What is up ladies and gentlemen?
We've got a fantastic man show for you guys today.
First and foremost, we are going to be finally revealing the head of LTT Labs.
Yeah.
Yes, we have actually done a test call.
It went really smoothly.
Luke did such a good job of getting it done in an extremely expedient and timely manner.
In other news, Apple has launched their self-service repair program.
We're going to be talking about that.
What else we got?
Nothing.
There is no other topics on the show at all.
Actually, no.
Sega is removing old Sonic games from the store and in a particularly fun turn of events,
Apple, I can't actually find this topic, but Apple has decided that if you don't update
your app for a long enough period of time, it's just going to be removed from the store.
Even if it works fully with all new phones and all new devices, it's gone.
Get rid of it.
It's getting deleted.
Let's get rid of this intro.
All right.
This is going to be good.
Everyone, we were going to update it like every couple of weeks.
The show is brought to you today by Squarespace.
XSplit.
XSplit's back?
Yeah.
Wow.
How are you doing?
It's been a long time.
All right.
We are going to get into those topics, but first, Sarah waited until well after work
hours.
Remember to lock your hours.
So she was sitting around, hanging around, getting paid overtime.
So it's not that bad, I guess.
But she's here so that she and I can painstakingly handcraft.
That's satin versions of the shirt, the eggshell shirt.
Okay.
So they're covered in little bits of painters tape that is actually silkscreened on.
So that is never coming off.
And then Sarah, there's some little cue cards here.
Can you explain what it is that we're doing with these?
Because legitimately I actually forget.
So I think I just need to do it while you explain to me what I'm doing.
Okay.
So I actually never really got confirmation on what you were doing either, but you said
two hand shows ago that you were going to write notes for these.
So I guess you're just writing notes for these.
Notes.
Well, I don't know.
How about, how about you draw a picture and then I'll write a note.
Is that a deal?
Oh, I think I just got marker all over you.
Can I draw dinosaurs?
You can draw anything you want.
You should review the dinosaurs.
Or you should like create a name and a history for the dinosaur.
Okay.
So Sarah, you're up.
You're first.
Luke, do you want to get us started with a topic while Sarah and I work on this?
For sure.
Do you want to dive into that Apple one?
Sure.
Yeah.
I can sure talk about that.
Sarah, are you putting tape on the shirts?
Hold on.
I need drawings to label.
Oh yeah.
And we're also going to add some, some hand added little bits of actual painters tape.
It's going to be great.
It's going to be great.
Uh, yeah.
So the, the Apple topic, if, if you don't update your app for a long enough period of
time, Apple wants to just remove it from the store.
Which is great because if an app works perfectly fine, but you're just like,
Yeah.
Not putting in the work to, you know, uh, smooth the lines.
Okay.
Curve the corners.
And that's, I mean, this, this is an extremely good point because this is my whole problem
with the whole situation is like, if the, if the core idea of this program was, Hey,
your app has been throwing an excessive amount of errors.
Like they have this, they have these statistics, right?
They have like your app versus apps that compare to yours and then they have error rates and
stuff.
So they can show you like, are you relatively industry standard in terms of your crash rates
and error rates and stuff.
And they'll have like, sometimes they'll spike way above that.
And it's like, Whoa, you need to fix something.
If it was like, okay, your app hasn't been updated in two years and it's just throwing
errors like crazy and it's crashing all the time and it's just a horrible mess.
We want to remove it from the store unless you fix some things that is much more understandable
to me.
But there's genuinely a significant amount of applications that just like work fine.
And they're like, hasn't been updated in a while.
So they want to remove it.
I believe a genuinely would make it past them easy way to fix this, by the way, for any
developers out there that are potentially listening is literally just a version bump.
I actually don't think you have to change anything.
So I would suggest doing that.
It's unfortunate that you have to do that to like preserve things.
I personally have an app on the Android store that I've had that hasn't received an update
and I think like four years and it still works completely flawlessly and has worked with
every single phone I've ever migrated it to.
So I hope Google doesn't go down the same route because I would like to keep using that
app.
And I don't think the company that made it like literally exists anymore.
So I don't think it will be getting an update.
But yeah, several developers took to Twitter last Saturday complaining that Apple was taking
their apps down from the store within 30 days because they had not updated in a significant
amount of time.
Apple demanded that developers must submit an update within that 30 days in order to
keep it on the store.
This is part of Apple's what they're calling app improvement system, which is a plan to
remove abandoned and problematic apps from the App Store, which was launched in 2016.
Again, the problem here is when they're not, when they're just removing things that they
are deeming abandoned, not when they're removing things that are problematic.
Because an app can genuinely, especially certain like self-contained games and stuff, can get
to a point where they are completed.
They don't need further updates.
They don't have user-generated content.
They don't have future features.
They just work, and it's fine.
And I don't think developers should have to keep working on that.
How many of these are we doing?
Fix?
Okay, hold on.
You're on the last one then.
Okay.
Yes, Luke, good job.
Thanks.
It's worth pointing out that apps removed from the App Store remain available for re-download.
They just won't be listed for sale or free download to new users.
Which is like cool, I guess, but not great.
This has also raised several concerns which read like questions but are in fact open questions
being asked by the community for indie developers.
So indie developers just appear to be disproportionately targeted.
That makes sense.
Indie developers aren't going to be able to long-term maintain as many apps and might
make something that, say it's a purchase game, not a subscription game, and there's no microtransactions.
Those games usually have a shorter tail on them.
So if they make something, it's great.
It sells really well for a year, say, and stops selling.
You want to keep it on the store because maybe you still get sales every once in a while.
You want people that own the game from the past to be able to download it more easily
even if they switch accounts or something and doesn't need an update.
But yeah, that makes sense.
If an app is complete and works on modern devices, what is the reason for an update?
Well there isn't one.
That would be my answer to it.
Does this kind of requirement incentivize developers to release rushed slash broken
apps or respond slowly to bug reports to keep the possibilities for updates open?
Honestly for that one, no, I don't think so.
Because again, I'm pretty sure you can get by with just a version bump.
And if you can't get by with a version bump, you should be able to get by with changing
the color of a line and also version bumping.
So I would go that route if people really want to keep their stuff up there.
There's a discussion question from, I believe the writer of this was Anthony Young.
If games are art, then does this effectively mean that Apple is asking for art to be constantly
updated whether it needs it or not?
Yes, that is specifically what they're doing.
I definitely agree with that.
How would we feel about this standard being applied to TV shows, movies, famous paintings,
sculptures, et cetera?
So Seinfeld just gets removed if they don't, you know, add more jokes or remove bad jokes?
Certain Greek statues just have like progressively longer members over time.
I love it.
Well, we really felt it needed arms.
This is VArms.o.
Well the concept of an always changing piece of art itself is arguably art.
Yeah.
I could think of situations like that.
That could be interesting.
Think of art slash place.
Okay.
Hold on.
Sabin 1001 says Seinfeld doesn't have abandoned library dependencies in it.
Seinfeld?
Well, yeah, it's saying that, you know, if an app has abandoned library dependencies
and that could actually be a legitimate problem and there could be a reason for Apple to do
this.
But that would like throw errors and have, yeah, that would fall under what I was talking
about before.
Yeah.
That's why I'm so busy.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So what I was saying was, is like, I get it if it is like way above statistical averages.
I think it's stupid.
Yeah.
Cool.
Nice.
All right.
Agreed.
Now, Sarah, are you ready for you to react to my changes or should we just let Luke react
to them?
Yeah.
Sarah did the Sharpie and I added the pen, so I will, I will let you, these are the little
cards that are going to come with the random satin versions of the eggshell shirt.
One in each size.
Ready and go.
I like it.
I dig it.
Yeah.
That's good.
That's an improvement on the overall theme that was going on there.
Also definitely.
That's so far my favorite one actually.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
That's good.
Not, I still think the second one is my favorite one, but that's, these are all, these are
all better.
Okay.
Yeah.
I like that one too.
Okay.
Yeah.
These are good.
I think you might've got better over time.
Also solid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, Sarah.
Now you get to see how inappropriate I made your cards.
I think she'll like them.
Okay.
Wait, is this like a live reaction or what?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These are by the way, the best dinosaur drawings I've ever done.
You can, you can describe them.
You can hold them up for the people so they can actually see.
Sure.
Yeah.
Zoom in.
Zoom in on Sarah.
She's she's hosting the show now.
Thanks Dan.
This is Sarah's show now.
Wow.
It says satin brain, actual size.
This will come with the small t-shirt.
Okay.
Small t-shirt.
Great.
Oh, so you get to decide who they go to.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sarah has that power officially now.
Yes.
This one is fantastic.
Satin paint.
It took me a while to find the swear button.
I didn't move it, did I?
No, no.
I'm just slow.
Usually this one is good.
I think this is my favorite drawing of all of them, but here.
I added horns and I just put satin paint.
Yeah.
I was going to say just.
Incredible.
I thought that was my weakest actually.
Oh, it's so cute though.
Your drawing is very cute.
Thank you.
Well, the drawing is you.
I don't, don't.
I'm just complimenting myself.
This one is good too.
The pterodactyl is bringing you some eggshell paint, says you're welcome, idiot.
Oh no.
This one is my favorite.
That one's really good.
What actually killed the dinosaurs.
Yeah.
This one is inspired by satin paint.
Whoever gets these, you're very lucky.
These are one of a kind masterpieces.
I forget what that one says.
NFPs if you will.
But not actually.
Oh, the, yeah, the, the something sauropod is, is doing some satin paint.
Let's call it a diplodocus.
And his body of a pterosaur is like gross.
Incredible.
All right.
Thank you for sticking around and doing this with us, Sarah.
This was a lot of fun.
It is entirely up to you which one goes to who.
Those are one of a kind masterpieces.
Do you want it?
Do you want to sign them so that whoever gets them gets an original butt?
Yeah, that's, that's perfect.
And not in the actual script you use to sign things.
Okay.
She knows.
She knows.
All right.
Let's get it framed.
Thank you very much, Sarah, for coming on the show with us and participating in that.
And thank you for throwing together this t-shirt design in literally an hour and a half.
That's productivity.
Yeah.
Good.
Good work, Sarah.
Let's go.
Now, every time it takes longer than an hour and a half, I'm going to be like, well, Sarah
did an hour and a half, so that's a standard around here now.
All right.
Why don't we jump into the big topic for the day, which is of course the official announcement
of the head of LTT Labs.
Can I get a drum roll please?
I'm the only one drum rolling.
Okay.
All of you at home.
You guys are doing it.
I'm sure you're doing it.
Okay.
Here we go.
Are we ready to welcome to the show?
Is this actually going to work?
Theoretically.
The one, the only, there he is!
Gary Key!
All right.
Hey, Gary, you want to hit me with some voice noises?
Please.
I don't know if you're going to be able to hear him.
I don't think I can hear him.
We can't hear him.
Okay.
So I'll tell you what, why don't I give you guys a brief rundown of exactly who this guy
is while we get his voice working.
Gary is one of the people who taught me pretty much everything that I ever learned about
technology.
Okay.
And he, if I recall correctly, one of the original half a dozen or so writers at Anand
Tech.
Yeah.
A lot for me too, just to throw that in there.
Yup.
So between, between Gary, Dr. Ian Cutris, Anand, I want to say, I don't remember his
full name, but Raja Gill, those guys were really, in my opinion, the team that had Anand
Tech at its peak.
And this was back in the early two thousands.
So Gary has been on the manufacturer's side.
I'll let him give you guys the full details there, but he's been on the manufacturer's
side for probably about, goodness gracious, I guess it's been almost 10 years now.
Once we get his voice working so that I can actually hear him, that'll be, that'll be,
that'll be great, but it should be working, Gary, hit me.
No, the stream might be able to hear it.
Can they hear him?
We can't hear it.
I can't see Gary.
You can't see him?
Oh no.
Guys, we couldn't.
Oh, actually his frame isn't letting up.
So the system is not hearing him.
Okay.
Cool.
So I'm going to keep stalling for time.
Keep going.
Good luck.
Trying to think of what categories Gary handled back in the day.
I know that he handled the motherboards.
I don't know what else, but in his time at ASUS, I can tell you guys that he's made his
way up to, if I recall correctly, you know what?
I'm not going to say what his title was before he left, because if I get it wrong, then it's
going to be really, really awkward and embarrassing when he, when he pops on.
Stream says, no, they can't hear.
I mean, at this point, should I just call them and then just to hold them up to the
microphone?
Oh, I just saw, I'm seeing audio.
Yay.
There we go.
How are you doing, Gary?
I am great.
So we finally get to announce it.
All right.
I did.
I do.
Okay.
Did I kind of cover what the heck it is that you, you did at some point?
Oh, they still can't hear him.
Oh, fantastic.
Well then we'll just get a recap, but they can't.
They still can't hear you.
Oh no.
Why does this dream not have him, Dan?
Yeah, no, there's nothing.
Gary say something again.
I see it.
I literally see it.
I see it in OBS.
I'm wondering what they should be able to hear.
I'm so confused.
Is it?
Oh, he's super quiet.
He's super quiet.
Turn him up.
Turn him up.
Crank him.
Okay.
No, no, no.
Not you.
Leave it.
Leave it on your side.
Yeah, Gary, don't touch anything.
We'll get Dan to crank you up.
Okay.
Turn you up in OBS.
Fantastic.
Okay.
Okay.
Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?
Yeah, I do.
I do.
We had a whole test call, but I was doing other stuff.
Is that better?
I can go louder.
Okay.
Okay.
Great.
Great.
Great.
Okay, those levels look good.
Yep.
Okay.
All right.
Let's hope that they can hear you.
So why don't you start with giving us a little rundown of what did you use to do at Anantech?
I was the senior...
No, they cannot hear him.
They cannot hear you.
They say nothing.
They cannot hear me.
How is that even possible?
I am watching the levels right now.
It shouldn't be possible.
Nope, you can hear now.
You can hear now.
It's good?
Oh, thank goodness.
Okay, Gary, run us through.
What'd you used to do at an OnTech and when did you leave?
I don't even remember all the details.
Yeah, I started there in 2005 and left in 2009
and was a senior editor, primarily on motherboards,
but then dabbled in SSDs at the beginning of that,
video cards and mice and yeah, whatever else a non had.
Now tell me something.
You went over to the manufacturing side
and what were the factors that caused that to happen?
Cause I mean, one of the things I talked about
when we first announced the lab
was that we were trying to stop a perceived trend
in my eyes of experienced
and knowledgeable media personalities
heading over to the manufacturing side
when and becoming essentially tainted,
disappeared or tainted.
I mean, yeah, a non just disappeared
and then I don't wanna name any names,
but I think there are some that have gone over
to the other side that honestly,
you just kind of can't take everything
they're saying seriously anymore.
So what were the factors that pushed you
over to the manufacturer side?
I had actually spent so much time working
with the various manufacturers,
almost doing consulting work and testing
and yeah, decided if that was the majority of my job,
why not do it at the manufacturer?
Do you feel like you ended up actually making,
so wait, so your first gig at,
did you go straight to Asus?
I thought so.
Yes, I went straight to Asus.
Okay, so then your first gig with them
was not marketing then?
No, I've been in marketing the entire time.
Oh, interesting.
So I started out in technical marketing,
went to PR and then product marketing and channel.
Yeah, for the last three years,
I've been in charge of marketing for North America.
Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.
Yeah, that makes sense that you were in technical marketing
at the beginning, because I was looking at it going,
yeah, you've been in more of like a strategic,
like a PR sort of marketing role,
as opposed to actually being the contact
that I get on the phone with when some voltage
won't adjust in the BIOS or whatever.
It's been a lot of years since then.
Yes, there's been a lot of years.
Still a lot of phone calls though.
Yeah, so I got to tell you something.
When I made that video talking about the lab,
there was actually only one name
that I really had in mind to run it.
And it was you, which actually, no,
now that I think of it, I think I did tell you that,
which really didn't help my negotiating position
when we were trying to figure this out.
But I want you to talk to the people,
like how exciting is it to come back to the media side
and start covering things other than just one brand?
Oh no, it's really hard for me to explain.
It's very exciting.
I am so pumped about doing this.
It's a brilliant opportunity to expand what we're doing
on the manufacturer side, but back on the media side.
There are so many different products
that I've wanted to get into as far as testing,
also testing competing products, right?
That was part of our job in technical marketing.
But yeah, I'm really looking forward to this,
being able to truly take a deep dive
into what makes the product tick and why,
and then why that's important for the consumer, so.
Now, you know that there's gonna be a lot of pressure
to execute here, right?
I mean, one of the things with labs is that it's,
I think we've done a great job over the last 12 years
here at Linus Media Group of getting lighting sparks.
We run around, we light fires,
and then we kind of like run away.
If people wanna go deeper, a lot of the time our answer is,
well, we can point you to more technical resources for that.
But we gotta make more videos.
But the reality of it is,
with the breadth of products that we cover,
we can't go that deep in any particular category.
And your job is essentially to fix that.
And there's something that I kind of popped this on Gary
about, I guess, two, three hours ago.
He didn't know this, but remember lab one
that I showed all of you guys, including Gary,
cause obviously you saw the video.
Man, this guy took so long to apply.
I had to send so many texts.
I was like, hey, I know you saw that video
because I know you watched the videos.
F**k is your resume?
He's like, I'll get it to you.
I'll get it to you.
I'll get it to you.
I haven't made one in a long time, okay?
Fricking guy.
Any who, any who.
So lab one is officially dead.
It's out, it's gone.
Do you know this yet?
Well, we talked about it being a potential thing.
I didn't know it was actually happening though.
Where's that coming from?
Stop.
Okay, lab one is done.
It's out.
So what I think we're gonna do with that
is we're gonna turn it into like linked media
or something like that.
So tech linked starts doing more talk links,
more talk or more tech longer.
So we expand the programming for tech links.
Maybe we add like game linked on Tuesdays and Thursdays
or something like that.
So we're publishing five days a week.
We build some awesome sets in there
for whether it's tech longer,
whether it's talk links so that we don't have
to move things around all the time,
which is one of the big reasons that we don't do
those longer form discussion formats.
We add a couple of people, maybe on the research side,
maybe on the writing side,
have a dedicated editor slash shooter over there.
So we turn that into kind of a satellite studio.
It's no longer gonna be a lab.
We have a new space lined up
that is going to be approximately 10 times the size.
And that should give you some idea
of what my expectations are in terms of building up the lab.
So the way that I framed this for Gary
a couple of hours ago is that I never want to hear,
well, Linus, we could test this
if only we had amount of space X or facility Y.
Because every time I hear that, I'm gonna say,
then why haven't you built it yet?
Or like, is it on order or whatever?
So Gary, are you ready?
I'm ready.
I'm really ready.
I'm sweating right now, but I'm ready.
Man, it's been so long since you've been public facing.
You're always so shy when I tried to get you
in the videos and stuff.
I know.
Well, I kind of suck on video, so.
I'm much better.
No man, you'll get used to it.
You'll get used to it.
You'll get used to it.
This is gonna be so much fun.
So we've actually got one of your new charges.
Gary's been helping us out with the hiring process
for some of our labs candidates as we've made our way,
even though we didn't have an official,
even employment agreement signed with them
because he took forever on that too.
Gary's been helping us with hiring,
making sure that we're going through people's credentials
and making sure we're building out a super qualified team.
We've got someone really exciting who's starting on,
I forget if it's Monday or Tuesday.
And then what's your first day, Gary?
It's in a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
Freaking awesome.
Now I got to know, now we're past the stuff
that Gary and I have talked about already.
What are you gonna do on your first day?
My first day?
Jeez.
Very good question.
Have a little cry?
No, I'll probably do donuts in the parking lot.
You haven't surprised me.
So, okay, is it a secret?
The other media vertical that you have participated in
in the past?
Cause my understanding is you kind of have done
some ghost writing,
but I don't know if you've actually disclosed
for what and about what.
And don't feel pressured to disclose it
if you don't want to, that's fine.
No, no, we'll keep that secret.
We're gonna keep that secret.
