really heavy.
It's really thick.
I don't.
Is it really much heavier than this?
It's freaking thick.
Is it really much thicker than this?
It's way thicker than that.
Look at them.
It is way thicker than that.
Jeez.
Include the camera bump.
Include the camera bump.
Why do they even have camera bumps?
It's thinner.
Optics, Dan.
The camera bump is insane.
Just make the phone thicker.
It's so huge.
And then wait.
What am I waiting for?
Oh, my God.
Oh, it's so worth it.
It's so worth it.
It killed him.
That hurt me.
Can I have a small ding?
This is definitely heavier.
And part of it is the length.
So it's heavy and it's a tall aspect ratio.
So it like...
Like it wants to go.
It wants to be free.
It's so slippy.
Like a bird on the wing.
Sorry.
I've held a Pixel 8 non-Pro.
And I wish the Pixel 8 Pro features and all that other kind of stuff were just in the Pixel 8 non-Pro's body.
Yep.
I would have preferred that phone.
Yep.
For sure.
Dear LLD, I will use my first ever purchase in the hopes of getting you guys to talk more Final Fantasy VI.
Oh, yeah!
Linus, Edgar, or Sabine?
Sabin?
Sabin?
Well, okay.
Those aren't three characters.
It's Linus, Edgar, or Sabin.
Well, I mean, it depends at what point in the game, right?
I don't want to...
Don't spoil it.
Right.
I'm like actually enjoying it.
Okay.
I like...
Is it Sabin?
Do you pronounce it Sabin?
There's a lot of debate.
I ran into both of those characters.
Because it's one of those things where the...
I think the Japanese name is like Mash or something.
Oh, okay.
And so the translation is just like whatever it is.
And to my knowledge, Sabin is not a like American English name.
Yeah.
So...
So I just kind of came up with something.
Sabin, Sabin, Sabin, I don't know.
Sure.
I've always...
Is Edgar the king guy?
Yeah.
It's always been Sabin in my head.
So it depends on how you're asking.
If you mean just like, you know, character arc, or if you mean battle fight prowess, or if
you mean like character design, I was always more of like an Edgar guy.
But I think they both have limitations.
And I like both of them.
I like both of them the same.
I'd say like character design, you know, obviously, you know, Mog is awesome.
Man, I don't know.
They're all...
What's the dude's name?
I just got him in my party.
And this is probably going to tell you sort of where I'm at.
Yeah.
He's cool.
Yeah, he's cool.
Shadow's badass.
Shadow's awesome.
It's like so cool.
Like he's got like Fang, his dog.
He's got a dog.
Yeah, he's got a dog.
Dog doesn't like strangers.
He'll eat you.
Leave him alone.
I...
As a kid, I...
You know, my reading comprehension was not what it is today.
And when they do the introduction for Shadow,
I misread it as he did slit his mama's throat for a nickel.
Not that he would.
So I was like, whoa!
Dang!
Dang.
Oh, man.
I was surprised when he joined the party.
Well, he doesn't always.
Oh.
Like, I think you can proceed without him.
And that's like a thing with him.
So like, no spoilers, but like, watch out for that.
It's not a guarantee that Shadow is in the party.
Oh, yeah.
I know he tells you.
He's like, I might just leave at any time.
I was like, oh, wow.
And it is legitimately RNG sometimes.
And there was one point where he just f***ed off.
Like, there's a segment at some point where he's with you.
And he may leave at some time.
And he just f***ed off after one random encounter.
And I had to go it without him for an extended period.
That you're kind of supposed to kind of have him for part of it or something.
It was very inconvenient.
I just finished the...
There's this, like, actually insanely long rafting portion.
Yep.
Yeah.
The Lette River.
This is going to end now.
And then it's like, pick a direction again.
You know why, right?
No, I know you have to make the right choices.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
But I still kept thinking that it would, like, actually end sooner than it did.
Oh, no.
And then, like, you get to the fight with Ultros.
And it's like, you've kind of had the s*** kicked out of you for kind of a while.
And if you haven't stocked up items and stuff.
And that's another fight where I keep going, like, all right, this is a big hit.
This will take him down.
And then it just keeps going.
I'm like, oh, my God.
Oh, no.
He's like, he's a pain in the butt that early in the game.
Yeah.
Like, he's...
Well, now I know you fight him again.
It's fine.
Okay.
It's fine.
It's fine.
But, yeah, no.
I mean, he doesn't die.
So, I think the game implies it.
It was pretty obvious.
Implies it pretty heavily.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he has his own theme music.
That usually is an indication.
And a lot of dialogue and stuff.
Like, it's really involved.
It's pretty obvious.
Don't tease the octopus, kids.
Yeah.
As a literal kid, when I played it, I was like, uh-oh.
I feel personally attacked right now.
I was...
That one spooked me because he, like, cleaved my...
Entire party for over three quarters of their health and, like, dropped one of them from
fairly healthy to dead.
And I was like, oh.
This is a little scarier than I thought.
And then I realized how overpowered Prey was.
And I was like, oh, okay.
I'm fine.
Prey?
Yeah.
One of the guys that you have.
Like, Prey.
Prey.
One of the...
Oh, Bannon.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Oh, so you're playing the modern translation.
That move is just called health.
In the original translation.
I wasn't sure what it did, so I almost didn't even want to use it.
Oh, that's hilarious.
And then I was like, well, I should figure it out because he doesn't do a lot of...
He doesn't do a ton of damage compared to my other characters anyway, so let me try this.
And then it was just like...
Make sure you're using your rows properly.
That's really important.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not doing that like at all.
That's really important.
So you throw Bannon in the back row.
Just have him prey on every turn.
Prey spam.
And then you're good.
And then same thing, like even with...
That's one of the few...
Oh, I should have done that.
It tells you like Bannon can't go down.
I should have put him in the back.
I didn't even think about it.
Yeah.
It's one of the few RPGs where it actually makes sense to play around with your lineup, even mid-fight
sometimes.
Like if you go, oh, crap.
I didn't even know you could do that.
This is bad.
Yeah.
So if you just click over or something like from the menu.
Okay.
Like with your D-pad.
Yeah.
So you just go over and it should...
There should be an option for a row.
I'm playing with keyboard and mouse.
Okay.
We'll just use the arrow keys though.
And just go...
Can I just...
Can I give you a SNES controller and a USB adapter?
I mean, sure.
Okay.
I will do...
Oh, wait.
I need a ride tonight.
Okay.
I will give it to you tonight.
Sweet.
Can I get a ride?
Yeah.
Thanks.
So you just go over and then go row and it'll switch to the defensive position or the...
It does use your turn, which sucks.
Yeah.
But it might be worth it in certain scenarios.
If you have somewhere where you're just like, okay, I'm going to switch.
You're on healer duty now and you're only going to use magic.
You need to actually get out of the way.
Yeah.
It can be pretty useful.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
How are you going to...
How are you going to do Sabin's Blitzes on a keyboard?
I've done it.
How are you going to work?
But it's...
It was fine and then they gave me an angled one and I was like, oh, no.
But you can do it.
I just did it.
Okay.
There's ones that will be impossible.
Okay.
Yeah.
You will need a controller at some point.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
I had like down left or something that I had to do and I just stared at it for a second
and was like, oh, no.
Okay.
And then just tried to do it sync.
What's Aura Bolt called?
Because that's what that is.
The down left...
Yeah.
I'm trying to remember.
Down diagonal left one.
I feel like Conrad's going to know.
Oh, man.
Oops.
I didn't mean to do that.
That's okay.
It's not that important.
I'm not going to remember.
I've only used it once.
Okay.
Because I saw the angle thing and I was like, I don't really want to do that again.
What are you enjoying about the game?
Um.
The story's like actually decently engaging.
I wasn't necessarily expecting that a ton.
Really?
After all the time I've spent talking about it?
Yeah, but you were like six.
I've played it like...
Man.
I've played it all the way to completion at least two or three times.
And I've played the first half over a dozen times.
Like all the way into adulthood.
It is a great game.
I actually very much enjoy the graphics.
Um.
I am playing the pixel art remake.
Yeah.
So that might help it a little bit.
But like the pixel art's good.
It's good.
It feels good.
It makes me...
Kind of mad sometimes.
Sometimes.
Because like...
It just feels like a good game.
Like within minutes of starting it up.
I was like, yeah.
I want to play this.
Like I actually want to play this right now.
I'm not just doing this because I want Linus to do other stuff.
Like this is...
This is cool.
I'm engaged.
I want to go through this cave and find this thing and keep this chick alive and do whatever.
Like I want to actually do these activities that the game is trying to get me to do.
And the graphics are good enough that they're interesting.
And like I'm...
I know that a game is working for me when I start doing things naturally that are like the reason why I like Bethesda games.
Like I started hunting in caves for secret passages.
Yeah.
And enjoying that.
Yeah.
And I was like, alright, I like this game.
I know when I start doing that type of stuff.
