the WAN show. We've got a great show lined up for you guys today. Our big headline topic is,
of course, that AMD's numbers are bigger than Intel's. Therefore, their products are better.
But, AMD, why do you have to follow Intel's naming scheme? It's the worst thing their
company does, and Intel has done some pretty terrible stuff. In other news this week,
there is, of course, the verdict in the big, big court case. I'm talking, of course,
about, oh, dang it, I lost it. Here it is. Yes, Bungie winning a decision against cheat
sellers. So that's pretty exciting. What else we got, Luke?
Luke. Oh, boy, this delay. Google had a leak of a document, 2,500 pages of internal documents
that detail the inner workings of Google search. And it's a little interesting because it goes
against a lot of stuff that they've said in the past.
Don't look at it.
Yeah. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. It's not important. It might be out of date.
It might be out of date, even though we said things in the past that contradict it. It
might be out of date. Also, Valve says you can't put your games in your will.
Yeah, what the heck?
All your games die.
Today's show is brought to you by Rocket Money,
AG1, and Ridge, along with our chair partner, Secret Lab. Why don't we jump right into our
big topic today? And that is, of course, that No Door Accord apparently just had a daughter
in floatplane chat. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'll move on. I'll move on. AMD's numbers are bigger
than Intel's. According to multiple sources and leaks, AMD has decided to rename their upcoming
Ryzen 8050 9050 APUs in order to insert AI in the name, resulting in the Ryzen AI 100 series.
Okay, this, I believe we already talked about. Ridiculous, obnoxious. I don't think anybody
looked at Intel's core ultra naming scheme and went, wow, that sure makes it easier to understand what
your product line is. And I just, I can't really wrap my brain around this because on the one hand,
you look at a sort of misleading or confusing naming scheme and you go, oh, well, that makes
sense. It's so that they can sell you something not as good and make it sound good like something
you would want. But when it's just a random mumble jumble of numbers and letters, how the f*** am I
supposed to know that I would want any of it? I don't really understand what they're trying to
achieve here. So naturally, AMD followed suit with this supposed Ryzen AI 100 series. No wait,
it gets better. More recent leaks indicate that AMD has again internally rebranded these chips,
this time to Ryzen AI 300 series, so that they will not appear less numerically advanced than
Intel's core ultra 200 series, which is following the core ultra 100 series.
How can I just say this? AMD at some point, you know, you got the market share, you've got the
performance, you've got the mind share, man, you guys have got the engineering know-how. At some point,
you've got to respect yourself. At some point, you've got to stop just calling your product
Intel's naming scheme plus, right? It goes all the way back to the PR or the performance rating system
from back in what? That would have been late 90s, early 2000s, somewhere in that time frame when AMD
had already abandoned the gigahertz race. They had recognized that chasing more and more gigahertz
was not the solution to gaining better performance and better efficiency. And so it started out
kind of valid enough, right? Where they were saying, look, our processor doesn't run at the same
frequency, but we're going to have this PR rating system that's going to be pretty much what Intel
would have run at that kind of frequency, but like better. So they put plus at the end. And then AMD got
kind of loosey-goosey with the performance rating plus towards the end of the Athlon XP days in
particular, where you could buy a 3200 plus. But well, here, let me put it this way. They released
a 3200 plus Athlon 64 product. Okay, so that was their next generation K8 compared to the K7. They released
a 3200 plus that absolutely bulldozed the original Athlon XP 3200 plus. It wasn't even close. Okay, so AMD
knew. Note, I don't even have to bring an Intel chip into the comparison. AMD clearly knew that if this is
3200 plus, this can't be. And they've pulled this kind of bullshit time and time and time again. Man, I'm
trying to think of, uh, I'm trying to think of one of the ones recently where they, they changed the
naming of their chipset so that, um, so that when Intel released their new chipset, it would be, it
would be the same number or something like that. Guys, guys, let me know in the chat. Let me know
which one it was. I'm trying to remember. Uh, yeah, hit me, hit me with that X370 versus Z370. Yeah,
that might've been one of them. The point is they've done this over and over and over again.
It is so obnoxious. Just be your own company with your own product line, communicate your own value
add and stop trying to confuse consumers. We understand why you're doing it. You want to make
your generation of product seem like it's a generation ahead of Intel, but this is such a stupid
game. And if you play it, you're just going to win stupid prizes because now, now what's,
oh man, I'm trying to wrap my head. So, so what? So what? So Intel is going to skip a generation now
and then they're going to have 400 and then AMD is just going to have what odd numbers and Intel is
going to have even number. Like no one's going to be able to understand what they're buying.
I hate it. Like I ended up changing naming schemes entirely because like Intel is not going to be
happy with being leapfrogged all the time. So they're going to like have to change, which I'm
completely for honestly, because I've never liked the core branding. Um, the core man, the fact that
Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7 stuff was good. Well, yeah, but that was just copying Intel too.
Like, tell me, tell me something AMD has done branding wise that has been an original thought
in the last five years. Give me something. Five years. Yeah. No, I, I got nothing. I got nothing.
I was like, I was trying to dig deep and be like, I think there's some ideas there, but no,
no, you know what? Okay. NH four by four tracker says X3D. Yeah. I love that. It's so clear. AMD
had an engineering advantage. Their 3D V cache, they had an engineering advantage and they put that
in the product name. They clearly communicated the value add of 3D V cache, which is that it benefits
gaming and certain applications and they put it in the product name. I love it. That's how you name
a product. You tell us what the f**k it is. Okay. Okay. Hit me with a couple other ones.
Uh, no, Threadripper's not within the last five years, yo. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. X3D was older too,
but I, I appear to be wrong. Yeah. No, X3D, X3D is pretty recent. Okay. Uh, yep. Yeah. That's about it.
Cool. Um, all right. Ridiculous. Anywho, uh, yeah, I hate it. And apparently, oh my God,
apparently they're skipping a number on the next motherboard chipset going straight from X670 to
X870, uh, which is most likely to launch at this year's Computex, which is also going to see the
debut of Intel's Z890. It is not good for consumers that, and it's not good for consumers to see very
similar numbers on the shelf when they are shopping for a product, especially when now, even physically,
they don't appear that different. Like the socket in the middle of the motherboard kind of looks the
same to the lay person. Just have a clear numbering and naming scheme of your own. All right.
That's all I really want to say about that. Let's move on to our next topic. What do you want to talk
about, Luke? What do we got? Google search doc is real. Let's do that. Google has confirmed the
authenticity of a 2,500 page, uh, leaked internal document detailing the inner workings of Google
search. A Google representative warned against making inaccurate assumptions based about, uh, sorry,
about search based out of, uh, out of, oh, wow. I really do. You doing okay? You jet lag, buddy? Are you
jet lag? Inaccurate. I've been in the woods for a few days, so I haven't looked at a computer screen in
like four days. Um, making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out of context, outdated, or
incomplete information likely because they mark, uh, wow. Likely because many marketing and SEO experts
have concluded that the documents directly contradict past public statements by Google
representatives about how search works. Google employees have previously denied that search
uses click-centric metrics to determine page rankings, that it does not consider subdomains
separately from domains, and that it doesn't penalize new websites. But these claims are all
directly contradicted by these technical API documents. Further, Spark Toro founder and
marketing expert Rand Fishkin says that the documents show a clear pattern of Google search
increasingly prioritizing powerful brands over all else, even when smaller sites and companies are
more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant, which is something that we've been talking about for a
while now. Um, and even, I think we had a topic on WAN, uh, from House Fresh about a month ago.
Yep. A few weeks ago about this exact problem. Uh, and now we see it in technical documents and they
can say whatever they want. Uh, they confirm the authenticity of the documents. So yeah, sure. Maybe
it's outdated. Sure. It doesn't feel like it. Maybe it's gotten worse. Maybe that's the outdated part.
I'm not sure. I mean, it doesn't matter how out of date it is if it's contemporary, right? Like if it
is from the same time that they issued these denials, that they are a hundred percent that
they're, yeah, that they're determining page rankings in these manners. Um, I think it's been
very clear to anyone who's ever talked to a Google representative that they are not transparent, uh,
about how their algorithms work and they will hide behind excuses like, Oh, well, you know,
we don't know it's a black box. We are not sure. Uh, no, but the reality of it is that I have
personally had experiences with Google staff. I mean, obviously most of my experiences with
YouTube, not with Google search, but I have personally had experiences with Google staff
where I've basically said, Hey, you guys tuned something. Here's what I think you tuned.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then six months,
a year later, I go, Hey, you know, about that experiment a year ago, uh, I see you guys have
kind of walked it back and they're like, yeah, it was kind of tuned too far for X. I'm like,
right. So yeah, you never like acknowledged it to me at the time, but if I just pretend that I knew
about it, then no problem. Um, and to be clear, these were not, it's not as black and white either
as just an engineer going in and, and, and turning a dial, right? These are, these are gigantic
platforms. So any experiment that they run would never be site wide these days. I mean,
you'll see this in things like the rollout of the new layout, for example, where a small handful of
people see it and then more people see it. And then they gather feedback and they gather user metrics
and then, and then they roll it a little further and a little further. And then they make some tweaks
and then they roll it out a little further. So it's not usually as simple as just, Oh yeah,
we want to be able to respond better. This, this, the time that I noticed this in particular was,
uh, when tech talk was really on the rise, it's what, like five, six years ago, seven, I don't know.
It would have been a number of years ago. And it was kind of in the, in the hot knife through object
phase of YouTube, where from what I could tell, it was basically impossible to break out.
If you were anything other than how many M&Ms you can flush down the fucking toilet, right? Like it
was just, just viral pablum wall to wall, as far as the eye could see. And I was like, Hey, I
understand that you guys are up against a platform that is very, very on the ball, very trendy,
but you guys got to make sure that YouTube doesn't lose its soul. That YouTube doesn't forget what it
is, which is quality content, which is elevating authoritative voices that are going to provide,
uh, top tier entertainment or education or whatever the case may be. And obviously YouTube is full of
garbage as well, but in terms of what they were going out of their way to promote, I always felt
that it was evergreen content that, that has a lasting value. Um, I don't think that they've stayed
true to, to that value. I don't think they've stayed true to that, uh, that mission. I think
that things are, are falling off. Um, but I don't really have any, I haven't really seen a stark
change, like a sudden change. So I don't really have any, any evidence to go by these days, but it's
pretty clear from these leaked Google search documents that they absolutely do know what they're doing,
at least to a degree. And they absolutely are not transparent about what exactly, uh, they are
changing. Uh, this is a really good comment from low in verse, uh, over on flow plane chat. YouTube
is the new TV. Uh, yeah, we attended a, uh, like a, a creator workshop recently and apparently TV,
and we can see this in our metrics as well. TV usage for YouTube is growing like crazy right now.
And that's something that you may see reflected in changes to our content over the next little
while, because we've got to make sure that we're capturing that. I mean, we we've made little
changes, um, to respond to platform development over the years. Like I, it's funny how few people
bring it up these days compared to when we first did it. But when mobile started to overtake desktop
use, and that was a lot of years ago at this point, but when mobile started to overtake desktop
use, and especially as mobile devices started to abandon the 16 by nine standard aspect ratio,
we actually changed the aspect ratio of our videos. So it's not, uh, whatever it would have been like
eight and 18 and a half by nine or whatever was kind of becoming the standard. I forget exactly what
it was, but it was a little, a little bit wider, right? It was not that, but it also wasn't 16 by nine.
We kind of split the difference so that you end up with small black bars or small black bars,
uh, vertically. So letterboxing on the desktop and small black bars on the side. So pillar boxing
on a mobile device that has a taller, wider screen. Um, yeah, so it's, it's pretty darn good on the
iPhone. It's pretty darn good on the TV and, and on your desktop, but it's not really,
it's not really perfect for anything, but you know, that's something, oh man, maybe this should
be a, oh man, this should be a conversation with YouTube. It'd be kind of cool for us to be able
to just build in safeties. And, uh, what, what are they called? Dan, you come from a production
background. Do you have the safe, safe zones or keep outs or? Uh, yeah. For, for what? For videos
and things like that. Yeah. What are they called again? Yeah. Safe zones, safe zones. Yeah. So if we could
just upload in like almost like a square, just like upload in a square aspect ratio and then just
make sure all the content is within all the different safe zones. And then it could just
auto crop. That would actually be kind of sick. That's very common. Yeah. I have, uh, I have those
for Wancho and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Really? How do you do that on Wancho where we've got like
text at the bottom? Oh, all right. He just put it up on my preview thing. Well, that's cool.
No, he showed everybody. I think. Yeah. Everybody can see that. Oh, all right. He showed me.
Hey, but it cuts off the logo. That logo was designed by the one and only Ed Zilyago. How dare you?
Yeah. That's why we can't put anything over there. Oh, I mean, the WAN. That's not a very safe,
safe zone, Dan. The WAN banner acts as its own safe zone because it's on all the time.
Whatever. Way to be. Whatever. Just disconnect again, Luke. I don't care.
Uh, all right. What's next, Dan? We're going to have to keep things moving pretty quick because
poor Luke, it's the morning there and. Well, let's get a couple of merch messages in. And
he was in the woods or something. I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. Sounds
like a good vacation. Uh, yeah, sure. I got a couple of merch messages. Oh, hold on. I should
explain. I should explain how they work then. Also, we have a very exciting announcement
for LTT store this week. We are launching. Oh, you got me. We are launching the scribe
driver. Hey, there we go. Oh, hold on. See if I can kind of catch that. Oh, the scribe
driver. It's a bolt action stainless steel pen available in, I believe, two different
colorways. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh, bolt action stainless steel pen that is made out
of upcycled screwdriver shafts. So if you guys remember, I was talking about how our original
supplier for the screwdrivers, there's the gold accented one. And then, oh, sorry, that's
the silver accented one. And there's the, uh, the brass accented one. So if you guys
remember me talking about this before, our original supplier that was supposed to build
our screwdriver shafts and ratchet assemblies screwed up, well, got acquired and then de-prioritized
their work and ended up taking forever and giving us extremely low quality output. And
one of the things that they built for us without ever getting the go ahead to actually build
them because we didn't approve the final samples, but they built for us 100,000 screwdriver
shafts. And they basically were like, well, we made them. So you're not getting a refund.
And we said, okay, well, if we're paying for them, then you better darn well deliver them
to us. So we got pallets of screwdriver shafts that, um, honestly, we couldn't use in any other
way. Oh, oh, I should go to the Luke. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh boy. Oh yeah. There we go. Uh,
hey, okay. There, there's a, oh, there we go. Uh, yeah. So anyway, so we got these pallets of
screwdriver shafts. And if you guys are good at time, then you'll know that we've probably had
them for a hot minute at this point, because we got these around the time that we were launching
the original screwdriver. So anyway, we looked at them and we kind of went, well, it would be really
cool if we could do something with these. And the original plan was to just melt them down and turn
them into something like I had kind of pitched a, what about a, what about a fail wrench? Um,
and it is just like a normal wrench. There's nothing special about it, but it's just made of failed
screwdriver shafts or something like that. Just trying to, trying to get something out of it.
And then we kicked around a bunch of ideas and eventually I forget who pitched it. Um,
it must've been Sebastian because this is absolutely his handiwork, but he took one of
the shafts and you can actually see this one has quite a bit more of a, of a screwdriver shape to
it still. There you go. No, no, it's good Dan. Uh, it's got more of a screwdriver shape to it.
It hasn't been, um, it hasn't been, uh, lathe to down to, to make it here. Here we go.
Here's the final profile. There you go. So you like that? Ah, cool. Uh, so it's got more of a
screwdriver shape to it. And then he just like Frankensteined a regular pen top onto it and was
like, uh, fail pen. I'm like, Whoa, that's so cool. So then in LTT store fashion, instead of just
going for something basic, we spent a bloody year developing a legitimately actually really great
bolt action pen. It's got a really nice feel, great little fidget toy. Um, it's compatible with
hold on, hold on. I forget. Basically what I told them is look, make sure it's whatever,
like the good one is that, Oh, Linus laptop. Oh, it's unplugged. Well, there's your problem right
there. I was basically like, look, make sure it's whatever the good one is that is broadly
available. So people aren't locked into whatever. And so that we don't have to deal with dumb
dumbs on Reddit that talk about how old ink quality is bad. Literally someone already posted
that. I'm just going to get a Bic pen because the ink quality of the scribe driver is not
even good. What are you, what are you even talking about? A, you don't know. And B, you can put
in any, uh, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me find it. Any Parker G2 refill. There are so many
options. You can put in basically anything you want. So we didn't want to waste a question here.
Yeah, go ahead. If you can scroll through the photos and yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's in like
a pen holder. Have they been killing it on the product photos lately or what? The photos look
fantastic. I will also give them that. Absolutely. I assume this is Maria. Uh,
yeah. What can I do for you? Keep scrolling. I'm, I'm, they see me scrolling. Did you find the one
where it's, where it's mounted in a bag in a orange and black, like LTT backpack? Oh, I'm,
I'm working on it. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Laser, laser. Let's go. Uh, oh yeah. It's, it's like two
down or something. You're almost there. Uh, that's in the tech sack. Oh, okay. All right. I have my
backpack here. And I was like, where is that? And I was like, is this, is this a leak? Is it,
did we leak a bag? No, no, no. It's a tech sack. Uh, oh yeah. Showing the bolt action.