Okay, well, I'll say this much.
Gary, tech is not Gary's only passion.
And that could actually be a really good thing
for Linus Media Group moving forward as well.
So man, you're gonna have a lot of stuff to do.
Yeah.
I look forward to it, I really do.
How big is your team gonna be after 18 months?
Like these are important questions.
Have you given this any thought?
Could you repeat that?
I'm sorry.
How big is your team gonna be after 18 months?
Yeah, I thought that's what you asked.
I'm envisioning probably nine to 11.
Nine to 11?
Okay, my expectation is somewhere in the neighborhood
of like 14 to 18.
So we're sort of talking the same language.
But the thing is that, man,
as we get deeper and deeper into all these different
verticals, I'm realizing that,
even something like, okay, here's what we were working on.
Here's the reason that the show was late today.
I wanted to mod my old Game Gear
to put a better screen on it.
And it turns out that this is a king rabbit hole.
There are so many different revisions
of the Game Gear hardware over the years.
There are so many different board layouts
for the different revisions.
There are so many interesting little quirks
that you might discover.
So even though we found out that we had,
what's this one?
This is a single SOC, whatever.
Dual ASIC.
Oh, no, no, the original one.
This one's single ASIC, isn't it?
Oh yeah, the VA2.
Yeah, so we have a,
yeah, so this is a VA5, I thought.
I have no idea what part of that is.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Okay, so this is a VA5.
Okay, it's got a single ASIC,
which means that you can't replace the screen
unless, oh wait, there was a new screen kit
that was released six days ago or something like that.
Oh, but even if you get a new screen,
it actually in the sports like 500 colors.
So what you really want is an A1 or A2
or something like that.
So this is a dual ASIC.
But then we found out based on our serial number,
we think that this may actually be one of the first
like several hundred off the line
of the particular factory that made this unit.
Also, whoever sold it to us appears to have done
at least some mods unless some of the early ones
shipped with glass screen covers,
because you can see those are clearly
not the same material at all.
There's different audio boards you can put in,
different charging boards you can put in
to convert it to lithium ion.
And I'm sitting here going like,
if we don't have a couple
of dedicated electronics modding people
and a person who's just dedicated to retro console content,
we're not gonna be able to keep up
because that's the vision for the labs
at the end of the day is that the tide has been,
the tide's been turning for quite some time now on YouTube.
You're no longer able to just be a generalist,
a jack of all trades, a master of none,
because there's going to be someone or someone's out there
in every single vertical that is gonna do it
five times better than you because that's all that they do.
They eat, sleep, and breathe,
nothing but that particular category day in, day out.
So I think a perfect example of someone like that
is Addy from EposVox, okay?
Looks at pretty much nothing but streaming optimization
and coding, capture, all that kinds of microphones,
really focused on streaming.
And so unless we have people who just are completely immersed
in these categories or in these spaces,
I just think we're gonna fade into irrelevance
and that's what the lab is for.
So essentially the way that I see the lab
is that it's going to be kind of like
tripling to quadrupling our writing staff
without making necessarily more content.
Yeah, but also we'll probably do more content.
Yeah, Vincent from HDTV Test is another great example.
Chat's pointing out some other just outstanding examples
of people who are super focused on a particular vertical.
And to be clear,
the idea is not to compete these people out of business
because the way that I see it,
the rising water is gonna lift all ships,
however that saying goes,
because the more we educate people about technology,
the more appetite there's gonna be for deeper content,
deeper analysis, and of course, differing opinions.
I mean, even back in the day when you were doing written,
there was AnandTech and Tom's Hardware and HardOCP
and PCper and Tech Report
and all these respective publications.
And you didn't read a review from just one.
We just need to make sure
that we are part of that conversation.
So can you do it?
Yes, I can.
That would be a hilarious time to say no.
Just saying.
Honestly, on second review, I think maybe not.
No, I think I'll get any fun on that plane ticket.
I'm involved.
Yeah, so I'm excited.
I mean, one of the great things
that I liked so much about bringing Gary in
is he doesn't only have the technical expertise
and really the hunger to learn more
and get deeper into this stuff,
but he has the people management expertise
because the reality of it is that I need to be focused
on making the content entertaining,
on keeping Linus Media Group
running like a well-oiled machine.
So he wasn't cheap.
Gary, you weren't cheap.
So he wasn't cheap,
but the idea is that Gary's gonna come in
and basically, I don't have to think about it.
When I get numbers or when I get a report from labs
or if Alex is sitting on set for short circuit,
working on an unboxing of some laptop,
whatever is on that page is bulletproof, can we do it?
Yeah, our goal is not to be questioned.
Simple as that.
Well, I'm excited.
Yeah, I am too.
In fact, I need to get to the airport
so I can find a place to live.
Yeah, so how's that Vancouver housing market treating you?
Oh, just like it is in St. Jose, it's a bit rough.
All right, well, hey, you know what?
Thank you very much for joining us on the show.
I'm super glad that we were able to bring you on.
Sorry guys, there's a really long delay
on the call with Gary.
So maybe we'll have him come in person once he's here
and we'll have a chat maybe after the first month or so,
we can talk about what's going well,
what's going not as well, what positions we wanna hire,
what we can do to make this whole thing go better.
I mean, really the reality of it is,
it shouldn't come down to budget
as long as we're finding the right people,
we wanna make sure that we are attracting the right talent.
So guys, for those out there who know,
I know a lot of you, no offense, Gary,
are gonna have no idea who Gary is
because he has spent the last 10 years behind the scenes.
Yeah, he's not a limelight seeker
and you know what, that's cool.
But for the people in the know,
I think that this sends a message
that we are serious about this.
And if you weren't sure if we were serious about this
and you've held off on applying,
then it's time to get your resume over here
because whether it's displays,
whether it's GPUs, CPUs, whether it's consumer electronics,
we have to do and we're gonna need a lot of experts.
And if you feel like you can help us take things
to the next level, then we really need your paperwork.
All right, thanks, Gary, drive safe.
Thank you, take care, see you later.
All right, bye.
Bye. Bye.
Just as a note for troubleshooting in the future,
apparently there was no delay for the stream.
It was just for our monitoring.
Oh, got it, interesting.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
Okay.
All right.
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yeah, are we supposed to do any LTT store stuff?
Oh, whoa, no way.
Okay, yeah, this is big news for LTT store.
Oh?
Yeah, let's get my screen up here.
It's finally back for over a year.
We have not been able to get,
we have not been able to get heathered aqua blanks
from American Apparel in the volumes that we need
across all sizing that we need
for the constellations t-shirt.
Remember the constellation shirt?
Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen,
it is finally freaking back and not only is it back,
but it is back in our own blanks.
So these are the new LTT store, creator warehouse,
whatever you wanna call them.
These are our blanks.
These are the same ones that went out
on the privateer shirt.
I don't actually know if they went out on the eggshell one.
I'm not sure.
There's still a little bit of overlap on black shirts
in terms of what's American Apparel and what's the new ones,
but constellations will absolutely be new.
And check this out.
There's a long sleeve.
That's actually so cool.
I like the long sleeves.
I've always liked long sleeve shirts,
but also constellations in long sleeve
just kind of makes sense to me.
Mm-hmm.
We are working on a constellations V2,
but because constellations V1 has been in such demand
and we've had people message us so many times,
hey, that shirt, I love that shirt.
Why can't I buy that shirt?
We are doing one more run of constellations one.
They're gonna take about two to three weeks to print.
All of these are gonna be print to order
and your entire order will be shipped together.
So if you order more items than just the shirt,
it's all gonna ship at once once the shirt is ready.
We never offered constellations in a long sleeve.
And the long sleeve is also our own long sleeve.
This is gonna be the first availability
of our blank long sleeves.
And guys, they're freaking awesome.
So here's the old American Apparel version.
So you can see how it looks actually printed.
I doubt the logo on the back will be orange.
We don't really do that anymore.
I suspect the logo will be some other color,
maybe white or something like that.
But don't quote me on that.
Don't quote me on that.
So constellations is this design.
If you guys wanna get your hands on an LTT long sleeve,
this is gonna be the first possible availability of it.
All right, let's get on with the show, shall we?
What do you wanna talk about next?
Team viewer called me again.
That's what I wanna talk about next.
Do you wanna hear my voicemail?
Oh, you didn't pick up.
Of course I'm not picking up.
Let's go, let's do it.
Those fricking guys.
All right, hold on.
Six messages and one saved message.
To play your messages, press one to record a message.
All right, y'all ready?
Y'all ready for this?
Message sent by 72.
Oh, whatever, hold on.
Okay, let's get that number out of here.
We're not gonna, okay.
Tyler from Team Viewer Software.
Check out to hit here.
Wanted to see if we can connect and speak briefly
in regards to the older version of the license
that your company is running with us.
Give me a call back here at my direct line.
It's gonna be 727.
Okay, okay, yeah, that's enough for your direct line.
Literally, literally did it again.
Out of nowhere, could you even hear that?
I bet you guys couldn't even hear that.
They're basically just like,
hi, I'm calling from Team Viewer
and I'd like to talk to you about the older version
of the software that your company is running.
If you could give me a call back, my direct line.
I don't fucking direct line is.
How many times do I have to tell you guys not to call me?
You've already said, you took me off the list.
Once again, here we are Team Viewer
with you guys either lying about taking me off the list
or you're lying about the existence of a list at all.
And you would think, given that last time you guys called me
and I complained about it,
so many people shared my frustration
and were so, that the video got a million freaking views.
You would think after that experience, you guys would go,
oh gee, maybe we shouldn't call Winus anymore.
I'm a really smart executive.
I'm a smart marketing executive
and I think that this might be a good idea.
Well, listen, I know the guy sounds like that
cause he works at Team Viewer,
but you should listen to him anyway
because that's really smart.
You guys need to actually stop emailing me, stop calling me.
I spent, I forget how much it was.
So if the number's not right, I don't care.
But I spent thousands of dollars,
like $5,000 on a perpetual license of Team Viewer 12.
And for those of you saying,
I should switch to some other software, I don't want to.
I paid for this software.
It actually works perfectly for what I need to do.
All I need to happen is for Team Viewer
to never call me again.
Not even once.
That was it.
That's all I have to say.
You should just like reverse chain them.
Like task someone at work
with wasting as much of their time as possible.
So just like rebounce them over and over again,
like generate a bunch of like fake email addresses
or something cause you can generate email addresses
in Gmail that you don't pay for.
Because you can like add pluses and stuff.
So they can still be our domain,
but you don't pay for it
cause they're just like forwarding addresses or whatever.
No, I know how that works, like aliases.
Yeah, yeah.
So you just like bounce them from person to person
to person to person to person to person to person to person
and never actually have there be an end.
Just have them chase this non-existent carrot.
Oh man.
You want to waste my time?
We'll waste yours.
Let's go.
It's just more work than it's worth for me.
I just want them to not bother me.
I just, I bought your product
and I just want you to leave me alone.
Man, Anthony's discussion question is,
this isn't really a question,
but I literally am dealing with this with Telus right now.
They keep messaging me every Wednesday without fail
to try to get me to install Norton.
I said, stop multiple times.
I got the 10th one this week.
I am angry by the way I use Arch.
Thank you, Anthony, for that.
I'm actually stunned that that's happening.
I read that before the show and was like, what?
Like why is Telus calling him to install Norton?
Telus is one of those companies
where now that they have pure fiber, I love the service.
Absolutely love the product.
Their uptime is genuinely extremely strong as well.
But over the years, my experiences dealing with Telus
from like an administrative standpoint,
going all the way back to high school,
like we are talking, how old am I now?
Yeah, we're talking 20 years.
I have a 20 year history with them.
I bet you this is true for anyone
who's ever worked with like a major ISP.
Shaw has been better by and large from my experience.
Shaw is super anti, super like monopolistic
and anti-competition in their business practices.
Sure they are.
Oh, Shaw's okay.
Like aggressively.
Shaw's got some really stupid issues.
Did you know you have to call Shaw to put your modem in
or to put your router thing in bridge mode?
You know that that router supports putting it in bridge mode
just through accessing it over the local IP,
but Shaw specifically blocks that functionality
so it doesn't work, so you must call them.
Or at least they did the last time I used them.
I haven't touched a Shaw internet product
since Telus Pure Fiber came to my neighborhood.
I'm also gonna put an allegedly in front of this
because like I don't know,
but I've heard from a very wide range of people,
so I believe it to be true,
that Shaw actively like legislatively blocks Telus
from putting conduit in new buildings.
Oh, I would believe that.
Well, hold on a second.
Don't you have some firsthand experience with that?
Why don't you just tell that story?
I think that that's not allegedly,
that's a thing that happened to you.
That happened in that building
as far as the developer told me.
Sure, then just say that,
but I think you should tell the story.
So as far as my understanding goes
from more than one developer telling me this,
Shaw is seen as like a local ISP
and Telus isn't for some weird reason.
And that gives Shaw like first strike
at new apartment buildings that go up in British Columbia.
And Shaw can just decide that they're gonna only put in
a certain amount of conduit into the building
that only has enough space
for what Shaw is going to put in,
which does not allow Telus to put anything in.
Effectively, the developer just goes like,
okay, well, we're being paid by Shaw
and Telus can't do anything with us at this stage anyway,
so we're just gonna build the building.
And then Telus to be able to get service into that building
would have to like chop up.
Tear out like walls.
They'd have to chop up the building.
They have Swiss cheese the building
to fit all their new conduit in
so they can actually service the building.
So tons of apartments in BC,
like a huge amount of new apartments
don't have Telus access.
And it's just like, why is this even allowed?
That's the most monopolistic thing
I've ever heard in the ISP space.
Why is that allowed?
I don't understand.
I've never understood.
Yeah, like someone in full plane chat said, it's BS.
It sounds like local monopolies.
It absolutely is.
You're buying into an apartment building
is buying into an ISP at this point, which is nuts.
Which was actually a deciding factor for Luke
when he was shopping for his place.
He was like-
Because Shaw's fiber isn't fiber.
Oh boy.
Oh, we got Luke with the spice we take now.
It's not.
Okay, they go fiber to the node.
They advertise it as fiber.
It's so frustrating.
They go fiber to the node.
They go copper to your place.
Telus goes fiber to your place.
Yes.
I prefer Telus right now
because they're not just like blatantly lying to everyone.
Yeah, like that's so much better.
Why are you?
Oh my goodness.
I have two and a half gig now.
We have fiber because we go fiber to the node.
Yeah, you've been doing that forever.
Yeah, fiber to the node.
How else were you going to get internet service to the node?
Like what were you going to do?
Send smoke signals to the node?
Shut up.
You got fiber optic internet's been a thing for decades.
Yeah, it's so frustrating.
How else were you going to cover that distance?
It's honestly pathetic.
Step your game up.
Cause like we used to be a like Shaw house.
My parents' house had access to both.
Yep.
And I liked, my brother and I like sat our parents
down one time and we were like, we got to switch to Shaw.
Shaw is the way to go.
And they did it and we were stoked for a long time.
And now they're just like-
Telus's ADSL-
It was terrible.
Like the number of times,
this was my ex-girlfriend in high school,
like my high school sweetheart girlfriend.
The number of times I had to bring Telus to her house
cause Shaw wasn't available there.
Cause I was, we were out nowhere in Maple Ridge.
Okay.
And so they had no access to Shaw and I had to bring them
up, I swear to you, like half a dozen times.
And every single time they diagnosed a completely separate
issue, their ADSL service went down all the time.
It was so frustrating.
And man, their customer service was so bad back then.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I just, so like I used to be on the Shaw side
and then fiber started becoming a thing
and Shaw just stayed in the past.
Yeah. They were like, well, what don't you like coax?
Don't you like coax, bro?
In this, in this age of like everyone on the planet
trying to be a streamer, don't, isn't it fine
that we have this non-symmetrical, you buy like 900 down
and no matter what we advertise you,
you get like 10 up or 20 up and then, and then like Shaw,
Shaw does their, their speeds.
This is another allegedly, but Shaw does their speeds.
As far as my understanding goes as like sections.
Yeah. Oh, they do.
Because it's not fiber to the house.
Yeah. So it's all shared.
So it's all shared.
So in peak times, you're like 10 up goes down to like five.
It's like, oh, I just can't do anything.
Now to be clear.
Goodness.
Any ISP is over-provisioning.
That is actually normal.
And that's, I don't mind that to a certain degree,
but at, at peak times I can speed test my Telus stuff
and it's pretty much what I'm paying for.
Yeah. Mine, when they first put it in,
I first paid for Gigabit and it was like faster.
Oh no, I couldn't check the Gigabit.
No, it was when I went to 500 at first
and it was faster than 500.
And then I had no way of knowing if I was faster
than Gigabit until I upgraded
to greater than Gigabit gear later.
And it was actually a little higher than Gigabit.
I have found if you don't test during like absolute peak,
Telus connections are usually faster than advertised.
And like, yes, I'm not, I'm not a Telus shell.
There are downsides, but right now it's not a competition.
Man, Telus has managed to screw up
almost every single interaction I've ever had with them.
Even when we had our ITEL fiber network put in here,
when we first upgraded to, I guess it was Gigabit.
So ITEL, just for some context,
as far as my understanding goes is a small company
that runs off of Telus backbone, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So, so they, they do their own stuff.
Like they do actual engineering and stuff.
They're not just like some cheapo reseller.
And they like put down dark fiber and stuff too, right?
But they are, but they are not.
They're cool.
Like a national tier ISP either.
They're, they're a relatively small shop,
although they've grown a lot in the time we've known them.
So when we first engaged with them,
they are basically just leasing,
they're leasing capacity from Telus.
And their, their CTO and I spent literally,
like it was either an hour or two hours on the phone
trying to diagnose why our upload speed
was like a 10th of what it was supposed to be.
And it turns out that some,
some butterfingers, numb nuts at Telus
just entered, missed a zero.
It took forever to fix it.
Oh my goodness.
Like literally everything I've ever done with Telus
has kind of been a cluster,
but the product these days is very good.
So that's that I had,
you got to give credit where credit is due.
All right.
You got to give credit where credit is due.
Yeah.
People in chat are saying some ISPs boost their speeds
when you go to speedtest.net.
Sure, but there's other ways to test speed.
Yeah.
Like I've got a two and a half gigabit connection at home
and I was downloading games off Steam
at 280 megabytes a second.
Yeah.
Like.
Like I have surpassed my rated speeds on Steam as well.
Like it's.
Regularly.
Yeah.
And like other services, like it's, it's, it's fast.
The one thing that you get with Telus right now is.
It's fast.
It's fast.
Latency.
You get speed, you get latency.
Get that good latency.
The actual connections are really good.
Just dealing with them isn't exactly the greatest thing ever.
Yeah.
That's one way of putting it.
Yeah.
Speaking of dealing with them not being the greatest thing
ever, why don't we talk about Apple's launch
of their self-service repair program?
American Apple customers can now take advantage
of Apple self-service repair program
to fix their mobile devices.
By going to this completely generic looking website.
That's right my friends.
That domain.
You too can go to self-servicerepair.com.
This is actually Apple?
I don't, right?
Apparently it's run by a third party company.
It's run by a third party company.
Yeah. Okay.
But yes, these are genuine Apple parts
and genuine Apple tools.
But this isn't, yeah.
This isn't like, it literally is not Apple though.
So the site has all the parts, tools and manuals available
as performer pairs on iPhones going back to the 12.
Jonathan Horst editorializes not handy
as 11 and older are the models
that will be needing repair right now.
That's a very fair criticism.
Yep.
And so far one can repair it.
Man, are we converting Horst to like not an Apple,
just like lover?
I feel like Horst's takes on Apples have gotten more
and more cynical the longer he's been here.
Oh boy.
I love you, Jonathan.
You do a great job over at Mac address.
I try not, honestly, I try to have nothing to do
with the editorial direction over there.
I think just being around here, I'll just,
I'll pop by his desk and be like, it's stupid.
It'll be like, oh, why do you say?
I'm like, well, I don't know this, this and this.
Like, oh, okay.
Yeah, I can try and integrate that.