I'm like, okay, I'm engaged.
I care a lot.
I want to find all the little secrets.
Treasure matters.
I want to do all this type of stuff.
Treasure does feel like it matters.
Treasure actually matters.
I like that about games too.
That's huge.
It is so boring.
It's one of the things that I hate about Zelda games.
Yeah.
That every treasure chest, unless it's at the center of a dungeon, is a f***ing rupee.
Yeah.
Like it sucks.
Yeah.
Like I want there to be...
That's something that's...
Oh.
I'm back on Fantasian again.
And that's something I do like about the game.
Oh, okay.
Treasure matters.
There can be a random chest at any stage in the game.
Like in the first dungeon.
And it could be something that is impactful for the entire rest of the game.
Like it unlocks part of your tech tree.
And there's no other way to unlock it.
Like you actually need to explore.
You can find cool stuff by exploring.
Something that I was going to say I do really like is that you're talking about how treasure matters.
I like that you have to use it.
I think that's cool.
I am the type of person that will naturally be like, oh, a potion?
Guess I'll never use this because I might need it someday.
And then I'll forget that I can even use them and then just beat the whole game.
And it's just like whatever.
But like if you don't use them, your team's just going to be dead all the time.
Yeah.
So like you actually need to use your stuff.
And like the economy matters because having a tent or whatever is like actually pretty important at times.
I will say that it does fall into the same trap that most RPGs do in that the economy makes a ton of sense for the first like 10 hours of the game.
And then you just make too much.
And then it just sort of loses all semblance of that's one of the things that I just I hate to come back to this again because I know it's such a sensitive topic.
But that's something I loved so much about Breath of the Wild is the economy never scaled to ridiculous land where you're getting 100,000 rupees for every stupid random encounter and you can afford all the armor in the game.
Every piece of armor was like 500 rupees or whatever.
And it was always difficult to raise 500 rupees of money.
Not well, not difficult, but it was always some like you didn't just have enough money to just buy everything because everything was constantly breaking.
Just like in the real world where you were always buying stuff and always always treasure hunting.
It always mattered.
It was always important.
I did.
I also found out in a negative way, but I'm okay with that.
I want to be very clear recently that you need to kind of do the things now or the game might take that opportunity away from you.
I got to a town that felt really big South Figaro or whatever it's called.
Um, it felt pretty big and established and I was like, okay, I'll come back here later.
Yeah.
No, you won't.
Yeah.
And there was like some dude that like wouldn't talk to me unless I gave him alcohol or something.
Slider.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like, I think I kind of figured I want to progress the game though.
I'll like come back and do this later.
And then it's like literally the next thing that happens is they're like, that place doesn't exist anymore.
I'm just like, okay, I guess I won't go do that thing.
Um, all right.
And I'm like trying to actually do all the content.
I just didn't think they were going to delete the like, what, third city at this point?
It's like everywhere I go, they're just like, you're never going back there again.
Empire's f***ed up, man.
Yeah.
Like, yeah.
S***'s f***ed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to do something about it.
And you know what?
Yeah.
But that's the thing is like, I like that they establish real stakes.
Like it's not just.
I care.
There's an ambiguous motive for someone to something because whatever.
Like it's, it's really grounded.
There's a, there's a, there's an empire that is like actually doing bad stuff.
Like burning down cities and just wrecking everything.
And all in the name of, of, you know, conquest and acquisition.
And, and it feels, I don't know.
It feels very on the one hand, like a global conflict, but they, on the other hand, they
make it really personal.
Yeah.
This place that you visited now it's gone.
It's wiped out.
And you were a slave.
Yes.
To them.
Yes.
What are you going to do about it?
Yeah.
It's a, yeah, I don't know.
It's cool.
I love it.
I can't believe you haven't mentioned the music.
I love the music so much.
Music's very good.
Music's very good.
However, I haven't heard the redone tracks for the pixel remaster.
It's good.
Would you be enjoying it as much if the graphics looked like that?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, seriously though.
That's my Tara.
Yeah.
Wait, I don't think I have this person yet.
Not that that's a problem.
No, she's the main character.
Oh, her name's Tara.
Oh.
What's her name?
I think I accidentally rewrote it.
I didn't do that to anyone else.
I didn't do that to anybody else.
All right, fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's Tara.
Yeah.
I didn't want to rewrite it, to be clear.
What was I going to say?
Yeah.
I don't mind.
I don't mind pixel graphics.
I don't know.
I am appreciative of art styles, not necessarily just fidelity.
Oh, apparently I had the wrong one.
Apparently that was not the pixel remaster graphics.
So does she look more similar to the one on the far left?
I think she does, actually.
Yeah.
Hold on.
What's this?
Is this it?
I feel like that's what I'm looking at.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like the dude, the dude.
Locke or Locke or whatever.
Yeah.
He looks like the third one, I think.
This one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's him.
Yeah.
I think it looks cool.
I actually kind of like his old bulkier look.
Yeah.
Me too.
He looks kind of pinner here.
Yeah.
Definitely more like kind of swashbuckling thief and less just like brute.
Fits the theme.
But I also don't know what's up with these super, super pointy shoes.
Was that really the intent?
No idea.
Might have been easier.
It might be an asset.
Oh, no.
This is the new one.
I don't know.
I was going to say on the old one, it might be an asset they use for something else as
well.
So they save data.
The only thing I don't like so far, genuinely, like everything about the game.
Whatever criticism you're going to have.
There's no way I can accept it.
Yeah, that's fine.
It's a perfect game.
No, it's not a perfect game.
The only thing I don't like is I have very, very little experience with Final Fantasy
games.
I don't remember Final Fantasy 8 working this way, but I haven't played it since I was
like 12.
So maybe it did.
I don't know.
But the turn system, I hate it.
Like a lot.
I have it set to wait.
Actions are still happening in the background while I'm trying to select things.
Oh, yeah.
Get good.
Doesn't seem to be happening.
Yeah.
Get good.
Even wait doesn't wait much.
Oh, it like ends up resuming anyways?
So what wait will do...
I think that's a bad system.
I forget what the distinction is.
So active means that everyone's turn counters are running all the time.
And then wait, I think what it does is if they act, they will wait for you to finish their
turn before it starts to count again.
But that doesn't mean they can't act if they had already reached the end of their active
time battle.
It's called ATB and there's...
I should give you the manual.
I have my manual from when I was like...
I talked to...
This was...
Again, this is a sign that I actually cared about the game.
Yeah.
I went into the Adventurers Guild thing near the beginning of the game and I actually talked
to everyone and like learned these things.
Nice.
And I decided to put it on wait.
But it doesn't...
Yeah, it doesn't actually like pause the game.
And I don't find sorting through menus quickly to be a skill that I care about.
And also, I've been really enjoying it as like a side monitor game.
So I'll leave it there and be doing something else for a while.
Maybe I'm talking to Emma.
Maybe I'm playing with the birds.
Maybe I'm...
I don't know.
So anything...
Maybe playing another game sometimes even.
I'll just leave it on the side monitor.
And then I'll play for a little bit.
And then get distracted by something else and it's fine.
Whatever.
But now I can't ever pause.
Really.
You can pause.
Maybe there's a way.
Maybe there's a specific pause.
But I want to be able to just stop.
Oh yeah.
No, start button just pauses the battle.
Okay.
And it just stops.
I don't know what that is.
Maybe escape or something.
Okay.
I'll give you a controller tonight and I'm going to give you my manual.
You'd like it.
It's full of like artwork and stuff.
Cool.
Like it's actually awesome.
I used to really like old manuals.
Yeah.
Probably will like it.
Yeah.
Oh no.
Luke wants an idle Final Fantasy game.
No, that's not what he's asking for.
No, no, no, no, no.
I don't want it to play while it's sitting there.
My whole point is I want it to pause.
Like something that I really like about Slay the Spire and FTL.
And maybe now that I know you can pause in combat if you press a button, it'll be the
same thing as FTL.
Yeah.
Because in FTL, you just press space bar and the whole game pauses.
So it's great for a side monitor.
You can leave it for two days.
Yeah.
No, you can pause it.
It's fine.
Okay.
Great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that should help that.
But I still wish it was just turn-based.
Apparently it's while you are in a submenu.
So it's so that you don't have to like quickly navigate to which magic spell you want to cast.
Maybe I'm using it wrong or maybe I switched it back off of weight and don't remember that.
But I was in submenu.
I was like selecting spells on whatever her name is.
Tara.
Tara.
And actions were happening in the background.
I was trying to like read the descriptions of what the spells did.
And the game's just playing itself.
I'm like, bro, stop.
I can tell you what they do.
Fire casts fire.
I figured that one out.
Cure casts cure.
Yeah, but I wasn't sure what cure did.
And scan scans.
I don't know what scan is.
Oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, shoot.
What's, um, the other translation of it or whatever.
Uh, I have like four spells with her or something right now.
Scan and characteristics of enemies.