Gotta love it. Anyway, really? Oh, sorry. It's electrical discharge machined. Sorry. Not laser
electrical discharge machine, man. We spent so much time on like how to make the logo. I saw laser
versions. I saw, uh, actual like machined versions. Um, yeah, we ended up settling on
that. So yeah, quality, sustainably built product. Uh, it's 30 bucks, which for these kinds of pens,
actually pretty competitive. And it's a really, it's a really great pen. So hope you guys, uh,
hope you guys enjoy it. And okay, Dan, I'm okay. Right. I'm explaining merch messages. So if you want
to interact with the show, uh, don't, don't do a super chat or a Twitch bed or whatever, do a merch
message. All you got to do is go to LTT store, go to the cart. And if you got something in your
cart and we're live, you can go ahead and leave a merch message. And if you check out, it'll go to
producer Dan, there he is, who will reply to it or pop it up down here on the bottom of the screen
or forward it to someone internally who can respond to it for you. Or he will send it to me
and Luke who will address it as a merch message. Dan, do you want to show the folks how it works?
Yeah, sure. I'm still going through all of them. They seem to really, really like pens.
Uh, yeah. Before we even talked about it on WAN show, we had sold hundreds of them today.
So that's good because we've got a hundred thousand shafts. Now I believe each pen is made of
two shafts. I want to say, I don't remember. So I'm not going to, you know what? I'm not going to
say anything. Oh, that's something you'll notice by the way is there might be slight color mismatches
between the two. It's an upcycled product guys. Take it for what it is. It's a unique piece
of LTT history. The time that Linus got f***ing shafted. There it is. Right there.
Speaking of which, is this a forced limited edition product then? Like once you sell the
hundred thousand, would we, would we find a way to continue making them or is that it?
I don't know. I mean, we haven't numbered them or anything like that. Um, we've kind of kicked it
around. I mean, right now we're more concerned with developing other fail products than we are with
selling a hundred thousand pens. I mean, with that said, I haven't looked at the sales numbers since,
um, since we started the shows. So you never know now that we've actually formally announced it,
things might go a little different. So we'll see.
Also, I want to address this because I've heard a few people comment on it. Uh, he's, he's not like
intentionally talking over me. There's, there's, I think over half a second of delay between us.
And that makes it actually ridiculously hard to communicate. So it is what it is.
Yeah. I'm erring on the side. I'm trying to time. Sorry.
I was just going to say I'm, I'm erring on the side of trying to fill voids, um, and trying to
leave only very obvious gaps because not only is Luke a little bit delayed in terms of his
internet connection, but his brain seems to be pretty slow today. So, uh, don't worry. I'm here
to carry it for you, bro. I, I'm also trying to time when I talk for just before Linus is done
talking so that the delay isn't as noticeable for the stream, but that can be like difficult to do.
So I don't know. It is what it is.
Yeah. We're going to do our best with it guys. We're going to do our best with it.
All right. Uh, why don't you give, hit me with a couple of merch messages. Oh, good Lord.
Don't look at that. It's fine. I'll get through it. Uh, uh, let's see. Hey, LLD,
if South Park were to parody you and LTT, like they did with Logan, Paul and Lizzo,
how do you think they'd portray you? What kind of wild storyline do you imagine they'd come up
with? Oh man. Uh, they've already done the episode that I would want to be in the one where they,
where they go to California and Kyle unplugs and plugs back in the giant Linksys WRT wireless router.
Um, if so there is no South Park episode that I would belong in, but I would, I would love to be
the, you know, techie, uh, Canadian with my head all, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, buddy.
Um, and, and somehow I'm involved in that storyline, but other than that, I, I, I have no, I have no idea.
Okay. And what else I got here? Linus, you work a lot. Do you ever wish you had more time to pursue hobbies
and interests you have outside of work?
I mean, that's the thing about making your hobby, your job. I, I kind of do my hobby every day to
the point where sometimes I get kind of sick of it and I need other hobbies. I have kids, which is
kind of a big hobby. Um, that was, that was part of that conversation. I think Yvonne and I talked
about that a couple of weeks ago when she was on the show, but that was part of that conversation
that we had where it was like, look, you know, we don't, she, she was basically upset. Cause she was
like, you hear about couples that grow apart, you know, their, their kids move out and, and,
and all this stuff happens. And they basically look at each other and they go, who even are
you? Like, I don't know you anymore. Uh, you know, what, what do we do together? And I kind
of went, well, we do raising kids together. We do building a company together. We do all
of these things. I think we just need a perspective adjustment so that we can recognize raising kids
as our hobby. I mean, people absolutely treat having dogs as a hobby, like taking care of
their dogs and, and, and training them and, and feeding them and grooming them and like
all these things. It's like, well, what fucking difference is it? They're just really smart
dogs and eventually they move out. It's great. It has challenges, but yeah, to me, it's, to me,
it's just a perspective thing. Right. And so I have hobbies. My hobbies are my job. Um,
my hobbies are my kids. I'm painting my motorbike right now. Uh, I game, you know, when I find time,
um, I, I like setting things up, you know, I like, I find cable managing and organizing,
like kind of relaxing. I was never that kind of person when I was young, when I was a kid,
I was the kid that you couldn't walk across the floor without breaking something because
all of my belongings were just strewn across it. And like, I was the, the teenager with like all
the plates and dishes in my room that needed to be taken up to the kitchen and giant batches to be
cleaned, hopefully by someone else. If they don't see me putting them all here, like I was always
that kind of person, but I think having, having a team, um, has made me really appreciate the
importance of organization and value that to the point where I'll spend a Saturday afternoon,
like one of my few times legitimately to myself, just like organizing my garage. I complete an
embarrassingly small number of projects in my garage, but I spend probably more time than I do
working on projects, just like organizing it and going, this is a space I can control.
Everything is where it's supposed to be. Everything is fine.
Sure. We can do another topic. Uh, Luke, do you want to, you know, why don't I read a topic?
Uh, Oh no, no, we're not. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. Okay. You know the chance.
Put me in coach. Which one? Double whichever one you want. You could do Scrapyard Wars is back.
Yeah, let me do that. Scrapyard Wars is back. We're bringing back Scrapyard Wars with the help
of our partner, jawa.gg. They're a marketplace for all things gaming, full PCs, PC components,
peripherals, even consoles, all from verified sellers. Well, the series won't be coming out
until July. We'll be shooting it soon and we need your help. We'll be hunting for some of our
components on jawa. So if you list your old parts on there, we might be able to buy them from you.
Keep in mind that you'll be listing it for real. So don't try to sell like a 4090 for a dollar so
that, uh, I can win or Linus can win or something because someone else might just buy it. So yeah.
And also keep an eye on jawa.gg because they're going to be launching a massive giveaway to celebrate
the return of Scrapyard Wars. I can't really tell you guys anything about what the, what the
gimmick will be this time. But what I will say is that it will be both back to roots, classic,
awesome, head to head. And also you won't see it coming from a mile away.
I don't even know what it is. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm really excited about it. There's no competitive
advantage for me knowing and you not knowing it's just fun. Oh no, I'm not. Yeah, it's fine.
Pure fun. Listen, listen to this guy. Listen to the confidence. Yeah, whatever. I'm just
going to extend my winning streak. You know what? F*** you, Luke. Let's start the trash talk
now. I want the stare down. I want the stare down.
Based on how you did that price guessing, uh, video we did together. I don't know. I might,
I might, I might have a chance still. I've been out of it for a while though. It's going to be
interesting. Once born a cheapskate, always a cheapskate. Yeah, it's a, it's a good skill.
It's a good skill. Hopefully it'll continue to carry me. Um, uh, valve says you can't put your
games in your will. A customer support representative from Val has confirmed that you
cannot bequeath your steam account as property in your will because steam accounts and games are
non-transferable in the event of death. This means that the valve team would be unable to provide
another person access to your account or to merge its contents with another account.
Even if that was laid out in a valid will account holders can obviously still transfer control of
their account simply by giving another person their login information, but who owns this collection
of perpetual game licenses would be legally ambiguous. I think another way to help in this
scenario would be to set up one of the steam family things. Yeah, but that wouldn't stay valid
forever. Cause then you'd still, cause if you didn't log into an account for a certain amount
of time, I suspect that eventually valve would close the account. Like if you don't log into a
Gmail account for five years or whatever, they close it. I don't know what the number of years is. So,
um, your mileage may vary on that, but no, I would, I would be very surprised if they don't
eventually close accounts that are just inactive. With that said, a Gmail account, um, is not full of
things that someone paid for, right? Like they wouldn't close a Gmail account that's being actively
renewed that has like a extra storage subscription or whatever else. So I don't think that's quite a
perfect parallel to something like a steam account where yeah, it's, it's full of paid merchandise.
I don't like this in general. I think that valve is, is a, um, is a force for good in the gaming
industry. I think in general valve is a force for good for consumer rights, um, at least relative to
their competition. But this is something that I see as a step backward in terms of consumer rights.
When it comes to games, uh, nothing prevents me from bequeathing a retro game collection of SNES
cartridges, for example, to, uh, you know, my children or, you know, my, my, my friends or
colleagues or whoever the case may be. Uh, Dan, you can have my super Mario RPG. Okay.
Yay. I'm kidding. No, no, that's, that's a cool cart. That's sick. You know what? No, forget it.
No, forget it. No, I, no, no, no. You know what? No, you're out. You're out of the will.
Bequeath me Linus. All right. All right. You can have my super Mario RPG.
Um, but yeah, so nothing prevented that. And while technically I get it, these are digital licenses to
use it. These are, these are, are, are perpetual licenses to the licensee, which is a person.
I don't know. It's, um, I, I, yeah, I just think it, I think it sucks, but we're seeing this kind of
thing all over the place. So Luke, I don't know if I talked to you about this, but when I was,
when I spent the, you know, four to five years that I spent shopping for somewhere to, to build a
badminton center, that's something that I've been passionate about for a very long time and
something that I spent years, uh, trying to find a location for, uh, one of the options that came up
was a 99 year lease, um, that was actually in kind of the, the recreation center of, of one of the,
one of the, uh, municipalities within the lower mainland, within the Vancouver area. And I basically
was like, okay, so how does this work? Cause this is just, this is just bare land. So do you guys
build a building on it? And then like what, I just sign a lease until my death. And then after I die,
um, someone else is just going to lease it or something. And okay. I knew more about how they
worked when I was having this conversation, but what I'm laying out right now would be, I think a pretty
reasonable assumption for how something like that works. No, get this. You want to know how it works?
You pay them market rate, no discount. You pay the market rate for the land as though you were buying
it instead of getting the deed, instead of holding that property as a private property owner, you hold
the right to lease it for 99 years or, or your own lifetime or some combination of which comes first
or of the two. And if you're a corporation, for example, you're a best buyer in Amazon or whatever,
then it would be tied to probably the time and it would be tied to the corporate entity rather than
a person. But in my case, it would probably be a brand new corporation that would be spun up just for
this badminton enterprise. So, and I would probably be along with Yvonne, the only shareholder and
director. So it would basically be tied to our lives. So you pay full price and I go, okay, but
like, do you guys contribute to the development of a building? Like this is, this is just bare dirt.
Did you build the building? And then I lease it. They're like, nah, you build the building. And I was
like, okay, so I buy the land and then I build the building. I pay the full cost for that. And then
when the lease expires, you guys reimburse the asset that you've taken over in some way, like the,
the, the building cost or something like that to my beneficiary or no, no, that's ours now.
And I'm kind of sitting here going, what the fuck? I like, I, I, I'm generally, I think that,
you know, a lot of Americans would probably see me as a filthy socialist. I am, I am pro,
you know, public works. I, I am pro tax dollars being invested in, in public programs, swimming pools,
ice rinks, libraries, parks, man. I love that stuff. That's great. Spend that money. Let's,
let's build it. People should have access to recreation and entertainment. We shouldn't just
be seen as walking wallets that pay taxes, right? Like I want services in return for my taxes,
all of that stuff. Sure. No problem. But to basically go, okay, yeah, you know what? Private
ownership, bad idea. We take it back. Um, no, no, no, um, no, no.
Yeah. I, I looked into one of those a while ago. Um, when I was, I was shopping for, for my own place
to live and was actually pretty stunned at how bad of a deal it is. Um, it's, it's a pretty wicked deal
if you're the one selling it. Um, cause you, you get to sell a property and then your inheritance down
the line, just get the property anyways, which is kind of hilarious. Um, I don't know. Weird.
So it's, um, so, so anyway, I forget where I was going with this. Oh, right. Um, so I am generally
pro if you pay for something, it should belong to you and you should be able to do whatever you want
with it. And that should include beyond your own lifespan. Is it kind of irrational? Yeah, I guess
so. Like I can see that perspective. Realistically, I paid for the game. I got all the benefit that I
was possibly going to get from it. The latest research shows I can't take it with me. So what
difference does it make? I'm not there to, you know, see my kids enjoy my copy of Stardew Valley.
Like, does it, does it really matter? Could they just buy their own copy? Probably. Um, but
I am, I'm torn is what I'm trying to say. And I, I would like to see, I would like to see
Valve do better, but I also would fully understand if this is an issue that they're basically going
to studiously ignore and do absolutely nothing about. I mean, Valve has already done so much
to make their licensing terms less, um, less of a burden on their users. The fact that you can
family share games digitally over the internet compared to what everyone else was pushing for.
Absolute industry changer, nevermind game changer. And I don't think they're going to win that battle
again, this time with bequeathing games. Um, I also have no idea what the landscape is going to look
like, like, you know, 50 years from now when I dropped dead, you know, hopefully knock on wood,
right? 50 years from now when I dropped dead, are my kids going to want to play Anno 1800?
I suspect the, the gaming paradigm is going to have changed so much like that. That's basically
like my grandparents bequeathing me their original Atari, whatever, like the, the one with the actual,
you know, paddle controllers. And that plays one game that just plays Pong. I'm sitting here going,
I mean, that's sick. Yeah, but I'm not going to play it. And this is digital loop. I don't think
it should be, that's not digital. I don't think it should be up to Valve. Decide.
And that's fair. That's fair.
It should be up to Valve. It shouldn't be up to us either, really.
Maybe, maybe they do find it interesting.
I see it both ways. I definitely see it from both perspectives. Licensing is a complicated thing.
And, you know, we've seen time and time again, that it's often not down to the publisher platform,
the publishing platform. It's often not even down necessarily to the game publisher or to the game
developer. Like we've seen games get shut down after 10 years, for example, because they don't have
the development cycles to go and source and integrate new music. And there was licensed
music that they only had a finite license for. Man, I remember learning about that,
where we wanted to do that Top Gun volleyball scene with, with the original music for Channel
Superfund. And they were basically like, yeah, you can buy a, a six month license for this amount
of money. And then you take down the video after I'm sitting there going, well, that's stupid.
Nobody is listening to that song by watching this video over and over again. We're not even playing
the whole song. Like why, why do you care if we just have a perpetual license for it, but it's just
not how it works. It's a time, time limited license. And man, the music licensing industry is going to be,
is going to be doing some stuff. The big rights holders in that industry are acquiring libraries like
never before. And they are going to be jacking the prices for any iconic music from big artists.
It's going to, it's a whole thing. Um, sorry, that's a, yeah, that's a whole, that's a whole rabbit hole.
Anywho, what are we, uh, what are we supposed to be talking about?
I think it's new topic time. Sure. Luke, do you want to pick a topic or do I get to pick a topic this
time? I'm going to keep going because I can't do a lot of the back and forth conversation afterwards.
So I'll just, I'll, I'll read out the topics. Um, PayPal launches an ad network. PayPal has
officially said it will be launching an ad network that will sell ads leveraging. Oh no. Leveraging
the data it collects on the purchase history and spending half of its 400 million users. PayPal
claims that users will be able to opt out of their data being used in ad targeting. However,
the only way to completely opt out of data collect users to delete their accounts. This change would
also likely affect users of PayPal subsidiaries like Venmo and honey. And I believe there's more
as well, but I'm surprised honey's in there. Um, I know that credit card companies sort of do this
as well. They sell your data in regards to purchase history. Um, or at least this is something that
happened far in the past, but I suspect this will be a little bit more direct. I'm not sure.
Nice. This is like terrible. Um, yeah, I mean, look, let's be realistic. PayPal was already
probably selling this data to other ad networks. So in terms of your personalized ads that are coming
through on the side of the websites you use, or when you're, while you're waiting for your favorite
live stream, uh, or while you're waiting for your favorite live stream to load, you're probably not
going to see a difference. The only real difference is that PayPal is going to be profiting directly
rather than by selling to another ad network. And I'm about to pitch you a controversial
take on this Luke. The ad network space, the ad, the ad network space actually needs more competition
right now. Oh, it is dominated by Google and Facebook. And quite frankly, PayPal may be one
of the worst f***ing companies on the planet, but they may be a lesser evil.