No, no, no, no, no.
Just, just do your thing.
Do your thing.
Do your thing.
Anyway, so far one can repair the battery, bottom speaker,
rear camera, display, taptic engine and SIM tray.
Okay.
It's thorough, but not easy looking.
Users are to play Apple,
are to play Apple repair genius for a day.
Oh, okay.
For example, repairing anything requires using
the heated display removal fixture and the display press.
Oh, I see.
So they give you guides and tools and everything,
but only to do it the like official way.
Not necessarily the cheap and or efficient way.
So people in chat are saying that they charge you
the same price that you would pay at the genius bar.
Well, that's the problem is these tools are available
for purchase for 256 and $216 respectively.
So this is the heated display removal fixture
and the display press,
but repairers can rent the entire kit for a week for $49.
The issue is that the economics
are sort of difficult to justify.
So on an iPhone 12 display, a screw kit costs $268
while going to the Apple store costs 279.
So you literally save $10 to do it yourself.
However, if you send back your parts,
you do get a discount of $33 and 60 cents for a display.
So for $40 of savings, you get to do it yourself.
When honestly for OEM grade parts,
like you could definitely do this for a lot cheaper
than that.
Okay.
Our discussion questions are,
what are you most happy to see with this program?
I'm most happy that the program exists at all
because now the first, you know,
okay, let's say we're trying to move a really big rock.
You know?
I'm not, that's my heart's sake.
You're not, well, can I?
Nope.
Because I feel like this is going to be their look,
we did it move and they will not improve.
Okay.
That's my concern.
I think the bigger picture, no offense.
I think the bigger picture is we know that right to repair
has a long way to go.
And if nothing else,
this is that first little bit of movement of the rock.
Is it good enough?
No.
No.
I believe it will improve over time just by merit
of them not removing access to iPhone 12 stuff
when the 14 and 15, 16, 17 launch, like I feel like,
I hope like the back catalog of parts will expand
just by nature of new things coming out
and not removing access to that stuff.
That would be really awful.
I think throwing it under one of the worst websites
I've seen in like a decade and under a third party
really doesn't help a lot of adoption.
Like if you land, if you land on Spot's website here
and the...
Should I throw it to you?
Sure.
A little logo in the corner.
And if you see that the logo is literally just plain text,
like if I land on this website, I'm leaving immediately
because I'm concerned about the security of my computer.
Like I'm not buying something through this thinking
that it's actually official.
It's clear that Apple could have made this official
but decided not to.
Yes.
Now, that's not to say that working through a third party
is necessarily bad.
We praised Valve for working through third parties
like iFixit on the Steam Deck,
like right to repair initiative.
So making parts available to end users.
But the reason we did that is,
well, they partnered with someone reputable.
They partnered with more than one partner.
And I mean, is that, okay,
do we need to give reasons other than that?
No, I mean, like, and I'm not trying to dog on,
on small companies by any means.
It's just this website literally looks like a scam.
Like...
Apple would have made it look more Apple.
And an Apple customer, I think,
is gonna want it to look a little more Apple.
But can I come back to my point, back to my point
where if Apple is doing this, okay,
maybe it becomes the industry norm to do at least this.
Or maybe, maybe, now that it's a conversation,
now that an Apple customer even becomes aware
of the concept of being able to get replacement parts
for your hardware and perform repairs yourself
or do them for your friends.
Like if I was a high school student or something like that,
then how cool would it be
if I could repair all of my friends' iPhones?
I mean, I'm not gonna buy them.
I guess I would just...
And getting the word out is good.
So maybe we see one-upmanship start to happen in the space.
That's what I want.
I'm worried that in this case,
due to the way that they did it,
and this is gonna be a weird thing to argue,
but in this case, due to the way that they did it,
getting the word out might actually be bad.
I know that sounds nuts,
but my argument for that is the pricing is so bad.
The pricing is so egregiously bad.
The website that it lands you on is so sketchy looking.
There's no about us.
You can't figure out who these people even are.
I'm on your screen now.
There's no...
You look at the bottom.
Contact Us is just like the most basic.
It's not even loading now.
There we go.
Contact Us is just like,
open a chat and here's a random phone number.
There's no about us.
There's nothing.
Like, who are these people?
I don't wanna send them a huge amount of money.
That's one of the first things that I do
when I go to a website,
is check about us and find out where they're located
and then cross-reference that
with some kind of geographical resource like Google Maps.
Make sure they're actually real.
Who are you?
What's your building look like?
Yeah.
And then, so pricing is super bad
and it looks super sketchy.
So to me, getting the word out this way
feels like they're actually turning people off
and making them, pushing them into a defeatist mentality
where they're like, I have to get it repaired by Apple.
There is no other solution
because this is the solution that is being exposed to me
in the easiest way possible and it's trash.
That's my argument.
I can't argue that, but I just would like to...
I would like to feel better about this.
So if I live in my delusional little magic minus world.
I hope it works out.
I hope you're right.
I hope people see this and go like,
oh, maybe there's alternatives.
And then they work with whatever local shop
or they just research things themselves
and try to do it themselves
if they're a little technically apt or whatever.
Like that would be fantastic.
I hope it goes that direction.
I just feel like, honestly,
it feels kind of weird to say like a website
made me lose hope like almost immediately,
but it really did.
Like it's just so sketchy looking.
What's the word for the dashboard
for the merch messages again?
I just realized I don't have it up.
I don't exactly want to say it.
Can I just see it?
Yeah.
Okay, I think, really it's not going to auto fill for me.
Oh my gosh.
No, that's not it.
Oh, oh my gosh.
Like this, this thing that, okay.
You know what?
That didn't complete.
I'll check my history.
I'll see if I can bring it up.
I can send it to the email that's on my computer.
Okay, yeah, that would help.
Okay.
Anyway, yeah, fine.
Oh, the, the, the, the RMS journal and float playing chat
says I've been thinking about the availability of parts.
Wouldn't it be worse for the environment
to continue producing iPhone 12 parts
six or seven years after it released?
Wouldn't having a ton of batteries
and other parts lying around for years be bad too?
So no, they would keep them in production.
There's so many iPhone 12s out there
and there will be so many iPhone 12s out there,
even six, seven years from now,
because to Apple's credit,
they do do an excellent job of providing software updates
for their devices that yeah,
you would be able to justify doing small production runs
and no, they wouldn't be lying around for years at a time.
And you might say, okay, well, you know,
all these parts are effectively, you know,
manufactured e-waste because you're putting them
into old devices that are not gonna last.
But that's the thing,
as long as those parts are available,
you can actually keep running those devices on life support.
That's good because when you make a new device,
well, you're making the whole device,
not just those parts of it.
So.
Also, it's not like they aren't going to
like monitor their demand and produce for that.
Like they don't just have like,
an entire factory pumping out iPhone 8 screens
for the end, until the end of time,
as fast as they possibly can.
Apparently the repair manuals
are at least on the Apple website.
Yeah, when you click the manuals button,
it just completely redirects you to Apple.
I know.
Which is also not how that's supposed to work.
I know, I know.
I did that as well.
I didn't even want to break it up
because it was like sketchy,
but not as sketchy as the other things.
So like, I don't know.
I'm not sold, man.
And like, again, I don't want to rag on a small company,
but they got to fix these things.
You got to look legitimate when you're on the internet.
Raven Derritt says you can run the devices,
but as people, we seem to toss away working stuff
for new shiny things all the time, regardless.
Right.
But we want those devices to go to someone, right?
That's the point.
As long as it still works.
It's like buying a new car does not turn your old car
into an environmental disaster immediately.
Someone will drive that car and they will drive.
They will go buy that car instead of a brand new one.
Also with enhanced repairability,
you might shift the culture to being more interested
in keeping devices going.
There's a significant amount of people
that are completely fine with their phones.
Yes.
But the battery is not okay.
So they buy a new phone.
I'm honestly getting a little bit tired of my folding phone.
I picked up my Note 9 the other night
because my battery was low on this
and I just needed something.
Mention it.
And I was like, oh, it still feels so good.
I might put a new battery in it and just rock the Note 9
for another couple of years.
I don't know, man.
Nice.
But yeah, it's like, I don't know.
Wicked Peruvian is really mad at you
criticizing the website, by the way.
Says, hey, my uncle Barry made that website
for like two hours and it was super hard for him.
Yeah, I just, like design actually matters
for a lot of reasons other than just like, ooh, pretty.
It makes a website feel more legitimate.
It makes a company feel more legitimate.
You need to stay up to date so that people don't think
that your website has been abandoned.
You need to have an About Us page
so people can, again, add legitimacy to you.
If I haven't heard of your company
and I'm gonna spend a bunch of money with you,
something that I very often do,
you mentioned how one of the first things you do
when you go to a website is you go to the About Us.
One of the first things I do is
how does this company make money?
Because a lot of the times I wanna make sure
that whatever thing I'm using
has a reasonable way of making money
because if it doesn't, then I'm gonna be like,
why are they, how are they profiting off of me?
And am I actually okay with it?
If it's like, oh, they're clearly profiting off of me
because I'm buying some service or I'm buying something,
that adds legitimacy to me,
but then I wanna see like who the team is, et cetera.
I actually care about those things.
And I know the greater world that does as well.
So like, please update the website.
We need to do a couple of merch messages
for those of you who haven't noticed already
or you're new to the show.
Merch messages are down there.
If you buy something on lttstore.com during the show,
while we are live, you can enter a merch message.
Some of them will just end up showing on the show.
So if you wanna do shout outs for your friends or family,
that's an awesome place to put it.
Some of them will be curated by our producer, Bell,
who is gonna actually read us a couple of those
for us to address them.
Do you wanna start at the top?
Cause I've already got an answer in my mind for that one.
Brendan asks, with Elon buying Twitter,
how much money would someone have to offer you to sell LTT?
I think if they offered $44 billion.
$44 billion would be pretty hard to say no to.
I'd have to wonder what the terms are.
Like, am I some kind of like sex slave
for the rest of my life as part of the deal?
I mean, you never know with the elites, right?
I mean, the kinds of rumors that swirl
around the billionaire class are just like hilarious.
Like, did you ever hear the one about how the co-
Sorry, you were in the middle of saying something,
but what was the guy's name?
Who had the island?
You super sketchy dude.
Oh, what's his face?
Jeffrey Epstein.
Yeah, the amount of them that had photos with that dude
or like hung out with him a lot.
It's like, there's a lot of rumors.
Might be true.
Did you ever hear the one about the co-founders
of one of the fang companies?
I just don't feel like naming them
because it could be not accurate.
But one of the co-founders of one of the fangs
apparently had a soundproof room for conducting meetings.
Completely soundproof.
Oh yeah.
But like, apparently it was like in their home.
Oh.
And I'm sitting here going,
what do you mean that for?
I don't know if I mentioned this on WAN,
but there's a, I struggle to say confirmed.
Allegedly, there's a couple people that were founders
of one kind of fangy company and a single person
who was a founder of another company
that isn't technically included in fang,
but it would be that had an apartment
that was completely sound blocked off
that they would go to on a private elevator
up to that apartment.
It's completely soundproof.
There's a chef that has a different entry
that goes to a kitchen.
They leave food in like a certain area
that is completely blocked off.
They have no access from the kitchen
into the rest of the apartment.
And then to get the food, the chef has to leave.
And then they go in and get their food.
And they have meetings in there, or at least used to.
Crazy.
Nuts.
Bloodsail admiral over in floatplane chat,
can I just shout you out for this being hilarious?
Hearsay, and I'm assuming this is a Johnny Depp
Amber Heard trial reference here.
Objection hearsay.
You see the one where Amber Heard's lawyer
literally asks a question and then objects to his own question?
Look, I don't normally,
I don't normally wade into like celebrity drama
because it's not really my cup of tea
because it's just kind of a bottomless pit.
But I gotta say based on how things are going so far,
I'm pretty team Johnny on this one.
I just-
She is not looking good.
I have not really followed it that closely,
but I've been finding it very funny.
Like I saw that clip.
My girlfriend sent me a few other clips
that have just been very entertaining.
Yes, Zatharion, he objected to his own question.
The judge was extra confused.
You watch him like stumble afterwards,
but it's, yeah, it's pretty funny.
Oh man.
He objected to so many things.
I don't know.
I haven't been keeping up to it.
I shouldn't say anything, but yeah.
Apparently he objected to the testimony
of the person that was testifying.
No, he was prepping to object to the answer.
Depp was giving not the question he was asking.
Okay, either way it was hilarious.
Yeah, I don't care.
I don't care about the details.
Either way, it was hilarious and I loved it.
It was amazing.
Talk to your humor.
Yeah, okay.
How much money would someone have to offer you to sell LTT?
Well, I can tell you for a fact
that even if I got an offer that was millions of dollars,
right now I am not at a stage in my career
and I think I speak for myself.
I speak for my wife who as most of you, I think,
probably know you guys are WAN show regulars.
My wife who is my business partner.
So we are pretty much 50, 50 owners.
It's a little complicated.
Have I ever told the story about how I went full ego trip
and I was like, can I have 51%
back when we were setting up the company?
That's incredibly lame.
I legitimately, okay, so hold on a second.
My justification for it
is actually not completely ridiculous.
Would you like to hear my justification
or would you like to sit there judging me?
I'm gonna do both.
You're gonna do both, okay.
My justification for it is that
I liked being like the majority shareholder,
founder, whatever, but at the end of the day,
because we're married with no prenuptial agreement
whatsoever, if we were to split up,
my 51% goes half to me and half to her
and her 49% goes half to me and half to
fucking anyway.
It actually doesn't matter.
So I was like, look, this doesn't matter.
I just wanna be like, Lens Media Group,
I have the controlling interest or whatever.
And it was like, it was totally stupid
and I totally get it, but it also totally doesn't matter.
And she and I both knew it at the time.
So that's my justification for it.
It actually doesn't make a difference.
Okay.
Are you still judging?
Yeah.
I mean, it's still stupid.
Is it less lame?
Linus and Cheris has always been an interesting thing.
That's all I'm saying.
And I'm not surprised is another thing that I will say.
I like, look, I like controlling the direction
of the company.
Entirely, in every possible way.
Have I done a bad job?
Yes.
No, no, it's been good.
Oh my God.
What a dick.
What a dick.
As I sit here and drink from my,
my LTT store water bottle wearing my,
my LTT store underwear and LTT store shirt.
Yeah. It's been horrible.
Yeah. I've clearly done a very bad job.
So, so anyway, I, I was just like,
and I asked if she had said no,
it would have been 50-50.
Wait, she said yes?
Yeah. She was like, fine.
I'm like, well, she let me call it Linus Media Group 2.
Yeah.
I was open to other ideas.
It's true.
I kind of want to change it.
You know what?
And in fairness to me, in fairness to me,
I recently offered to do another nine years
the other way around.
I was like, tell you what, how about we do the paperwork?
You know, if I want us to, I want,
I want you to feel like we were having a conversation
where like, she felt like I was overriding something.
And I was like, look, no,
I don't want you to feel like that.
Yes.
I have my convictions and I have my opinions
and there's a way that I feel we should do it,
but I don't, it's not that I,
it's not that I'm not listening
or it's not that we can't do it your way.
I tend to be a very passionate arguer.
That's all.
True. Fair enough.
You've also traditionally,
and you've gotten a lot better specifically
with Yvonne lately.
And it seems like she's appreciating it, which is cool.
But you've also had maybe some tendencies
to not exactly share the credit.
Yes. That's fair.
Or accolades for things in the past.
I tend to speak in the singular.
Yvonne has, in fairness again to me,
Yvonne has, oh boy, she's going to watch this.
Yvonne has made her own bed to an extent
when it comes to how public facing she is.
There have been countless opportunities.
There have been countless opportunities.
Just like with those, you're wrong.
So what?
You're wrong.
With these?
Yes.
When you said like, that's not a fair question to ask
or whatever in the pre-show.
Oh.
I ended up being right-ish.
So she decided to take that stance
and then things that she did
were claimed as actions from you.
Well, what?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.
What did I take credit for?
I'm not going to be able to give good examples of this.
I'm talking about over the last 10 years.
And this is something that she has approached you about
as well.
Oh, well, here's an accusation, but I'm afraid,
objection, hearsay.
Here's, okay.
That would be fair.
And it would stand up in court.
You get that.
But you know, this is a thing.
Objection, hearsay.
And again, I did give you the-
From a legal standpoint, I'm winning this argument.
You are.
And I did say, however, that it has gotten better recently.
Well, the thing is-
Especially in the two,
like the two more recent videos that she has shown up in.
Yep.
There's been a lot more, more like credit.
She has expressed more desire to play a more public role.
And honestly, I think part of it is that
she just didn't have the energy
to play a public role for a long time.
Fair enough.
She was, you got to understand,
the thing is that Yvonne's biggest contribution
to Linus Media Group was actually made
working at a different company than Linus Media Group,
because without Yvonne's seed capital-
Like financial support arm.
Linus Media Group does not exist.
It never makes it to this stage.
And then without her ongoing financial guidance,
it never hits that hockey stick moment where it takes off.
And all of that is stuff that takes place
inherently kind of behind the scenes,
especially when you're so busy working on that stuff
that you don't have time to go say,
I don't know, start a cupcake decorating channel
as an offshoot that we promote
to try to build our female audience.
All the legitimate business cases that we could make
for Yvonne taking a more front and center role.
It's also not something that she's always been
the most comfortable with.
I mean, sometimes, and you know-
Hasn't always loved being on camera.
Sorry?
Hasn't always loved being on camera.
No, and sometimes, if I had to pick
my wife's biggest flaw, it's insecurity.
Literally her biggest flaw is not realizing
how awesome she is,
which I think is not gonna land me on the couch,
but that's not why I chose it.
That's actually true.
And it's something that I've been chasing her about
pretty much since the day we met,
because especially when we met,
boy, was I ever punching up.
Like, she's settled, man.
And you know this isn't a dig.
That's very true.
I'm just gonna say, guys out there,
find an insecure chick,
because she's gonna be so much better
than you would have done otherwise.
Not a great take, yikes.
I'm obviously kidding.
Just saying.
But in all seriousness, I was, in my opinion,
clearly punching up.
And over the years, it's been something
that she's struggled with,
that she hasn't realized.
Like, one of my favorite songs, okay?
One of the songs that reminds me of her most
is One Direction's You Don't Know You're Beautiful.
Because she just has no idea.
I'll be like, yeah, you did great.
And she'll be like, oh, oh,
I could have fixed this hundred things.
I'm like, yeah, you could have, but you did great.
Like, who cares?
Especially, I heard about this,
especially more early on.
It might still be a thing I don't know.
But I know she was very self-conscious
about her work here as well.
Oh, I know.
Oh, man.
Actually, you're kicking bleep button,
but I don't know where it is.
But ass.
Oh, you can say ass.
I think it's fine.
Ass is probably fine.
I don't know, whatever.
Sounds good.
I think it's just, but it was,
I feel like it was very hard for her to see that.
Yep.
And I think that's like,
I don't know what necessarily changed,
but something changed there
where she wanted more recognition.
And I feel like maybe it was her seeing that.
Maybe.
And then being like, now I want the accolades,
which is cool, because she deserves them.
I mean, to be clear, guys,
this is something that I have talked to Yvonne about
extensively over the years.
This is not something that's going to be
some kind of a surprise for her.
We have an extremely open,
I don't want to say an extremely open relationship.
That is.
Almost.
We were so close.
I was watching that train go at that wall.
It didn't quite hit the wall.
Got a little off the rails.
We have a policy of extremely open communication
in our relationship,
because we wouldn't have made it this far without it.
And there are times when honestly,
she will just tell me, yeah,
this is something that I could take
a more of a front facing role on.
But honestly, I just don't feel like talking
to people right now.
Why don't you announce it?
Or why don't you say it?
Or, you know, I like the way you say it.
And I will say in the credit to both of you,
as well as someone who's literally lived with you
for an extended period of time,
conflict resolution seems quite strong.
Oh, well, thank you.
Yeah.