Uh, what's it called?
Uh, it's escaping me.
Uh, crap.
And where do you see your MP when you're in battle?
I don't remember.
I only see your health.
And then there's this like other number beside it,
but it doesn't seem to change when I cast spells.
Libra.
Libra is scan.
Uh.
Okay, hold on.
What's her, what's her fourth spell?
I don't know if I have that yet.
I don't have ice yet.
Someone just said ice.
I don't have that yet.
Ice is way later for Terra.
Yeah, very natural that I would get.
I'm not worried about that as a spoiler,
but I don't have that yet.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
That's not.
Yeah, no.
She's, she's a, she's a natural magic user.
So she'll just like learn spells.
Um, man, I don't, I don't remember the,
I don't remember the order.
I don't remember the fourth spell she gets.
Oh, antidote.
Yeah, so that's the first four.
But like, there's so many different status things.
Oh my God.
Like there's a blind or something.
Yeah.
Couldn't figure out what would stop that.
Really?
So I just had to rest.
What?
Yeah.
Eye drops.
I don't think I have any.
Maybe that's why I couldn't figure it out.
Yeah, that's your problem.
Yeah.
Yeah, you should get some.
I didn't have anything that would solve it.
There's a cure-all item, but you can't buy it.
That's probably hyper expensive.
You can never buy it.
So be really careful with that one.
Okay.
Yeah, I think it's called Remedy or something like that.
I was kind of surprised you could buy Phoenix Downs.
You'll go down a lot.
So I'm really glad that you can buy Phoenix Downs.
Okay.
So far, I've only used two.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I have had to use two.
Well, I was six.
Fair enough.
One of mine was, I just told you, it was the octopus guy.
Yeah.
All my people were fairly healthy.
Yep.
And they just bonk.
I'm like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
When he does tentacle once and it like takes down one of your guys and you're like, oh,
I got to watch out for this.
And then it turns out he can multicast it.
You're like, oh, really?
Yeah.
No, that's what happened to me.
Yeah.
I know.
He hit all four of them at the same time.
And I was like, ooh.
Yeah.
And it's...
I don't think he had done it once yet.
Oh, really?
He just...
Yeah, because no one had taken any noticeable damage and then just got one shot.
I think the single target one hits ever so slightly harder, but the four target one still hits really hard.
Yeah.
It's pretty brutal.
It's kind of nuts.
Anyway, it's a great game.
I love that game.
And now that you're playing it, I'll probably play it again.
I sure hope you got the sprint shoes.
I have like multiple pairs of that.
I just don't have eye drops.
I just looted them.
I didn't buy them.
You'll need one pair of sprint shoes.
I didn't buy them.
Oh.
Oh, you just found them.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
All right.
I think I bought the first pair and then I found more or something.
I don't know, but I have multiple pairs.
Hit me, Dan.
Sure.
Yeah, we got lots of potentials too.
Hey, LLD, hello from Michigan.
What do you think has been the most detrimental to gaming?
Games as a service, microtransactions, or loot boxes?
Oh, wow.
Those two things are...
Well, no, not...
No, you could have one without the other.
You could have loot boxes without microtransactions.
Yeah.
It's like square and rectangle.
Yeah, you could have expensive loot boxes.
That wouldn't be micro.
I'm not doing it.
Don't look at him.
You could definitely have games as a service without microtransactions though, or games
as a service without loot boxes, or loot boxes without games as a service.
I think they're definitely separate, yeah.
Out of all of those things, I do not think games as a service is the worst one.
No, I think games as a service is probably the most palatable in terms of predictable
recurring revenue for developers without being completely predatory.
I don't like it.
I think it's kind of a bad thing.
But out of the current options, I think it's the least of the evils.
Microtransactions versus loot boxes?
I actually agree with the argument here.
I think loot boxes are a subset of microtransactions, and I do think they are a worse.
A worser.
I also agree with that.
Theoretical handshakes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm satisfied.
Because, I mean, loot boxes are just microtransactions with gambling.
You know what, I take it back.
Gambling makes everything better.
Let's go to kick.
Rescinded handshake.
Hello, LLD.
Do you have any opinions on the popularity of hardcore gaming and players' willingness to
risk everything?
Okay, I think I curated this.
I have no idea what this means.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I can't believe I didn't get this.
There's, like, I think it's in RuneScape.
I know it's in...
Oh, like realism mode kind of thing.
Like permadeath.
If you die, your character's dead, yeah.
Oh, that makes so much more sense.
I think it's cool.
Why not?
It's an interesting, interesting twist.
I think you don't have to play it.
No one's making you.
That'd be a really interesting MMO.
That's a thing.
Like, all the way back to level zero?
RuneScape and WoW.
Your character dies, it's dead.
What's called that?
Yeah, 100%.
Is it hard mode or is it...
It's called hardcore in WoW.
Yeah.
I think it's called Iron Man in RuneScape.
Yeah.
Iron Man, I think.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
That rings a bell.
And you think about some of the mechanics in a game like WoW.
That are just...
They'll just kill you.
And it's like, okay.
Is there PvP in like...
So in the World of Warcraft version, there's something called Mokgora.
Mokgora where...
Like, you can duel in hardcore, but in a traditional duel, you never actually die.
It ends when someone gets to 1 HP, and then all their debuffs and everything are cleared, and the duel ends.
No one actually dies.
Someone has to like, be forcibly forfeited, basically.
Um, if you Mokgora, you have to go through a bunch of...
I've never done it.
I don't know.
But you have to like, accept it a few times or something.
Like, you have to...
It's very clear to the user that you're agreeing to this thing, and it's a duel to the death.
And if you kill the person, you get like a permanent buff or something that says that you've actually like, murdered someone.
I think.
Let me look it up.
I like that a lot.
Mokgora.
Because you kind of did.
Wow, hardcore.
Um.
Okay, this is not...
People have called events the same thing, so it's not the easiest thing to like, find details on.
Apparently there's a hardcore mode in Diablo.
The first thousand players get their name on an in-game statue for Diablo 4.
In RuneScape, not only is there a permadeath, but you can't trade or receive items from other players in hardcore Iron Man.
So, WoW has that as well, but it's a community add-on that enforces the restriction.
It's not WoW that enforces the restriction.
And in my view of it, if you don't play with the add-on, you're playing a FACO version.
Because being able to just...
Okay, so every MMO has this issue.
Eve.
I'm sure RuneScape has it.
I know WoW has it.
People just buy gold.
If you can buy gold, you can buy items.
If you can buy items, you can buy with real-world dollars, effectively skill.
And in a hardcore situation, a very significant advantage compared to everyone else around you.
So if you're just going around buying all of the items you can possibly buy to be way stronger than you're supposed to be,
are you really playing hardcore?
And, like, the whole reason...
Like, I play with my brother.
The whole reason why we like playing it...
I haven't played in a while, but theoretically we play.
The whole reason why we like playing is because it, like, forces you to go slower.
We play together.
So we play in a duo.
So we can trade with each other, but we can't trade with anyone else.
So, like, our professions really matter.
Because now we're, like, making things that we can use.
We can't get these things from other people.
You only have a fixed amount of professions you can even take.
So we had to be, like, strategic about what professions each one of us was going to take
so we can benefit each other the most possible way.
Like, there's all this, like...
You have to pay attention to all these subsystems so much more.
It makes, like, any random encounter super tense.
Because, oh, what?
If you miss three or four times in a row and the random boar you're fighting crits you three or four times in a row?
Well, you're going to be freaking out.
Because if you screw up...
If this keeps going poorly, your character's going to get deleted.
So, yeah.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I can't find the actual details on, like, what the buff that you get is or anything else like that.
I think it's cool that they have the system in the game.
I don't think I'd ever do it.
But there's a $100,000 hardcore tournament ongoing?
That's awesome.
Wow.
People got to be level 60 and streamers legit logging in, getting carried through people giving them golden gear so they can get into the tournament.
But, yeah, like, that doesn't feel, like, hardcore to me.
Get the add-on.
Play it for real.
Anyways.
With the Unreal Engine promoting AI-powered smart NPCs in future games, should GPU testing now include an AI benchmarking suite, like Stable Diffusion, for generic A2A comparison?
Absolutely.
But it's going to take us some time to come up with meaningful benchmarks as they pertain to gaming.
Linus, do you keep any backup computers at home?
I would go crazy if I had to fix my computer on the regular.
You're crazy.
I think we talked about this recently.
Luke, did I ask you to guess how many computers I have in my house?
No.
Okay.
Guess how many computers I have in my house.
What?
Okay.
So, are we, are these PCs, like, are you counting servers?
They run Windows.
Okay.
Are you counting VMs?
Anything capable, anything currently running a VM counts as one.
Okay.
Fair enough.
25?
I don't actually know.
Okay.
So, let's, let's see.
Mine and Yvonne's office machines.
Okay.
There's a little, like, thin client in the family room upstairs that I haven't actually really used.