Yeah. I really, I really like wish it was pretty much anyone other than PayPal. Um, but I think that
is a decent take. It's effectively a duopoly right now. Um, I just, I don't, I don't see PayPal making
that space any better. No, I really don't. I was kidding. Yeah, no, it's, this is just, it's just
going to turn into more of a piece of s***. Like this is not a good thing, but look, look, I, look,
you gotta let me have some fun with this. If I, if we can't laugh at the darkest of times, what do we
have left Luke? You know what they should do? They should make it so that, uh, PayPal already has your
payment information. So they should just make it so that you to buy the thing in the ad. It's just
click on the ad and it just automatically does the entire transaction. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But you
just wait clicks now, like actually cost you money. You just wait. And Oh, what was that? Buy now pay
later platform that was in the news recently that had a scandal. Cause they were like, Oh yeah, we laid
off like a ton of our marketing staff and we just use AI for it now. Uh, I forget what they're called,
but if, if PayPal owns like a buy now pay later platform or something like that,
then man, not only could you buy something instantly, Luke, you could finance it. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Finance that toothpaste. Finance a new F-150 simply by clicking an ad.
Heaven forbid you accidentally click an ad, man. I have accidentally clicked more ads than I have
intentionally clicked by probably several orders of magnitude. Like I don't know if I have ever
intentionally clicked an ad, but I've clicked ads hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of times
overall, right? Like just you're scrolling on your phone or whatever, man, you got to imagine,
you know, obviously legislation's going to come in. That's going to make it illegal for them to just,
you know, one click, have you just like buy shit and it arrives at your door, but it's going to take
a few years. And in that few years, it's going to be, the internet's going to be one hell of a ride.
If they, they could make it so that like, you have to, you know, press a confirm button,
but they can do the amazing thing that I love that modern websites are doing where they'll have
buttons load before other page elements. And those page elements will move the buttons.
So you go to try to click on something and then you end up clicking on something that like loads under it.
Beautiful. You can just move the confirm button to where the no confirm button is.
Perfect. Oh man. I don't know. I mean, look, our D Google, your life video actually had some
really cool options that I learned about as we were working on that video. Like you can buy,
you can subscribe to search products that you can configure your own page ranking and that use
their own indices and, um, and that track nothing and target nothing. Um, and I don't, I don't think
as a, as a tech, as a member of the tech media that I would ever switch over to it permanently
because part of my job is to use things the way that I expect people to use them. Um,
but it's tempting dude. It's tempting. Like ever since watching that video, I have, I have sleep
considering when I get back subscribing to a, uh, a paid search because I like Google search to be
honest. Okay. Would you pay more? Cause you have a, a YouTube premium subscription, right? So that
includes YouTube music. Would you pay double if they just included Chrome integrated ad blocking
and no, no search ads, no ads on the internet. If they basically were like, we'll eat it. We'll pay
the advertisers that otherwise would have been displayed here. Like here. Okay, man here, this
would be what a wild day pay it through. Yes, I would. What a wild one 80. This would be if they
basically created the YouTube partner program. Okay. If the whole manifest V three thing was like
a giant 4d chess game where they were like, okay, we're going to make ad blocking impossible because
we're going to build our own ad blocking essentially, you know, kind of like, uh, kind of like brave,
right. Where you can view the ads and are in crypto tokens or whatever, except there are no ads
to view. There are no crypto tokens. You just pay for Chrome and you just have a completely clean
internet experience, but the page providers get paid kind of like the YouTube partner program.
So it's like, it's kind of like somewhere in between it's somewhere in between YouTube premium
and the partner program and brave browser. Would you pay double for YouTube premium if it included that?
So it goes up to like 30 bucks a month or whatever. It would also be really cool if they
worked out. Oh God, his connections bad, Dan.
Yeah, I'm getting a whole 35 kilobits a second.
Okay. I'm just going to jump in with what I think Luke is trying to say.
There you go. Okay. I'm just going to jump in. I think Luke is talking about
news providers. Uh, money has been flooding out of journalism for the last,
I mean, realistically 10, 20 years now. And if this was a way for internet giants like Google to
contribute in a positive way to rebuilding the newsroom, um, I agree with what I think Luke was
saying, uh, that that would be absolutely incredible. I think that was what he was talking
about. I'm not actually sure. While we wait for him to come back, I am going, okay, perfect. It's
like, do I even really need Luke to co-host the show? Not really. Hey, speaking of which, um, I think
we had a topic after you left last week that, um, I try, it was a, Oh, it was a merch message.
Someone sent a merch message for you and I tried to answer it. It'd be a lot of funny, a lot of funny.
It would be a lot of fun if we could get that timestamp. Um, someone in the chat, maybe do you
guys want to see if you can find that timestamp so we could send it to Luke and he can watch it
and then tell me how close I got. Cause I really did my best in the meantime, I'm going to run
through our sponsors for the show today. The show is brought to you by rocket money. Nobody wants to
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AG one travel packs with your first purchase at drink AG one.com slash WAN show. We're going to have
that link down below. Finally, guess who's back back again. Ridge is back for the men, but more
specifically for your dad, who you might've neglected to buy a gift for. That's right. Here's another
friendly reminder that father's day is right around the corner and Ridge can help you find the perfect
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and no worries. Luke and Dan, we don't have a Photoshop image of you guys this week. You'll just
have to use your imagination. Oh, that's weird. Go check out the sale using our link in the video
description. Anywho, uh, sweet. Am I also supposed to mention, um, our, our chair sponsor?
I don't think so. Okay. Well, whatever. They can see the logo on your shoulders. Our chair sponsor
secret lab, just in case you guys missed that. Okay. Wow. That was weird. Um, cool. Wait, do we have a
father's day thing? I don't know. I thought Luke said something about a father's day thing on the
store. Yeah. It's not in the thing. It's not in the thing, Luke. Gosh, darn it. Uh, well it's on the
store. It's, it's, it's, it's one of the banners at least. I don't know if, uh, happy father's day.
Don't screw it up or something. Polo shirt, scribe driver, LTT hat pro and a screwdriver. Hey,
there you go. We've got some more of a suggestion. Yeah. We've got some father's day gift ideas.
Oh, that's smart. Whoever came up with this idea. Good job. Oh no. The Jerry rig, everything knife
is sold out. Is it though? Oh yeah. Yeah, it is. It's funny. I thought I saw some sales for it
the other day. Well, maybe we're out of it again. It's a popular knife. Cool. All right. See you later.
Uh, okay. Uh, why don't we jump into our next topic here? Uh, I think I'm going to pick this one
since Luke's having some audio issues. Microsoft says no screenshots at work. Microsoft edge for
business is adding a feature that allows it managers to tag web pages as protected, meaning
they can't be screenshotted in the edge for business browser. The browser will also be rolling
out a feature that allows it admins to see which devices have edge instances that are out of date
and force them to restart and install updates. Um, our discussion question here is,
they know we can take a photo of a screen, right? Also, didn't they just, I have a, uh,
yeah, go ahead. I have a counterpoint to this photo of the screen thing. I don't think this is made
for workplaces, uh, like ours. I think this is made for ultra secure workplaces where you might not
have a phone on you or be able to have a phone on you. Okay. All right. I suspect this is like
for like military stuff like that. I don't, I don't think this is for like, you know,
your, your random job. I now it's being rolled out to probably everybody. So yeah, uh, a little
silly in some situations. You're definitely going to have workplaces that are like, we are very secure
and we take security seriously and you can't take screenshots and edge. It's like, man, I remember
when I first learned about Snapchat. Okay. Someone explained Snapchat to me. I was like, sorry, what
the fuck is Snapchat? And they're like, yeah, it's like, it's like messages, but they're like,
they, they, they, they disappear, uh, after a while and you can't screenshot them. And I'm like,
so it's WhatsApp. And they're like, no, no, it's Snapchat. It's Snapchat. It's you, you can't,
so you could like send nudes and people can't. And I'm sitting here going, are you an idiot?
Like we don't, you sure can, you sure, you sure can. Um, if it shows up on my screen,
I can decide to keep it forever. No matter what you do. Like this is, this is absolutely ridiculous
in most situations. This, this is hilarious. Um, yeah, this is a really good point for my work.
This is someone in float plane chat. We absolutely need to be able to take screenshots and mark them
up and send them to people. You're definitely going to have a well-intentioned it department,
roll this thing out based on some boomer boss directive and is going to cause absolute chaos,
absolute chaos within the workplace. Mark my words. Most non-technical people don't even know about
like screenshotting or snipping tools and already just use their phones to take pictures of screens.
So like, who are you even stopping? Funny thing. I, uh, often take a picture of my screen
cause it's way more convenient. Like to send it to someone on what I might not be logged into
WhatsApp or Facebook messenger. Like, I mean, I have like a dozen different messaging apps. So depending
on who I'm talking to, it may be extremely inconvenient for me to get a screenshot from
my computer onto my phone because I haven't done the like Android windows link thing. And I,
and I just, it's so much easier the once every three months that I need to do that to just take
a picture of my screen. I'm sorry, Luke, I've let you down. No, I do it. I do it on the WAN laptop
because I'm not logged into any of my personal stuff on that laptop. So sending images off of it is a
huge pain. So I will take a picture of it and then send it to like the info team or whatever else.
Um, so it, it happens. There are times where it is better. It's just, you know, usually not.
And to, to, to kind of counter that point a little bit, it is set up so that it's specific
websites, uh, or so it can be configured so that only specific websites can't be screenshotted. So for
example, at NCIX, NCIX was hilarious, uh, at NCIX, our internal, our, our internal system was accessed
through a, um, a windows remote desktop connection to one of, you know, many machines. So everyone had
assigned machines. Um, and the only browser that we could access that in was IE, which, um, it wasn't
that long ago. That was pretty bad already, uh, when I was there. And so this is the kind of thing
that an organization could try to prevent, you know, screenshots of your, your inventory or your
sales from being quickly and easily gathered and leaked to a competitor, for example. With that said,
we all worked in private offices anyway, and nothing would have prevented us from just
taking pictures of our screen or anything, but Hey, sure. Cool. Anywho.
Yeah. What else we got today? Um, oh no. Oh, cheat sellers losing court. This is cool.
Cheat mod providers lost two major decisions this week. The first suit was a copyright infringement
claim launched by Bungie three years ago against Phoenix Digital, the owners of mod selling site
aim junkies. While some of Bungie's claims were settled in arbitration last year with
Bungie being awarded 4.3 million. A jury has now decided in Bungie's favor and awarded them
$63,000. That's not a lot of money. Um, but these cases have typically ended in settlements in the past
and this decision will likely set a legal precedent for future cases. In a second case, huge deal.
Yes. Which is a huge deal. So we'll get to that in the discussion. In a second case,
a judge has sided with Activision and ordered cheat maker engine owning to stop making and selling
cheats to turn over its website and to pay Activision $14.4 million in damages as well, excuse me,
as well as covering their legal fees. So our discussion question here is, is it good that cheap providers
are losing in court? And I think, uh, I'll, I'll let Luke, I'll let Luke handle this one.
Yeah, I think it's super good that cheap, uh, developers are, and providers are losing in court.
It's, it's honestly ruining a lot of modern gaming, especially in the FPS scene. Um, but it's,
it's hitting a lot of other games as well. Uh, it's, it's never been worse. You, you get ads on,
I, I've, I've received ads on YouTube. I received ads on Twitter. I received ads all over the place
for cheats. And back in the day, you used to have to be at least somewhat, um, like technically
competent to, to know how to make it work. And these days, not even sort of, um, it's just,
you, you launched the program. It runs a GUI on your screen. It, it is automatically set up to
actively protect you based on, you know, screen sharing problems and things like that. So if it
detects that you're streaming or something like that, it'll try to hide itself. Like it's,
it's very conveniently built because this is a, uh, large industry with a significant customer base
at this point in time. Um, and that needs to be shut down if we want to have, uh, gaming online
be legitimate at all moving forward. So I think it's actually a very important and very big deal
that this precedent has been set. And look, I don't want to come across hypocritical because
we've made very similar arguments in the past that the, the difficulty of doing something is,
is not a, a valid, um, or the ease of doing something is not a valid reason to outlaw it.
For example, I made the argument in our coverage of the flipper zero that no, uh, a, a, a security,
a pen testing tool should not be banned just for its capability of making these kinds of functions
available to a lay person, right? So what's the difference here is, is probably what you're
asking. And from my point of view, a pen testing tool has legitimate purposes. It has the ability
to be used by gray hat and white hat people to achieve better security overall. And so the argument
that it is, it is not, okay, yes, it is allowing some folks that otherwise wouldn't have the technical
means to engage in, in technological mischief, but it is generally broadening the, uh, understanding,
I would say of the general public about the threats that are out there and that were already accessible
at a very, very low price of entry for people who want to cause trouble or for people who are
realistically doing something a lot more nefarious than changing the numbers on a, on a, you know,
gas station sign or, um, okay. Unlocking people's cars is pretty bad. There are definitely bad things
that you can do with not just the flipper zero, but with these kinds of like mainstream, uh, hacking
tools. Uh, but the difference here is that these game cheats serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever
other than to degrade the experience of using this product for absolutely everyone other than the
person who buys the cheat. It's, it's, it's pay to win, except it's not even endorsed by the game
developer. It's not even available to the other player that wants to play legit. So that to me
is the difference between these things. But, you know, Alan asks in the flow plane chat, do you even
think the courts can make such a nuanced, uh, nuanced? Okay. This word is not correct, but
distinction. Do, do they, do they have that capability? Honestly, I, I don't know that they do,
but generally I am supportive of companies that try to degrade or destroy the functionality
of someone else's product, um, being penalized for it. But hold on a second. Okay. We're in a super
gray area here, Luke. Okay. What about a company that's selling, uh, Tesla hacks so you can unlock
your heated seats or unlock additional performance or range? Are they, are they're not degrading the
experience of using the product for the customer, but they are certainly degrading Tesla's ability
to charge money for that product? Are they in the same? Yeah, go ahead. You are degrading the
experience of other people. Sure. But Tesla's other people enable yourself. Uh, they're another
company. Yeah. A corporation is an individual. You, if you, I don't, I don't, I think that's the
stupidest thing ever. That's a, but that's a, but that's a legal thing. That's a legal thing. I don't
make the rules. Sure. We have to consider it. Uh, other users, I would say other users. Sure.
Tesla's not a user. So if you made it so that by enabling heated seats for you, the, the seats of
other people in the lanes around you while you're driving have to be on active cooling for some
reason, then yeah, that would be stupid. And I wouldn't want that to be allowed. Um, it's the,
the, the, the issue is that it, it significantly degrades the experience of, of other people.
Um, and in a lot of situations, these are competitive environments where people could
be potentially pursuing careers or directly pursuing ranking positions that could lead
them into the money. Um, so this is actually a financial problem. Absolutely. Yes. Um,
karate swan asks a great question. Could this set a precedent that affects the modding community?
And I think that by Luke's definition, where we only care if it degrades the experience for other
users, no, it shouldn't affect the modding community, but can we trust the legal system
to make that distinction? I think it's very challenging. You would have to have such a deep
knowledge of gaming to tell the difference between the legality of a mod that I don't, who
cares? Let's you run around as a, as a hyper sexualized bunny in a single player game versus
a mod that allows you. Sure. Versus a mod that allows you to, uh, change your in-game skin
in Fortnite to some combination of the default grass building and dirt textures, essentially
turning you into a camouflaged, uh, player model, right? What would be the difference to them? And I,
they, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't think, I don't think I trust them to be able to tell the
difference. So it's really hard for me to take a firm stance on this, even if I am ultimately happy
to see these, uh, these game cheat makers paying some kind of penalty and, and to see finally some
kind of crackdown that isn't just falling on game developers to try their best to infect our
computers with more, you know, kernel level software and, and root kits in order to freaking
supposedly prevent cheaters from degrading the gaming experience. Uh, hold on a second. Uh,
Imperator 3733 says companies are not people regardless of what a clueless judge thinks. They're
not, I don't disagree with you. It makes absolutely no sense. Um, but it's also, there are reasons for
it, even if they suck is all I kind of have to say about that. Fair enough. Uh, should we do the
remaining announcements? I think we've got Dan week and remaining charity stream items. Yeah. Yeah.
Hit me or if you want me to do it, your audio is okay right now. Float plane week. And this time
we're highlighting one of the most important people on the WAN show. That's right. It's the one and only
Dan. Dan week is upon us on flow plane and we've got special content going on such as a video about
Dan's new car, which is like actually really cool. I haven't seen the video, but his car is cool. Um,
answers to your Dan centric questions and a rant about of all things, a table. Additionally,
we're going, we're doing a giveaway with many items, including green man, gaming codes,
retro and stubby screwdrivers, LTT store desk pads, and 20 bread plushies. Wow. Uh, thanks to
everyone subscribed to float plane. We're excited to bring you more of Dan also remaining charity
stream items. Check out the remaining products from our charity stream that are still available
for purchase at whatnot. Um, LMG, LMG.GG slash charity leftovers. We'll bring you there. We've got some
LTT store items, a PC, a laptop, and some other PC parts and peripherals still up for grabs.
Hey, there we go. All right. Got the list up there. And I have some quick updates about the pens. I
believe that we've sold probably about 1100 to 2000. Currently, we have apparently made 5000. Uh, so unless you
want to wait another two months for them, uh, you should probably buy one tonight. Oh, I was wondering
where you're going with that because I, um, yeah, yeah, this is just the live audience too. That's wild.
Yeah, no, yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting some info from Nick as well, but. What the f***? There's only, hold on a
second. How many people are even watching the show? Seriously? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. No, no, no, no.