Luke has probably overheard far more than
really I realized at the time,
and I'm comfortable with.
Our walls are not as big as I think we assumed.
Yeah, not so much.
That's okay though.
Yeah, but you know, we really do live by principles
like never go to bed angry.
Even if it means we're up till four in the morning,
like you just can't.
Anyway, the point is not to get into like
relationship tips or whatever.
The point is that.
How do we even get to this topic?
Yes, I have not given enough credit to her over the years.
It has always been my, it's been my instinct.
I mean, I think it's okay.
Oh boy, here we go, more hot takes.
I do find it takes a certain type
to get into a social media role.
You have to be an attention seeker to a degree.
There are exceptions, but you have to at least enjoy
whatever type of spotlight it is that you end up
taking for yourself.
Whether it's a more behind the scenes kind of spotlight,
like a CGP gray, whether you like having people,
whether you like just sharing and educating,
you're still in a spotlight,
even if it's like a necessary evil kind of spotlight.
Yeah, you might hate it.
I mean, we've seen this by people who like
become internet famous by accident basically.
Yeah, but you have to at least be able to tolerate it.
You have to have a certain amount of charisma, right?
And that's not something that comes naturally to everyone.
I forget why I started this sentence.
So it doesn't really matter.
We're talking about how much money it would take to sell it.
Oh, right, yeah, how much money it would take.
I have another thing if you're still thinking about it.
No, I'm ready.
Okay. Okay, but hit me, hit me.
So I often have to reference what Floatplane does
by saying, by trying to reference all of the companies.
Because at this point we do a certain amount of thing
for all of the companies,
especially with the hiring and expansion that we're doing.
We're going to be doing even more of that, which is great.
But saying all of the companies or like the greater companies
or the companies under the numbered umbrella or whatever
is getting really annoying.
Yeah, we do kind of need a name
for our umbrella organization
and it should be something different.
Honestly, what I would like to do
over the next three to five years
is remove the Linus branding from everything that we do.
I would like Linus Tech Tips to become LTT.
And I slip up sometimes, but I'm trying to get in the habit
of only referring to it as LTT.
Like sometimes in a video, it'll be like,
are we going to do this halfway?
No, this is Linus Tech Tips, baby.
And so I want to be like, no, this is LTT.
I want to shift that branding.
I mean, we've already been doing it on the merch
for years now.
We almost never print Linus on anything
because it's just time to move away from it.
There's so many more people here.
It's all, it's group, it's not Linus anymore, right?
When the Linus Media Group thing.
Oh, call it group group.
I'm not calling it group group.
Sounds like fish, like grouper group or something.
Anyway, the point is, no,
we're not calling it Umbrella Corp.
That's very funny though.
So I want to move Linus Tech Tips away.
I want Linus Media Group to become a brand
that we sort of phase out.
And then I want to create a brand
for that Umbrella organization
that contains LTT productions or whatever.
Okay.
That contains Creator Warehouse,
that contains Floatplane.
And I would like to,
I'd like to do all the branding around that
because it's becoming clear to me as we go that,
and this is coming back around to the question,
it's becoming clear to me as we go
that we are eventually going to have to raise capital
in some way.
We cannot, Yvonne and I cannot keep reinvesting personally
and doubling down every single time that we need to grow,
whether it's labs, whether it's backpacks and screwdrivers,
whatever it is, whatever it was, new facility.
At some point, the not stupid, excuse me,
the not stupid thing to do is take some kind
of outside capital in some way.
And I think that if we were to raise some kind of funds,
we would want to do it as that umbrella organization
rather than as one of the individual silos within it.
So yeah, having some form of name
and being able to point at that name
is like something that's legitimate would be kind of cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a very-
WANIC Enterprise is limited.
Not bad, not bad.
R of array says, please don't go public.
So there's lots of different ways to raise funds.
Going public is obviously one of them,
but it's far from the only way to do it.
I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know what it looks like.
Yeah.
New WANIC Incorporated, nice.
All right.
So it was with Elon buying Twitter,
how much money would someone have to offer you to sell LTT?
So coming back to the question,
I have spoken with the executive team here.
I have spoken with Yvonne.
We are not at a place where we are ready to sell.
And so the offer kind of doesn't matter.
And the reason for that is that whatever the offer is,
is gonna be based on business fundamentals,
like your, what is it?
Earnings before, interest, tax, and whatever.
Your EBITDA, okay?
So it could be based on that.
It could be based on some kind of multiple of revenue,
but there are formulas for valuing a business.
And we are in a position right now
where we believe we have such a period
of explosive growth ahead of us with Creator Warehouse,
with new channels, with the lab,
that we would be stupid to take any kind of offer today
rather than what would come a year or two
or three years from now.
And that's really exciting.
So I just don't want,
and I don't think that we would be able
to guide this organization toward the success
that we think we're headed towards
if we didn't have full control.
Am I a control freak?
Yes.
That was a rhetorical question, asshole, but-
Yes.
Yes, I am.
I was gonna answer it.
I was gonna be the same answer.
Because you, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Dude, okay.
The most hilarious thing to me was back in the house
when you were pushing me to show up on camera really hard,
but couldn't actually let me have a video
just by myself either.
That dichotomy was one of the weirdest things
to have to like work out in my brain ever.
He would run downstairs,
cause he'd realized we were filming something,
but he would realize it too late,
or he'd be on a call or something.
And you'd literally hear him sprinting
from his desk downstairs to get in the shot
and would like dive into the shot
as I'm doing the outro to make sure that he was in it.
I was actually kind of just having fun with you.
But there's probably some kind of
broken psychological disorder too.
We'll call him A, we'll call him B.
Yeah, that's fair.
That's fair.
That's fair.
All right, I am archiving that.
We're not gonna talk about that anymore.
And we should probably talk about sponsor spots
before we do a couple more topics,
do some more merch messages here.
The show is brought to you by,
wait, how do I do sponsor frames now?
No, no, no, on the dashboard.
Oh, oh, uh, uh, uh.
I can bring it up.
Which one do you wanna do?
Okay, I wanna do them in order.
The show is brought to you today by Squarespace.
Do you know a website but you don't have the know-how?
Squarespace makes it flippin' easy.
They've got a wide selection of award-winning templates
and all of them are optimized for mobile,
so your site's gonna look great on any device.
With Squarespace, you can create members-only content
to generate extra revenue in their member areas,
and you can grow and engage your audience
with powerful and easy-to-use email campaign systems.
Seriously, like email blasts, newsletters are,
I know, I know, it's web 1.0.
Do not underestimate it.
Works, like works hard, yeah.
And if you ever need additional help,
Squarespace also offers webinars,
a full series of help guides,
or you can contact their 24-7 customer support
via live chat and email.
So get started today and head to squarespace.com
forward slash when to get 10% off your first purchase.
The show is also brought to you by the third one.
The third one, got it.
XSplit.
I think it's probably been five years
since XSplit's been a sponsor of the show.
Thanks XSplit, welcome back.
XSplit is a trusted live streaming and recording software
designed for gaming, presentations, and live events.
It offers useful features like XSplit Broadcaster,
an all-in-one streaming and recording solution
designed for content creation,
Connect Webcam, which turns your smartphone into a webcam,
Presenter, which lets you add personality,
flair, and interactivity to presentations,
Capture, which lets you capture images
and record your screen so you can add annotations,
a voiceover, and share as a link in seconds,
and VCam, which is a virtual background tool for webcams.
If you use code Linus at the link down below,
you can save 10% on XSplit today.
Finally, the show is brought to you by Vulture.
Vulture offers high performance
and easy to deploy cloud servers,
bare metal storage, and managed Kubernetes.
You can deploy instances with your preferred OS,
with Vulture's 12 pre-selected operating systems,
and you can even bring your own ISO.
Their advanced networking features
are optimized for multi-cloud deployments,
thanks to VPC peering and Direct Connect,
and with 24 server locations worldwide,
like their new Honolulu location,
you can spin up a low latency infrastructure solution
for your users no matter where they are.
Vulture's marketplace offers one-click installation
of more than 50 applications and OSs,
including instant Minecraft and game servers,
VoIP and VPN platforms, content management systems,
and cPanel, and right now,
listeners of the WAN Show.
What are you guys, Vulture?
Do you guys think this is a podcast or something?
Viewers of the WAN Show, and listeners,
it actually does also go up as a podcast,
can receive an exclusive 30-day $100 code for new signups.
Just go to getvulture.com slash LTT.
That's get V-U-L-T-R dot com slash L-T-T.
Can I show you my thing yet?
You wanna see my thing?
Yeah, but before we do that, someone in-
What? I wanna show you my thing though.
My thing's down here.
I wanna show it to you.
I'm down, dude.
Yeah, I'm down.
What are you talking about?
FlowPlane Chat came up with an amazing,
I didn't wanna say it during the thing,
just in case they didn't like it.
Oh, for sure.
But FlowPlane Chat came up with an amazing sales pitch
for Squarespace, which is-
Oh, it'll be beautiful.
Do you wanna make your-
Oh, I missed that one.
Do you wanna make your website
not look like Apple's repair site?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Honestly, you could build a better-looking site
in like a day on Squarespace.
Not in like 10 minutes.
Probably, yeah.
Well, okay.
All the pictures were stock.
Ah, you're not even wrong.
The buttons are just like links to the website
and it's just basic text.
You could literally, okay, maybe 10 minutes is too low.
At max, honestly, I think you could recreate
a better website than that in like under two hours.
And this is not like, we're done the Squarespace spot.
This is not a sponsored bit.
I know.
We actually just like do use it
and it actually is really easy to use
and that site is horrible.
There's nothing unique or interesting really there.
You're just filling out,
like especially if you could just copy paste the text over,
then you're just done.
Like almost immediately.
Yeah, I know, I know.
The longest part would be like picking a theme.
Okay, can I show you this thing?
Yes, yeah, what's going on?
Okay, I'm sure you recognize,
I'm sure you recognize this.
Yeah, the Frogger machine.
Enough, it's a reference for the pre-show.
Sarah and I ended up in an argument
over whether Frogger was available on Game Gear
and whether her assuming that it was
was her trolling me, which it turned out it wasn't.
It turned out that the system does not have Frogger,
but it turns out that all the engineering was actually done.
It was just never released.
You can get it as a ROM.
So her assuming that was not her trolling me.
That's where we ended up.
I was kind of right, but I was also mostly wrong.
The pre-shows are pretty cool.
If you want to check them out, subscribe to FlowPlane.
Yeah, you should definitely be subscribed to FlowPlane.
Because the VOD including the pre-show is on FlowPlane.
Exclusively on FlowPlane.
Yeah.
Also like lots of behind the scenes.
Like if you're not on FlowPlane.
Yeah, it's actually been popping off lately.
Oh yeah, Artie is doing an amazing, amazing job
of the behind the scenes.
Like meet the team, cutting room floor stuff.
There's some great exclusives.
We actually took a day off this week.
So as a surprise to everyone, but me, Yvonne and Chase,
I think, oh no, the executives knew.
Yeah, you knew.
Okay, so the C-suite, the executive managers
and then Chase, who's our event coordinator knew.
But everyone else showed up for work on Tuesday morning
thinking they were showing up for work.
But at 9.45, a school bus drove into the parking lot.
We all got on it, went bowling,
went to Boston pizza for lunch.
And then we went to see Uncharted in our own private theater
and then came back to the office and everyone went home.
It was actually amazing.
We've never done anything like it before.
It was genuinely really fun.
Except I couldn't really, my shoulders all screwed up.
So I couldn't really like, I was bowling left-handed,
but it was really fun regardless.
Yeah, honestly, the point of bowling is not bowling.
It is to hang out, yeah.
And it was cool to be, the float plane team,
like, you know, doesn't get out much.
So it was cool to be able to like have the float plane
people mingle with other people that work here
and all that kind of stuff.
It was a really good day.
Yeah, it was pretty fun.
Anyway, the point is, wait, what were we talking about?
Dang it, right.
Artie, even though I told him not to work,
I explicit, did I explicitly tell everyone no work?
You did.
I did.
He just, I don't know, maybe actually enjoys his job,
I guess, but decided to like vlog it.
And so there's an exclusive vlog on float plane
with some of our bowling antics and stuff like that.
So it was cool.
Yeah, it was really fun.
It was really fun.
Anyway, the point is, what is this?
It's a Game Gear.
Right, okay, thank you.
Okay.
Finally answering the question.
Sorry.
Okay.
Is there anything about this particular,
hold on, let me just get it kind of dialed in
for you a little bit here.
Is this the glass front?
Oh, can you just chill for a second?
Okay, God.
Geez, you've got to ruin all the surprises.
You can never have a surprise with this guy.
Okay, so is there anything about this
that kind of stands out to you playing it?
So I never had, I've literally never used,
this is the first time I've ever held a Game Gear
in my life.
Really?
Yeah.
This was like my childhood console.
I had a SNES and I had a Game Gear,
and then I moved to my mom's house
and then I had neither of them
and I had no consoles ever again.
I had a Game Boy original
and then I had a Game Boy Advanced, that was it.
Okay, so you're, well, we had, I think back in the 90s,
you know, it doesn't matter what happened in the 90s.
90s was back then.
The screen seems pretty original.
The screen is definitely pretty original.
So this is the reason that the show was late.
I wish I'd taken a picture of what it entailed
to turn it into this.
Oh, so this is new, okay.
This is completely original.
A little rough.
This is an A5 Game Gear.
But like it.
Okay.
I mean, it's a Game Gear, so.
Well, I can already immediately tell.
When it was here, I could tell.
It's a brand new IPS display, man.
We are gonna have to get heavy
into like retro console modding and stuff.
Honestly, man, when I was working on this with Dan.
Oh, that's so much better.
Is that incredible or what?
That's actually like so much,
because the screen was honestly the biggest problem.
Yep.
The viewing angles were terrible,
but even just outside of that, it wasn't very bright.
Beyond terrible.
Like, look at this.
It just goes completely yellow from the top
and completely white from the bottom.
There's like this narrow, like maybe 10 degrees
where you can actually make out an image on the screen.
You know what I mean?
And like legitimately almost just as bad
as it's really dim.
Hold up that one.
It is completely a night and day difference.
There's nothing I can do
to make it look anything like that.
Is that cool or what?
That's really cool.
While we were working on this video,
I'm sitting here going like,
oh man, there are so many businesses
that our umbrella organization could get into
with just a little bit of startup capital,
some space and like a handful of employees
that we could just like turn on immediately.
You know, you start,
you create some jobs for people
with like micro soldering skills.
You start creating internal documentation.
We get into like console modding.
I mean, there's been so many times, right?
That we've talked about,
Linus, you guys should really do,
just do like a system builder.
Like why don't you guys just build computers
if you like know how computers are supposed to-
Or you can even just go like the more iFixity route
and just sell like kits.
Well, the problem a lot of the time with the kits
is that all the engineering work has been done.
Like the guys that make this replacement screen,
ah, the name is on the tip of my tongue.
Sorry, it escapes me right now,
but there's a full video coming about this.
Don't miss it.
They do all the engineering work,
but the problem is that
they're doing extremely small production runs
cause these in many cases
are really, really small organizations.
So if you have someone that steps in and goes,
yeah, look, I'll pay for you to do 5,000 or 10,000 units.
Like let's actually make some of these things
instead of people waiting in some cases, three months.
Oh yeah.
For them to produce and then ship them from overseas,
all of a sudden you've got easy availability
of this stuff in North America, easy access to it.
So yeah, I think people would actually pay a markup
for us to sustain our operation
and we could totally get into this stuff.
I know like-
I don't need more,
I don't know if I need more business divisions to run, right?
Man, it's wild looking at them from here
cause the lower one is pure white.
The screen is purely white
and then I can see the upper one perfectly.
Yeah, like I know with 3DSs, I think it was,
people wanted to stream Animal Crossing
back before there was Animal Crossing on Switch.
Yeah, okay.
And to-
Benven, says Duckilootsnip.
Yep, that's the one.
Benven makes the screen.
Oh, okay.
Animal Crossing streaming.
For people that wanted to do that officially,
so on an actual 3DS, whatever,
they were shipping their 3DSs off to some person
and they might get it back in like half a year.
Who knows?
The queue's like super long.
They might just brick your 3DS
and just send you one broken back.
Like it was just, yeah, I don't know.
Adding some more business savvy to that space
would be pretty cool.
Yeah, and like-
Cause the technical work is there.
It just needs a little bit of capital
and it needs a little bit of like trustworthiness,
like that consolidation.
The technical expertise is like,
they've been doing obviously fantastic work
for a long time.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know what the crazy thing is?
A lot of this retro console hardware
is either open source or like semi-open.
The only reason that no one can get it
is because no one is willing to put the capital
into actually doing reasonable size production runs
of these darn things.
So, you know, I'm just sitting here going like,
yeah, why don't we just hire, you know,
four or five people?
We just talk about it once in a while on the show.
You're gonna end up hiring Shane.
Build a brand around it.
I know, right?
I'm like not even kidding.
I know, right?
That's crazy.
That's cool.
Yeah, FlowPlane's like, I love where this is going.
Yeah, but you guys love like everything.
You love everything.
Yeah, I can't take you seriously at a certain point.
Have you seen the mod that the shank did
to the Hot Wheels PC or whatever?
I have, it's amazing.
It's so amazing, I love it.
Oh, what just happened?
I thought I just curated one and it disappeared.
Oh yeah, no, no, nevermind, it's here.
We should do a couple more curated merch messages.
Bell, hit me.
Hello, welcome to the editorialized questions.
This one's from Derek.
As an avid Beat Saber player, Linus,
what are your preferred VR controllers
maybe specifically with Beat Saber?
I have only used the original Vive controllers
and oh, actually that's a lie.
No, I've used the Oculus controllers.
The Oculus controllers, you're objectively wrong
about them being better
because if you were any good at the game,
you would have the problem
with the battery covers coming off
if you're like actually at speed, like playing.
As for the Knuckles controllers,
I wish they were lighter,
but I guess they're my preferred
because the only ones that I've used
with like a proper VR headset plugged into a computer
are the original Vive controllers
and the Knuckles controllers.
And for everyone who is not catching it,
I'm taking the piss right now.
I'm just teasing.
The Oculus Quest is a fantastic value.
The controllers are fine,
but I personally have difficulty going at full speed,
keeping the battery covers on.
I just can't do it.
I know that there's-
You have to like tape them on, which is not great.
Something to note about the original Vive controllers
is I never tried any alternate grips.
So I'm coming at you from like complete ignorance
cause I wasn't very good yet.
So I was just using like the drumstick grip,
but there's like ones where you put your fingers
through the holes or something
and it redistributes the weight
so that you're able to rotate the controller more easily.
I just, I'm not that-
This is probably a noob problem.
I was just teasing Derek.
I always found that the original, not Vive.
What am I trying to-
The Valve one.
Oculus.
No, the Valve one.
Valve, Index.
Index.
The original Index controllers, not Knuckles.
There were other Index controllers?
Was there not?
The stick ones that don't have the wrapper on your-
Those are Vive controllers.
Okay, yeah.
Those ones then I guess, my bad.
I actually really like the Vive controllers
in regards to how it feels
when it translates into the VR space.
Like it feels like you're actually holding
the B-table lightsaber.
Yeah, they have some weight to them.
Yeah.
But if you're, once you reach a certain level-
You don't want the weight anymore, for sure.
Yeah, that's like, I didn't get that far.
So I was still in the just like more experiential
side of things.
Right, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Vibe into music.
Yeah, so it felt more proper with those,
but that's my only actual input.
All right.
From Matthew, I would love to know the upcoming tech
that you think we should be looking forward to the most
over the next year or two.
I mean, obviously new gen graphics cards.
I think, yeah, okay, you know what?
Yeah, I'm gonna pick one.
The LTT screwdriver.
AMD's leaked Zen 4 RDNA 3 APU.
Looks like it could be an absolute utter game changer
for entry-level gaming PCs.
Like if you can get your CPU and graphics sorted out,
remember we're gonna have DDR5 memory.