I just, like, got it to kind of tinker with it.
It's there.
If it runs Windows, it counts.
Um, does it count if it leaves the house sometimes?
See, I wasn't sure about this.
I included in my crappy brain math your, uh, the Asus thing that you have.
Oh, okay.
Oh, I didn't even think of that.
I meant, like, the four gaming laptops in the van.
Oh, I didn't think of those.
I think those count.
Seven.
Darn it.
Um, okay.
So, then there's the five in the LAN center.
Yeah.
So, we're up to 12.
There's five laptops in the LAN center that I haven't removed yet.
So, we're up to 17.
I actually did count both of those because I was pretty sure that was true.
Um, there's the play button PC.
18.
There's my two Flow X13s.
My old one and my new one that I need to transfer everything onto and my framework.
So, sorry.
What are we up to?
I think that's 21.
Is that 20?
I think that's 20.
I think I was at 17.
Oh, I thought you were at 18.
Oh, wait.
No.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
18.
Because I play button PC was 18, I think.
Okay.
Right.
Okay.
So, that's 21.
There's Yvonne's laptop.
So, that's 22.
I already got obliterated because he hasn't even got to the server room.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Server room.
So, in the server room, there's, um, do I count a test bench?
It works right now.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, 23.
Three?
Were we at 22?
I can't even.
I have no RAM.
We were at 21 with the laptops.
Okay.
Well, 22 or 23.
One of the two.
Sure.
And then there's the NVMe server.
So, 20.
Let's say 23.
Then there's the hard drive server, 24.
And then there's, um, yeah.
If you can only find one more, I'm a god.
What?
Well, I said 25.
Did you?
I think so.
Oh, okay.
I'll try and find one more.
Oh, right, right, right.
Uh, Ally.
Hey!
25.
Um.
Now you have to find zero more.
Do laptops count?
Yeah?
Yeah, we counted laptops.
Okay.
That's good.
Yeah.
Um, well, okay.
Maybe not all of them.
Does it count if it's in my house right now,
but on its way out?
Like, it's on a rack to load into my car.
How long was it at your house?
A year.
Was this, like, a fairly permanent fixture?
Like, this is your thing?
It was my old ally.
My I and EO.
Oh.
I want to say no, because I want to be right,
but I think that counts.
Okay, okay.
So, 26.
Yeah.
Um, there's probably another computer in there,
but that one was, like, temporary.
Do you have a media center PC at the downstairs TV?
No.
So, I have the fiber optic HDMI working great now,
so I just, like, plunk it into my computer.
I used to use my computer from in there,
or I had the play button PC in there for a while,
but then, yeah, I just got bored of dealing with that,
um, because it's, no, it works great now.
Right, you had to update it for Whale Land or whatever, right?
Yeah, but it has a Thunderbolt GPU, um,
and so the performance isn't as good,
and I'm kind of sitting here going,
well, what, I'm just plugging an HDMI cable.
If you're going to do that anyways,
you might as well go away.
Yeah, I might as well have, like, the performance of a 7900 XTX
if I'm going to be gaming at 4K 120.
Um, so yeah, it's awesome.
So, 20, 26.
So, in response, it's not, sorry,
I wasn't, like, showing off or anything.
You asked if I, why I don't have a spare computer,
and the answer is, I definitely have a spare computer.
I will typically just plug in an, um,
an R, uh, Flow X13 laptop.
To be fair, if you did,
if my computer's down.
Car content, and you didn't have a ton of cars at home,
it would be really weird.
Yeah, well, see, that's the thing, right?
I'm always, I'm always trying stuff.
I'm always playing around with stuff.
Like, I can only use one computer at a time,
but sometimes, oh, I forgot about the VR PC, 27.
Um, like, I'm not going to move my computer around
every time I, I actually did a review
of a VR headset recently, the big screen beyond.
Like, what, I'm going to, like, cart my computer?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, I actually do this for a living,
so it's, um, it's just a bit of a different calculus.
Yeah.
Luke, uh,
Is that you, Dan, that said you're at six?
Yeah, I think it's six or something like that.
Wow.
Plus laptops.
I feel so not with it.
I'm at, like, three.
We don't count the iMacs,
otherwise I'd have more than Linus.
I want a, I want a fourth,
but no one has told me that I can buy
the wood accent parts yet.
Mm.
If I can, I'll have a fourth.
But I know I'm not going to butt the line or anything.
I'm waiting.
I'm, uh, I'm downsizing soon.
There's a couple that need to get sold.
All right, sorry.
What's, uh, what's next?
Next, Luke,
I know you have challenges with dyslexia.
Yeah.
God, I hope I spelled that right.
Uh, what about spoonerism?
That's one I discovered that's a thing recently.
What?
Did you know the term spoonerism?
I didn't.
No.
Reversal of the initial letters or syllables
of two or more words.
I have a half-warmed fish in my mind
for half-formed wish.
Ah, a blushing crow for a crushing blow.
Isn't this just, like, a symptom of dyslexia?
And doesn't, to a certain degree,
just, like, everybody do that?
Or is that just me normalizing my own stuff?
No?
I do.
I do it verbally.
Like, I'll do it verbally by accident,
but I don't think I would ever read it by accident.
I don't know if this would even still be a problem,
because I, like, never write things,
but there was a time in high school,
I swear I wasn't doing it on purpose,
where I would write words,
and I'd, like, leave.
I wouldn't even,
I wouldn't have to think about it,
but I'd, like, leave one of the letters blank
and then go back and put it.
I have no idea what the heck was going on with that.
Not a clue.
That might be completely unrelated.
I have no idea.
That was very odd.
Someone, I didn't even know that I did it.
Someone saw me do it once,
and I was like, wait, yeah, what's going on?
I have super weird issues with spelling.
I haven't had that happen to me at all in years,
but I don't write that often anymore.
But I was, I mean,
I was taking notes in the gym and stuff,
and that never happened.
So, I don't know.
Maybe I just stopped doing weird things.
Is your spelling okay?
No.
Because what I'll do is I'll, like,
at the top of the page,
I'll spell a word wrong.
Surprise, Linus didn't roast me right there.
Oh, I wasn't listening.
Ask again.
Neither of us can spell very well.
He was like, is your spelling okay?
And I was like, no.
Spelling matters.
I don't think it doesn't matter.
I just struggle with it.
I just can't do it consistently.
I'll be writing a page,
and I'll not know how to spell a word at the top,
and then, like, two sentences later,
I'll know how to spell the word.
Did I ever tell you about,
in grade, I think it was grade one,
when my teacher held me back for recess,
and I had to break out of the classroom
because I couldn't spell a certain word.
She didn't believe that I couldn't spell it,
but I genuinely, like, had no idea.
I don't remember what the word.
I think it was, like, library or something.
Yeah, that R.
I remembered that it was on some of our uniforms.
I went to a private school.
It was, like, a private Christian school.
But, yeah, some of our uniforms had that word on it.
I think it was library.
I don't remember.
But, yeah, some of the uniforms had the word on it,
but not the one that I was wearing.
So, like, she was like,
you can't come out of the classroom,
but she laughed.
But she, like, I think she locked the door or something.
I don't think you're allowed to do that.
This was a private Christian school.
They can do what the heck they want.
So, I crawled out of one of the windows
and found a kid that had the right uniform on,
memorized how to spell it really quick,
ran back inside.
And then flubbed it anyway.
Wrote it down, did get it right,
and then just, like, bashed on the door
until she came back,
and then she just, like, looked at me really weird
and was like, I guess you can go.
And then I went and hung out for recess.
And I'm just like,
this has been a problem forever,
is my point.
This is not, like, a new thing.
I don't think it was school.
I don't think it was school.
I don't remember what it was.
How much power does it take to run the pool loop?
How many computers would it need to cool
to break even with the running costs?
Ooh, that's a good question.
Um, not that much.
I mean, each of those pumps
is probably, like, 20, 30 watts
or something like that.
But as long as it's dumping
more than that amount of heat
into the pool,
which I'm very certain that it is,
the...
Oh.
Did you ever figure...
No, no spoilers.
There's going to be a video
where I demonstrate
that we're definitely dumping heat
into the pool.
Um...
Did you ever figure out
the one loop?
No.
Oh.
But it works perfectly now.
So after you and I, like, looked at it,
so I think it was an airlock
or something like that.
And we probably worked it out.
And we...
Yeah, by blocking off the one,
yeah, they both blow
really cold air now.
And it's awesome.
Nice.
Um...
So that video is coming.
Anywho.
Yeah, it's definitely worth it
with even just the systems
that are on it now.
But from, like, a purely, you know,
pure cost perspective,
no, I'd be way better off
just dumping the air into my house
and then using a heat pump,
which is way more efficient
than, like, any kind of resistive heater
or anything to just...
I hate pump to do the cooling.
It doesn't matter.
The point is,
no, it makes no sense.
And yes, that's okay.