Hold on. I've already done 517 merch messages. Uh, you're a unit, Dan, just so you know. Hell yeah.
There's 10,000 people watching on YouTube. Okay. There's probably based on sort of chat velocity
numbers because we don't have an actual viewer count, uh, but there's probably somewhere in the
neighborhood of a couple thousand watching on float plane. There's probably a couple thousand
watching on Twitter. Yeah. There's 2000 watching on Twitch and I Lord only knows how many are watching
on Twitter because I think that number is fake. So there's somewhere between 15 and 20,000 people
watching WAN show. That means one in 20 of you, like, like look to your left, look to your right.
There is a one in 10 chance that one of those people bought a pen. You guys are wild. Um, yeah,
I mean, it's a great pen and it's honestly a good price compared to other like stainless steel
machine. Like it's a beautiful pen. Um, but you guys are awesome and thank you so much for your
support. You guys. Sorry. We're up, we're up to 1500 now. Way to go, Dan. Way, way to sell 300 pens or
whatever that works out to, uh, to be fair. Uh, you know, I talked to Nick a half hour ago, so it's already
another 400 and a half hour. So, okay. Yeah. That's wild. All right. What else do we want to
talk about today? Uh, no, one quick question I have for Dan is you're seeing the merch messages
come through. How many people are buying like multiples of them? I don't think he's looking
at what people are buying loot. Yeah. So if you want, if you want fire, if you want accurate numbers,
I now have 530 merch messages and we've sold 654, sorry, 531, 32, 655. Uh, that's basically how
56. This is how fast it comes in. Uh, 57. This is how fast I have to, you, this is, you're ruining
my life. Uh, yeah. Why are you talking to Dan? 59? 60? I'm sorry, Dan. Keep going. Keep going.
Keep going. Ah, this is ridiculous. 62? Every time I refresh the Shopify,
500 people went to the site since I mentioned this. Okay. Well, anyway, yeah, it's a cool pen.
Uh, guys. Hey, um, I love you all. You know, make sure to pick up, you know, a t-shirt or
something in the meantime, we've got a man. The clothing products have not been selling as well,
but the reviews are so good. So if you guys are, you know, picking up a pen, Hey, maybe check out
the polo shirt, four and a half stars, maybe pick up a button up shirt, four and a half stars. You know,
we got lots of, man, we got, we got so much, we got so much clothing, you guys. What about the
dip dye hoodie? Look how good it looks. Okay. We don't have any reviews for that one yet, but it's
great. The dropout is my personal favorite. Am I wearing my dropout today? Yeah. I'm wearing my
dropout today, man. I love this thing. This is a five-star product. Literally five stars. Amazing
quality. Five star. It makes me feel awful. Oh, that I got it at such a steep discount. Yeah. It's
great. Anyway. All right. All right. All right. All right. Buy some clothes. Uh, what else we got
today? Luke will return in a minute. Oh, Oh, Oh, uh, okay. Dang it. Well, this was one
that I really wanted to be more of a discussion. Oh, I was about to have Dan join. No, no, you're
busy. I got stuff to do, sir. I'm on my own. I mean, I can help. No, no, you're good. You're
good. You're good. Do you think, um, Sony struggles with that? You know what? No, I have
an idea. I mean, realistically, he's not doing anything anyway. So, uh, oh, oh, well, that
doesn't work. Why, why do I not? I thought my phone, I thought all of my Google contacts
automatically joined my phone contacts, but apparently they don't. So I have no idea how
some of those people ended up in my contacts list. Okay. Realistically, this guy's not doing
anything important anyway. Hello. All right. What's up? What's up, Eli? Uh, right. We're
going to be talking about $500 skin bundles. And before we do that, I just, I'm going to
kind of put you on the spot live here. Um, you know, you know how we, we talked about,
you know, one of those conversations that I was having with my kids about stuff that I
don't want to see them doing. And I was all like, Hey kids doing that thing. What is that?
And they're like, it's dumb. Are you comfortable talking about, you know, what we talked about
after that conversation with my kids? I'm asking in very coded language on purpose here.
Are you, are you, are you asking, wanting me to tell how much I've spent on skins?
No, no. Well, yes, basically the conversation we had about, you know, how that can be bad
and stuff, you know, like that whole thing. Oh, like, is that something you've talked about
or I don't remember, I remember telling you how much I spent and then you said it was
shameful. Okay. I really remember. Okay. Man. Um, okay. Uh, mute me for a second, Dan mute
me for a second. We're back. Okay. So, so Elijah, um, one of the things that we chatted about when
you were over for the land party, um, was how for you in game spending actually got to the point
where it was a real problem for you. Um, and you know, this is one of those things that I feel like
for me and Luke, it's very easy for us as people who never got into it to kind of talk about, well,
just don't buy the skin. Right. But I think for, for someone who falls into alcoholism, for example,
to hear someone say, well, just don't drink the drink is, is actually very, uh, very non-constructive.
And so as we make our way into the, um, the riot news this week about their, uh, their skin bundle,
um, you know, why don't you talk a little bit about what it's like to be the sort of person that's
being targeted by this type of marketing? Um, cause we chatted about that a little bit at the land.
Yeah, totally. So, I mean, one thing that I have always struggled with was mainly the, the FOMO
and like loot boxes. So, you know, the chance of getting something that is, is there, you know,
falling into that gambling aspect. Um, unfortunately I suffer from being taken advantage of that and
basically having gambling addiction. So in early days when loot boxes were super, super prominent
and basically the first thing you see when you boot up a game is, oh my God, you can get this skin.
Then you should go get it right now. It's, it's very tough because you can then boot up a game
and maybe your friends have it, or maybe someone else got it. That's in this game. And you're like,
wow, that actually does look really, really cool. Um, it's, it's, it's a tough feeling to fight
because, you know, it almost feels like you have no control because you're just like, oh man,
they're just shoving it in my face. There's an opportunity. I have to take it and
I don't want to miss it. So it's, it can be really tough. And the game can be a significant
part of your social life. I mean, it's not like I can't relate to that in my, in my peak TF2 left
for dead days. I literally got up in the morning, ate food, went to work, ate some food, worked some
more, went home, grabbed some food and sat down at my computer and gamed until it was time to sleep,
rinse and repeat and do it again. And so the idea that, you know, this could be a
significant amount of your social circle is your gaming buddies and a significant amount of your
social life is interacting in this game is, I mean, it's something that we should be able to
relate to even if we haven't really considered it that way before. So let me run through the news
from this week. Um, League of Legends developer Riot is selling what it calls, this is great,
some of our most generous bundles to date. I'm going to stop there for a moment. Elijah,
how do you feel about a game developer describing a skin bundle as generous?
I would say they're pretty humble. Perfect. This is despite the fact that the cheapest of these
bundles is $50 and the most expensive is $500. The $500 bundle features cosmetic skins for the
playable character Ari, leading many players to argue for boycotting the character. As ranked league
matches allow each team to vote on a small number of characters who can't be played in the next
match, boycotting players could eventually potentially even block others from playing
Ari. Some players, however, still appear to be buying these egregiously expensive limited time
offers. At least one third-party seller of in-game currency claims that some of his customers took out
small loans in order to do so, saying,
can you guys stop taking out loans to buy the Ari skin? I don't want to put you in debt. Legit,
every second order is with a loan agreement. So, can you talk a little bit about how that feels?
It doesn't shock me that people are buying it. And I think that's kind of, I remember one of my
first WAN shows when I was typing in chat, you were blown away when I mentioned that a CSGO skin
sold for six figures. You know, it's one of those things that becomes a flex status symbol. It's the
same reason that Supreme Clothing, you know, can charge prices. Gucci can charge their prices. Even
if they are good quality, you're paying the artist for their work of what they've done. It's a flex
status at that point.
Oh, man. I, uh, I, I gotta confess, like, I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around that. That's still
something that's, that's very, uh, that's very difficult for me to, to fathom. Like, when I was in
school, right? Like, I wasn't cool. Um, I didn't have status symbols. Um, my, my RCA Lyra MP3 player did not
get me chicks. Um, the, the cool kid, the cool kids had mini disc. All right. Um, so I don't know
as someone who maybe, maybe part of it is that I have never reaped the social benefit of flexing. Um,
and so maybe that's something that, and, and guys, you know, let me know if I'm kind of onto something
here, but like, you know, is that something that can get you kind of addicted to that dopamine hit of
people being like, Whoa, man, like cool jacket or, uh, cool product? Like, is, is that, is that part
of the experience? I think part of it can definitely be related to that. I think this $500 skin is
definitely going to be pushing that outer limits of, you know, people being like, damn, you're kind
of an idiot potentially. Cause you spent $500, but there's also going to be that group of circle.
That's like, wow, that guy must really like this game or he plays this game a lot or, you know,
whatever it may be. Cause they have that skin. And yeah, like you said earlier, social circle,
right? If you're part of a group of friends that only plays league and you want to be the guy that
has the $500 skin, it, it's a status symbol. But like, wouldn't the status symbol be like, I,
I, I, I, I'm, I'm baller enough that like, I don't, I don't have to, like, I don't have to dress
up. I don't have to cause play as a league player. I can just, I can just rock vanilla and beat you
and embarrass you.
Like a hundred in the world then like, that's the kind of thing, you know, no one cares about
numbers, thousand to 10,000. They only care about the top thousand. So, you know, if you can't make it
there, your next chance is to look cool and look like you belong.
Oh my God. Chase is in the chat now. Good Lord. Did you see this? Valve apparently lets you rent
CS2 skins so you can try them out and then decide if you want to buy or keep renting them.
Are you kidding me?
Dude, it's a thing where people will buy a skin, put it on a gun and get upset because
it doesn't look as good as it does in the shop.
What does that even mean? It was digital in both places.
No, no. Okay. But like when it's in your hand and like you're in first person perspective,
seeing it and how it glints off like maps and lighting, if it interacts with the environment,
if the shadows, if the light, dude, I, I can see your reaction looking at the camera right
now. I get it. You're, you're dumbfounded by this. Like I get it.
You know why they call it dumbfounded? Because I found dumb. I found it. I'm not even going
to ding that. That's just clever. Thanks Dan.
It's, it's, it's crazy. Like I, I totally, uh, yeah, but I, I totally see why renting would
be a thing because if you're not sure how it's going to look on your favorite map or
in your game, why would you spend the $500? Maybe if I can spend $10.
Just look who it is in float plane chat is like a hundred dollars a month. You get every
skin, new idea. You're welcome. EA, but it's all a rental. Okay. So it's, it's, it's skins
as a service. Let's go. I love that. I hate this timeline. Can we, can we get a patent
on that real quick? Oh my God. Sony's already, I got it. Elijah, I would rather not make the
money than, Oh, I mean, I guess we could patent it. So no one does it. That's what I'm saying.
I see. Okay. In charge anymore. Taron, if Taron asks you to do this, you know, we, we kind
of have to now. I don't know if I'm going to sign the check, man. I don't know if I
want any part of any of this. We could sell new colors for the LTT store.
That's fair. Oh, float skins. I like that idea. Yeah. Our chatters specific colors for
their username and they can rent it. Or like you could have dark mode or like puce for
the background. Look, float plane people, they already pay a subscription. Yeah, but we, they
could pay us more. Why do we want to nickel and dime people? They're a trapped audience.
Why does Fortnite do it? Why does Valorant do it? Because it's profitable.
Yes. Think of the, think of the opportunity. I mean, look, I got, I got to tell you like
back when we were looking at development of our own VPN, it's not like we didn't recognize
that digital products are, are so scalable, can be so profitable. I mean, if we could come
up with more digital products, I mean, look at float plane, we have almost 35,000 paying
subscribers on float plane. That is a, that is a pretty chunk of change. And we're so
appreciative of you guys for supporting us like this, that we actually go and spend a
lot of money on, you know, making sure we're creating exclusive content and all of that
stuff. And it's, it's great, right? It's, it's win-win because we can build out a team
that is able to have a good job here at Linus Media Group. And you guys are getting all this
great behind the scenes content, all that good stuff. But like, I don't know, we've had
these conversations internally that I'm like, yeah, but should we just be creating a digital
product for the sake of having a digital product because it's just profitable? I don't know.
I, I want to do that. No, we don't. I mean, okay, we did. Yes. The potato. Okay. Yes. Yeah.
Okay. I was like, I thought we did this, didn't we? But that was a joke. And people still took
it. It was an obscenely profitable joke. I think we sold like 800 potatoes and they weren't
even real NFTs. They were just pings or JPEGs or something. Don't, don't spoil it. Don't
spoil it. Oh. No, no. They knew. We said it was. I, I know. Yeah. We were totally upfront
about it. That the whole thing was nonsense. Do any of y'all still have your potato? By
the way, did, did anyone, anyone in chat buy a potato? Imagine if you deleted the PNG and
it's just gone. You just lost it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what a shame.
Is, is Luke coming back? Like, do you, do you need a camera? Cause my, like my audio
is garbage. So like, uh, I don't know. Is it, Hey Dan, is Luke planning to come back?
Yeah. He's right here. Oh, okay. Yeah. Luke's apparently ready to come back. Okay. All
right. Cool. Okay. See you later, Elijah. Okay. Bye buddy. Thanks for filling in. Okay.
Bye. Um, yeah, really, really cool, different perspective. And the timing was pretty good to
bring him in just because I think that Luke and I as outsiders can be a little judgy about
that kind of stuff. And, and that's probably unfair because we know that these companies
are engaging in psychological manipulation. And so I think just being dismissive of, of
people's susceptibility to it is honestly just kind of non-constructive. So I think about
it was pretty cool to have Elijah come in and, uh, give us an alternate perspective on
that. Uh, Luke, did you have any thoughts you wanted to share on the $500 skin bundle or
do you want to move on to, uh, Ooh, this is a good one. Social media children are finally
fighting back as adults. Something I called like almost 10 flipping years ago.
Yeah, I think on the $500 skin bundle, like it's, if, if, if it doesn't make you better at
the game, if it's not a skin that like makes you camouflage in with the background or something
like that. Um, I don't think that people should buy it, but it's a free game. So like, I don't
really care. They need to make money somehow. And if someone's going to buy this, like cool,
I guess.
But based on how many people, dude, but based on how many people are taking out loans to buy
it, I mean, doesn't that, isn't that just sad? Doesn't that just tell you like what they're,
they know what they're doing. They've got to know what they're doing, right?
Like at what point do you have to kind of go, okay, look, you're working at a tobacco
company. You're complicit. You know what you're doing.
Yeah. I think there's, I think for some people though, that $500 skin bundle isn't going to
be bad. And smoking tobacco is bad for everyone.
I'm like, look, I get that. Not everybody's in a position to be able to make a moral judgment
about, you know, the job they have to do to put food on their table. I get it. No judgment here,
but I do feel like at least at the executive level, they've got to know who they are making
these things for. I mean, Luke, you've talked about this before where there are games where
they go into their analytics with enough granularity that there are specific users that
they will craft an item for and market it too heavily because they know they're going to buy it.
It's nasty.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I don't, I don't like it. Um, but I don't know my, my, I don't feel super
strongly about it just because I think my stance on this one is just like, obviously don't buy it.
Um, but I don't know. What was the next topic?
Next topic is now that the first big wave of social media babies are hitting adulthood,
some of them are now advocating for protecting children from their parents' online oversharing.
Two notable advocates are Cam Barrett and Chris McCarty, who have been testifying to lawmakers in
multiple states, asking them to regulate family vlogging and ensure that children are protected
and to some degree compensated for their labor. They are working. They are generating revenue.
This is not the same as household chores. And I have had some stupid f***ing conversations about this
where like I just about made my brain rot from the inside out. People basically going, yeah,
until they're 18, they're my kids. And if I tell them to do something, they got to do. No,
no child labor is not something that you have the right to have your kids do. And if they are
working on a commercial endeavor, they are child laborers and there are very strict regulations
around it. Even in industries where children, children, where children are allowed to work
like the entertainment industry, 25 year old Cam Barrett claims that she was traumatized by her
mother's extreme oversharing, which included everything from childhood tantrums to personal
medical information. In particular, Barrett was humiliated by her mother's decision to post
publicly about her first menstrual cycle when she was only nine years old. These posts led to
celebrity attention and perks like front row concert tickets, but also fed ammunition to bullies who
used the information to ridicule her. She claims to have started hiding in her room to avoid being on
camera and that she felt she couldn't confide in adults for fear of her secrets being exposed on
social media. Meanwhile, 19 year old Chris McCarty is a founding member of Quit Clicking Kids and he
has noted that family vlogging can be in some ways worse than child acting as these children wind up
living in houses that feel like sets with parents who feel like their bosses and it's unclear when
they finally get to stop performing. McCarty likewise says these parents are often failing to empathize
with their children and not considering how they would feel if they had the most intimate moments of
their lives monetized. Young people are likewise increasingly criticizing the practice of family
vlogging on social media. It's about f***ing time. I called this so long ago and yes, my kids do
appear in our videos from time to time. What the f*** do you know about them?
I know a few things. Sorry, there's a butterfly.