So dramatically more memory bandwidth
compared to previous gen platforms,
which ironically doesn't matter as much
for higher end chips that do not need to use
their system memory for VRAM.
So we're gonna have this high speed memory.
And I think you are gonna be able to build
a legitimate gaming computer for like 400, 500, 600 bucks.
No GPU.
With no GPU and with great upgradability
because these CPU cores are gonna be so fast
that instead of, there's gonna be no reason
to buy some like Optiplex thing.
You should just get this and then it'll be everything
you need today while you're like in high school
playing with high school money.
And then it'll still be upgradable
once you get out into the workforce
and you are making more money,
you throw a GPU in there and boom,
you have actually created no e-waste whatsoever
with this machine through two full upgrade cycles
worth of use.
Like I'm super excited for it.
It's almost certainly not worth anyone actually making
on like any real scale,
but like a one-off or something of a case
that is built for a no GPU,
really, really, really small system would be pretty cool.
I'd love to see someone like Framework do it or something.
Did you see they released Disclosure?
I'm investor in Framework.
Did you see that they released their main board
as a standalone part?
And then there's like,
it's either a 3D printed like schematic they released
or there's like a basic case that you can get for it
to just, and then it's a computer now.
It's like, oh, okay, cool.
That's sweet.
Yeah, that's awesome.
That's actually really cool.
Well, they said they would.
So now they're out there keeping promises, which is good.
That means I don't have to put them on blast publicly,
which is nice.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, cause I, you know,
it's not like I want to go out and be like,
yeah, that thing I invested in,
it sucks and you should hate it.
It's not the best financial decision for me.
Gremlin Injector in full plane chat said
that there's lots of cases out there because of NUCs.
Yeah, but I don't want a NUC.
Lots of cases like that NUCs.
Well, I mean, they're okay.
Not all of them are NUC NUCs.
Like there are AMD Nuc-a-likes
is what I think we call them.
Nuc-a-likes is what we like to call them internally.
Cause I think Intel actually pronounces it NUC.
So, so calling them Nuc-a-likes is really funny.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Anyway.
Related to that upcoming tech,
someone asked if you had seen the Ionia Air
and if you're excited for that.
I didn't.
Hold on, I need to be really careful
the way that I answer this question.
Let me just see.
Ionia Air is a thin and light.
I'm just gonna read what is in this article.
The makers, thank you, Brad Linder of lilliputing.com.
Lilliputing.com.
Oh, like Lilliputions.
That's very cute.
Actually, I've been on this site before.
The makers of the Ionia and Ionia Next,
but Ionia Air less than, ooh, very light.
Just about the size of a Nintendo Switch Lite,
but it's a full fledged Windows computer with an X here.
I'm worried about power envelope in such a small size.
I don't know what kind of performance we're gonna get.
They haven't revealed which processor it'll use.
Yeah, see, that's gonna be pretty important,
but the fact that they're not revealing it means
it's probably embargoed,
which means that it could be really good
because it's something we haven't seen yet.
12 rot rising 5,000, that's 5.5 or six inch display.
Price will be competitive.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
That is all I know about it.
That sounds cool.
Question for Luke.
How's your personal rig running?
Did you have any issues with the pin that you had to repair?
None, it's been flawless actually, not a single problem.
It's actually more stable than my previous computer
because my previous computer
had some weird motherboard issues.
I don't know if you remember that,
but yeah, no problems whatsoever.
It's been great.
From Devonte.
It's even, so I do have a UPS,
but there's been a few power outages at my place
and it's been completely fine through all of those as well.
But again, I do have a UPS to add context to that.
From Devonte, this is my first LTT store purchase.
Thank you.
What is your dream product
to be able to sell in the LTT store?
Something that maybe we have absolutely no plans for
like computer hardware or anything out of the ordinary.
Dream hardware.
What's really funny is back when I bought this,
I was like, man, I wanna enjoy this,
but I can't with this screen.
We should like make kits
to upgrade the screen of the Game Gear.
Thankfully, someone else did it for me.
Massive shout out because you did it as well or better
than we would have.
And now I don't have to like build a business around that,
which is cool.
Yay.
So you kinda like almost wanna be like a new age Radio Shack?
Yeah, well, no, I don't know if I'd say that.
Man, what a dream product for us to create.
You know what?
I'm gonna open up my dock.
I'm gonna open up my dreams dock.
And then why don't we have,
Luke, why don't you get us through a topic
while I check the dream dock.
Sure, let me see what we got.
I mean, really my immediate dream
is to ship a screwdriver or a backpack.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Let's not forget about that.
Sega is removing old Sonic games from the store.
Why?
Sonic Origins is launching June 23rd.
This is a remaster of the, oh, that's why.
This is a remaster of the first three Sonic games released
on Sega Genesis.
It's apparently going to have everyone's favorite DRM,
Danuvo.
Ray.
Ahead of that,
Sega is pulling games from digital stores.
They're pulling Sonic the Hedgehog 1,
Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3,
Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic CD.
Why would you remove Sonic CD?
There are a couple of exceptions.
Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 will remain available
via Sega Ages on the Nintendo Switch.
And Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will still be playable
via Sega Genesis on Nintendo Switch Online Plus.
This whole thing just sucks.
It does.
I mean, if I was Sega, I'd be pretty desperate too, but.
You can still play the games if you already own them,
but customers will no longer be able to purchase them.
Then there's the discussion question that says,
sometimes these newer releases lack features
or have new bugs.
So why would Sega do this?
Either way, regardless of what you purchase,
they get your money.
So why not just keep them all up?
And then Anthony says,
the current rights holders to Duke Nukem 3D
did something similar with the current edition.
I didn't even know there was a current edition.
The previous superior version was delisted
so they could sell a new one.
Granted it had a new episode,
but lacked many features and polish.
Yeah, this happens all the time.
Yeah, this sucks.
Think about the GTA remasters, right?
Like those came out and everyone just immediately hated it.
Think about like anything Blizzard has basically ever done.
Yeah, the Warcraft 3 remastered,
or reforged or whatever they called it.
Didn't everyone just like universally pan it?
It's a disaster.
If I remember correctly,
it hasn't been updated in like a year, like at all.
It was just trash.
Yeah.
I've got some answers for you.
Yeah.
Answer number one,
I think we should finally deliver that product
that we joked about like six, seven years ago.
The clench to prone, butt plug PC peripheral.
Honestly, at this point,
I bet you at this stage in the company,
we would actually be able to do it.
I bet we could get away with it.
Like back then it was like a pipe dream at this time.
We actually have the like-
We could build it.
Engineering know how.
I was just waiting to deliver that.
Oh no.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And potentially other controllers in the future.
Yeah.
Or other haptic feedback.
Because you look at the way,
you look at the way unconventional game controllers
have taken off, right?
Imagine wanting to take more.
Pretty much any voluntary muscle in your body
could be bound to some kind of control scheme, right?
So you're just like, you're sitting there and you're like,
okay, it's tense moment.
You would just automatically clench to prone.
Playing a horror game where you bind like clench to prone,
except it's bound to like shoot or something
to get your position away.
So you have to like not be so interested.
Man, the streams.
Oh my goodness.
There's a new category on Twitch.
It's like, man.
And so-
Hot tubs and unique input devices.
Chat would explode.
Like every time you, every time you crouch,
every time your flashlight turned on or something,
like, man, you know, all of those streamers, right?
You'd bind something and then chat would absolutely explode
every time they like did that thing because you know,
they just want to know about that or something
because Twitch culture, which you're awful.
Oh man.
Yep. Yeah.
It would absolutely, absolutely be a success.
Absolutely.
People are asking for haptic feedback.
Oh, of course it would have to have haptic feedback.
Yeah. I mean, come on.
And it'd have to be like wireless.
You don't want to have like, you know,
like if you know those pajamas with the little like buttons
in the back, like you don't want to be dealing with that.
I'm like, okay, cable management.
Come on.
People are like, he's not wrong boys.
Shut up and take my money over on Twitch chat.
Yeah.
That's funny.
I think we could legitimately build it.
There's some other,
there's some other stuff I have in my like document
of dreams.
I would love to build like a bathtub scale RC boat.
Like I think that would just be so much fun.
You guys should make a firetruck RC firetruck.
Oh my God.
Okay. That I don't want to do the amount of like plastic
molding you'd have to do to create a product like that.
It'd be terrible.
Just be a good homage.
Okay. What are some other,
what are some other like cool product ideas
that I wanted to do?
Oh, I wanted to do like a USB cable that stays exactly
where you put it.
Like kind of like a gorilla plot pod.
Like it's like,
it's bendable so that it's like always in the same place
when you need to reach for it.
I think it'd be super neat.
Like really stiff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lineage, tush tips, tush tips.
Oh, one of the ideas I had like way back in the day,
now that like cash is barely a thing anymore.
Thanks. COVID was like the world's coolest piggy bank.
So it could be like wall mounted
and it like sorts what you put in it,
displays the money through acrylic with like lighting.
And then there's like buttons to dispense like one
or a roll of each coin,
or you can like key in how much money you want.
And it'll just be like,
I thought that would be really cool.
Just as like a, like a super fun, cool product.
There's like so many weird things in here.
Okay, here's one.
Here's a product idea.
A PCIe half height adapter board
from a 1X slot to a 16X slot.
I probably came up with these before mining.
I came up with this one before GPU mining took off.
Cause this probably like exists now.
But the idea is to be able to install a 16X card
in a 1X slot without sawing the back out of the slot.
Like I've had to do a number of times in the past.
I think Yvonne should write a book.
So like Yvonne's book,
The YouTuber's Wife.
What it's like to be in the support role,
like growing an internet famous person
without being the one that's in the front.
Because it's actually a huge burden.
Like I remember she ended up having
like a commiseration session with another YouTuber wife
where they kind of taught.
And it turned out they had a lot of the same challenges
and a lot of the same struggles.
Just, you know, and they kind of compared coping mechanisms
and it was just a really interesting conversation.
And I think it's something people would have found.
I only overheard a little bit of it
cause I was busy YouTubing with the guy.
But it ended up being a super interesting conversation.
Oh, here's something.
Okay, I get so triggered when automatic dispensers,
whether it's for like soap or hand sanitizer or whatever,
I get so triggered when they dispense
like three times the amount you need.
Like one of the things people have actually noticed
that there's a mod on my soap dispenser
in the kid's bathroom.
Sort of a mod, I don't know.
Two zip ties around the thing.
So that it shortens the throw
so that they, unless they pump it multiple times,
they actually can't dispense more
than they need to wash their little kitty-boo hands.
And so if I see them pumping it multiple times,
I'm like, hey, no, one time.
Because that is the exact correct amount I checked.
You don't need more.
And so I would love to just have dispensers
that just always cleanly dispense
the exact right amount of stuff.
And you could just like adjust it.
I know that some of that stuff exists, but like-
You know what I wanted to do
in terms of a product when I was younger?
And this doesn't, I actually really wanted to push it.
Then I realized that I would have to,
like I don't think it's gonna work
because I wouldn't wanna sell the product directly.
I'd wanna sell it to people.
It's a container, basically.
I want it, you know, large peanut butter containers?
It's always annoying to get into the bottom.
It's very likely that you're gonna get-
You always get peanut butter on your hands.
Peanut butter on your hands and stuff.
So what I wanted to do was,
you know how you screw the big green lid on usually?
Yeah.
I wanted to make it so that-
Well, green if you're a pleb and you eat smooth,
but yes, carry on.
Well, I don't eat smooth.
Oh, you're a crunchy-
It might be a brand thing.
I like crunchy for sure.
Oh, okay, nevermind.
Crunchy's like absolutely-
Okay, my brand green is smooth.
Okay, I don't know.
Red is crunchy.
I wanted to make it so that halfway through the container,
there was the same type of screw mechanism
that the lid has, like exactly the same.
And I figured out ways to do this
so that once you're about halfway through,
you could unscrew the top and then take the lid
and put it on the lower half.
I like it.
Yeah.
But selling that as a product doesn't work.
Yeah, that's tough.
Cause it already comes in a container, so.
That's the problem with my dispenser's thing.
Cause like, how do you make a,
like a toothpaste was one of the ones I had here.
Well, people-
Like your whole tube of toothpaste and like into the-
For soap, a lot of people buy soap dispensers.
Oh, well yeah, the soap, yes.
For toothpaste though, you're right.
Yeah, some of the other ones,
what are some of the other things I had?
You could probably get a toothpaste thing
that squeezes the tube of toothpaste the right way.
Yeah.
Oh, that sounds like a lot of engineering.
It sounds significantly more difficult.
Yeah.
Are they talking about soap?
Sorry, I just zoned out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are actually.
Easy text station,
that ended up getting done by someone else.
Yeah, I don't know, I guess that's-
Oh, I had the idea of doing like a kiosk
that prints greeting cards on demand
instead of requiring a huge inventory
and like a whole aisle.
Probably someone's done that at this point.
That was like 10 years ago or something like that.
I wrote that down.
I came up with the idea of curated gift shopping
like a thousand years ago.
So you just like fill out a survey
about the person you're shopping for
and it just like spits out a gift recommendation
or like orders it for you.
Also, this one is one that I wish
that Yvonne had like had the bandwidth to pursue
cause I think she could have built
like a bigger business than LMG, just like doing her thing.
But a kid's clothing service
that just gives you the next size up,
like when you're ready
and then you can just credit your old stuff
by sending it back.
So effectively like, cause kids clothes, man,
a lot of it will wear out.
Sure, fine.
But a lot of it,
they are gonna use for such a short period of time
and so lightly that it's like kind of a hassle
to have to deal with like getting rid of it.
And so just reducing waste by creating a service
where it will just automatically send you the next size
or you can just like press one button
and like all the sizing is done in like a standardized way
across like instead of having to deal
with all the different brands
and all the different sizing,
like ordering clothes online is a nightmare
and for kids it's even more of a nightmare
because obviously they're all different, right?
So being able to just go,
okay, yeah, here's their new size
and everything shows up, everything fits.
I think it's super valuable
and I think there's a company that's already doing that
but we came up with that idea a long time ago
and it could have been absolutely killer, absolutely killer.
Yeah, send the rip stuff back for recycling
in a small credit.
I think it could have totally reduced waste, reduced cost.
Like honestly, our kids own almost no new clothing
because brand new kids clothing is stupid.
There is so much perfectly good kids clothing out there
that is just sitting rotting in a thrift store
because they just get so much more intake
than they can possibly sell.
So yeah, people are saying some of the places that do that.
Yeah, exactly.
Is it called Rent-A-Swag?
Is this an idea on Parks and Rec?
Oh, okay, apparently Parks and Rec did a bit on this.
Well, there you go, not my idea then
but I don't know if I've never watched Parks and Rec
but it makes a lot of sense,
especially in the kids context.
Oh yeah, for sure.
I think that's more specific.
It sounds like the Parks and Rec one
just cause it's called Swag.
I'm assuming it's a more adult focused one,
which is still, I mean, there's still some value there
but it's much more interesting in the kids context
because like for me, I can wear a shirt for many years
as long as the shirt doesn't deteriorate
because I'm not growing.
Yeah, exactly.
When you're growing constantly, it's a bit of a problem.
Oh shoot, there was something else.
Shoot, I just came up with something
and I guess I forgot about it.
I was gonna say, I would love to have something
and I forget, I guess it doesn't really matter.
Why don't we just move on to the next thing?
Yeah.
From Anon, what are your thoughts on the Oura Ring
and the mandatory paid subscription?
Any other thoughts or reviews coming?
My thoughts on the Oura Ring are that I like it.
My thoughts on the paid themselves.
I did end up getting FOMOed into getting the latest Gen 3.
They offered it to Gen 1 or Gen 2 owners
with a lifetime subscription if you upgrade like now.
So I was like, I actually like this thing enough
to buy another one and flip my old one
but I do not like it enough to pay for it forever
so I guess I'll go for it.
Fair enough.
It does give me some useful insights.
I had the lowest readiness score since I got it
while I had COVID so it seems accurate.
Apparently the Parks and Rec thing
is literally based around kids.
Oh, okay, well there you go.
I came up with the exact same thing
or maybe Parks and Rec was on in a room somewhere
while I was present and I like subliminally absorbed it.
I don't know.
Oh man, there was, man, there was something.
Ah, it doesn't matter.
I guess I'm over it.
Crap.
Okay.
From Garrison, hey Luke and Linus,
what are the biggest tech failures
you wish would have been a success?
I think we've done this one before.
I think we basically said,
oh man, it's on Zune.
Like, I don't know, I'm sure there's other stuff.
I remember saying something about Zune.
I think we did this one recently.
From Joshua, hey Linus, how big of a role
do you play in the creative process at LTT in 2022
except for hosting and reviewing scripts?
Did COVID affect the team in any way?
I mean, obviously COVID affects everyone who gets it.
Fortunately, we haven't had any severe, severe cases
where anyone's, I guess I can't really speak
about medical things.
Fortunately, everyone's good.
How about that?
We're really pleased that we haven't had to announce
any COVID fatalities out of our staff.
As far as me, I mean, it only really affected me
making my brain pretty foggy for a while
and being really sick for a shorter while.
As far as being involved in the creative process,
I would like to think I am fairly involved
in the creative process still.
And that's something that I wanna continue
to be involved in.
The team is amazing.
They come up with ideas that I never would have.
I still do like to think that I contribute
pretty significantly to making ideas better.
I am still where the buck stops
in terms of what videos get made.
We have weekly meetings that James and I run
with the rest of the writing team, a lot of the time
I will end up just kind of rewriting things on the fly.
If we've got sort of a particular idea
for how something goes and I'm like,
oh, actually did we think of this angle?
And it's like, oh, no, that's a little bit different.
And we'll just kind of run with it from there.
One of the things that I do,
that I am still really good at is thinking on my feet.
If something goes wrong in the middle of a shoot,
that's where my creativity will definitely come into play.
There are things that I have, to be clear,
I'm not always right.
Like I've been wrong many times.
Jake is one of the ones that has really pushed me
to like take the low hanging fruit once in a while, my dude.
Stuff like Linus responds to mean comments.
Those were Jake and James initiatives
getting me to do more stuff like that.
Jake has been chasing me to do way more house updates
for you guys.
But what it took to do it was for me to get sick
and literally not be able to make any other video.
I think sometimes you have to break Linus down.
Okay, thank you for that.
We were trying to get you to do lower hanging fruit
for the entire existence of the company.
Look, I always want to do bigger and better.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I don't think there's anything wrong
with low hanging fruit either.
A lot of the times, not all the time.
And you have to do bigger and better sometimes,
but sometimes that's just what people want.
It can break a team.
Oh, I remember what I was going to say.
Right, one of the other things that I had really wanted
to do was a handheld gaming PC,
but Valve and Aya and 1X player saved me the trouble
because they're like really good.
So I no longer feel compelled.
No reason to do it.
That space has a lot of competition.
Yeah, it's great, I love it.
I'm excited, I think that's the next big form factor.
And honestly, if I'm someone like Nintendo
who has just sat completely unopposed
as king, queen, god emperor of the handheld gaming space,
I am shaking in my boots right now.
Absolutely shaking in my boots
because I was sitting here thinking,
oh, well I can just charge 20, 30, 40, $50
for like ancient software.
And because I have a monopoly, people will pay it.
Oh boy, now I got to compete with like Steam,
like cheap games on Steam and like the E word, it's challenging.
Yeah, you might actually have to like make new games
and faster, better consoles.
Impossible, what we should really do
is just take more Wii U games and release them on Switch.
Are you secretly a Nintendo executive?
Yes, you know, like it's actually stunning to me
that I think, no, there's a Switch Smash, I think actually.
There's no new Mario Kart.
It's just Mario Kart from Wii U.
I know.
Like what?
I heard, I haven't actually looked into it.
I heard there's a new DLC coming from Mario Kart
that's actually like huge, like it's an expansion.
Yeah, so that's cool.
I mean, basically every Mario Kart is a DLC anyway,
so it seems fine.
Fair enough, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
So like that's cool, I'm actually happy about that.