There.
That's what I'm trying to say.
I'm stunned.
I have so many funny stories
from this school.
I was only there for, like,
three years.
Um...
I'm stunned they're still around.
They were a very small, like,
in the absolute boonies school.
I remember one time
I was super pissed
when I came home
because there was a creek
that ran along, like,
one of the sides of this school.
Um...
And we would race, like,
little boats that we would make
in the creek.
And I was, like,
playing with my boat
while I was in class
and the teachers took it from me.
And I was, like...
I thought it was, like, theft.
Like, I was pissed.
I was, like,
complaining to my parents
and my parents just being, like,
um...
You shouldn't have played
with it in class.
And I was, like,
what do you mean?
She stole from me.
Like, this is not okay.
Yeah, doesn't the Bible
say something about that?
Yeah, like,
what are you talking about?
It's, like...
You're, like, five.
So it's, like,
one of the most important things
to you you've, like,
ever had.
It's, like, whatever.
I don't know.
It's funny.
Um...
Next one.
Hello, Dan and his merry men.
Are there any employees
that you feel deserve
more recognition
but aren't in a role
where they would typically
be in the spotlight?
P.S.
Please rerun
the Uncle Linus bottle.
Like, all the developers?
Yeah, I mean...
Man, like,
even...
Even Yvonne
is a perfect example
of someone that...
I have to go out of my way
to make it
so that people have
any idea
that she does anything here.
Um...
And people just...
The number of times
I've seen it assumed
that she's the boss's wife.
Which is just...
Yeah.
So reductive.
Is that a word?
I hope it's a word.
It is to me.
Yeah, but...
Everything's a word to you.
Um...
Present a subject
or problem
in a simplified form
especially one viewed as crude.
You know what?
I'm going with it.
Um...
Yeah, it's just...
It's so...
It's so dismissive
and disrespectful
and honestly
it's a problem
that everyone
other than the people
on camera have.
It's one of the reasons
I go out of my way
to, you know,
thank the team
and talk about
how we did something.
The problem is that
sometimes that's not
necessarily good for business.
People like
having a, you know,
a personality
they relate to.
They like things
feeling personal
and so, you know,
we've tried...
We've played around
with it a lot of times
when I put
we did X
in the title of the video
versus
I wasted $500 on Y.
I performs better.
Honestly, even just thinking
right now
that's more clickable
for sure.
Of course it is.
Yeah.
And so it's a challenge, right?
Because in order to do
the right thing
for the team
sometimes I have to
take the narcissistic path.
Right.
Which is like
f***ed.
I don't know
what to tell you.
All these pressures
to not do it
and then the algorithm
is just like
yes.
Yeah, I don't make the rules.
It's not even the algorithm.
Remember,
you can understand
the platform
so much better
if you replace
the word algorithm
with audience.
Yeah.
The audience chooses.
The audience clicks
what it clicks.
I don't make the rules.
They're the boss, man.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
No, I mean
everyone has
logistics,
entire departments
of people
who get no recognition
at all
but we, you know,
we need them to function.
I have
old school members
of the team
that are like
yeah,
pillars of the community
have worked here
for a long time.
I don't know
if they've ever been
on camera.
Because
as
I think
I think
I know
Jaden is in
like an
LTX
exclusive
at the very least
and I know
he's in the background
of some video
from like forever ago
but I don't
I don't know
if he's been in anything
more recently.
I don't really think so.
I don't know if AJ's
ever been on camera.
AJ's been here
since like
2016.
Six years or something.
Yeah.
He's never been on camera.
That's crazy.
Like they're there.
Yeah.
I have a lot of examples
from the dev teams.
Mastery asks
who gets the most
praise and recognition?
Me.
But
there's another edge
on that sword.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also gets the most
pretty sharp too.
Everything else.
Yeah.
When something goes wrong
I'm damned if I do
I'm damned if I don't.
If I tell the true story
that it was actually
someone else's fault
and I had nothing to do
with it and no way
to prevent it
then I'm throwing my team
under the bus.
Yeah.
And if I accept
the responsibility
and I do the adult thing
then I'm an incompetent
f***wit.
So I can't win.
I've tried it both ways.
Yeah.
Hi Linus.
You are rich and frugal.
Is this written by you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What are you doing
with all your excess money?
Bill Gates didn't leave
any for his children.
What are you doing
with your excess money?
Who the f***
curated this?
Not me.
Not me actually.
That was me.
Hey.
Building stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.
We have a lot of revenue.
We
our revenue is greater
than our costs
but that doesn't necessarily
mean that we're not
doing things with it.
Yeah.
I would say everything
from wise investments
for the future
just in case things
go sideways
to building future
business opportunities
so we can continue
to grow
and provide opportunities
for upward mobility
for our team
to you know
I finally
over the last few years
started just
blowing some of it
on myself.
I live in a nicer house now.
I drive a pretty okay car.
It's pretty okay.
Holly debated.
Yeah it's pretty okay.
I mean there's people here
who wouldn't
who wouldn't take one
for free
because they're petrol heads
or whatever
but like you know
I think it's pretty okay.
I'd take one for free.
And I'm building
a badminton center.
I'd probably sell it.
I'd 100% sell it.
I don't even know.
There's no way.
I don't even know
if I would drive it.
Really?
Not even once.
Just in case?
Like brakes or something?
Yeah.
I mean that's fair.
It's broken
a couple times already.
Yeah.
Did you know Yvonne curbed it?
Is that what happened
to the rim or something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Someone showed a picture.
I was so unhappy.
Anyway.
That's unfortunate.
Yeah.
Those are probably really expensive.
You know what's really funny
is my...
You know what's crazy?
What?
If you do that in my car
it like wouldn't matter at all.
Oh yeah.
The wheels would get shinier
if the value would go up.
So my grandfather
was in the hospital
a couple weeks ago
and we went to visit him
and he made kind of a
kind of a misogynistic joke
about whether or not
I let Yvonne drive my car.
Oh boy.
And I know he was joking
because he's not like that.
Okay.
But you know
I'm still gonna
make sure that I
you know
Okay.
The follow up of this
even if it is a joke or not
play this hand correctly
is that it is our car
that was purchased
with our money
and it would be
ridiculous for me to
restrict or otherwise
try to dictate
Yvonne's access
to a shared vehicle
that we both paid for
and you know
because it was also
so it was a joke about
you know
pants wearing
in the relationship
but also the old stereotype
of bad women drivers
right?