Well, yeah, you do. You're a family friend. It's different. And we compensate them. Like I was an
extra on the X-Files. I don't know if I've talked about this. I was an extra on the X-Files when I was
a kid. I've never actually seen the episode, but yeah, but like I'm not bothered by that because
all I did was appear on camera. My dad gave me the money. I mean, it was my money, right? But he
made sure that I got it. His rule for it was that we both made money. We were both extras and that we
weren't gonna, you know, it was like a couple hundred dollars or something like that. And he was
like, hey, it should be, we should do something together with it. Like he didn't really like give it
to me, give it to me. But we both, we went and we ate at La Belle Auberge, which was a fancy French
restaurant in Ladner when I was a kid. It's not there anymore. And we went and we tried it because
we would walk past it all the time. And it was one of those places that was like a hundred plus
dollars a plate. And that was back in the nineties, right? So this was a very fancy, fancy restaurant.
And so, yeah, I was in this thing, but you know, my intimate secrets were not spilled out online.
We turned it into an opportunity to do something together as a family.
No harm, no foul, but that's not what these families are doing. It's absolutely wild.
I think there's also a huge difference between happening to appear in, you know, one video every
once in a blue moon and being compensated for that compared to having content made about you,
including, as you previously mentioned, uh, pretty intimate parts of your life, like first
menstrual cycle, stuff like that, like that being on YouTube for all your peers to see is ridiculous
and not okay.
Yeah. Brutal.
Sony seems to be struggling with the concept of multi-platform support. Oh, wait, wait, wait,
hold on. I want to finish by making my prediction again. Um, the only way that this is ever going to
change the, this family vlogging exploitation of children is when one of these kids reaches the
legal age and sues the out of their parents. And it's basically like, Hey, you guys made by my rough
calculations with data that is easily available online, uh, you know, $8 million over the course
of my entire childhood. Um, I am one of the three principal talents on this channel.
I would like my $2.7 million or whatever, whatever it works out to. Uh, you can, you can send it
through my lawyer. That is the only way that this is going to change. If one of these guys
takes it to court and wins it. Otherwise it's just going to be the same. Um, okay. Sony seems to be
struggling with the concept of multi-platform support. According to records from the Korean
Ministry of Sciences, testing and certification center, Sony has developed a PC adapter for PSVR
to showing that they've made significant progress on their promise to add PC support sometime this
year. This would likely bolster sales for the PSVR two, which is reportedly experiencing a major
backlog of unsold device. It's a pretty cool device. Got an OLED display. Um, it's pretty darn
comfortable. It's, um, yeah, I think something that would do okay. Um, I don't know. Okay. It'd be
okay. It'd be, it'd be pretty competitive for the price. I think I'd be, I think I would find a PSVR
two pretty darn attractive as a, as a gaming headset. Meanwhile, PlayStation's new co-CEO Herman Holst
insisted at Sony's business segment meeting on Thursday that PC gamers will want to buy a PS5 in
order to play their upcoming exclusive sequels like Spider-Man two and God of War Ragnarok after
playing earlier entries in those series recently released for PC. And our discussion here is as a
PC gamer, would you be tempted to play, uh, horizon zero dawn, for example, on PC and then run out and
get a horizon? Shoot. See, as a PC gamer, I can't even remember what the second one was called because
I played zero dawn and then I was like, Oh, there's a sequel. Oh, it's not on PC. I guess I'll just not
play it, but I, I, I tend to, I take a pretty different approach to my gaming backlog where
I'm just like, Oh, well, realistically, I haven't gotten to participate in a cultural moment like,
uh, you know, Helldivers two, or, um, what was that Pokemon with guns game pal world or,
you know, whatever else I don't get to participate in these cultural moments anyway. So screw it.
If it actually has staying power, then I'll play it later. Um, but would you be tempted to run out and
buy a PS five in order to play a sequel? I could see that being a thing. Um, I, I honestly could
absolutely see that being a thing. I think a lot of people play, play games more than they play systems,
if that makes sense. Now the economic environment that we're in and the costs of modern consoles
might put a stop to that. Um, I think it used to be a little bit more approachable to get into a
console. Um, but if it was like, if it was kind of time to upgrade your computer anyways,
and your favorite game was the, the game that you're playing now and there's the, the next
version of it is just on the console. I could see that happening, but I think that's going to
happen significantly less than Sony thinks. And I think they would drive a lot more overall revenue,
just releasing the darn games on PC. I don't know, man. A lot of people, cause go ahead.
Yeah. I, I just, you, you always have that experience or at least this happened when I
was younger where people would come over to a friend's house and see Halo for the first time
and then be switched over to Xbox houses or whatever else. Like, like individual games can
swing people. Absolutely. And a lot of people in chat are talking about it. A lot of people in
chat are like, yeah, I'd be tempted. Totally a thing. But can I, can I propose, man, I don't know
why so many, I was reading this article a little while ago. I might've even talked about this on
Wancho before, but it was about every once in a while, like, like luxury goods articles get fed
to me, like the state of the luxury goods market. And particularly like, what is it? South China
Morning Post or whatever, like they're, they're, I'll particularly get articles from them. This was
more before they, they went paywalled and I would actually read articles there. Now I just, I'm like,
oh, okay, paywall. I forgot about that. And then I navigate away. So I don't really get them
anymore. But one of the things that they would talk about a lot is they would kind of keep tabs
on the state of the luxury goods market in Southeast Asia and China, kind of overseas.
And I remember reading about how there's this like trend. There's this trend toward more
secondhand luxury goods and the, the incredible value that you can get by buying and by selling
the things that you bought for so much money and getting back some of the money for it. And then
you can buy something else with that. And, and by saving money, by buying secondhand, it's like,
like, it's just like, like the idea of, you know, a thrift store is a new fucking idea or something.
But, um, I don't know what it is about people because I don't think it's just the younger
generation. That was what the article is about. It's like younger generation comes up with the
idea of buying and selling secondhand. No, you didn't. Um, but basically I don't understand why so
many people are allergic to that. If a game comes out that you really want to play, go pick up a
secondhand PlayStation five on Facebook marketplace. Okay. So that's like, let's do the numbers,
right? So that's, uh, it's probably going to be like a hundred bucks off or whatever. So that's,
that's 350 bucks out of your pocket. Let's say, I don't know the actual numbers. It doesn't matter,
but that's 300 bucks out of your pocket. Okay. You go buy the game, right? So that's 70 bucks or 80
or whatever works out to for modern game these days. I don't know. I'm in Canada, so I don't even know
what us games cost. So you, you go buy your $70 game or whatever. So you are, you are $420 out of
your pocket. Nice. Okay. So you play your game, right? Realistically, it's probably got, you know,
what? 25 to 75 hours of gameplay. So you can probably get that done in let's say a month,
right? I'd say that's pretty reasonable for a game that was, was so compelling, right? For you that
you went out and you bought a several hundred dollar console just to play it. Okay.
Sell the console. It's been a month. How much do you think the value has actually changed,
right? Compared to buying a new one, the value of a secondhand one realistically hasn't changed that
much. You can probably get what you paid. And if you're patient, you can probably buy for lower
and sell for higher and then sell the game. Do you really need it? I've, I've, you will be out of
pocket scenarios before too. You'll be out of pocket, probably 25 bucks.
And it costs you overall less than the total cost of the game. It's no big deal. I used to do it all
the time. Another thing too, is if, if you buy one that happens to be like a little bit dirty or a
little bit scuffed up, you can try to not, I wouldn't say refinish it, but like clean it up a
little bit, take better pictures of it than the original poster did, make it look a little bit nicer
and actually end up making money.
And it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's a little bit of work, but it's also kind of, it can become a hobby.
It can become fun. You know, bargain hunting is a lot more fun if you follow through and you don't
just buy. If you sell as well and you maintain, like make a spreadsheet, have the discipline,
make a spreadsheet where you track everything that you're buying and selling and keep it net zero.
I bet you can do it. And I don't know, I had a, I had a blast with it and then the resources for it
are so good these days. If I had had Facebook marketplace, which has problems. I mean, the
fact that they're not tamping down on sellers who list for $0 and actually it's, it costs a lot of
money. Oh man. Are you going to tell the bunker story or should we save that for another WAN show?
You want to tell the bunker story? Okay. I don't know. He's muted. So who knows what he's saying,
but it sounds like he's not going to tell the bunker story. We'll talk about the bunker story.
Sorry. Uh, I can tell it now or another time. I'm down. Sure. Sure. Let's talk about the bunker
story. But the point is, let me just finish this thought. Facebook marketplace is an incredible tool
in spite of its problems. And I would have, man, I would have had a blast. Okay. I want to talk. Why don't you
tell the bunker story, Luke? Sure. Okay. So we were at a land party at Linus's house and having some fun
and Elijah happened to find a, uh, a, a concrete, a safe. I think it was, it was listed as, and it's
like, it's, it's very generic. It, they sell basically it's a series of exactly uniform concrete
slabs that make up all of the walls. I believe the floor, if there is any for the floor and also
the ceiling, I know the walls and the ceiling are all the same uniform concrete slabs. And then
there's just a big vault door that goes into it. I was able to actually Google the company that makes
it and figure out that this person that listed it for $0 was effectively just trying to resell from
another company. Uh, because all they posted were sample images, not an image of the actual safe or
vault or whatever you want to call it. So they weren't reselling something that they owned.
They were just trying to advertise and make money that way. Um, so Elijah bugged him by offering
him. I think it was like a single dollar. So it was listed for $0, but the real price,
I think Elijah messaged for $1. Sorry. Yeah. So it was listed for $1. We messaged him. Um,
Elijah offered him a dollar, I believe it was, or $2 or something. Um, and he's like, Oh,
but my cost is like $40,000. And Elijah was like, well, you shouldn't have listed it for that. If
you shouldn't have listed it for $1, if you wanted to sell it for more than $40,000. Uh,
and then my brother and I caught wind of this, um, and just decided to have, have a little bit
of fun. Um, I started asking them a series of questions that ranged from like, um, what,
how it would be transported to us and what the transport costs would be. Um, I got really into
the exact material composition of the concrete. And when we nailed that down, um, despite knowing
the safety rating of the lock, I started getting into, um, like how many, uh, I don't remember what
they're called, but like the big, not the pins that you would pick with a lock pick, but the pins
that go into the wall to keep the door closed. Like how many of those exist? What are the material
composition of those? How long do they stand up to angle grinder attacks, all this other different
type of stuff. Um, just like every, every question you could possibly imagine. Um, and then when you,
when you get to, when you kind of run out of questions, you hit, you hit them with the old $2 offer.
Um, so we, it was, it was just a little bit of fun, you know, just wasting, wasting somebody's time.
Who's basically wasting everyone else's time.
In fairness, in fairness, he had it coming. I'm with you on this one, but how many days did your
brother keep him, keep stringing him along? Wasn't it like almost a week?
My brother had him. I think it was actually a whole week. Cause the last messages I'm seeing here
are from the next Sunday. Um, I hadn't actually seen this one. The last question was, could you
fit a small card car inside? Maybe Dan's car. He's like, like, like very small, like a very,
very small car. Could you fit one inside? Oh man. I would love for this to become an entire content
genre. Just like trolling people who list things for $0 or $1 on Facebook, because you know what?
Fuck those people. They are ruining the platform for everyone else and they need to just screw off.
Apparently it is. Oh, that's awesome. Now I thought we came up with something, but I guess,
um, there's no such thing as a unique idea. Apparently Dutch tech talk is full of it.
I love it. That's awesome. That's great. Respect. Yeah. My, my brother had him. I think my questions
got a little bit too obvious. Uh, but my brother was trying to convince him that he had an extremely
extensive watch collection that he wanted to store within the vault and stuff. Like he spun this whole
story. It was great. He did a better job than I did. I just got really into asking him a lot of
questions, but my brother was like trying to have a conversation, which was, uh, a better use of time,
I think, but it was good. That's hilarious. Um, um, open AI has formed a new safety and security
committee only a few short weeks after it saw several high profile resignations and ultimately
the, uh, dissolution, um, of its super alignment committee, which was focused on making sure that
the pursuit of artificial general intelligence remained aligned with the interests of human
beings. Open AI says that this new safety committee committee will be led by two members of the
current board alongside CEO, Sam Altman, the primary person who has been accused of making
irresponsible decisions regarding AI and AGI development. There's not really much else for
us to say other than seriously, who's going to, who's going to oversee the tech bros.
How about the tech bro-est of tech bros? Um, you know, I, yeah, I'm, I, I got a bone to pick
actually with, um, with, with, with the community. And I, uh, I don't know how to address this because
I think a lot of you probably recognize it, but I get called a tech bro a lot. I actually have very
little in common with tech bros. I do not run a f***ing tech company. I run a media company.
Yes, you do.
Okay. Floatplane, sort of. Floatplane's also a media company.
I run a media company, an other more different media company, and an apparel company. Guys, come on!
Anyway. There's a good question. What about Labs? Sorry, there's a train going by, so I'm trying
to toggle me quickly. Labs is media. It's still media. It's all media. It's been media from the
start. It's the moon meme. Always has been. Like, yeah, I love technology. Okay, so if, if,
but I don't do, I don't do VC, I don't do VC investment. I don't do like, I don't do tech bro
stuff. Yeah, so that's a big difference. I don't do any of that stuff. I run a media, I run a self.
I think the heavy VC.
I run a self-funded media company. So I resent that. Okay? I resent that.
I think the heavy VC funding and building in order to sell is the biggest differentiator,
because like, if you want to call Floatplane a media company, is like, are people who work at
YouTube, not in tech, are people who work at TikTok, not in tech? Like I, it gets a little
bit weird, but I think the, yeah, the heavy like financial company backing and stuff like that is
a major differentiator. Yeah. There's no private equity in Floatplane. There's no pressure on us
to behave in any way that is, that is unethical or that is, that is hostile towards our user base
or our customer base. And so there is no inshification. There's no reason for it to
happen. And it's something, it's, it's, it's, it's the way that we are structured is the antithesis
of like a tech bro style company. And, you know, obviously as, as people who are, who are into
technology and who are, you know, running a company, I can see how, you know, there's a lot of cosmetic
similarities, but the, the underlying structure of this company is completely different. And the
pressures on us are completely different. Uh, someone asks, what about framework? I do not run
framework. I don't have a seat on the board of framework. I, I had some cash burning a hole in my
pocket and I saw something that I thought was incredible and could be an industry changer.
And I was like, you know, what would be really cool is if I put my money where my mouth is and
if it ever grows and I ever get a return on the investment, that's super cool. But I'm basically
kissing this away. And I guess we'll just see what happens. If, if it doesn't take off, then at the
very least I put my money where my mouth is. And I showed that I believed with, with real concrete,
like money in my pocket. I showed that I believed in the mission. I'm super proud of them. They are
doing incredible. Um, and since we're at it, right. Um, it was a very, very similar investment
into that NAS operating system that is still churning away in the background. They'll, they'll
let you guys know when they're ready to announce something. But again, I'm not being all tech bro about
it. I didn't even, they offered a seat on their board. I told them I don't even want it. I don't,
I don't, I don't want any of that pressure. I don't want any of that responsibility. They were
good people who were building something that I believe in very, very strongly. I wanted it to have
a shot. That was it. That's it. I am. They, they were like, you are the least hands-on investor
that we have ever heard of because I basically don't even like respond to emails.
They'll be like giving me an update. I'm like, all right. And they're like, Hey, we really need
to have a call. Like, because we'd just like to talk to you and, you know, get some insight on
something or whatever. Or like, you know, obviously you invested in this because you felt very strongly
that this is a product that, you know, creators and, and tech enthusiasts need. Um, you know,
we'd love to get some clarification on some stuff. I'm like, uh, all right, I can fit you in on
Saturday. That's the last call I had with them. I was, uh, I was driving home from dropping off,
uh, dropping off my son at a lesson. Anyway, uh, Corey is the name asks, does a hundred thousand
dollars really mean that much to a company like framework at the time? Um, it was helpful,
but no, it wasn't critical. They had put aside a little bit of equity for,
an investor that could open doors for them. Um, and as someone who can, who can help cheerlead
the product, which I told them I would do regardless of whether they took my investment
or not. It was at their discretion. I told them I would do it regardless. Um, they, they
saw, uh, me and our company as someone that would be valuable to partner with.
Uh, let's talk about the Spotify car thing. There's an update. Uh, they are not going to be
open sourcing it. However, they will be issuing refunds for the car thing. So long as they have
proof of purchase following backlash to Spotify's plan to brick the barely three-year-old dedicated
streaming device. Um, as someone who cares about the environmental impact of tech, I'm not super
happy with this outcome, but I am a lot happier from a customer, um, customer care standpoint.
Um, refund would have been a lot better or sorry. Uh, uh, open source would have been a lot better.
I would have strongly preferred that, but I also did talk last show about how I understand that that
may not be possible. Is there anything else in the doc? Did we, did we get through the doc in a
reasonable amount of time today? How are your fingers doing Dan? I suspect we have. Yeah. Uh,
let's see. I have done 780 merch messages. That is, um, not good enough. There's a lot more coming
Dan. Wow. I'm working on it. No, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There,
there are actually like 145 in the queue still. So, so objectively speaking, it's not good enough,
but I'm still very proud of Dan and I appreciate his efforts. See these, these things can both be true.