But like, wow, the length of time that they just let IPs sit
because they can just keep selling it
for full price anyways is crazy.
I just bought my son a copy
of Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.
You wanna know how much I paid for it?
Probably full price.
79 Canadian dollars.
Yeah, oh my goodness.
And you know what I'm really mad about
is I was gonna, it was on sale at Christmas time
and I was like, I'm gonna order this.
And then I was just like lazy and I missed the sale.
Goes back up to full.
And he asked for it for his birthday.
Okay, I shouldn't say I paid for it.
It was more complicated than that actually.
You know what, I'm, oh man.
A relative paid for it,
but we compensated a relative through like other things.
Yeah, you know what, it doesn't matter.
The point is it was expensive.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it sucked.
It sucked,
because it's like a four and a half year old game
or whatever.
Joshua also asked how are things going with backpack
and screwdriver notification numbers?
The backpack is sitting at 42,798.
We have, so that new bigger lab,
we hopefully have secured favorable financing terms.
So we only need, I think 10% down, which is good,
because that allowed us to buy 10,000 more backpacks.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so we bought more backpacks.
We have 40,000 coming,
which means most of you will be able to get a backpack.
If you had to take a wager,
not, I'm not actually asking for a real wager.
If you had to take a guess,
what type of conversion rate do you think
you're going to get from notification signups?
We are hoping for somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40%.
That would be on the high side
compared to what we get for out of stock notifications.
But because these are items that have been so in demand
for so long and we've received so many inquiries
and they've never been available before.
So it's not like a back in stock notification.
This is like a, hey, if you don't get it now,
there's actually more people signed up
to get notifications to get this
than like we can make with our current cashflow.
I am hoping for higher than typical,
typical somewhere in the neighborhood of like 20 to 25%.
Yeah, okay, cool.
Yeah.
However, with a product like this,
I suspect a lot of people just are not bothering
to sign up for notifications.
And it is entirely possible that when the first,
you know, 10,000 screwdrivers
or first 10,000 backpacks arrive,
they will literally be immediately gone.
No, I'm sure that's true.
So yeah, it could be interesting.
You know what I think we might do?
I don't wanna take pre-orders,
but I think for the first time,
I might be willing to take back orders.
And it's more because both the backpack and the screwdriver
are going to be in production
because the volumes are so high.
It's not like we haven't placed the order.
It's not like the factory isn't working on it,
but the deliveries are gonna be spaced out.
A back order is very different, yeah.
So backpacks, for example, our 10,000 unit orders
are gonna arrive somewhere in the neighborhood
of one to three weeks apart.
Oh, so you could, sorry, keep going.
So it's not like we are taking your money
and maybe in six months you will get a product.
No, these are ordered.
By the time we sell out of the first shipment,
probably two more shipments will be on the water.
Like it is definitely coming.
And so I think for the first time,
we're just gonna have to take back orders
because otherwise I don't know how we would fairly
distribute them.
Unfortunately, our mechanism for notifying,
for sending email notifications
when an item comes back in stock is not very good.
All 40,000 of those people are gonna get an email at once.
And so if they don't-
Some of them will be at home depending on their time zone,
some of them are gonna be sleeping,
some of them are gonna be at work.
So if we don't give them an opportunity
to kind of grab something from the second wave,
then they have to what?
We have to have them go sign up for a notification again.
We don't have a good way to manage it right now.
So I think taking back orders might be the only way
to deal with it.
That might make sense.
And that's not the same thing as a pre-order
because people will see reviews from other users
and all that kind of stuff before like it's out in the wild
before they make that purchase.
So I think that's gonna be my compromise.
And you know what?
Honestly, I don't wanna say never as far as pre-orders go
once it's items that we have a little bit more expertise in.
We might take pre-orders for a follow-up screwdriver.
Where we're just going,
yeah, it's the same ratchet mechanism.
We're working with the same tooling manufacturers
for the molds.
It's gonna be that thing, but it's gonna be small.
Yeah, we'll take your pre-order.
This one has like an empty back instead of the...
There's some variants that we're looking at right now
based on the reception to the release,
to the impending release of this one.
And based on how good we know the product is,
there's gonna be more tools.
So I'm not saying never,
I'm just saying these are unproven.
I don't wanna take your money.
Let's get them out there and we'll go from there.
Cool.
So yeah, $42,798 for backpack,
$41,850 for black and orange screwdrivers,
and $37,421 for all black screwdrivers.
Did we get, sorry,
did we get 18 more all black notifications
while I was talking about it?
We're at $42,810 for backpack.
Hold on, I'm gonna refresh again.
Okay, y'all need to chill out.
Yeah, less than a minute.
Okay, this is all in less than a minute ago.
People signing up.
Have you announced in a mainline video
that there's even signups?
Yes, we have.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
I thought it might've just been WAN.
Speaking of WAN,
why don't we do like another topic or something?
Sure.
Apple launches self-repair.
Actually, are we in pretty good shape as far as topics?
Oh, Twitter accepts Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter.
But you know what?
I think that's all I have to say about that.
Dude, to not talk about the purchasee
and to talk about the thing that was purchased,
I did a little bit more looking into this
and it was sparked by an Atrioc video,
but I did a little bit more looking into this
and man, do I just think he got scammed.
You think so?
It's just trash.
Okay, first of all, I found from a different source
that they've been like,
I don't wanna say falsely reporting.
Mistakenly reporting, inaccurately reporting,
whatever you wanna say.
Their user accounts.
Twitter?
Literally, as far as my, I wish I had a link for this.
I believe it's like millions of users less than they said.
To be fair, I think it's like two or three million
compared to the like 200 and whatever million
that they actually have.
But it's still like, it's a lot of people less
than what is actually there.
And like, of course they find that out exactly now.
Also, I have heard, let's look this up.
Let's see if I can find it right now.
It's crazy.
You know what?
I'll put it in context for a second.
Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion.
Okay, okay, listen to this.
And we thought that was crazy.
And it probably was because, oh wait,
is it even in the doc this week?
Talking about Twitch, the rumored 50 50 revenue split
and like forcing streamers to like play more ads and stuff.
I have some hot takes on that.
So we'll definitely talk about it.
So this is, I hope this blows your brain
because it blew the heck out of mine.
And I want some companionship here because this is nuts.
Cause I've been talking about how like ridiculous Twitter
is forever.
And this is actually driving me insane.
Take a guess at what their annual research
and development expenses were for 2021.
I don't know.
I mean, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Okay, okay, just give me a sec.
Give me a sec.
You can't ask me a big question like that
and be like, come on, answer, answer.
Okay, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
I will give you a little hint.
Hold on, I wanna think, let me think, let me think.
Okay, okay.
So they have software developers.
Software developers are very expensive.
So if their team is more than like five, six people,
their total expenses.
And remember your expenses includes
more than just salaries, right?
These people have to have a place to work.
They need equipment.
And salaries are more expensive than people realize
cause there's government costs and stuff.
Okay, and M&M's.
It's a modern web.
Smarties.
Oh, which I, oh no, not smarties.
That's more of like a different candy in the States.
It doesn't matter.
The point is they need candy.
They're developers, okay?
So if you have even like a handful of developers,
you're already spending a million dollars a year.
So I'm gonna say they have more than
just a handful of developers.
I'm gonna say they spend 20 million a year.
Okay.
How far up am I?
Um, orders of magnitude.
Orders?
Yes.
Shut up.
No.
Sorry, $2 billion a year?
So maybe not quite, but 1.247 billion
was their spend in 2021.
Look at what they've done with it.
This is the like, what are you doing?
And they're so bad.
Like what did he buy?
This is so trash.
I'm like, okay, if you're a developer at Twitter, I'm sorry.
It's honestly probably not your fault.
Looking at that amount of expenditure
and what you've been able to produce,
this is probably a management issue.
I know I'm regurgitating Atriok on that point,
but I completely agree with him.
That has gotta be a management issue.
The fact that you can't take one,
one and a quarter billion dollars
and create something better than like a glorified forum
for admittedly a lot of people is crazy.
Wait, hold on a second, $1.2 billion is just R&D
or actually includes operating expenses
of running the platform.
Research and development expenses for 2021.
It's up 42.81% from 2020,
which was $0.873 billion.
It's still closer to 1 billion
than what did you say, 20 million?
I said 20 million.
I figured they might have a team of like 50, 60 devs.
Like what do they even do all day?
What do they do all day?
They killed, they killed Vine,
which like, if you were able to fast forward
into the future and see TikTok.
Yeah, well killing Vine was just obviously stupid.
Like even at the time,
you didn't even need to fast forward.
Vine was huge.
One of the biggest things on YouTube,
I don't know if you were like into YouTube
at that point in time,
one of the biggest things on YouTube
for even years after Vine shut down,
was Vine compilations.
They were huge.
Vine shutting down created some of the biggest YouTubers
that have ever existed.
They shut that platform down.
Just gave it away.
They are only now running just Twitter.
It's one and a quarter billion dollars.
Some people brought up in the past
when I ragged them for the edit button
and I was like, you could do this in a week.
Yes, that's not enough time.
Sure, I know, I know.
Yes, it's more complicated
because they have to reference things
in a lot of different places
and they're trying to be very data scalable
and they're gonna get embedded on websites
and they have to deal with that
and yada, yada, yada and it's been built a certain way.
I get it.
They spent one and a quarter billion dollars on R&D.
Figure it out.
You can send people to space.
What is SpaceX's, just for another one of his companies,
SpaceX R&D budget.
Let's see if it's even public.
Okay.
All right.
I'm just seeing comments about this.
So I'm not entirely certain,
but that is an insane and absolutely ludicrous R&D budget
for what they've actually produced on Twitter.
I do understand these massive development teams
for these really, really, really high-end companies.
There is a lot more technical bureaucracy in the way.
There's positives and negatives to that.
I'm not gonna get like way into that now.
I know only certain people can actually push code
and you're gonna run into bottlenecks
and like all this stuff happens.
Absolutely.
But here's the thing.
Apple spent $19 billion on R&D
for the fiscal year ending in September, 2020
and has a product lineup
that includes multiple operating systems.
And they're working on like cars and stuff.
Like they're super wide reaching at Apple.
Well, yeah.
And the thing you got to realize about Apple
is that that's one, honestly,
it's one thing that pisses me off the most about Apple
is that they are often at the forefront
of product development,
whether it's micro-led display,
exploration for wrist devices or VR
or like cars or whatever it is,
they are often on the cutting freaking edge.
Oh yeah.
Like I don't get to see a lot of it.
Or it's ludicrously priced.
But like Apple only spent like one point,
one and a half times that probably by the time
we're looking at the same year,
or sorry, 10, 10, 15 times.
What does this work out to?
I'm sorry, math is still got COVID brain.
About 15 times the amount.
Apple definitely has,
and Apple is also a company that I often look at and go,
wow, they spend an awful lot on R&D
for how many products they actually make.
I mean, when Apple is making you look like a complete idiot
when it comes to R&D spending.
Insane, like actually crazy.
I had no idea.
I've honestly spent a lot of this time
when I'm like ragging on how trash Twitter is.
I've spent a lot of it just assuming
that it's a like really small team
that's just raking in the dough
because there's like none of them.
And they have this really massive platform,
but that's not even true.
It also wasn't profitable.
Bro, you got ripped the hell off.
You bought a dumpster fire.
That's a big problem is like Twitter,
how on earth are you gonna turn a profit?
Apparently when you shall not be named,
got loans to make this purchase.
A lot of it, the discussions at the bank included
actually reducing staff count
as one of the ways to approach profitability.
And also he had apparently some other ideas.
I don't know, I didn't really look into it that far,
but like apparently chopping down staff count is part of it.
And I believe he specified like executives,
which honestly looking at the spend
and what they're getting out of it
is probably the correct approach.
And I don't know what executives,
I know nothing about Twitter.
I know nothing about anyone that works there.
I know I'm not claiming anyone individually.
I don't care, it doesn't matter,
but something has gotta be going wrong here.
I like it, it's insane.
Apparently, yeah, I know I'm getting
a bunch of conflicting numbers about SpaceX
and I don't really care.
Just sending something to space
seemed like a funny thing to reference, but like.
I can't tell if binary C here
is being verbally ironic or not,
but they said an unprofitable dumpster fire
with a large intangible value
is an ideal company to take private.
I would actually think it's the opposite of that.
The other way around.
It's an ideal company to like IPO, yeah.
And take a bunch of people's money
and then Jack Dorsey out, sorry.
Sorry, sorry, just take off, PCO.
Yeah, yeah, it's, that's crazy.
I just, I don't think I've been stunned
by a statement that hard in a while.
Let's play a game.
Cause it's not like Elon's the first billionaire
to buy a media organization as a way to swing,
an unprofitable media organization
as a way to swing their thing around.
Bezos bought the Washington Post.
And then immediately articles started running
that were like extremely positive Bezos,
but yeah, sorry, keep going.
Yeah, so, okay, you're a billionaire, okay?
Which would you rather have the Washington Post or Twitter?
Man, I don't know.
I mean, if I'm, if I'm, what is it?
Rupert Murdoch, I just buy all of them.
That's, I don't know.
I feel like they're very different approaches
because on one of them you're attempting,
well, I don't know.
I don't want to presume what he's doing with it.
Yeah.
But on one of them, you're wrestling some form of control.
I'm not placing intentions at all.
You're wrestling, this is I think objective.
You're wrestling some form of control of an open forum.
Yeah.
And then the other one, you're-
Or theoretically not asserting any kind of control over it.
Well, no-
Which the EU also already made very clear
is absolutely not going to be happening
unless Twitter wants to pay, I think,
somewhere in the neighborhood of 7% of its,
of its turnover per year in fines.
They're like, yeah, you actually do need
to regulate hate speech on the platform,
or you will either be fined to this degree,
or you will just be outright banned in the EU,
which would actually be pretty bad for Twitter.
Well, I mean, they just lose money anyways, so.
I guess, yeah, I guess the fewer users,
the more profitable.
The better the balance sheet.
Chop that R&D budget down.
I don't, yeah, I don't know.
I feel like you probably get more direct value
if that's your goal.
And I mean, he hasn't stated that's his goal,
so I guess it's not his goal,
but I think you get more direct value
by buying the publication.
I'll be very interested to see what happens
when and if there is some kind of non-free speech move
that takes place on Twitter.
Whether it is, you know what?
Whatever the perception of it is,
I'll be interested to see how that goes.
All right, why don't we move on to some more merch messages?
From Joe, they asked specifically about Final Fantasy VI,
but I'm gonna open up the question a bit.
What are your preferred ways to play old games
on original hardware, remasters,
re-releases, emulators, et cetera?
Final Fantasy VI is a funny one
because the original translation
has a lot of character in it
that is not true to the original text.
So it's bad, it's flawed in that sense,
but because I grew up with it without classic lines
like son of a submariner, I find it hard to enjoy it.
I really liked the way that the characters
were developed by, what's his name?
Bill, Bill something.
Fantasy VI translator.
Ted Woolsey, sorry, not Bill anything.
Ted Woolsey was the translator for various Square games,
including a couple of my favorites,
Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.
And I honestly, yeah, maybe he was a bad translator
in the sense that he added some of his own character
to the text, but I actually really enjoyed his style.
And so playing it again with any kind of fixed translation
is a little, I don't know, it's a little weird for me.
With that said, trying to share some of my favorite games
from my childhood with my kids,
it's very clear that there are creature comforts
that they take for granted in modern games
that make old games just not as enjoyable for them.
So if I was gonna recommend a version,
then I would probably recommend the Pixel Remaster.
There's also the, oh man, what's it called?
There's a Final Fantasy VI sort of fan,
let's see, VI fan version, what's it called?
I like the idea of remasters because I find a lot of times
if I think about old video games,
they look better in my head than they do in reality.
But I have been burned by so many remasters over the years
that what I default to wanting
is a properly functioning version of the original game,
which if I don't have to emulate is great,
if I do have to emulate is fine.
That's usually where I land.
Hmm, best versions.
Relocalization, uncensored edition, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, sprites more like their Japanese originals.
I don't know, there's one cool one
that's kind of altered in ways
that make the combat more interesting
and there's a bunch of changes to it.
I really, oh, Brave New World, Brave New World,
that's the one, thank you, Twitch chat.
I tried it, I made it halfway through the game
and it was pretty good, honestly, it was pretty cool.
But when I go back and play an old game,
honestly, I'd rather just play the version I remember,
even if it's super broken.
I played back through Final Fantasy Tactics recently
and just, yeah, there are things that are super stupid
and frustrating about it, but that's why I enjoy it.
So I like playing the original version.
I do still like some creature comfort,
things like save states,
that's why I'll almost exclusively play on an emulator.
I think the Game Gear is a bit of an exception for me
where I really do just wanna play it
on the original hardware
because the ergonomics are different.
There's no controller on Earth
that feels like that in your hand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like that is just clearly meant to be played on here.
Okay.
From Nick, would you say the Labs project
is something you see as a big profit making investment
or are you more doing it
because you don't like the direction of the industry
and you're using your position to change it?
Little from column A, little from column B.
I think that as a business owner,
it would be extremely irresponsible of me
to just do stuff that is gonna put the financial security
of myself, my family and my team in jeopardy.
If I didn't believe that we can make money on Labs,
it's not something that I would be able to justify
the multimillion dollar investment
that we're going to be making into it
before we can have any hope of turning a profit.
But with that said,
there are absolutely things that we could pursue
in the short, mid and long-term
that would be more profitable than Labs.
So on the one hand, yes, my intention is to make money.
I have never, I have never claimed
to be anything other than running a business.
And honestly, I think that's the reason
you guys should trust me.
Because if I was doing something
other than running a business,
I might try to get away with stuff.
Like way back in the day,
we'd have people who are sort of questioning,
are we gonna be honest with you guys?
And the answer was always, well, yeah,
because the internet never forgets.
And if we screw with you guys,
you will find out and you will know forever.
So transparency has always been the best way
for us to retain that trust.
And that trust is the most valuable thing to us.
So because this is a business that we're running
and our main value as an organization is viewer trust,
then the relationship is very clear.
I never like to enter an arrangement or a business agreement
where I don't understand the value to both sides.
The value to my side is making money.
The value to your side is getting entertainment
and information.
So if I can't keep doing those things,
I'm not going to make money,
so that would be bad for my business.
With that said, there are other businesses
that I absolutely could have gotten into.
I do this one because I love it,
because since I was a teenager,
what I would do in my spare time is sit
and answer people's tech questions
and help them make the best purchase that they can.
So yeah, it's a business,
but it's also something that I do
because I just like to do it.
I think that probably answers it pretty clearly.
It's not the most eloquent way of putting it,
but honestly, I still have a little bit of COVID brain.
I'm not, last one in particular,
I kind of felt like I am all over the place.
It's not a very good show, but.
It was also the first time we had done a remote show
in a long time, and it felt so bad.
It was laggy.
It was laggy.
If you guys want to get some idea
of how I intend to make money on the labs,
there's a post on the forum where,
again, back to transparency, I lay out the plan, okay?
One of the ideas, wellspring of content for LTT.
That also includes short circuit,
includes any future channels.
I think that as we start testing products
by the dozens or the hundreds,
interesting patterns and stories will emerge.
Hey, maybe someone is seeding golden laptop samples
with liquid metal instead of standard thermal paste,
or maybe a power supply from a brand no one heard of
is the undisputed king under $70.
Video is still immensely profitable,
so we have the funding to go and create
this testing apparatus to make our videos better.
Why don't we just do it?
Two is affiliate revenue.
If LTT Labs achieves my goal
of creating an alternate spec sheet
where pretty much it's the only site you need
to make a good purchase decision,
then we should be able to get a ton
of affiliate revenue from it.
Advertising on site is unlikely.
I hate ads, so I just don't think
there's gonna be a ton of that on there.
It's possible we'll put some banners here and there,
but it'll be more likely that we're just pushing
the channels, pushing affiliate revenue, that sort of thing.
We could get into certification programs
and third-party validation.