Like it was
it was kind of
it was a two-pronged joke
that like
like he's like 80 something
like chill
like I
he
sometimes old people
say stuff
that is you know
not in line
with modern sensibilities
and we all
that's part of being
accepting sometimes
is accepting
that some people
don't have the same
acceptance as you
and just
they're not gonna be here
much longer
so it doesn't matter
just chill
it's okay
um
anyway
so I said all of that
and um
and
and he's like
um
but aren't you worried
she's gonna wreck it
and I was like
no she's actually
a really good driver
blah blah blah
don't forget
Yvonne's also Asian
so
they're not racist
yeah
I actually promise you that
but like
that doesn't mean
they don't make
off-color jokes
sometimes
and
so um
Yvonne left
to go
grandparents are a hell of a thing
yeah Yvonne left
to go get
um
like my sister
and my kids
cause
they hadn't come
right away
um
just in case
his condition
was like
upsetting to the kids
or something
but like
I had to talk him into
letting the
the grandkids come
uh
so that they could see him
um
and I was like
no you don't look that bad
I think it's okay
and so
so anyway
Yvonne went to go get everyone
walked in
and was like
I curbed the car
oh
right after that interaction
oh man
oh jeez
oh man
I uh
I ran the poll
in float plane chat
uh
would you rather have
one of Linus's taikan
or 25 of Luke's acaras
okay
hold on a second
you couldn't afford
20
you could
oh
Nick uh
Nick sent me some
all capitals
team's message
to remind us about that
you actually
it's pretty split
actually
yeah
you do have to remember
that my car's a little old
yeah how are you gonna drive
25 acuras at once
no we we
we thought this through
and they would last forever
so
Dan's theory
so the first one
that we came up with
was uh
you do a different
color scheme
for every single month
of the year
where are you gonna store them
that's besides the point
because if you could
store 25 cars
you could buy 25 taikans
here in Vancouver
here yeah
no you just park them
on the street
and then get another one
no you guys just got
checkmated
so hard
would you rather have
uh
one parking space
well you don't have to
buy all of them
at the same time
oh yeah
that's reasonable
you can
at that rate
this one's out of gas
you just leave it
at the side of the road
just put
just put wraps
on your taikan
with your sponsorship
from dbrand
so you don't pay
for them anyway
boom
mic drop
this is why
he runs the business
get all your stuff stolen
because your
your trunk stays open
all the time
that's user error
yeah that is user error
I don't know
I don't know
if the key's as
wacky as you're saying
it's not that wacky
oh I don't have them
Yvonne took them
oh right
I wonder if she's
breaking my car
right now
just get it
just get
25 Acuras
would fill our parking
WTIP
I think one
extra Acura
would fill our parking
we're on the
we're on the edge
right now
yeah
yeah
okay
Sony tech here
Blu-rays have been
console locked
with daughter boards
for every single
location
by law
and the PS5
wasn't going to be
the one to not
adhere to that rule
in this case
it's not up to Sony
it's kind of
bringing back
to our earlier topic
so
but just because
it's locked
does that mean
that
well hold on a second
no I thought you could
on a PS1
oh Blu-rays
Blu-rays
okay
so on a PS3
can you replace
Blu-ray drive
someone says
if your wife curbs
your car
you pull out
another one
of your 25
your 25 wives
or your 25 cars
just leave it
sweetie
we've got more
at home
don't worry
I'll grab
Acura number 4
oh this is
the blue one
the vleur
interior
it does require
swapping the
Blu-ray drive
board from the
old drive
onto the
replacement
but here's
what I don't
understand
why isn't
the board
just in the
external Blu-ray
drive thing
then
like couldn't
it just be
an authenticated
validated thing
and then it
just plugs in
via USB
I mean the
Xbox
whatever the
crap had
a USB
Blu-ray
drive
didn't it
Xbox 360
USB
Blu-ray
I thought
so
you can
also
how to
play
Blu-ray
disc
on Xbox
one
and
360
if you
haven't
got one
get an
external
USB
Blu-ray
disc
drive
like am
I
am I
missing
something
here
no
it
had
HD
DVD
okay
there
you
go
never
mind
my
bad
yeah
okay
fair
enough
I
hate
it
and
I
feel
like
there
would
have
to
be
some
kind
of
a
better
solution
but
if you
if you
say
it's
necessary
for
reasons
that
are
beyond
Sony's
control
then I
retract
my
derision
I like
how Linus
is at
an age
where
complicated
names
like
iPad
Pro
12.9
inch
6th
generation
USB
3.2
generation
2x2
and
Snapdragon
8
generation
3
don't
deserve
to be
memorized
in his
head
what other
names
infuriate
you
the
biggest
ones
for me
are not
even
necessarily
the
super
long
ones
the
ones
that
make
me
really
mad
are
the
ones
that
are
the
same
from
one
generation
to
the
next
Mac
Pro
no
no
no
no
that's
you
that's
not
that's
not
helpful
how am I
supposed
to look
up
how am I
supposed
to look
up
technical
articles
and specs
and find
information
on this
thing
it's
ridiculous
it's
like
they
don't
want
people
to
know
about
their
products
like
I
I
don't
I
you know
again
I
don't
mind
if
there's
a
rhyme
or
reason
to
it
like
the
a7n32
dash
sli
deluxe
okay
it's
it's
an
a
for
amd
it's
seven
for
you
know
k7
it's
actually
I
don't
think
there
was
an
a7
see
okay
see
look
the
system
works
a7
would
have
been
an
amd
platform
motherboard
for
the
k7
which
means
there
was
no
SLI
because
that
was
an
AGP
platform
it
would
have
been
the
a8
and
32
dash
SLI
deluxe
so
32
if I
recall
correctly
referred
to
the
2x16
PCIe
lanes
so
it
would
have
been
an
a7n
8x
something
for the
previous
generation
because
you
would
have
had
just
an
AGP
slot
and
then
deluxe
generally
refers
to
the
slightly
higher
tier
board
which
has
like
more
USB
or
E
SATA
or
SATA
ports
or
Firewire
or
whatever
the
case
may
be
as
long
as
there's
a
rhyme
or
reason
to
it
I
don't
mind
but
non
adherence
to a
standard
naming
scheme
upsets
me
a lot
like
skipping
a
random
generation
when
they
just
skipped
Ryzen
4000
even
when
Nvidia
would
be
like
this
generation
is
Best Buy
exclusive
it
felt
like
skipping
it
just
as
bad
that's
because
it
was
like
it
means
that
it
wasn't
a
generation
it
wasn't
a
product
lineup
yeah
yeah
hey
LDL
a few
WAN meets
ago
you
talked
about
silicon
fabs
how
hard
do
you
think
it
would
be
for
a
developing
country
like
India
to
set
up
their
own
silicon
fab
as
good
as
TSMC
and
Samsung
have
impossible
and
I
don't
even
mean
that
as
like
a
knock
against
India
I
just
mean
if
you
don't
have
the
expertise
because
it's
not
about
access
to
the
water
or
like
the
equipment
from
ASML
it's
about
expertise
it's
about
intellectual
property
like
if
you
are
not
TSMC
Samsung
Global
Foundries
or
Intel
you're
not
building
a fab
at the
tier
of
those
guys
and
even
those
guys
you
know
even
the
second
place
fab
is
significantly
different
in terms
of its
approach
and
capabilities
compared
to
the
first
place
fab
even
if
you're
on
the
same
node
I
mean
we've
seen
this
time
and
time
again
with
Samsung
being
on
the
same
node
as
TSMC
but
their
power
characteristics
suck
or
whatever
the
case
may
be
it's
it's
as
much
black
magic
as
it
is
science
at
that
point
and
I
just
don't
think
it's
I
just
don't
think
it's
realistic
I
mean
China's
trying
and
they
are
achieving
some
pretty
amazing
stuff
over
there
but
no
they're
not
on
the
same
level
as
TSMC
and
Samsung
at
least
not
yet
yeah
this
is a
good
point
even
TSMC
Space
Razor
brings
this up
in
float
plane
chat
even
TSMC
is
having
trouble
building
a
fab
like
TSMC
they're
trying
to build
one
in
the
US
and
they
can't
find
a
workforce
for
it
sorry
go
ahead
sorry
another
interruption
Bernie said
India is
launching
rockets
so it
seems
it's
easier
to put
something
in
space
than
make
a
chip
well
yeah
they've
been
putting
rockets
in
space
since
the
60s
exactly
they've
made
it
more
like
back
when
computers
were
woven
together
by
hand
like
burning
fuel
and
like
rocketing
something
into
space
very
complicated
but
it's
more
of
like
a
mechanical
engineering
problem
and
less
of
like
a
nano
manufacturing
problem
yeah
yeah
all right
next up
Linus
I've been meaning
to ask you
since you have
your computer
on a server rack
instead of
in your room
how do you
turn your PC
on remotely
I get up
off my
lazy gamer
and
go turn it
on
it sucks
I've been
meaning to
implement
something
that is
an upcoming
video
there's
a lot
of
different
options
there's
little
key
fobs
that
you
can
attach
to
like
a
relay
board
to
your
power
switch
there's
pi
kvm
there's
magic
packets
as
unreliable
as I've
found that
over the
years
there's
there's
actually
you can
just
run
a
wire
you can
actually
run
an
incredibly
long
wire
and
just
put your
power button
wherever
it turns out
we've
tested it
I just
I think
Jake tried
like a
hundred foot
spool
or something
like that
and it
totally
worked
you just
bridge the
contact
and it
turns on
the
motherboard
so I
just
haven't
gotten
around
to it
last one
that you
created
hey
LLD
after all
these
years
of
gaming
what
do
you
guys
think
is
the
greatest
game
of
all
time
and
why
okay
is
this
this
is a
very loaded
the most
or is
this
what we
think
is
the
greatest
game
but is
it
the
greatest
for
me
or
is
it
the
greatest
for
everyone
what
do
you
think
I
think
I
think
it's
what
do
you
think
is
the
greatest
game
of
all
time
for
me
what
do
you
think
is
the
greatest
game
of
all
time
but
is
this
my
favorite
game
no
it's
the
greatest
game
the
greatest
game
of
all
time
are
you
being
are
you
being
intentionally
obtuse
no
I
think
it's
not
very
complicated
Luke
I
have
something
that
I
think
is
the
greatest
game
but I
don't
recommend
that
anyone
plays
Stalin
you
communist
wow
our
bell
he
got
the
dig
oh
my
goodness
come
on
Skyrim
no
right
well
we're
checking
them off
the
list
I
don't
know
I
don't
know
what
I
have
to
look
that
up
on
steam
yeah
it's
highly
rated
yeah
98
metacritic
I
mean
my
personal
one
is