So subjectively, I'm so happy that Dan is doing such a great job, but objectively it's not good
enough. I think another way to frame it could be that Dan's effort is good enough, but he might
need an expanded team in order to conquer this, uh, workload. That's actually interesting. Had we
ever, Dan, had we ever thought about like, if we're launching a big product and we know we're going to
get like a bajillion merch messages, bringing like Jake Belavance back for, for like a Friday or
something. I've been, uh, training kind of chewy to, to do this. Oh, because he wouldn't probably
embroil us in controversy like this guy. Uh, so I think that would probably be useful. Um,
I think there's like a level of, uh, intuition that you get eventually, um, which is why I can do this
now. And I would be struggling like six months ago. All right. Yeah, we should, uh, yeah, maybe that's
something that we should consider. Hey, what was that one that just came up about someone having
a one-on-one with their manager about wearing the LTT hat pro? Do you remember replying to that one?
I do actually, hilariously. Uh, the hat was not professional enough, uh, or something like that.
And he wants to make a case for it. And I think I suggested two hats. That is hilarious. The LTT
hat pro is not professional enough. Something like that. It's all black. It's a ball cap though. I guess
I can't understand. Yeah, that's the problem. Okay. So we need to work on a more professional
hat. What's a professional hat? No hat. What's a professional hat? Yeah. Like what? Top hat.
What makes it? I mean, we've joked about it before. That would be sick. That's what you can use the
alpaca wool for. Oh God. The wool. Yeah. Yeah. I claim my delays is why I was late on that.
You guys, it's going to be like a hundred dollar hat. People are going to flip out. You're buying a top
hat. People already give us a hard time about our stupid pricing and look, quality products cost
money. I'm sorry, not sorry, but that an alpaca wool top hat, you guys are going to get me roasted
on social media. I mean, if it's already happening, then like what's just more fuel? If you want to
look like you can wear a top hat, you got to spend like you can wear a top hat. Yeah. He's not wrong.
He's not wrong. That cardboard cutout with the head on top of it is. Um, okay. Dan, I don't think
that it is realistic for us to get through all the merch messages this week. I mean, if you're ending
the show, like, I mean, I was making good progress. Um, I think if you guys start some of the other
ones that I can get this down because now we're in the, the denouement of the evening. And so they're
coming in a little less fast. Okay. Um, all right. In that case, uh, Luke, how long do you have? You
appear to be in a park. There is literally someone hiking behind you right now. Yes. Um, so right now,
uh, I am mostly battery limited. So since I got out here, we've burned 22% of laptop battery.
Oh, that's not so bad. So when that hits zero, I'm done unless we want me to go onto my phone,
which I am willing to do. I think it will be a significantly degraded experience.
I'll tell you what, why don't we, uh, why don't we start on some curated merch messages and, uh,
I'll read them out and then, uh, Dan will continue to reply to some and we'll see how we do.
Um, Mike D says, hello, Dan, Luke, and beardless Linus. What's a video idea you've had over the years
that seemed like it would be good and an entertaining one, but just wasn't practical to
produce. Oh man, there's been so many. In fact, I could pull up a spreadsheet right now. If Luke has
one off at the top of his head that he'd like to, that he'd like to talk about then, you know,
by all means, but I can talk for a little bit. What instantly jumped into my head was things that
that is true for, but we, we honestly ended up doing anyways, because we thought it was just
a good thing to make for the community. Like, honestly, uh, we announced that this stream,
like making Scrapyard Wars doesn't make a ton of sense. Um, it's, it's very, very difficult to make.
It takes an incredible amount of time, not only in the fact that like, sometimes they're up to a
week long, uh, it's super risky to shooters, sometimes more we're counting hosts. And then
the editing time for it is enormous. And I'm super insistent that anytime we do a competition
or a, or a game of chance style piece of content, that it is real. So there is legitimately a strong
probability every time we do something like Scrapyard Wars, that it's just going to be boring
as fuck. Um, yep. So it's super risky, but yeah, we do. But we, we believed in the content because
we, as we talked about for a different topic on this show, we like promoting the idea of people
making economic choices by people buying on the used market. We're contributing less to e-waste
because we're reusing things. You can get a lot better of a deal. You can get into computers,
computer gaming, computer performance in whatever way you want to, um, by reusing other people's
stuff, saving a ton of money. And it can be fun, which is part of what we're trying to show people
as well as it can be engaging. It can be fun. It can be done relatively quickly. Um, and you can get
really interesting things. And honestly, a lot of the computers that you end up making
that way, you probably feel more attached to anyways. Like it's, it's, it's, I don't know,
it's all very good, but realistically it's not super practical. The return on investment
of making a Scrapyard Wars series is like super bad, not the greatest. Um, I could do a lot
of likes. I could do a lot of sponsored pool robot videos in the time it takes to do Scrapyard
Wars. I'll put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. A ton of them. Uh, here's one. I really wanted to do a
roundup of window mounted AC units with how much heat pumps have been in the news, like doing, uh,
doing like a window mounted, like heat pump style heater, cooler window. Like the, I think that would
be super, super news. You can use content. Um, I'm sure there's a channel that like is more focused
on that kind of thing, but I, I feel like it's something that we could do if we really
wanted to, you know, do it. Uh, this is a W in, in our, in our rating system. So I've
got like a color coded rating system for video ideas. Um, W is good ideas that might require
sourcing something difficult or waiting for new technology to arrive. Um, so one of them
was, oh man, we're trying to get our hands on a Toshiba 55 ZL two glasses, free 3d TV. Uh,
that's one of those. Um, one that just wasn't practical was using the vision pro for a whole
day and just like vlogging about that. We just kind of got to it too late. Oh, here's one
I've wanted to do for so long. The e-waste PC where I actually go like dumpster dive. But
the problem is all those recyclers because of their, their data protection policies and privacy
policies and stuff, which I totally get and totally makes sense. They won't let you just
dig around in the e-waste. Um, and any, any transfer station or, or dump like landfill in
at least the part of Canada where I live won't let you anywhere near that because they're worried
about liability. Like what if you puncture your skin on a hypodermic needle while you're
digging around in computer cases, which by the way, is a possibility. Remember that time
I found a crack pipe in a computer doing scrapyard wars. Yeah. So like, yeah, I, I really want
to do that. People have suggested it so many times. You think we haven't tried, man, we've
tried so many times when we did that, um, that Acer sponsored piece where we, uh, where
we set up like a stripped down windows on like an e-waste tier machine, like office discard
machine. That was supposed to be the e-waste PC. We had found an e-waste processor like on
the East coast and we were going to pick up, we were going to go all the way there to do
an e-waste build challenge thing. And it was going to be sponsored by Acer and it fell
through. Like we've tried so many times. I would, I would love to do it. People are like
sign the necessary NDAs, et cetera. It's not that simple. They have agreements with the
organizations that send them e-waste that say they will not allow an unauthorized party
to have access to it. It's that, it's that simple. The answer is no. Yeah, it's tough.
Sucks. Uh, all right. Archive. Oh yes. It's after dark. Uh, chase M says, sup DLL. I wanted
to ask about the Lux backpack. I'm on the fence about purchasing it and was wondering about
how long I might have. Has it shipped? Ooh, uh, shoot this one. I don't actually know the
answer to. Uh, I know I just signed off on the, on the final sample of the Lux tech sack,
which I don't think we have talked about before. Uh, so that's coming to match the Lux backpack,
but, um, I believe we will have some inventory when it arrives like dozens of units, not a lot,
but I believe we will have some, uh, when it arrives. Okay. Archive. Gareth says, hi DLL back in
many of your old videos, you would say to always use an antistatic strap and you claimed you always
had one on your ankle. Is that true? Or were you lying for clout? Um, it is true that you should.
It is also true that I was often in a hurry. So yes, I lied. If there's a lie that you could nail
me on, it would be that one. That is one time that I have actively deceived the community,
but my heart was in the right place. I wanted to make sure that I was encouraging proper best
practices while also recognizing the reality of our fast paced understaffed production environment
and desperate attempts to keep our business alive. That would have been slowed down by me constantly
clipping in and unclipping my antistatic strap. And I didn't have the money to invest in things like
antistatic flooring. And I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. You know what? There's a second lie.
I I've, I've, I've told very few lies to the community. The two that I can think of right now
are that one. And when I would fill a water loop and I would tell you guys that it was distilled
water, it w it was, it was tap water. And there is one particular member of our community who knows
who they are and is a f***ing idiot. Um, who is very mad about that because I showed the performance
of a water cooled system that had tap water in it, which by the way, here in British Columbia,
Canada, in the city of Surrey is not hard and doesn't have a ton of chemicals in it. It's basically
whatever. It doesn't matter. Um, like I have run our tap water in water cooling systems for
extended periods of time, years at a time, nothing goes wrong. It's fine. Um, but the point is they're
extremely mad because I said it was distilled water. And then I gave performance numbers,
not comparing multiple products against each other. I just gave some thermal numbers and that I lied and
deceived our viewers. And it's like, are you for real cares? It doesn't matter. So that, that is a
second lie that I told. I said I was using distilled water because depending on where you are, it may
actually matter here. It doesn't, you put some biocide in it, you'll be fine. Um, but I may, I like
to encourage best practices, even if I don't feel like going all the way to the grocery store to get
distilled water because we're in the middle of a shoot and I need some stupid water. I'm just going
to go fill a bottle and I'm going to fill it from the tap. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sounds like you should
make a donation to BC children's as an apology. Okay. I just did. I just did. I just did. Uh,
this was cool. This was cool. I actually had the, the relative of a BC children's employee who works in
the lab that we donated to walk up to me in a parking lot, which is a little creepy by the way,
please don't approach public figures in a parking lot. Like your intentions might be good, but it's,
it's actually kind of scary. Um, but anyway, the worst times. Yeah. They approached me in a parking
lot and we're like, Hey, I just wanted to say like, thank you so much for the money you raised. My
brother and his team are so grateful and they're going to do such incredible work with it. And it's
completely blew away their expectations. So that was pretty cool, but don't do that.
That's all right. What's next. Oh, right. I'm, I'm in charge of this, but anyway, sorry. It wasn't
for clout. It definitely wasn't for clout. It was because I want people to, uh, follow best practices,
even if, um, I don't always have time to do things properly. Um, Mitchell D asks, I bought an
engagement ring and I'm trying to think of ideas for how to propose to my girlfriend. Linus, what's
the story of how you proposed Luke and Dan, do you have any plans of how you would propose in the
future? Okay. Mine's terrible. My wife explicitly told me not to put the ring in food and not to
propose in front of our families. I did both. I don't know why. I don't, I don't think I could
put myself back into my headspace. My original plan was to propose underwater. And then she
explicitly told me not to do that. So my plan was to be scuba diving and find, you know, a treasure
chest with a ring. And I was like, I've got a really good idea. And she was like, as long as
it's not underwater. And I was like, Oh, okay. Busted. And then I, I don't know. She hates
our, my proposal. So whatever you do, don't do what I did. A good bet would be to ask her for
inspiration. Kind of go chat GPT on this, ask her to, to, to, to, to, to, you know, give some
inspiration and then try and find something that's aligned with her interest, but that would
be a fun surprise and different.
Find a funny, find like a compilation of funny ones online and watch them with her and then roll
it into, uh, like rating them on like how much she likes them. I can't be super specific
right now. Someone is across the table.
Geeky Vapor says don't do it publicly unless you're a hundred percent sure they want that.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Geeky Vapor knows what's up. Yep. Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Uh,
anyway, good luck with that. Congratulations in advance. I hope, or I'm sorry to hear that
TLDR or however, however that, that copy past it goes. Uh, one B says, hello from Miami.
Welcome to Miami. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I did that wrong. I'll be watching this on my way to
work tomorrow morning. What are the, some of the things you wished you knew when you started
the company and what are some pros and cons of having your own company? I wish I knew how
much bloody work it would be. Um, you know, the pros are that you kind of, uh, you
can control your own destiny to a degree. Like there's things you can't control. There's
economic conditions, there's pandemics, there's all kinds of stuff that you can't control,
but compared to just having your livelihood and having your, your life and your happiness
tied to the whims of someone else, I would say that is a major advantage, but it's also
a major disadvantage because you're going to be subjected to all of the pressure that
comes from having that level of control. If anything goes wrong, you have no one to blame
but yourself.
Caleb G. Hey, Luke. I was curious since you grew up in sports and being athletic, if you
ever mountain biked, especially given you grew up in one of, if not the place to get
into the sport or one of the best, if not the best place.
Caleb G. Uh, yes, I did actually. Um, but I mostly did it on like trails that just happened
to be around my house. Um, sorry, one second. We are, we are battling a invading insect that
I just conquered. Um, uh, yeah, no, I, I, I used to go on like trails around my house.
When, when I was growing up, my house was much more wild land around it than it is now
because cats all urban now kind of, yeah, got, got all over to where our house was, but
originally it was mostly fields around there. So we would go around the fields and, um, and
make little tracks in the, in the forest or like jump over, you know, just push a bunch
of dirt in front of a fallen over tree and use that as like a jump or whatever else. Um, but
the reality of mountain biking is, was a little expensive for our, our, uh, abilities at that
time. So I was lucky to have a bike with gears like ice hockey. Exactly. Yeah. Like my, my
mountain bike had no shocks. Um, my shocks were my legs and I would stand up while I was
going, which was great. I didn't mind it, but, um, like there was, there was some issues
with like, okay, we're not going to go up to Whistler every summer and like go mountain
biking on Whistler and stuff like that. Um, it just wasn't going to happen, which is
fine, but it was a little bit limiting. We didn't play ice hockey. We played ball
hockey, things like that. Um, but yeah, no, I, I think mountain biking is super cool, but
I never got like really into it. I just enjoyed riding a bike, um, on, on trails and stuff
like that.
Ben R says, I love this upcycle. I've wanted a forever pen for a while, but couldn't
decide this is the one. Hey, thanks, Ben. Question for Linus. How has your autograph
evolved over the years? Have you considered changing it? I have changed it multiple times
because I realized that it was pretty fucking stupid, uh, to use my real signature, um, and
hand it to people in public.
Bad, bad. Don't do that.
Yeah. Every once in a while, someone will hand me something that, uh, they're like, Hey,
I had you sign this once and, uh, I want you to sign it again. And I'll have this temptation
to like scribble out the old one because they'll have like my real signature that I use.
Realistically, what I should do is I should just change my signature. Um, maybe I'll do
that. You know what there, this will be the kick in the pants that I need to finally change
my signature. I just got a new document of some sort. I'm not going to tell you what it
is because you don't need to know, but I just got a new document of some sort that needs
a signature and, uh, I'm going to sign it with a new signature and we're going to see
how that goes. It's going to be great. I'm going to come up with something. It's going
to be really inconvenient for Yvonne for reasons that Luke will find funny, but none of you need
to know. Uh, but that is actually quite funny. Um, you guys are still doing that. I don't
know what you're talking about. William G says Linus as a fellow ally lover, I'm disappointed
with how they've been handling warranties. Have these issues influenced your preference
between ally and steam deck? Okay. This is a really good questions. Complicated question.
I'm sure that you've seen the leaks for ASUS is rumored ally X handheld. And so what I predict
is that if ASUS, uh, were to continue to have, um, support practices that I can't fully get
behind, I would need to say something about that in any hypothetical coverage of such
a device. Mark says, Hey Linus, as a parent with ADHD, what strategies do you use to help
your children avoid the same pitfalls you had going to school? School is so different
for my kids. Anyway, they don't even have like homework and stuff. I don't even, I don't
even know. Like, I don't even know what they learn. I'm okay. No, no, I know what they learn.
They learn stuff yet. They don't do homework. It's like not allowed or something. Whoa.
Like if they don't finish a worksheet and it's like, it's like a problem, like they were
being disruptive or whatever. Occasionally they'll be asked to finish the rest of the worksheet
at home. Or if they miss a week of school, cause they're sick or something, they'll be given
a package to work on, but they are supposed to be given ample time to complete work in school.
And that seems to be a policy. Um, is that a government policy or is it that a, that school
policy? I have no idea. Yeah. So they, they, they seem to, honestly, it's probably a good
thing. Cause like kids are in so many extracurriculars these days compared to how I feel it was when,
when we were kids. Um, like I don't, mine are pretty busy, like they're busy kids. So if
they had a bunch of homework on top of it, I don't know how they'd survive. Um, Rick T says,
hello, DLL. If a Netflix or Amazon approached you about making a tech news slash entertainment
show for them, do you think it'd be something you would go for? Man, that'd be tough. I can see why
Mr. Beast did it. Uh, I think that's going to be really incredible. It's going to be potentially
the moment where he transitions to being like a mainstream celebrity, um, as opposed to the
biggest YouTuber, you know, like I think that's super cool. I don't know what our tech slash news
slash entertainment show would be. It's something that I haven't brainstormed in a long time. I used
to have some kind of cool ideas. I always thought something in between, uh, just for laughs, gags and
myth busters would be kind of cool, like tech pranks. And I had one idea for like a pilot, um,
where, uh, we even got as far as kind of brainstorming some ways that we could do it.
But the idea that I had was, um, like using, using, um, speakers and sound projection and,
uh, machine vision to turn a crosswalk into a piano or something like that. Like, so where all the
pranks instead of being, yeah, instead of being like sleight of hand or, or like, like, like, um,
like more illusion or, or, or magic oriented, we're more tech oriented. I thought something
like that would be really cool, but I just have no idea what kind of, um, what kind of offer
I would have to get to justify shifting my focus from what I do to doing something like that.