This one has the potential to create muddy waters,
but I think there's ways that we could silo it
to make it so that it doesn't have to,
and the certification team doesn't have
to affect the editorial team.
Maybe they just don't even talk to each other.
They're in completely separate offices.
I don't know.
I think we could figure it out.
I think that's also probably the one that's furthest
down the line.
Yes, that's a fair ways down the line.
Well, I would have said that,
but then we had a large global brand reach out
to us earlier this week, asking us to take a look
at a product that is in the very early stages
of development to provide feedback on it.
I decided that where I'm at today,
I'm going to accept that, but not paid.
So I just am really interested in this product,
and I'm really passionate about it.
But I'm not in a position where A,
I have the time to provide proper feedback myself.
And we don't have the expertise set up yet.
And B, to have the facilities to provide
empirical objective feedback.
We don't quite have that $1.2 billion R&D budget yet.
Yeah, I could use $1.2 billion.
I think I could do a lot with $1.2 billion.
Yeah, probably a little bit more than Twitter.
Yeah, so the way that I did this,
I don't think it creates any kind of conflict of interest
for me to be involved.
I just really want this product to be better.
And I know that I will have some ideas
if I play around with it.
So that was my compromise for now.
But I think in the longer term,
it would be better for me to just recuse myself
from that sort of thing.
Like I could talk to the team about,
here are ways that we wanna guide the industry
towards being better.
We should really be focused on things like repairability
as we provide this feedback.
We should be focused on things like not saving $1 today
to cost the consumer $10 tomorrow.
Like putting together those guiding principles
I would like to be involved in.
But in terms of the actual evaluation of the products
and even knowing how much the transactions are,
either way, I think I should just not be involved in.
Right.
Turning our testing knowledge
into product development processes.
This one is gonna happen.
I promise you this will happen.
If we figure out how to make the best keyboard,
why don't we just make the best keyboard?
Yeah, there's conflicts of interest there too,
but I don't know, we'll figure it out.
I'd like to think that if I had a mouse pad,
I could still say another mouse pad is really good.
I mean, we even said that in our launch video
for the mouse pad.
We were like, yeah, hey,
we weren't quite at the spec of this other mouse pad.
We think it's okay
because you actually have to travel like this many meters
for it to drift this amount.
We think that's accurate enough for your caveman hands.
But we know that this one actually did a better job.
Shout out them.
Like I'd like to think that we could be trusted that way,
but I guess we'll have to see how that turns out.
It's a fine line to walk,
but it's also technically a fine line
that we've been walking the entire time.
For a long time.
So, yeah.
There's the possibility
of putting certain content behind paywalls,
like having professional level content
versus consumer level content.
And that seems unlikely to me, but it's possible.
And then there's direct sales of products through the site.
Why don't we go full circle and become a retailer?
Like why do we take affiliate revenue
when we can just put up a warehouse
and just sell it to you directly?
There's more conflicts of interest there potentially.
I don't know.
We're just gonna have to navigate this the best way we can.
And you guys will tell us if you think we've done it wrong.
And we'll tell you guys if,
sorry, that's the way it's gonna be
because we actually can't sustain the labs without it
or whatever that ends up looking like.
We're just gonna do our best
to keep the guiding principles of why are you doing this?
Well, one, to make money.
But two, as we are making money,
we absolutely are setting out
to create better information for consumers
to stop the bleeding of all the knowledgeable people
going to the manufacturing side
where they literally have no choice
but to shill for the brand that pays their paycheck.
I'm tired of it.
Anyway, if you guys wanna check out that post on the forum,
it's on the thread called LTT is about to change
and it's on page six.
And I just, I laid the whole thing out.
I'm like, yep, here's the plan because why bother?
Oh, look at this.
I've got a mission statement that I wrote.
LTT Labs is the answer to manipulation of onsite reviews
and the degradation of the quality of online tech media
over the last 10 years.
There.
That's our goal.
Cool.
Awesome.
From Charles, but also many, many others.
They were wondering about any news on a Rackmount case,
either if we're selling it, how yours is going,
if you're gonna get your neighbor to repaint it,
if you do a new one, so many questions.
Neighbor Steve is probably too busy.
You know, neighbor Steve is still here, right?
He just moved down or something.
Yeah, like down at the end.
Neighbor Steve is probably too busy to airbrush me a case.
Yvonne, I think does wanna keep her owl.
So she may keep her original case,
but we are in the very early stages
of designing a new case for me.
If that goes really, really well,
then I don't think it's impossible
that we would find a case manufacturer to partner with
to build a Rackmount gaming case.
Yeah, I know.
I know there's a lot of people who are super into it.
Man, watching your home video,
I finally actually did watch it.
Which one?
There's a lot.
Sorry, we're leaving this one.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The feels?
Man, yeah, a lot of that.
There was so much stuff that I feel like was missed,
but I feel like if you hit everything-
It would have been three hours long.
Yeah.
So there was things that I was like,
I knew I cared about a lot and I like wish was in the video,
but then I had to think like, okay,
does the audience care as much?
Do you and Yvonne care as much, et cetera, et cetera?
Okay, here's my merch message.
Hit me with a couple.
Okay, can I guess?
Can I guess a couple?
I'm gonna write them down.
I'm gonna write them down.
Yeah.
And then I wanna know if I get the same ones as you.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, hold on.
Let me think.
Things that would be really special to Luke.
Luke.
I'm waiting.
I'm trying to think of more while I sit here.
I've already thought of one additional one
while I was sitting here.
Okay.
All right, I've got three.
I've got three.
Don't look at them.
I will also say, I thought it was good.
I thought it was really good.
I enjoyed the whole thing.
I actually sat down and actually watched the whole thing,
which is like not that common.
There's some stuff that I'm really unhappy
that I didn't put in too.
So we'll see if your list overlaps with mine a little bit.
The original three WAN locations,
because there's three different WAN locations.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Okay.
I gotta, I gotta, hold on.
I gotta, I'm gonna turn this text white.
I swear, I swear to you.
That's all I'm doing.
He's not even typing.
There you go.
That's the first one I wrote down.
Yeah, okay.
And okay, so what was to the left of that was the peg wall.
My next note was going to be the peg wall.
So I was going to bring that up too.
Just like the garage in general.
Like you should-
Oh my God, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Okay. Highlighting, highlighting, ready?
Highlighting.
Yeah.
What did I write?
The general layout of the garage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Every once in a while,
he guesses things that I'm thinking
and it's actually like terrifyingly accurate.
This is not the only time this has happened like at all.
Okay.
Am I going to go three for three?
Well, I guess I got three.
Cause I had, I had the peg wall
and the land show set as kind of like one, but okay.
So I'm three for three so far.
What's the next thing you're going to say?
The next thing would be my room.
Okay.
Okay. That's pretty good.
Four for four.
That's all I have down though.
Yeah. I mean, that's mostly it.
There was, there was other things that I thought of,
but like even I was like, yeah,
I probably shouldn't have been in the video.
But like, I don't know.
There was-
Oh, that was so fun.
That's pretty funny.
Yeah. Honestly, I thought of all of them afterward
and I regretted not having them in.
There's so much stuff.
There's like, there's two, I,
cause I tried to think about like,
like what would I have done?
And I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Like there's, there's too many things.
Cause even if you walk in the backyard,
there's almost no direction you can face
where there wasn't like some type of major event.
Something crazy that happened.
Like the, the like fence jump for that commercial.
That was at the Langley house.
Nope.
I promise.
Nope.
I know because I hurt myself.
The Coursera commercial.
Oh, that fence jump.
I mean, we've done a few fence jumps.
It was the one, the one where I flipped
for the be quiet thing.
Oh.
I remember that one well
because I was quite hurt for a while.
That was actually,
that was actually genuinely really rough.
That was not a very good idea.
But yeah, there's a lot of like little things like that
where I'm like, I would have cared.
Where I went up on the roof
and threw the keyboard down for the giveaway.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like I just-
The weird thing I shot in the shower
for that like WD Computex promotion.
Yeah. There's like so much weird stuff
we shot in that house back in the day.
We didn't have sets guys.
Like you know what?
His whole house.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know.
We need to do a scene where like, you know,
the person wakes up in the morning.
Okay. Well I'm going to go get into my bed.
Yeah. So yeah.
I don't know.
It was, it was really good, but yeah, it would have.
Yeah. It would have literally had to been like
at least over an hour long.
Oh yeah.
For sure.
And we cut so much from, from that,
that I did end up talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
From Michael who built their first PC
with the help of our videos.
One question that I've always wanted to ask
is how you got into badminton.
Oh, my wife got me into it.
And no, LTT could not lose me to professional badminton.
I'm not that good.
There's only one major tech tuber
who is a professional athlete and it is not this one.
From John, are you excited about the rumor
of Intel returning to the high end desktop market
with Alder Lake X?
Or do you think that market is dead
with the current core counts
and high end consumer CPUs like the 5950 X?
Man, I hope it's not dead.
Cause like, honestly thinking about it
from a developer standpoint or like a prosumer standpoint.
It's really nice to be able to get that like tier
or class without buying the badge.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. A hundred percent.
Yeah. I'm jazzed.
Yeah. In a nutshell.
I do think that ATDT is more niche than it used to be.
I mean, 5950 X is a 16 core freaking consumer CPU
and new Zen four based ones are gonna be
like even more better presumably.
But there is still a value to it.
I mean, we're sort of frustrated right now
because we standardized on TRX 40 or whatever,
or the STRX 40 or whatever AMD's thread Ripper
3000 series platform was.
We standardized on it for editing stations
thinking that we were gonna get
at least one more generation of CPUs.
We actually ended up getting nothing.
And now we, is it the boards or the chips
that we standardized on that are EOL?
The point is that it's hard to find more hardware
for our workstations at a reasonable price.
And there also is not a clear replacement for it
with all the PCIE that we need.
Like we've got 25 gigabit NICs in there,
high-end GPUs that are actually being used for,
not for gaming, like for data use.
So the PCIE bandwidth actually starts to matter
a little bit more.
Sometimes they have other kind of crazy peripherals
we need to plug in.
We need lots of PCIE.
You need lots of memory bandwidth.
We need lots of cores.
They're all running 24 cores in there
and there's not a clear successor for it
unless we wanna pay Lenovo for their,
they're the only authorized vendor
of like the new Threadripper Pro,
because you can't get normal,
like regular prosumer Threadripper.
It has to be professional Threadripper now.
Like it sucks.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of,
CPUs are in a way better space now
than they were a while back,
but not a huge fan of where the HTTP space is.
I want Intel to come in and light a fire under AMD's butt,
which sounds like a very backwards thing to say.
Sounds so weird, but you're totally right.
But I mean, I warned you guys about this.
I said, look, the second AMD has the upper hand,
they'll behave exactly like Intel and they did.
They're not your friend.
There's no good guy and bad guy when it comes to CPUs.
What we want is competition.
Yeah, and we got it in certain space and not in others.
There's been a lot of speculation
about who the tech YouTuber athlete is.
It's Marques.
He's insanely athletic.
Some of his clips of his ultimate Frisbee
are actually like-
Otherworldly.
Amazing, like pure highlight reel golden goodness.
I still think I could beat him at badminton though.
Has he ever played?
No, I don't know.
Not enough, I can tell you that much.
I could almost definitely beat him at badminton.
Nice, I like it.
No, I'm not gonna say almost definitely, okay?
Marques, 10 grand.
Whoa, let's go.
Dude, that'd be really cool.
I don't wanna take his money.
I mean, I will if he really wants me to, but I'm-
What if you just make it that he gets 10 grand if he wins
and it's just a full ego placement.
There is no actual-
Okay, sure.
Nice.
Yeah, I don't want his money,
but I'll give him 10 grand if he beats me.
Nice.
There, I love it.
That'd be sweet.
I would commentate that.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I'd be super down.
I'd turn it into an event.
Yeah.
You know what?
I could make money on it-
It's like YouTuber-
Whether I lose or not.
Yeah, there we go.
It's like YouTuber boxing.
Yeah, do you see the-
But not finally.
Celebrity boxing?
Yeah.
You know, it's so funny because remember back
when the Paul brothers were first getting into that,
we were like, I should fight Austin.
And that, like, it became like a whole meme.
And now like, Dr. Mike is fighting in a boxing match.
I'm sitting here-
Yeah.
Dude, what?
Dr. Mike versus iDubbbz or whatever.
So funny.
Oh man.
I just wanna know why they didn't invite me.
I would have totally fought Austin.
Oh my goodness.
We could do, we could do almost like a reverse nerd sports.
A reverse nerd sports.
Where like, you have to get nerfed
until people beat you in badminton.
Oh man.
I don't know.
I don't, I think-
That might not be that interesting.
Nerd sports was too traumatic for me.
I don't wanna talk about it.
Oh man.
Okay.
Let's keep moving on.
From Osama, when you're feeling down on yourself,
what do you do to pull yourself out of a funk?
Oh man.
That's a tough one.
I think I can speak for both of us when I say
we've definitely had funks.
Yeah.
You know, I think for me, sometimes it's a matter
of just reframing the problem.
Like when I did the 10 million subscriber stream,
one of the big things that helped me
for the next couple of years was, you know, saying,
okay, well no, I'm not gonna do this cause I have to,
I'm gonna do it cause I want to.
And finding things that I enjoyed and wanted to do
and focusing on those.
A big thing that pulls me out of bed in the morning
is just the sheer sense of responsibility.
Like if I don't show up for work,
like obviously one day is fine.
If I'm just like, yeah, I'm taking a flex day.
But if I don't show up for work for like a year,
there's a lot of mouths that literally don't eat,
which can actually make it worse sometimes,
but usually makes it more manageable.
I just, sorry, there was something in chat
that I don't want to, oh, someone was saying
that it might be more interesting to Marquez
and other creators if it was a charitable donation
instead of a prize.
Anyways, for me.
Sure, I mean, he can always donate it, I don't care.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
I mean, we've done things that way in the past
where we just say, here's a prize,
you do whatever you want with it.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, I'm not, okay.
I really don't like charity pressure.
Fair enough, yeah.
I think that, man, I'm going into hot take territory here.
I think that a lot of charitable and philanthropic actions
are about posturing, are about image whitewashing,
are about brand building and are not necessarily about
actually giving up anything personally
or making a huge impact.
We do charitable stuff here, but for the most part,
we keep it fairly quiet.
Under wraps, yeah.
Cause it's, A, I just don't want to be accountable
for what I care about and what, like I've seen creators
get backlash for donating, for example,
to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Like, why would you donate for animals
when humans are still starving?
Oh, geez.
You know what?
Why don't you go do something for the humans
that are starving?
People have different causes that are important to them
for a variety of reasons,
and that's their personal business.
Totally fair.
So I just don't feel like having that conversation.
This is a stupid conversation
and I'm not going to burden my life with it.
I also just, I don't know.
I don't know.
I just, it just feels, it just feels like,
it just feels icky.
Like I don't like being bothered
at the cash register about it.
I don't like, yeah, I just, I don't like,
I don't like there being that pressure.
And so I-
That's definitely fair enough, yeah.
Yeah, and there shouldn't be.
You know what?
There's nothing wrong with a major content creator
doing some kind of, doing some kind of event,
doing some kind of appearance and making money from it.
100%, yeah.
And I've been very clean with you guys from day one.
I'm running a business.
I can't pay Luke in your goodwill
for my charitable donation to something.
So at the end of the day, for me,
maybe this is a selfish take, but it's me and mine first.
I am far more concerned with making sure
that everyone working under this roof has a place to live
than I am with the people who are not under this roof
and are not contributing to the success of this organization.
And that's not to say that it's, you know,
just us all the time.
It's just this team first.
First, yeah, and like you, yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
I don't think it makes me a bad guy.
One of my favorite things to dive into is like,
when some like hyper-rich, like the last one I did
was Bezos, he like donated a ton of money to something.
And people were like, wow, what a generous person.
And then people dove into it and was like, hmm,
it's like the equivalent of me donating $4.
If you like do percentages and stuff, like, yeah.
It's complicated because it should be very clear, guys,
that someone's net worth is A,
almost assuredly not accurate and B,
is locked up in assets just because,
okay, let's use Elon, just because Elon Musk
has a net worth, what is it, like 250 billion
or something like that?
It's changed a lot recently.
He still had to get financing to buy Twitter for 44 billion.
That's not just cash.
Like my net worth, I can tell you right now,
is a hell of a lot more than I have in my bank account.
That's just how it works.
In fact, the vast majority of it, which I know for a fact,
maybe I'll talk about it someday,
but the vast majority of my net worth
is tied up in a thing that I actually can neither sell
nor borrow against.
I know that it's worth that,
but I cannot extract money from it.
So it's-
It is what it is.
Yes, it's theoretical money, right?
Yeah.
To jump back to the get out of the funk thing,
I was in funk for a long time.
I don't think I've talked about this on camera much
and I'm not gonna go into it much further than that.
Kelton's being a tool over on Twitch.
Let's not talk about the locked up in assets thing, please.
You can take a loan against your investments
at which point you can borrow against that money,
but your investments might not be the kind of investments
you're thinking of.
Yes, there are certain kinds of investments
that you can borrow against.
There's a really crafty wealth management strategy
where you take out, oh, I forget how it works exactly.
Someone explained it to me at some point,
but there's this kind of life insurance that you can get
where you're basically putting the cash in a big pile
that is like a life insurance policy.
And then that cash, because it's basically just cash,
allows you to borrow against it tax-free.
And then when you die, the policy pays out,
the money pays back in,
and then you never actually had to take out
the money personally and pay tax on it
or something like that.
I forget exactly how it works.
Yes, there are assets that you can borrow against,
but there are also assets
that are not easily borrowable against.
I couldn't even get a mortgage
in the first couple of years of LMG
because this business that was generating
plenty enough money to be eligible for a mortgage
if I was buying a house personally.
It was just like too new.
It was just like, no, no.
That was actually an incredibly-
Apparently it's called universal life policy,
or index for universal life insurance.
Who knows, not financial advice.
That's according to Twitch.
Yeah, not financial advice.
I'm not a financial advisor.
Okay, sorry, what were you gonna say?
Yeah, so I was in a funk for a pretty deep one
for quite a while,
and I'm not gonna go into it further than that.
But since then, things have been getting a lot better.
And what I've more recently been doing
is whenever I find myself spiraling,
I try to immediately do something physical.
Go for a walk-
Physical health is mental health.
Oh, it's like actually-
You gotta keep your body healthy.
Yeah, so I try to go for a walk,
which sounds lame,
but works significantly better than it should.
Try to go for a walk.
On those walks, I find I don't usually,
this is gonna sound provocative,
but I don't usually physically stimulate myself enough.
So I'll try to usually go for walks.
I can help with that.
A lot of my walks, when I'm spiraling,
it's often very, very late at night because I am a night owl.
So I'll just go for a walk at 3.30 in the morning.
Yeah.
And I'll be out in the field,
and I'll just do squats and lunges
and all this kind of stuff just to get myself worked up,
sweat a lot, and then go have a shower.
And often, that's all I need, and I feel great afterwards.
I like going for a ride.
What's nice about riding on a motorcycle
is that if you're in a busy mind state,
you cannot stay in that state of mind
when you're riding on a motorbike.
So it's gonna, yeah.
You must be focused or you'll die.
The biggest, and another thing that I would say
is certain people in my life I have found
are very effective at pulling me out.
So I try to, a lot, I'm quite introverted.
I like hanging out by myself,
but I find that sometimes that's not good for me,
so I need to push myself to hang out with those people.
But one of the biggest things that I find
is just context changes.
So you were talking about on the motorcycle,
you can't let your mind just run.
There's this really old concept
where if you're in a potentially confrontational situation,
and this is a fun fact, I've used this for fan interactions.
When I notice that the person is feeling very anxious,
I will do this because it helps to shift frame of mind.
But if you, this is just a funny thing,
if you're facing someone,
if you step off to the side randomly,
it's kind of weird.
And people will now think about like,
oh, I'm looking at them,
I have to talk into this at the same time.
I'm looking at them like this now, this is weird.
I'm gonna turn my body, oh, I unplugged myself.