Morrowind
but is
that
the
greatest
game
it's
my
favorite
one
but I
don't
know
if it's
the
greatest
game
I
think
it'd
be
easier
to
define
what
metric
a
greatest
game
would
be
measured
as
Morrowind
inspired me
the most
it made
me care
about
game
development
it made
me care
about
what
went
into
uh
what is
it called
foley
even
like
yeah
it made
it made
me care
about
a lot
of
things
more
than
I
had
ever
even
considered
in
the
past
like
before
Morrowind
thank you
for
mentioning
foley
yeah
um
you'd
never
guess it
because
man
does
that
game
have
some
I
was
not
expecting
to say
Morrowind
and
the foley
was
inspiring
that's
that's
messed up
um
but
like
do
you
know
yeah
but
this
is
what
I'm
saying
like
I
don't
know
if
it's
the
greatest
game
it
just
hit
me
really
hard
um
but
here's
a
random
little
tidbit
do
you
know
the
the
sound
of
warthogs
hitting
things
you know
what
that
was
they
were
throwing
xboxes
on the ground
oh my
the halo
don't
those guys
are on
another
level
whoever
I don't
I should
really figure
out and
and worship
them more
but those
guys are
amazing
I got
really
I got
really
into
I was
like
thinking
I might
want to
do that
and then
I realized
like
four people
have that
job
and I was
like
never mind
uh
yeah
no
it's
an
incredibly
weird
and
creative
field
and
nothing
that you
hear
in
games
is
what
you
think
it
is
to be
clear
when I
say
that
I've
been
like
oh
maybe
I
should
do
that
to
probably
pretty
much
everything
in the
world
so
that's
not
a
unique
thing
but
yeah
so
you're
going
with
Morrowind
I feel
like
it's
a cop
out
because
it's
just
my
favorite
game
but
probably
I feel
like
you need
to
define
the
greatness
aspect
here
oh
yeah
this
is
obviously
an
impossible
question
to
answer
I
just
enjoyed
watching
you
squirm
I
would
be
really
hard
for
me
to
come
up
with
one
because
you
know
when
I
think
influence
right
so
obviously
you have
to start
talking
about
games
like
Pong
or Tetris
or
Half-Life
or
you know
whatever
else
but
those
aren't
games
that
I
enjoyed
they
were
not
part
of
my
childhood
they
were
not
formative
for
me
you know
for
me
if
I
was
trying
to
think
greatest
you
know
something
like
a
Final
Fantasy
6
I
think
it
has
a
great
story
great
music
like
if
we
talk
about
a
complete
game
if
I
tried
to
put
like
I'm
really
enjoying
it
it's
really
good
if
I
try
to
put
myself
back
and
when
that
game
was
released
holy
hell
dude
yeah
it
was
great
oh
yeah
and
that's
another
thing
too
like
do
we
consider
it
being
a
product
of
its
time
like
I
would
make
the
argument
that
Super
Mario
World
is
basically
a
perfect
game
tell
me
something
at
home
gaming
you
could
make
that
argument
although
consoles
at
least
the
NES
had
already
been
very
successful
was it
okay
yeah
the
NES
was
already
very
successful
but
Super
Mario
World
was
a
once
in a
in a
generation
of
games
game
like
it was
incredible
the music
the artwork
the
gameplay
it was
so
good
you know
I
personally
have a
really
really
soft
spot
for
Far Cry
for
the
first
one
the
what
was
really
innovative
at
the
time
surprisingly
but
they're
really
going
you mean
the
first
one
I
count
one
and
two
two
was
crap
as
early
Far
Cries
I
wasn't
saying
it
was
good
oh
I'm
just
saying
not
many
people
played
either
of
those
oh
yeah
no
but
they're
really
interesting
both
of
them
to
look
back
at
from
a
tech
perspective
Far Cry
1
came out
of
absolutely
nowhere
at a
time
when
everyone
was
waiting
for
what
was
the
stupid
Doom
game
at the
time
I forget
Doom
I don't
remember
I think
it ended
up being
a bit
of a
starter
yeah
Doom
games
listed
I'm not
using
Amiga
but they're
super
cool
Doom
was
fine
it was
just
flashlight
jokes
you know
main
series
here we
go
Doom 2
Doom 64
Doom 3
that was
the one
yeah
so
everyone
was waiting
with bated
breath
for Doom 3
Half-Life 2
and then Far Cry
beat them to market
by like six months
or something like that
and was
just out of
nowhere
I
in my opinion
the best of the three
and I played through
all three of them
well that's a dangerous
thing to say
I'm gonna
I'm gonna come in here
Doom 3
was trash
he said something
not amazing
about Half-Life
oh
you're gonna
upset the internet
oh no
actually I've heard
dissenting opinions
about Half-Life
so
it was
fun
you could approach
it any way
you wanted
there was
boats
and vehicles
and it was
beautiful
you were in this
lush
beautiful
environment
you
you were this
colorful
character
you're like
basically
like
like
like
a
swashbuckler
smuggler
like
Chad
like you just
it just had
so much
personality
Far Cry 1
is
awesome
and
yeah
there
you heard me say it
and it was
it was not
open world yet
right
like we hadn't
we hadn't hit
open world gaming yet
but
the idea
that you just
kind of had a
marker on your map
and you go and
get there
however you want
in this
on these giant
maps
the maps
were enormous
no loading screens
that was crazy
at the time
that was awesome
yeah
the
the open world
nature of Far Cry 3
was actually
really good
and then
Ubisoft decided
to spend the next
what would that
have even been
decade
decade and a half
making the exact
same game
with a different
skin on it
and now people
hate it
which sucks
because if you go
back and play
Far Cry 3
I guarantee you
it's trash
but I think it's
trash because
it's been played
out so hard
right
yep
I see people
talking about
Max Payne
I have not
played Max Payne
I need to
I've only played
a demo
and it was
very fun
yeah
I really
I really
need to do it
yeah
yeah so
I get
yeah
but then
you know
I've already
said before
like if I'm
being honest
with myself
taking off
the rose
colored lenses
I think
Breath of the
Wild is the
best game
I've ever
played
like it's
nothing has
made me
like that
thing you're
talking about
before
the just
spontaneous
exploration
nothing has
made me feel
like that
the way
and been
and been
as rewarding
as Breath
of the Wild
so there's
games where
you'll you'll
want you'll
want to
explore but
it turns out
this is actually
a really small
town there's
only like
eight people
to talk to
and most of
them don't
like give you
a quest or
or fulfill
you in any
way
you'd hate
Starfield
oh
yeah
my thoughts
have continuously
evolved and
gotten more
negative about
that game as
time is going
on
I my
my overall
if I had
to try to
condense my
entire review
into one
little thing
it would be
like sometimes
sometimes creativity
needs bounce
yeah yeah
that's that's an
interesting take
and I haven't
even touched
on anything
multiplayer
like I think
there's probably
a lot of
people who
would say
yeah
Counter-Strike
is the
greatest game
of all
time
incredible
staying
it's
it's
it's
it's
closer to
chess
than it
is to
like you're
like something
like a
far cry
where it's
like open
ended or
whatever
it's like
it's less
about
there's economy
the game
being changing
and it's
more about
the game
being a
constant
and the
players
changing
and I
thought
that in
itself
is the
mark of
a great
game
such a
wildly
difficult
thing
to accomplish
exactly
easy to
learn
impossible
to master
right
like it's
and so
yeah
you could
make
I think
you could
make
if we want
to go down
these strains
I think
Eve should
be mentioned
I was about
to say
wow
yeah
I think
I think
that to
not mention
an MMO
in a list
of greatest
games
is a huge
EverQuest
Eve
and wow
I think
almost
each
individually
deserve
some type
of accolade
in this
pile
and because
it was
I think
you could
make the
argument
I will
make the
argument
that MMOs
made gaming
more accessible
at a time
when people
were focused
on gameplay
styles that
were only
really accessible
to
a more
male audience
a more
male
you know
internet
citizen
audience
like I
didn't
know
any
gamer
girls
until
wow
yeah
it
anyone
it seemed
like
could
enjoy
wow
and you
know
was part
of it
that it
was
engineered
to be
digital
crack
cocaine
sure
was it
created
by the
government
and you
know
spread
to subdue
the
populace
maybe
but
I feel
like there's
that's great
that's a
that's that's a
great thing
they achieved
to I mean
what were their
concurrent subscribers
at their peak
like over 50 million
or something like that
like it was a ton
like for something
to have that
kind of influence
there's a dedicated
South Park episode
about it
like
and that was at
South Park's peak
in terms of
cultural sway
12 million
but you gotta
understand
how many less
people were
even on the
internet at all
it was only 12 million
peak
I think so
that can't be right
I mean
it could definitely
be wrong
that's just what I guess
12 million
which I believe
was the peak
peaked at 12 million
subscribers
but okay
hold on
remember
so few people
had computers
that could even run it
yeah that's true
I knew people back then
that didn't have
the internet
at home
or they were still
on like
genuine
put the phone
on the thing
dial up
yeah
oh yeah
that's true
like I
my computer
when WoW
first came out
when I played
back in 2004
if I wanted to raid
I had to
point my camera
at the wall
because the game
was unplayable
if I didn't do that
I couldn't look
at the fight
that was happening
and I had to
just like hope
and I would get
like 3 to 4 FPS
I'm not even kidding
wow
so
like it was not
very accessible
in regards to
technological requirements
I see a lot of people
talking about
just like
genre defining
you know
games
like something
like a street fighter
what has had the
staying power
of street fighter
counter strike
yeah
no
street fighter
is older than
counter strike
by a long shot
you're right
but I wonder
what the gap is
it's big
fighter
wait was that
arcade before
console
oh yeah baby
oof
okay yeah
1987
for street fighter
I forgot it would
have been arcade
first
and like you could
you could say
oh yeah Tetris
you know
maintains relevance
today but I
would argue
street fighter
and it's
inspirational clones
like it's
the clones
that it inspired
have had
a longer period
of relevance
than almost
anything else
like people still