I think it'd be kind of cool though. I wonder if I still have my, I, I specced out how to do that
musical crosswalk thing. I wonder if I still have that document somewhere. I think we had a couple
different ideas for how to do it. So there's probably a couple of things in there.
Uh, Earl S says, Linus, you mentioned that you read comments before watching content.
When you decide to watch a YouTube video, do you speed it up? Yeah. I, I watch at a 1.75 X if they speak
fast and then I'll go to 2X if they're a slow speaker. I actually kind of wish they could go
a little faster. I was watching, um, what's, uh, uh, technology connections video on the color
brown the other day. And I was like, dude, I need like two and a half X for you. Um, but like,
you know, really, really good. Love the channel and everything. But, um, the certain creators,
I do wish I could go a little faster. Fantastic channel.
Yep. Uh, Shay B says, Hey, bad cholesterol team, JK, what is your general experience negotiating
with brands, sponsors, and suppliers? Are there some insane terms you can share or crazy stories?
Oh man, I don't, I don't really negotiate with brands that much anymore. Um, I will say,
oh man, what can I say? What can I, what can I, what will not get me in trouble? Luke,
do you remember anything? Um, insane turns and stuff. Terms like, oh, like requirements.
Like there's been a few terms that were crazy, but we just said no and then didn't do it.
Yeah. Like we've had ones that have asked for, like, I remember a phone manufacturer in like
October or something or sorry, sorry, August or something wanted like a non-compete for three
months over the entire like September iPhone launch slash whatever period. And they were some
like rando, like Chinese phone company. And I was basically like, no, like, what are you,
what are you even talking about? Um, so there's like, there's definitely been some stuff like that,
but, um, we just say no. So, uh, man, oh man, I got, I got the most chatted out. Um, this is amazing.
Oh my God. I have a big problem. What day is it there?
Saturday. What time is it?
Uh, why do you need to catch a flight? It's 1230.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Uh oh. Hold on. Hold on.
Oh no. Uh, stall them.
Okay. Um, how do we stall them? I think I have some Luke. How has work been, uh, with me gone,
Dan? Oh, sure. Go do that. Do that. Question for Luke. Are you playing MOP Remix?
MOP Remix? What? I don't know. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The wow thing. No, I'm not. No, I'm not.
Hey, Luke, you mentioned Dimension 20 a couple Dan shows ago. I wanted to ask which campaign has
been your favorite. Oh, um, sorry to be disappointing. I don't actively watch it.
Um, I think it's cool, but I mean, that's a lot of content to sit and watch. I don't really
watch that much stuff. I, I play video games if I have time at the computer. If I, if I
have time at home that's free, I'm not usually going to watch TV shows or, or anything like
that. I'm usually just going to play games or work on stuff.
Does Luke still keep in touch with anyone from 929?
929?
What's that? I don't know. That's what it says. 929. 929.
Best Buy 929? Is this, is this Best Buy 929?
I, possibly. They bought a pen.
Is that the Best Buy 929? Yeah, that's the Best Buy I used to work at. That took a moment
to remember. Um, not super actively. There's a, there's a couple people like I have, I have
a couple of people on Steam and I don't really talk to them, but I'll see them jump in and
play games every once in a while. And I'm, I'm often tempted to like send them a message,
but I don't even know if they like remember who I am. Um, so I, I don't, I don't really
buy, cause it's been a long time for some of them. And like for some of these people,
one of them in particular that I, I know I still have on Steam cause I see them launch
things every once in a while. The last time I would have talked to them, I think I would
have been like 15. Um, so I don't know. Uh, but there, there's quite a number of people
that I would be happy to, but, um, I don't, I don't really keep active contact with them.
No, I'm surprised this person wrote 929. I'm wondering if they're one of them or something.
Um, cause I don't think most people would know that that is the Best Buy that I worked
at, but I don't know.
For those wondering, I, I realized that I screwed up something on my, my badminton playing
schedule in Taiwan and I accidentally booked some stuff for this Saturday. And then I realized
that a few days ago and then I forgot to message. So I'm literally supposed to be at
a center in like a few hours and I have to bail and I feel really bad because it's with
someone that I've played with last year and then played with like years before. And like
we had dinner last year and like, you know, um, I, I feel really, really, really bad. And
I just completely forgot. Um, do you have another day you can play with them?
Um, yeah, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if, uh, I'm gonna see if he's around sometime
in the middle of the week, but I, I feel awful cause he's like super nice guy and has
helped like coordinate groups for me before and stuff. Um, yeah, he's super cool. Uh,
anyway, yeah. So I feel really, really awful right now. And, um, let's get through some more
curated merch messages. Oh wow. There are, there are, Oh God, Dan, you're curating a lot
of them. Uh, okay. JS asks, Hey Linus, what's your favorite and least favorite part of the
Langley house? Like the one we used to shoot out of my favorite part of it. Oh man. I guess
it has a pretty open layout on the main floor. That was pretty helpful. Uh, my least favorite
they mean like favorite part of when we worked there or do they mean literally the physical
house? I don't know. My favorite part of working there was definitely the camaraderie. I remember
actually pitching to an agency that was looking for like reality talent. Like they were pitching
me to come be on some reality show. And I was like, you know what you guys should do is
you should come make a reality show here. Cause this thing, this place is nuts. Like, can
you imagine a reality TV crew being in there with like you, me, uh, old Taryn, uh, Burkle,
Brandon, Nick? I think that was Ed. I think that was the whole crew at the time. Um, that
would have been nuts. Like the deadlines were crazy. The hours were crazy. Like things were
kind of tense sometimes, but respectful, but tense. And like, it would have been, it would
have been such a window. It would have been such a time capsule into an early stage of,
of like new media that I don't know if you'll ever be able to capture again. It would have
been really cool. So cool. They missed out. They just like never replied to me. I was like,
well, I do wish that you're done. It would have been awesome. Uh, anonymous asks, sup LLD. Can
you give us a TLDR version of the real harm of big tech companies collecting and selling
your data? Why should we care about it? Um, you should care because of who they can sell
it to. And I get it, right? I think it's pretty easy to fall into the whole, well, I've got
nothing to hide. So what does it matter? Kind of trap. But the thing is that you have nothing
to hide today. I mean, women in the States didn't have anything to hide until very recently,
potentially with respect to medical procedures, for example, and like, look, there's a tech
program. I'm not interested in taking a position on that matter. I think I've made my thoughts
on it pretty clear in the past, but what I will say is that it is a prime example of something
that didn't matter for your, you know, searches about, uh, a day after, you know, pills or whatever
else. Um, they didn't matter before. And now all of a sudden they matter, right? Insurance,
uh, insurance company policies can change. Um, the, the, the, the value of the data can change
like something that, that can be detected, like some medication that you're on today. They could
find out something new about it. And all of a sudden, Oh, it's a risk factor for, uh, Alzheimer's
or who knows. And all of a sudden, yeah, sure. Legally preexisting conditions, something, something
can affect your coverage, something, something, something. Yeah, sure. Today, but things can change.
And once that data is out there, it's out there and that's it. That's why it matters.
There's also a lot more that you can glean from that data than you might be, than, than,
than you might realize. Like there's, there's old stories about how, uh, parents would figure
out that their daughters were pregnant before. I put your camera on so I could virtually high
five you, Dan. Yeah. They had a target. Yes. Good job. Dan got through them. Sorry. I talked
over you, Luke. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. Uh, I was just saying that sometimes there's more
information that can be gleaned from, um, that data that you might realize as well. Yeah. So
they might know more about you than you think. Um, and, and also just like you're, you're in a
somewhat constant battle for the information that goes into your brain. Um, and do you want to give
that level of information about how you work to people that are spending gratuitous amounts of
money to try to twist your actions and convince you to do things that you might not otherwise want
to do? Um, also the data is almost certainly going to leak. Julian S. Uh, that's a really good idea.
I'm not going to read it out on the show so it can be a surprise for everyone, but that's a pretty
cool idea. Uh, Damon S. Hey, Linus Dan and disconnecting Luke. I work in the trades and thus
have so far been unaffected by the AI revolution. Do you guys see trades and other skilled labor
positions being threatened? Not in the near future. I mean, I think that quote unquote
unskilled labor, um, which I, I don't really like that term. I don't think that, uh, I don't think
that anyone who, who is, who works hard and, and tries to do their job as best they can. I don't
think anyone like that is unskilled. I've seen some wild, you know, YouTube shorts or TikToks of
people who work on a, on a box assembly line, like, like doing it faster than I could imagine
any machine possibly could. Like I've seen stuff, right? There's, there's no such thing as unskilled
labor, but, um, I do think that relatively lower skilled labor, like, uh, unloading trucks is definitely
at more risk than something like, you know, running data wiring in a, in a, in a, in a new,
new construction or, you know, something like that. Um, but I don't think anything is forever,
but I do think that skilled labor, you know, like that requires apprenticeships and study and all
that. I do think that you guys are in a pretty good position and I would strongly encourage people
to pursue, uh, a career in trades right now. Um, man, it's hard to find, it's hard to find good
trades people and they are valuable. Yes. And they, they charge a lot because they can.
Tyler P. Hey, LLD and E. When's the last Linus led development item that actually went through?
That's a good question. Uh, wow. I don't know. Yeah. It's been a long time, actually.
This isn't something I've like tracked and, and to be clear, uh, Linus led development was more
specifically like a, if Linus asked for something, we do it era. Linus still asked for things. Um,
it's just more of a conversation now. And sometimes we won't do it for various reasons. Uh, but it doesn't
mean we're just automatically not doing things that Linus suggests. We still do tons of things
that Linus suggests. We might not do it exactly at that time, or we might not do it exactly in that
way. Um, but yeah, the reason why I refer to it as Linus led development is because all choices on
what to work on and when were effectively going, coming from, from Linus. Um, and that
wasn't working for a variety of reasons.
That's a terrible way of putting it.
I can throw him a bone. It's not, it's not really his fault because he wasn't working with the team.
He didn't see the things that we need to be working on. He didn't see a lot of the stuff.
He wasn't directly in that. Um, so there, there's no way that it would have been possible for it to
be accurate. And as I've said in the past multiple times, it's more on me. I should have taken it over
sooner, but I'm happy that it'd take it over eventually. Anonymous asks, why do you guys
think these companies are so focused on dedicated gaming devices like Steam Deck, Ally, Claw, etc.,
when phones and tablets are becoming powerful enough to run good games? It's a different class.
And you can go kind of, yeah, oh yeah, phones are going to get better and better and better.
And it's like, yeah, so, so are those, right? And the fact that we can play, you know, triple A,
what used to be desktop class games on a portable handheld device now is, is pretty incredible.
And it's going to be a long time before phones are going to catch up or enough. And by that time,
yeah, we'll probably get another generation of consoles, which is going to mean another generation
of game developers pushing the boundaries in terms of graphical fidelity. I, I, I, I do think that
it's a valid, it's a valid in between piece. And I think that it's going to see a bit of a,
I think it's going to continue to see a bit of a renaissance. I mean,
Microsoft is rumored to be working on a portable Xbox. Uh, I think Sony is rumored to be working
on like a, like a not PlayStation portal, like actual new handheld. So Nintendo Switch 2 is
supposed to be basically Switch 2. It's supposed to be another hybrid portable handheld. I'm,
I'm very excited for, for gaming portability. I mean, the original Nvidia shield, which was that
little Android, a clamshell portable gaming handheld was like reinvigorated, um, my love of gaming
because I had just had a kid and I had no way to play games because I was never able to sit at my
desk and it allowed me to stream like Tomb Raider and stuff like that. It was pretty cool.
Seth asks, did Linus ever daily drive the OnePlus open? Uh, no, I really wanted to. And Bell took it
home after, or rather took it to a trade show after the short circuit. And I was like, yo,
I had wanted to take it to the trade show. And he was like, well, uh, I have it. And I was like,
okay, well, can I get it from you after he goes? Yeah. And I got it back. And already from having been
used for like a week or two, the hinge didn't open all the way. And I was like, okay, well,
so much for that. Is Luke gone? Am I on my own? I think he did. Luke, you stopped moving and your,
your cardboard stand and fell over. Uh, I, I, sorry. I accidentally kicked it. Uh,
David T says, why did MSI repossess the laptops from your gaming minivan? You mentioned that in
passing in a May 8th live stream. I don't know. I think they might've been engineering samples,
so they might've just needed to go back. And like, it's not like the sponsorship dollars
still didn't come through. And I, you know, if we don't keep the hardware from a sponsored project,
like whatever we, we, we, we got paid, we paid our staff, everything's, everything's hunky dory,
but it means that there aren't actually computers in there right now. And I've been putting off,
putting new ones in because I want to make a video about it. So my poor kids just are like,
yo dad, these screens don't do anything. Um, I'm an okay parent. Uh, Matt C says,
speaking of security theater, what's the most annoying IT rule you've ever dealt with?
Mine is not being able to access a site from mobile Safari when Safari on M series Mac is fine.
Yeah, that is pretty irritating. I don't know if I can think of anything personally,
but Luke, can you think of something? Dude, password rules. Oh my goodness. I, I recently had to,
create an account at a financial institution. I will not obviously name which one. Uh,
and they limit your passwords to 20 characters, maximum 20 characters. And I think they had a
minimum as well. And then they had some requirements of what symbols you could use.
And they're like, you have to use a symbol, but then the symbol that I chose to use, they're like,
well, that one doesn't like, we, we actually don't recognize that as a character. So we're not
even going to allow you to set a password with that symbol in it, let alone not count it towards the
minimum symbol required count. So they like, they, they didn't allow a bunch of characters
and then they maximize the amount of characters that you could use. And I'm just like, dude,
this is, this is important financial accounts. Like you can't, you actually can't just,
oh man. Yeah. I don't know. Password rules drive me nuts constantly.
Wow. Dan editorializing in the replies. Foldables are dumb anyway. I mean, the cases are pretty bad.
So Ryan G definitely has a point, but, uh, wow. What am I? I'm, I'm not a news reporter.
Wow. Dan. Um, yes, sir. K says, Hey, DLL Linus, when did you first realize that you were going to be
held to a higher standard than most people deal with? Was there a moment that made you think I'm kind
of famous? Thanks. I don't know. Um, there have been lots of little things that I've kind of looked
at and I've gone like, really? Um, but I think part of the reason that I get held to such a
sometimes, um, ridiculous standard is that we've always been very transparent. We've always publicly
held ourselves to very high standards. So I think I've kind of created this for myself
because people can, I don't, I don't think it's a function of being famous. Like Leonardo DiCaprio
is super famous and no one seems to actually care that, you know, he hangs around with women who are,
you know, several decades younger than him, even though that's like, you know, a behavior that would
be weird if your dad did it when you brought your friends over, you know? And like, I'm not saying
he's a pedophile. Um, like as far as I can tell everyone's, you know, legal age of consent and all
of that, but it's just like being famous doesn't necessarily mean that you're held to some kind of
high moral standard or whatever. There's, there's an awful lot of like,
how you, you know, like I just, uh, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't really know.
I don't really know. I don't really know what my deal is in, in some cases with, with famous people
where, uh, not only are they not held to a higher standard, they're actually held to a significantly
lower standard. Like, uh, them, them acting like an idiot in whatever way will be
aggressively defended by their fan base.
It's like, it's like funny and endearing or something.
Yeah. Yeah. Like it's, it's, it's weird. Like they, they almost are allowed to get away with
being more of a bad person. Yeah. Coen Lemon here completely the other way.
Coen Lemon here is like, yeah, every rock and roll star ever with drugs. Like if,
if some, if some nobody has the possession of, of whatever, then, oh yeah, they should get like
the shit beat out of them by the police and they should go to jail. But if a famous person,
it, you know, throws a party with like, where the, you know, they bake bread with cocaine instead
of flour. It's like, that's hilarious, right? Like, it's just, yeah, I don't know, man.
Yeah. Uh, Joseph A says, hi, LL and D. I'm running data through conduit to a barn roughly
a hundred freedom units away. Should I use cat six or fiber? A hundred feet? Oh man. No, I'd go,
yeah, I'd go, go, go, go. Cat six, a go cat six, a cat six, a is bossed here. It's good.
Uh, Jake N, how much do I need to spend to make Linus rub his head and pat his belly at the same
time? I mean, you spent $194 on the store. I'd say that's probably good enough.
It's really hard to do.
It's funny cause I've done it the other way before. So I was all ready to pat my head and rub my belly.
Like that one, I can do no problem. You've got that down pretty good.
But this one took me a second. Any who, there you go. You got it. Adam K. Hi, DL and DL digital
Luke. Linus, do you have any advice for someone really interested in playing badminton in a region
where community badminton groups are virtually non-existent? Thanks. No, it sucks. It's one of
those sports that can only be as big as the facilities to accommodate it. I know that a lot of groups here
will try to rent out like school gyms and stuff off hours. Um, and that's something that's also
pretty common over in Asia from what I've seen. But if those groups don't exist in your area,
man, it's, it's, it's tough to get something going. It really is.
Uh, Kevin M happy days, everyone. I barely get to catch you all live as someone in the trades.