But it starts making them think about things that aren't,
I'm really anxious about this conversation,
I'm really nervous.
And it actually can really help calm people down,
which is kind of cool.
You ever used it on me?
No.
Oh, all right.
Well, I don't think so.
I don't know, it's been a long time, dude.
But yeah, I don't think so.
But a lot of the time for me,
I just need to do something different.
And usually I'll use a walk,
but it could be something else.
If I'm in a situation where I can't go for a walk,
it's basically anything else,
just do something different, change my action.
But yeah, that's it.
I still ride an SV650S.
And Armchair Yiddish asks,
if I had someone who wanted to give you money
for a significant but non-majority portion of LTT,
would you take it?
That would depend on the terms.
Every investor wants something.
That's literally the definition.
You put something in, you expect something back.
And I'd need to know what that is
because if I, A, don't agree with it,
or B, don't understand it,
then I'm not gonna be comfortable taking it.
Before we go to the last set of merch messages,
did you wanna talk about Twitch?
The chat is reminding.
Oh, yeah, I saw a really terrible take
from a Twitch creator that was like,
Twitch should just have ads that are totally non-intrusive.
To the viewer, their ads should just not be intrusive.
And I was looking at it going,
this feels like that whole thing.
Remember when there was the big controversy on YouTube
where they basically started enforcing
advertiser-friendly guidelines on videos
and it was affecting the rate
at which you could get monetization?
And you had this whole outrage
from especially certain corners of YouTube
that created very non-advertiser-friendly content.
And my take at the time, I felt like,
was very controversial and not received very well
where I basically said,
well, yeah, what did you expect was gonna happen?
At some point, there was gonna be a reckoning
where advertisers were not gonna want,
you guys don't understand.
You don't work with national and international brands.
They are extremely conservative when it comes to,
and obviously not all, there are exceptions,
but they're extremely conservative when it comes to
the associations between their brand and other things.
You look at the way that they will,
you'll watch like a Nike commercial
and it's just like someone persevering.
And at the end, there's just like a Nike logo
and there aren't even like any words or anything
because it's all about association.
They do not want the next thing you see after that,
for the same reason,
they want you to see a bunch of whatever
before you see the logo.
They do not want the next thing you see after the logo
to be something that they consider to be not brand friendly.
It's just that simple.
And so I feel like this is another one of those situations
where I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna say,
well, yeah, what did you think was gonna happen?
Do you have any idea how much Twitch costs to run?
And do you think that banner,
like static banner ads on a website are gonna pay for it?
I promise you, I give you my personal
Linus Tech Tips guarantee
that unintrusive ads are not going to pay
for a site like Twitch,
no matter how many of them they plastered on the page.
Unintrusive ads don't pay for the forum.
Because no advertiser is gonna pay for an unintrusive ad
because they don't work,
because they don't call your attention away.
Obviously.
No offense, no offense,
whoever does not understand how web advertising works,
even though it's like how they actually make a living.
My take on it is the thing that surprised me the most.
Okay, first of all,
doing it at all when your competitors are not,
I understand that Twitch is losing money,
but if they don't want to essentially die,
they're not gonna have to have
like significantly worse revenue potential
than other platforms.
Life is so hard and so expensive.
Oh, absolutely.
Like I sympathize for them.
Truly, but like it just doesn't matter
if you want to survive.
And then the other one is that they announced
no longer having exclusivity.
And exclusivity is rough, rough, rough, rough
for Twitch creators.
It's really, really bad for the creators.
But making their revenue split worse than YouTube.
Well, I hadn't even talked about the revenue split yet.
I was talking about that Twitch creator yet.
That's terrible.
Making the rev split worse than YouTube
and then also allowing people to split stream to YouTube.
Hilarious, hilarious.
They're just gonna push everyone over onto YouTube.
Obviously.
Man, we should maybe.
Twitch is done.
If they go through with this move, Twitch is done.
I wonder if we should try to productize
our stream splitting stuff.
I've told you I want to productize
the stream splitting thing eight years ago.
It didn't make a lot of sense then.
It might make sense now.
Well, maybe if you had built it
when it didn't make sense,
we would actually have a product ready to go
when it doesn't make sense.
You ever think of that, smart guy?
Dead product for eight years.
You ever think of that, smart guy?
Eight years.
It hasn't been that long.
I thought you said eight years.
I don't know, whatever.
It's been like four.
Gyrenthyr over on Twitch says,
ads don't really work anyway.
That's the kind of smooth brain take
that I would expect from Twitch chat.
Ads don't work.
Do you have any idea how big the advertising industry is?
Yeah, ads don't work.
Doesn't function.
You're right.
We don't have any backend information
on how much turnover we,
I don't know what the correct term is for it,
but push with ads, none at all.
Yeah, yeah, we have no,
it's not like we do any advertising at all in our business.
Never.
And it's not like anyone has ever bought anything
that we've advertised, please.
Come on.
And like, to be clear,
I'm not saying that they work on you.
Maybe they don't.
Maybe you're magic.
Honestly, I don't really see them either.
I was gonna say you in particular,
I think really don't see ads.
It's actually like stunning.
Like it'll be the most blatant,
most aggressive thing on the page.
And you'll ask him about it like four seconds later.
And he'll be like, what?
It's not everything other than that.
I can't see it.
But yeah, I don't know.
But they don't kid yourself.
Literally one of the most valuable companies in the world.
You might've heard of it.
Google, sorry, Alphabet, excuse me.
Like their entire business.
They have entire free services like YouTube and Gmail
that are sustained based on targeting ads
more effectively at you so that they will work even better.
Anyway, Jordan asks, sorry, I'm doing your job.
Oh, you didn't talk about the cargo or the revenue,
the rev split.
Oh yeah, they're doomed.
Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't matter if they're losing money
on a 50-50 rev split.
If everyone else is still doing 70-30,
then they're completely screwed.
As for having creators push more ads.
Yeah, I mean, that's just normal.
That's just needs to happen
because banner ads, no, are not gonna do it.
Sorry, nameless creator.
And probably more than one creator.
I don't even think that's a controversial take
in that community because there were like tens of thousands
of upvotes on this super big brain idea
that ads should just not disrupt the user at all.
Oh man.
Oh man.
Anyway.
Back to the messages, yeah.
Yeah, if any creators wanna leave Twitch,
FlowPlane, we'll take it.
Hey, let's go.
I don't know if we're ready to be like a Twitch competitor,
but what FlowPlane-
We have a live streaming only creator and he's killing it.
Actually, that's true.
I was looking at the payouts.
Yvonne just had it up on her monitor and I walked in.
I was like, oh, well that's good.
The users are stoked and like,
it's actually a very vibrant community.
But a more likely product might be,
I mean, it's a little, the UI is not great right now.
A little early.
But our multi-streaming works great.
I don't know if you noticed,
but we are live right now on FlowPlane, Twitch and YouTube.
And we could be live on Facebook
if we really felt like it, couldn't we?
We could.
We should just do it.
Sure.
Like why not?
I think I mentioned that like a long time ago.
Yeah, well I was wrong if I said no.
I don't know who said no.
Yeah, maybe we both said yes and then just forgot.
With these guys?
Definitely possible.
Dude, if it doesn't end up in like some form
of solid documentation, it's gone.
My memory is a sieve, not a good one.
One with lots of holes in it.
Well, I mean, a good sieve would have.
Okay, you know what?
I've had enough.
I need to block you.
Blocked, blocked.
Oh yeah, why didn't we just call them out?
Chris's 429 says garbage time.
Yeah, let's just call out garbage time.
Dude, it's awesome content.
Yeah, doing great.
Super cool.
Doing great over on FlowPlane.
Yeah.
And like the thing is, honestly,
kudos to garbage time for getting it.
For understanding that the reason,
whether it's Patreon screwing over creators
or Twitch screwing over creators,
the reason is that these are unsustainable business models.
We know because we're like running one.
So yeah.
And he totally understood.
We talk about it like every time.
I really enjoy talking to him.
So just in case people don't know,
garbage time is the same person that runs dank pods.
Garbage time on FlowPlane is a very music-based stream.
He's a drummer.
He's a very good drummer.
And he plays like meme songs
and runs drum tracks along with them.
It's fantastic.
It's very fun.
It's tons of viewers.
He's building like a new studio
and he's building a heavily reinforced door
so that he can hit it harder with cymbals.
Because every once in a while,
he'll just like throw cymbals around and stuff.
It's a fun show.
It's a fun time.
But I know one of the reasons why he likes it
and why his fans like it is because it's a music stream.
Oh, right.
That's right.
Our audio quality is so much better than like,
I don't think there's another video platform that has-
People like immediately when showing up are like,
whoa, it sounds really good.
Even when they don't know that that's like a thing
with Floatplane.
Yeah.
So yeah, cool.
I don't know.
Floatplane's like actually really good.
And considering the fact that we have like seven devs
and Twitter is 1.2 billion.
Sorry.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
Not everyone who works at Floatplane is a dev.
Sorry.
And then Twitter has $1.2 billion
in manages to create that steaming pile of garbage.
Floatplane's like amazing.
But yeah, our multi-streaming thing
allows us to simulstream on really any platform
that we want.
Yeah, like we could spin up Facebook like now.
But with just one source, which is pretty cool.
And then we also have-
I don't know if it's scalable and stuff.
I'm sure the infrastructure guys are gonna yell at me when-
We have merch messages.
We have merch messages, which anyone could theoretically use
if they also have a Shopify based like merch thing.
I mean, there'd be some dev to productize it.
So we've actually talked about that internally
and there's quite a bit of dev to productize it.
It's not impossible.
Yeah.
But yeah, it'll work.
Like a lot of work.
All right.
Well, hopefully Yvonne's in bed
cause the next two questions are about marriage tips.
Oh no.
First one here is from Jordan.
Hey Linus, I'm getting married in October and I'm curious.
Are there any special stories regarding your wedding bands?
For our wedding bands,
the story is that they were cheap and fine, I guess.
I didn't even want a band.
I wanted to do tattoos because at the time,
like I'm totally used to it now,
but at the time I didn't like wearing hand jewelry
and I just didn't want something on my hand all the time.
Now I feel naked without it.
But I just, yeah, I just wanted a tattoo.
And I was like, come on, this should be better.
Like it's more permanent.
I'm like, I'm in it to win it, baby.
Let's go, let's tattoo.
She was just not into body paint.
And so she said, no, I prefer a band.
So I kind of went, okay.
And then Yvonne doesn't even wear her wedding band.
I don't think she's had it on
since she gave birth to our firstborn,
which was like however many years ago.
It's been a bit.
Yeah, so she just wears her engagement ring.
And the story there is that I actually like went
and learned like a ton about diamonds
because my whole thing was, okay,
if I have to blow a bunch of money on a scam,
then I might as well get the best scam possible.
So I picked a diamond that I felt was best suited to her.
I could have gone bigger, but from my point of view,
if it wasn't internally flawless,
then it wouldn't be a good representation of Yvonne.
She also has extremely slender fingers.
That's cute as heck.
And I thought, sorry?
I said, that's cute as heck.
And I also thought that because she has
extremely slim fingers, there would be,
it would look kind of out of place
and could even, she worked with her hands a lot.
She's a pharmacist at the time.
Could even get in the way if it was too big.
I also really preferred a more low profile setting.
And that was for the same reason.
I liked a simple setting because she's practical.
So it's just a simple four-prong setting
on a traditional hearts and arrows diamond.
So it's a Canadian diamond,
which was really important to me.
No conflict gem is gonna go on my wife's hand.
That's cool.
I appreciate that part.
I'm just trying to think of like what else,
what else mattered to me?
I bought the diamond and the setting independently.
I forget why I did that.
Right, I just, there was a setting I really liked
and there was a diamond I really liked
and there was no point getting them in one place.
And compared to buying them both together
at a jewelry store,
compared to buying the diamond online,
it was significantly less expensive.
Peer Drifter says, borderline going for the G-Assert.
Of course it has a G-Assert.
Like, no, it's like a proper diamond.
Like you can get ones for less that are like gigantic,
but they don't sparkle the way that an IF does.
So if I'm gonna get scammed,
then I'm gonna get scammed properly.
I also didn't want something
that was obviously very valuable.
I wanted it to seem like a poor person diamond
to someone who doesn't know anything about rocks
because the last thing I want
is her getting like held up somewhere or something
and her, you know, in a panic,
not being able to get it off or something.
And it seeming like extremely valuable,
like worth cutting a hand off for.
Like it was, there was a very strategic decision made there.
And to be clear, it wasn't crazy expensive.
No matter what it was gonna be at my budget,
it was not gonna be worth cutting someone's hand off for,
but I didn't want it to look like it was.
You can get big diamonds that are just trash tier stones,
especially back then when the lab created ones,
hadn't really taken off yet.
Like nowadays, it's kind of hard to tell
if a diamond is like worth something or not
because it's all arbitrary anyway.
But back then, like, yeah,
you could get giant trash tier stones
that might look to someone who has no,
like, you know, not looking at them
through a fricking thing
and they might think it's worth taking a life over,
but actually it's not worth anything.
And so I would rather her actually have a smaller stone.
So that was my rationale behind the ring.
Awesome answer.
Another wedding or marriage question from Brian.
How long have you been married
and what's your take on marriage?
Is it something to wait on for a certain amount of time
or is it worth just diving in at 200 miles an hour?
Well, that second part is I come from a broken home.
And one of the things that I,
one of the goals that I set out for myself,
it's not a goal, it's a requirement.
In my adult life, I will not break my family.
It's that simple.
I will not accept my family becoming broken.
So Yvonne and I were together for, I think, six years
before we got married.
And we lived together for a full year
before formally tying the knot.
And the reason that we did so was because
I needed to be darn good and sure
because there was no taking it back for me.
Yeah.
So no, it is not something to dive into,
200 miles an hour, that would be bad.
Or maybe not bad, maybe great, but it's not for me.
From Abby, will LTT store ever stock cargo pants?
Yeah, we're working on it.
What about jorts?
That's another popular request.
Let's go.
What the heck are jorts?
Jean shorts.
Oh, jean shorts, not right now.
He's saying there's a chance, boys.
I'm not saying no, I'm just saying not now.
Dude, plaid shirts and jorts, let's go.
We are working on more colors of the flannel plaid
or plaid flannel or whatever order that goes in.
That's cool.
From Blake, hey Linus and Luke,
what's a skill or hobby you wish you had more time
to work on?
I've been doing woodworking.
Oh, electronics for sure.
I wish I was like, I wish I like really understood PCB
like design, man, I'd be super into that.
I wish I was better at flying RC aircraft.
Those are probably the big ones.
I'm super into those, but I don't have the time for them.
Electronics would be my number one,
but not to take exactly what you said.
I would put out blacksmithing.
I've wanted to get into blacksmithing
for a very, very long time,
but it's really expensive and you need space.
I had a friend in high school whose mom was super into it.
It's amazing the kind of stuff you can make
like a hunk of iron and a hammer.
Yeah, and I feel like the,
I mean, we were talking about this earlier, right?
I think, I feel like it would be very,
it would make my brain happy.
I've just always kind of thought that about just-
Would your shoulder handle it?
I've been pretty worried about that,
which is one of the reasons why I invited you
to go to a blacksmithing course.
I'm super down still.
And the reason why I haven't brought up that topic again
is because I'm waiting for a shoulder.
The bowling alley was actually almost a test for me.
I started with my right arm
and then I think it was like three throws in.
I felt it like it didn't hurt,
but you can feel the warnings.
And I was like, okay, nope.
We're going to left arm and we're not doing blacksmithing
yet, but it's getting a lot better.
The situation is improving, so yeah.
Daniel asks, oh, sorry, union grievance.
You're just excited.
I just want to go home.
All right, final question from Daniel.
What was the hardest part about leaving the old house
and what was the easiest?
Hardest part, honestly, I think is the,
every year since our kids were born,
we don't have a ton of family traditions,
but we do have this one.
We marked the door frames with their height
and we're going to, I don't know,
it's not going to feel authentic to measure them all
and like go mark them on the new doors or something.
So I'm going to miss that decade old writing
when we go and we look at their growth charts and-
Have you thought about taking,
like having one of your door,
because it's the frame, right?
I have considered ripping the door frames off
and putting them in the new house.
We are not going to do that.
Okay, yeah.
But yes, I did think about it.
Fair enough, yeah.
That just felt a little too stupid.
Someone said Alex Steele on YouTube
for blacksmithing content.
Yeah, he's awesome.
I watch a bunch of other people as well.
I like the creators.
I would just like to, I've never,
like with sports back in the day,
I played every sport under the sun, very enthusiastically,
sometimes on like a provincial level.
I was very, very into sports.
I didn't really watch sports.
And I'm like that with like basically everything.
I play a lot of games.
I don't watch streams.
Yeah.
I would like to do blacksmithing
and not watch blacksmithing content,
but I can't do blacksmithing,
so I watch blacksmithing content.
Oh my God, everyone's like,
no, you need to take the doorframe with you.
Like, no, no, no, no, you're not doing that.
Yes, we're still live, Foster.
Also, by the way, guys,
thank you very much for your support.
I knew that there was a lot of pent up demand
for constellations.
I didn't think it was this much.
I hope we have that many Blue Aqua blanks.
I want, yeah, I want one too.
Don't buy, you know, I mean, go for it.
I'll get one eventually, whatever.
Well, no, you won't.
We're not printing V1 again.
Oh.
That's the whole thing is like, this is the last,
maybe I created too much FOMO,
because if we sell all of the blanks,
we're not gonna be able to do any other Blue Aqua stuff.
So guys, last chance.
Actually, hold on a second, just give me.
What's V2?
Are you sure this is, we can never print it again?
Are you sure?
And we can, but then I would be a big liar.
So that's pretty tough.
Actually, we are gonna bring back one shirt
that I said we'd never reprint.
So we can do that to this one too.
I really want a long-
Nick, sorry to bug you.
Do we have enough blanks for the constellation print?
Have you looked at how many have been ordered
during the show?
More, well, I wouldn't describe it as a few hundred, no.
Oh, there's limits.
Oh, good.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
We're not, yeah.
Yeah, we're still live.
What time is it?
What year is it?
It's Jumanji, it's Jumanji.
Okay, yeah, I gotta go then.
Okay, bye.
Okay, so as long as the particular SKU,
the particular size and sleeve style that you want
is still up on the site and it doesn't say out of stock,
as long as you can add it to cart,
then we do have stock of that particular one.
So you guys can go ahead and get your orders in,
but yeah, we're gonna leave this up for, I don't know,
a few days or something like that, maybe for a week.
So go check it out.
Oh, the one that we are gonna bring back
is the one from PC or No PC.
I get so many compliments on that shirt
and we didn't really communicate very well,
so maybe we could bring it back,
do one run of it or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that would be good.
But no, I don't know that we will actually,
I don't know that we will actually
do another reprint of Constellation.
I wanna get a long sleeve though.
I literally just messaged Nick and was like, yo.
Yeah, I really want the long sleeve.
I want a long sleeve.
We haven't had, other than the short circuit one,
which I was not entirely happy with,
like to be clear, it's like still up like a brand name blank
that we had printed on, like it was like fine,
but we've never had like a really great long sleeve.
Tech linked?
This one we do.
Tech linked?
Tech linked.
We didn't have a short circuit.
We didn't have a long sleeve for tech linked,
I don't think, did we?
I thought it was gray.
Is that a short circuit?
It's just a recolored short circuit, yeah.
Oh, my bad, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Don't worry, bigger water bottles are coming, Jase Lucas.
I think it's time for us to leave though.
Goodbye.
Okay, bye.
What a show.
Sorry, it's very late.
Bell, log your hours, hey?
Of course.
Did you make it all the way to double time today?
If I say yes, does that mean yes?
Well, it's whatever it legally is,
I don't decide what it is.
Did you make it to double time though
when did you start today?
11, so I don't think so.
Oh, okay, all right, okay, nice.
Okay, I think we're done.
Oh, I can't reach the thing to turn it off.
It's far away.