freaking play
street fighter
and people were
freaking playing
street fighter
back in the
late 1980s
all right
I gotta bring
one up
2000
yeah hit me
runescape
I mean you
talked about
how wow
was taking cues
from runescape's
hard mode
and iron mode
like that is
such a distilled
experience
that's happening
now
yeah we talk
about number
go up
and like do
thing
number go up
get to 99
right runescape
has such a
distilled experience
for that type
of gameplay loop
which everything
else is built
on in my
the fact that
people still
play it is
so perfectly
addictive
the original
levels of
number go up
that people
still play it
I mean I
think that
there's there's
arguments to be
made for
warcraft 2
starcraft
warcraft 3
any one of
them
modding
warcraft 3
modding
we got dota
starcraft
modding was a
big thing in
starcraft as
well so
warcraft 2
was crazy
the way that
the map
editor evolved
that's the
reason I
brought up
all three
of them
because in
warcraft 2
you could
create custom
scenarios
but in
starcraft you
could do a
bunch of
scripting
because the
campaigns had
a bunch of
scripting and
they basically
made as far
as I can tell
made the map
editor functional
like their own
tools but
warcraft 3
a made it
more accessible
and b I
think the
general internet
dwelling population
was getting
more code
savvy
yeah and
it was just
this this
perfect storm
moment of
of incredible
creativity meets
incredible tools
and dota was
born
yeah right
and lots of
other stuff
lots of other
stuff I mean
tower defense
games kind of
existed but
is an entire
genre of
gaming now
and really
from as far
as I can
tell had
its inflection
point with
warcraft 3
like I know
there were
tower defense
mods for
starcraft and
I know there
was stuff before
that but
warcraft 3
man tower
defense was
huge
that was the
hockey stick
moment for
custom games
despite them
existing significantly
beforehand warcraft
3 was crazy
I remember there
was a pretty
significant period
of time where
all my friends
would just play
warcraft 3
custom games
and nothing
else and there
was a big
range that was
a whole summer
for me we'd
play dota we'd
play winter
mall wars I
used to love
winter mall wars
winter mall was
a very good
td winter mall
wars was a
versus td we
had to fight
each other so
cool so much
fun and all
these crazy
strategies of how
you balance your
economy it's got
built-in multiplayer
too right yeah
like it just comes
with multiplayer yeah
did we ever play
that risk map for
supreme commander
i remember talking
about it i don't
know if we oh
it's it's really
fun i feel like we
might have but i
don't know anyway
that is the last of
my curated oh i'm
i'm glad that one
went for so long
yeah lots of
potentials can
either start curating
them or just reading
them out pick one
why do i not have
the interface open
okay well i don't
have the dashboard so
you guys feel free to
um okay do stuff
uh with augmented
reality being able
to be used on
even lower tier
work devices like
the samsung x
cover pro what
are some ways you
foresee ar being
used in business
for example walmart
uses vispic for
keeping logs of
stock
oh training is
probably the biggest
one for me like i
uh or or just um
you know remotely
instructing someone
like imagine for a
second if uh someone
the size of walmart
right with all your
dozens or hundreds of
stores or whatever it
is instead of having
like a trained
technician in every
region for how to
fix your pos terminals
if you could just
have half a dozen of
them sitting at a
central location that
can instruct any
idiot on how to fix
something i i i could
see that being
absolutely huge um
i i think we are
just beginning to
imagine all the
ways that ar is
going to is going
to change our
lives i uh that
could be a whole
land show but yeah
everything it's it's
it's already being
used in a big way and
it's just the
beginning
hi lld i work in
the bioinformatics
would you consider
some sort of
collaboration to show
people how hpc
clusters or servers
are actually used
and what's actually
meant by scientific
applications in
biology i'd love to
but the challenge
with that is a lot
of the time the
work that's being
done is not very
visual and it
doesn't translate
well to a visual
medium like video so
there have been
situations where we've
wanted to collaborate
with industries um
or or like educational
institutions on you
know just talking
about hpc or um
you know data
visualization or not
data or like um
you know high-end
visualization um
applications like
there was this one
where they they try
to extract the oil
and gas from sunken
ships from like world
war ii to keep it
from leaking out into
the ocean and also
it's like worth money
i guess and stuff um
and we wanted to do
something with them
and it just like it
didn't really work
because the only way
for us to do it would
be to like go out on a
ship into the atlantic
ocean otherwise we're
just talking about
and and like it's so
cool by the way
they would do this
like visualization like
under the ocean thing
i will volunteer my
time um it's too much
time okay yeah it was
it's like it was like
over a week just to get
to the site because
yeah and like there's
no guarantee things
will go well because
it's like ocean
exploration the ocean
yeah yeah so like i
forbid it yeah
fair enough yeah
hello lld buying my
first gift card to
save up for shipping
linus what happened
to your diy water
cooling bed always
curious if you still
use or stayed with the
eight sleep mattress
is it any good i still
use the eight sleep
no the the diy water
cooling bed was
hilarious but it was
not it was not real
anymore you just want
to start reading them
off i just just uh
sorry let's just go
for it just do it do
it you coward here i'm
trying to curate things
i just curated one oh
my god we have a system
why didn't you use the
controlled atmospheric
chamber to test the
sub ambient pc wouldn't
humidity control be
helpful to ensure as
little moisture buildup
as possible our
humidity control wasn't
working yet at that
point in fact while it
was working for a
while it is now broken
again because the
housing on the pump for
the the water loop
failed right as we were
filming a video this
week on the
indestructible laptop
that keith from the
the tech shop sold me
so we'll get back to
you on that basically
howdy lld i have a
one and a half year old
son and wanted to see
what baby steps i can
take to get them to
slowly start gaming any
specific games or
activities that would be
helpful gaming is
highly addictive and
and a high stimulation
activity you won't
need to do anything to
get them gaming they
will game whether you
like it or not they'll
do anything that you do
like it or not so you
know keep that in mind
with all your bad habits
and try to get them to
do other things one of
the things that i did was
i told my kids that they
weren't allowed to play i
play rpg games and
whenever they would see
me playing one i think
bravely default was the
one that i i did this
with for my first kid and
he was like i want to
play that can i play that
game i go no you won't
enjoy it until you can
read so learn to read and
then you can play motivate
kids you gotta you gotta
incentivize them gaming
should be a carrot not an
end goal yep i don't even
have kids and i agree
thoroughly hey lld curious
as to why you think
computer repair shops are
a bad idea as somebody
who has run their own for
the past decade somewhat
successfully uh gen x and
zed are quite luddite um
it's not that i think
they're a bad idea it's
that i think they're an
extremely challenging
business which i'm sure
you i'm sure you wouldn't
disagree with um and the
repair aspect is by far the
most lucrative the one that
i'm constantly discouraging
people from is the one
where they think they're
just going to become a
system integrator that is
a brutal business where
it's extremely difficult to
come up with any kind of
unique value proposition
and if you don't have a
unique value proposition
why should i buy from you
instead of one of the
hundred other system
integrators that can buy
parts at new egg and
assemble them for me um
that's that's where i i
really think people are
going to run into
challenges um honestly if i
wanted to get into the
computer shop business
though right now i don't
even know that i would
start one i think that
what i would rather do is
like inherit one or like
you try to try to buy one
from the owner or something
like that i think that
would be a better bet so
you have that established
clientele that it's least
that is at least used to
you being there um because
i think it'd be really hard
to break out as a brand new
computer repair shop without
any kind of established
trust
hi lld business question
could you shed light on how
sourcing for ltd labs differs
from sourcing for creator
warehouse from a supply chain
and operations perspective i have
no idea
that's the goal
and last one hi linus at ltx i
got the 10 million subscriber
case and i want to see if
there's any possibility i could
buy the play button c pc that
came with it also plan to build a
top of the line pc inside it
oh i'm so sorry but i was
willing to bid adieu to the uh
like the the the case for it
but as a youtuber my 10 million
subscriber diamond play button is
one of my most prized possessions
um and i just don't see any
conceivable way that i could part
with it
but thank you for that donation
that um helped some sick kids
yeah and thanks for watching the
wan show
we'll see you again next week
same bad time same bad channel
luke's going down in super
checks
probably
bye
i have to pee
oh look up don't you worry
that's fine we can help lock up
because we have to we have to go
get a thing for me to stand on
anyway i'm not tall enough to play
with luke
okay
well because i need the game to be
boosted
you're too weird
oh no i wish