Are there any specific technologies like remote operation or autonomous operation of heavy
equipment that excite you? I mean, I think we had a similar question a little while ago and like
autonomous farming with super precise, like geolocation and stuff, man, that is, that is super,
super cool stuff. Uh, William C says,
I like farming stuff.
Wow. Thanks for contributing, Luke.
Farming tech. I find to be really, you're going to, you're going to interrupt for that.
But I like farming stuff.
I like turtles too.
I play, I play, I like trains. Um, yeah. Anyways.
William C asks, Linus, since your Note 9 no longer gets security updates. Yeah,
it's pretty bad that I use this. Are you looking for a new phone? I mean, yeah, I was.
And then you guys freaking saddled me with the wing. That was a real, I was,
I was having a conversation with y'all and you memed on me. Um, are you looking for a new phone?
Yes. I wanted it to be the Fairphone 5, but that thing ended up totally sucking.
Uh, so no, I'm not waiting for anything in particular. I'm waiting for
not being lazy and just getting a phone. I probably will just go for another
note, something, um, or whatever the ultra, whatever. I, I, I don't use the stylus often,
but I do like it. So I'll probably just go with a Samsung phone with a stylus.
I kind of want to daily a pixel though. Kind of tempted.
Anonymous says DLL. How do you handle working with team members who disagree with the chosen
solution and don't put in as much effort since it's not their solution?
I'm a tech lead and I try to preach disagree, but commit.
I mean, it happens all the time. Um, what I, what I talk about is that, you know, as, as companies
grow, you don't have to agree with every decision that the company does, but you do have to kind of
like do your job. Um, and if you disagree with enough of them consistently enough over time
and it never changes and you're voicing your opinion and it never changes, uh, maybe it's
potentially time for you to move on. I guess you're the manager in this situation. So maybe it's time
for them to move on. Um, if they're consistently underperforming all the time because they don't
appreciate company direction, that's a performance metric that you can talk to them about
and potentially move them on because of that. But like, I don't know, you got to do your job.
Sometimes you don't fully agree with all of what that is, but I mean, that can be okay. Fully
agreeing with everything that anyone else says is like never going to be a thing. You're never
going to be in 100% agreeance with anybody. Um, I disagree.
Perfect. I wish we could handshake through digitally. That would be fantastic.
John M says, I work in corporate audio visual and produce a lot of live events. I wanted to ask what
your biggest challenges were making lifestyle videos like PC or no PC. Thank you for the great
work where, oh man, PC or no PC. I'd say the biggest challenge with that one was that I asked one thing
about the set. I wasn't super particular about it. I asked for one thing. I asked that the jib shot,
which I knew was going to be a thing, not look like crap. So we couldn't just see that we were
in an empty warehouse. And I got there and I was like, um, I'd say the huge number of moving parts,
because that's how things like that get overlooked because everyone has so much on their plate and time
is so limited that it can be a real challenge to get all the details right. Um, like at the roast,
the audience wasn't miked that destroyed the viewability of the VOD. They, they loved it.
They were eating it up. The house was, it was, it was such a great atmosphere and the VOD on YouTube
just doesn't capture it. And you can see in the comments, people are like, wow, these jokes suck.
They're so flat. The audience isn't even laughing at all. They were, they were freaking loving it.
It was a great atmosphere. Um, and it just little details, little details are the hardest part of
that, of those kinds of things. Tyler V says, Hey, Luke, Luke, and Luke, I see you talk about turning
down potential opportunities for massive profits. What is something massively profitable that you've had
to turn down recently? Something other than the VPN. We talked about that last week.
I don't think my team runs into this as often, but I do. Am I muted? No, I don't think my team runs
into this as often. The VPN is by far the best example that we have. Um, I think our best example
of this would be that we, we tend to always work on like the hardest stuff possible. Um,
because we think it is, I don't know, more interesting, more, uh, who knows, honorable.
I have no idea. We, we tend to, to reach for like, not, not just the, the highest fruit, but like,
can we climb a mountain to get to a tree that's taller to grab the fruit at the top of that one
instead? Um, that, that tends to be more of the stuff that my team ends up working on. Um,
not so much a business opportunity thing. So I think, I think really, the only really major,
definitely hugely profitable business opportunity that we could have gone after is the VPN. There's
been other offers from companies to like, um, make video stuff for them, um, or, or do custom things
like that, but I, I don't know that they would be hugely profitable. So yeah.
Timofey says, Hey, LLD, how can one learn to master live storytelling and the art of recounting
personal experiences in an engaging way? How do you and Ludwig share personal experiences so entertainingly?
Well, Ludwig's not here, so I can't answer for him, but I think for me, I, I kind of alluded to this
on the, um, on the yard podcast when I was on it. I think that one of the things that content creators
have in common generally is a degree of narcissism. I'm not saying that that means that every single
YouTuber has narcissistic personality disorder, um, like anything, it's a spectrum, right? And I do
think that disordered or not, there's a certain degree of innate interest in oneself and assumption
that other people should care about oneself that has to be there for you to, um, for you to
even practice the art of telling personal stories, recounting personal thoughts and personal
experiences for an audience. You, because otherwise, if you didn't think that people should want to hear
it and should want to know about you, then you wouldn't push yourself to, to take those opportunities when
a crowd is gathered to talk about yourself and talk about things that have happened to you. Um,
and I don't think that you would get good at it. And it's like anything for me, I, I didn't start out
being good at storytelling or anything like that. Everyone's born knowing nothing, but it's something
that for whatever reason I am compelled to practice. You know, when there's a conversation,
my brain kind of goes, Oh yeah, it's like that time that I, and, and, and I want, I want to tell
that story. You know, some people are more conservative. They're more, they're more, um,
they're more just self-reflective. They don't, they don't need to tell other people about things,
but for me, it's like, I like, I want to write. Um, so practice is really the best thing that I can say.
Luke doesn't need to add anything to that. Apparently. Okay. Phillip P. Hi leg show. Uh,
Luke, what are your thoughts on directed just at you? Sorry. No, no, no, no. It was for both of us,
I think. Well, it was for me and Ludwig, but he's not here. So yeah. Uh, Luke, what are your thoughts
on cousins of birds? The cousins of birds, reptiles. I myself have a small family, three adults, four
children, and eight eggs of crested geckos. Any tips for starting a business selling them?
I yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Go for it, Luke. I don't know, dude. Uh, what? I have no idea. My mom,
when I was growing up, used to breed and sell betta fish. My dad built this huge wall of cascading fish
tanks so that the, the water from one fish tank would kind of like flow into the next one and all
this other kind of stuff. It was all crazy and cool. And he did a good job with it. Um,
and she used to sell them. And I think it was mostly like, like web 2.0
internet orders and stuff back then. I don't even fully remember all of it. I'd have to talk to both
of them about how they did it. Cause I was pretty young at that time. Uh, but yeah, she would breed
and sell betta fish. Um, how exactly that worked. I don't know. Do I have any advice on selling
reptiles? No, not even sort of. Um, and I know basically nothing about them other than
whenever I see geckos, I think they're neat. That's, that's pretty much it. Sorry.
Good effort, Luke. Good effort. Hi DLL. I recently turned my side project into a software as a service
and getting requests from fans to become affiliates. Any thoughts on what makes a successful
affiliate program? Well, you're going to get a pretty biased, um, version of that from me.
Obviously what makes an affiliate program successful from a, from a media standpoint is that it has to
have a strong payout. It has to have a compelling reason for people to use it. Um, Amazon had that
cool, like smile thing for a long time where like they donated proceeds or something like that. Like
you've got to, you've got to engage with people emotionally to make them want to use your affiliate
program. Um, one of the things that we look for is recurring revenue. So if this is a, if this is a
software as a service product where your revenue is recurring, we expect our referrals to be recurring.
Um, but Hey, you may not find that that's the most successful thing for your side. And you may find
that it's better to, to cut off the, you know, leech influencers or whatever, who promote your
product. But, um, yeah, that's something that you're going to have to kind of solve for yourself.
We have not figured out how to build a successful affiliate program for LTT store, even though
that's something that we have talked about and something that we would like to explore in the future.
Brandon B. Hi DLL. I'm a woman working in the male dominated AV industry in a technical director
slash supervisor role. What advice do you give female managers who receive pushback
from male peers or subordinates, man? I feel like this is a conversation that I've had
so many times to such frustrating ends, um, with my wife. I mean, we've talked about this on,
on the WAN show, I think pretty recently. So I'm not going to talk about it for too long,
but just the way that people will talk past her to me, you know, even if she's the one that is sent,
has sent every email leading up to this in-person meeting, even if she's the one that is answering
every one of their questions, like they're laser locked eye contact with me instead of talking to her.
And, um, you know, the cold, hard truth is people are going to be like that. And all you can really
do is do your best and kick ass. And you know what? Those people, right? Um, I'm sorry. I'm sorry
that I don't have like, uh, a solution for you. I mean, frankly, if I did, I'd be mansplaining it
anyway, I suppose. So like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm about, but, but for real,
you know, I, I, my, my general approach has all to business because I'm not that good at like
schmoozing and I always get a kick out of conspiracy theories about how I like am in bed with, you know,
executives at every company in bed figuratively. Right. Um, and I have, I'm doing all these like
backroom deals, man. I don't, I don't do, I don't deals with anybody. I don't even like talking to
people. Um, you guys are the exception and I think it's, it's mostly tolerable because you're
basically a camera. Like I'm not actually the kind of person who craves, um, like a ton of human
interaction. I got into this because I liked to play video games by myself in my basement. Right.
So let's be, let's be, uh, let's be real here. Um, so sorry, where was I going? Where was I going
with this? Right, right, right, right, right. So my philosophy has always been like,
I'm just going to let the quality of the work speak for itself. And if you need something from
me because that looks good to you, then you'll figure it out. You'll come to me and we'll do
business. And if you can't get over that, well then you, right? What do I care? I'll do business
with someone else and I'm doing okay. But you know, Hey, look, I obviously I'm speaking from a very
privileged position here, right? Like you're already talking about these challenges that you're
receiving. Um, but I really do believe the only thing you can do is just kick ass. Just keep
doing it. You're clearly doing all right. Sounds like they are. Yeah. But just keep going. Yeah,
exactly. Yeah. Chase K says, Hey DLL for the smaller L I'm starting to play Anno 1800. I keep losing
around the artisan stage. Any tips on getting past it or better setups? Okay. So you definitely got to
figure out, uh, the efficiency of your production. If you don't figure out how to boost the production
of your farms and how to start using, um, uh, trade unions, uh, with their like boosting items and,
and laying out your industry efficiently so that all of your, all of your raw goods are able to be
transported quickly and efficiently. Um, you're going to have a really, really hard time getting past that.
You've also got to figure out inter Island trade routes. So I'd say those are the main things to
focus on. Also small backpack. When I have a sample that I'm supposed to be wear testing in
Taiwan, but I might've forgotten it in my office and I don't know if I have it with me, but I'm
going to get all my stuff moved over soon and hopefully soonish. Mason G when stars. Oh, that's
a new one. I'm struggling at work with supervisors, not following company guidelines and personal
boundaries, emailing at 11 PM, sharing personal information with other employees. Any advice?
This is a tough one. And it's funny because like we take these kinds of guidelines, extreme and laws,
in many cases, laws, uh, whether they're guidelines or whether they're laws, we take these kinds of
things very seriously here. Um, and we recognize that there's enormous, you know, liability. And so I
think a lot of the time you guys hear a very employer perspective from me, because if we put
a toe out of line, the liability to our company and to me personally is actually enormous, but we
live in a place where employee protection regulations are extremely strong and that's
not the case everywhere. And we also, uh, work in an environment full of people who could just
get a job somewhere else and be making great money somewhere else. If they felt like it,
we have an extremely skilled team and not everybody is in such a privileged position to be in demand.
Um, the way that a lot of members of our team really are. So you might be in a position where
speaking out, um, is not something that is covered or protected and finding new employment in your field
could be extremely challenging for you. And it's something that honestly, I don't, I don't have
a ton of experience with, I mean, obviously, you know, having conversations starting with an, I feel
statement, like these are things you'll find in any guide for how to, how to interact with people.
But if people don't respect your boundaries, um, there's nothing that I, or anyone can do to
protect you from the potential consequences. If they ultimately just decide to just
not respect them. And I hear horror stories about other workplaces and, and the kind of
employee treatment that, that takes place there. And I just don't really, I don't really know how to
reconcile how any of that makes sense in, in, in good faith, human interaction. I'm sorry.
Brian M. How do I get refills for the pen? Still getting one before knowing, uh, they take,
they take standard Parker G2 refills. So you can just buy any that they come with a Schmidt
easy flow, 9,000 medium. Um, but you can just fill it with whatever Parker G2 refill you want.
They're common. Archive. Anonymous. What's your current use of the note nine? Um, daily.
What do you recommend for less technical relatives? iPhones, honestly. Uh, I typically get a new device
when supporters dropped. Yeah. Yeah. I really should. Robert D asks, how's the Taycan holding up?
I just hit two years with my forest wagon and it's amazing, except the software bugs are awful.
Sometimes they're like, it can't list music files on a USB drive or the nav voice, nav voice unmutes
itself. Uh, mine's not too buggy. Occasionally it'll like kind of have a little moment and
Android auto connectivity can be kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, but overall it's been pretty
darn okay. Except when it's in the shop. Um, like there's a recall for the, uh, windshield
heater or something right now. I have to take it in for, but it's summer. So I'll deal with it later.
Okay. We're so close. You guys were so close. Um, Thornton. No, we're not doing an episode of
me playing badminton. No one cares about that, but thank you for the suggestion. Liam B. Good
eye from Australia. When do you expect proper neural interfaces to be a thing? I have no idea,
but they sound cool. Tanner. LLD has someone involved in North American manufacturing. What's
the thoughts on insuring some manufacturing, even if it understandably increases cost?
In theory, it's great. In practice, um, even the most ethically minded consumers
seem to really struggle to maintain that when their ethics are reflected in an increased cost
at the till. Um, like I was blown away by almost no maintenance of that whatsoever. Statistically,
I was blown away by the number of Americans who use Shein as their primary source of clothing.
Like I just look at it and I'm like, well, this is trash. How about no, like navigate somewhere else,
but fast fashion, man, it's, it's a killer. Chris L. Since we all seem to generally agree that this
timeline has gone to hell, what year or event was the turning point for you interested to hear all of
your opinions? All right. Well, why don't we let Dan go first? Cause he seems to be too relaxed now
that he's gotten everything done. I'm still going through it. I'm just, I'm teasing. I'm teasing.
Um, let me think. I think it was probably the release of, uh, the 30 series. We've been seeing so
many really, really good like price to performance increases from the, the GPU market. And then it
just started to fall off. And now since then we're moving into other fields like AI and things like
that. And so the consumer space for better and better GPUs is kind of becoming boring. And I don't
know, there's not a lot to get super excited about anymore. Um, at least from that side of things.
Luke, do you want to go next? Yeah. I, I, I think mine's significantly older than that. I think
Dan's lines up kind of with like COVID. Um, not, not exactly, but pretty close. Um,
Oh, am I gone? No, you're still here. No. Okay, cool. Um, but there's, there's,
there was a marker, I think around like 2014, 2012, around there where like,
you know, income versus housing started spreading apart in a, in a really bad way. Um,
suicide rates started going up. Like a lot, a lot of things just started getting bad. I don't
remember all the reasons for it. I've looked into it before and the reasons made sense,
but I don't remember what they are. Um, but it was kind of around that era where things started
to just kind of get worse for a very significant amount of people. And it's been continuing to get
worse for a lot of those similar people. Um, so you've identified, you've identified the second
inflection point of the hockey stick. Um, it started a little earlier. It started more like
in the late seventies to early to mid eighties. Um, and basically that was when, that was when
executive pay started to dramatically outpace, um, median pay. That was when housing prices started
to dramatically outpace, uh, increased earning power of the worker. Um, yeah, that's, that's
basically when everything completely in the world went to, uh, at least in like the Western world,
you know, within our limited sort of worldview. Um, but if I had to have a tech answer, I'm going
to go with mobile gaming. Oh yeah. I, uh, I misinterpreted the question. No, you both,
that your answers are great. I very much agree with Linus. Yeah. That was, that was bad. Reaganomics
was not good. Um, Jeffrey Linus, are you still enjoying your large Chinese TV in your theater? Do
you think TVs above 120 inches will be under $8,000 anytime soon? I love my 150 inch projector,
but would totally swap for better black levels. No, I don't think that's coming anytime soon.
Even that $11,000 TV turns out the MSRP in North America is going to be like $23,000 and it doesn't
cost that much to transport it across the ocean. So I don't know. I don't know what TCL smoking over
there. Um, I think they recognize that consumers over here will be willing to pay a lot more for it.
And they're just basically taking advantage of that. So yeah, yeah, you can't, can't blame them.
It's their technology. If you don't like it, then, uh, don't buy it, I guess. But, um,
no time soon. There's a lot of logistical challenges around products that big already
and going bigger is not going to reach that sort of commodity pricing in the near future. I don't think.
And I think, is that it? We will see you again next week. Same bad time. Same bad channel.
Bye!
Bye!
With the big delay.
Oh my god.
Look at I go!
I'm still there. Get me out of here.
Sorry, Lou.
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Bye!
Mal- dungeons!
Bye!
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