And welcome to the WAN Show! We've got a great show lined up for you guys this week.
Uh, let's see. No, no, there was a thing. There was a thing I wanted to talk about.
It was in there. Um, uh, I mean...
Do I have a center?
Sure.
We've talked before about GM's infotainment centers abandoning Android Auto and CarPlay,
and now it is already biting them in the butt. Who could have possibly seen it coming?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe us. In our headline topic, Google has settled over incognito mode,
agreeing to pay, yes, my friends, billions of dollars, because, uh, guess what?
It was never as incognito as you thought it was, and, um, it's never gonna be. Awesome.
Yeah. Uh, China targets video game spending, and some of their largest companies get hit real hard.
And also, uh, I had another one. Where'd it go? Uh-oh.
There's not a lot this week.
Yeah.
You could go with the LTT screwdriver being in this game.
Sure, yeah. The LTT screwdriver is in Stellar Conquest, apparently.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The show is brought to you today by Maximum Settings, Forum, and dbrand.
Why don't we jump right into our first topic of the day, and that is, of course, Google's settlement over incognito mode.
Google has agreed to settle a 2020 lawsuit alleging that the company continued to track, collect, and identify users browsing data in real time while they had Chrome's incognito mode enabled.
This was obviously a big splash back when it first came out a few years ago.
Google has tried since then to have the suit dismissed, citing a warning that they displayed whenever incognito mode was enabled that informed users that websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity during this session.
However, I mean, I don't have to be an expert to tell you that Google never said that they weren't going to collect it.
Yeah.
Or, sorry, Google never said they were still going to collect it.
That's the thing.
They did say they weren't going to collect it.
That's the whole problem.
They are a website.
The judge rejected Google's request on the grounds that the warning did not adequately inform users that Google's data collection would continue even while in incognito mode.
Because, I got to be honest with you, on the surface of it, I would assume, based on the name of incognito mode, the stated purpose of incognito mode, and the messaging around incognito mode, that it actually stops Google from tracking exactly what it is that I'm doing and logging it anywhere.
It feels like it.
I've always known you're essentially just turning history off temporarily.
But I think most people don't assume it just works that way.
So, yeah, I don't know.
Google's taking some big L's, man.
Wait, did I say billions?
Because I read that somewhere, but that appears to be, we don't know what the settlement is.
Not in the notes.
At least not at this time.
No, no, no.
Exact terms of the settlement are unknown at this time.
So, scratch that.
I may be conflating two completely different things, but there is some kind of settlement, and we are hopefully going to figure that out at some point.
The discussion question for us here is, is it reasonable to expect that a person using incognito mode would understand that Google's still tracking them?
No.
No, I don't think so.
I mean, here, look.
We can play this game in real time.
I can launch incognito mode, which, as far as I can tell, hasn't changed at any point in this process.
And, as far as I can tell, isn't going to change at all.
And we can see right here exactly the way that Google continues to message this even after the settlement.
Now, you can browse privately.
And, here we go.
Other people who use this device won't see your activity.
Now, they do say, so they kind of imply that what this is doing is, to Luke's point earlier, just effectively turning off that local history on your computer.
However, downloads, bookmarks, and reading list items will be saved.
Learn more.
Chrome won't save the following.
Chrome won't save the following.
Yeah.
Your browsing history, cookies, and site data, information entered in forms.
Chrome won't save.
Your activity might still be visible to the websites you visit, your employer or school, your internet service provider.
And this is true unless you are, here in these cases, using a VPN or some other kind of tunneling or data encrypting service.
And so, I guess what we see here is that, from Google's point of view, it's maybe not a lie.
Nothing here is a lie.
Yeah.
But, oh.
I'm trying to find, no, I don't have anything.
I'm trying to find, like, screenshots of the really old version.
But it certainly is a mislead by omission.
You know, lie is a high bar to clear.
I feel, see, I'm going to have an I statement here.
I feel that Google's intent was to mislead.
And I feel Google probably knew what they were doing and knew better.
And I feel that this is pretty easily categorized as a lie.
But you have to prove that.
And I don't think that's something that I can prove.
That I can prove.
And, yeah, this is a perfect example of a lie by omission, says Loudface Bob in the Floatplane chat.
Yeah, exactly.
If we could prove that it was a lie, I think it would be a lie by omission.
Because they seemingly, I feel, lead us to believe that incognito mode prevents Google from tracking what you're doing.
But all they said was Chrome.
Oh, you meant all of our other products and services.
I'm sorry.
And, I mean, anyone who's really made their way down the internet privacy rabbit hole is going to know that even if incognito mode worked the way that people might have assumed that it worked based on that messaging,
there are so many ways that you and your device can be fingerprinted by the services and the websites that you visit.
Everything from the, if you have an unusual resolution on your phone, okay, and then you log into the same email account on a computer somewhere.
Like, there's so many different ways that your devices can be tied to you and to each other.
So, for example, what is it?
And they don't actually need 100% data perfection.
No.
As long as they're pretty sure, they can still paint a picture that's extremely accurate.
Because it's very likely that if someone shares 95% of the commonality traits between you and them, that that fudged data where you got something attached from them to you or whatever else, it's probably accurate or close to it anyways.
So, like, yeah.
So, here's the question.
Is it time to switch to Firefox?
I wish, man.
If you ask Firefox people, the time to switch to Firefox was years ago.
Yeah.
But, for real, though, for people like, you daily drive Chrome still, I believe, right?
Yeah.
I try Firefox once a year.
Wow.
Okay.
Flowplane chat has some thoughts.
Yeah.
On the whole switch to Firefox.
Okay, we need a pull.
We need a pull.
Is it time to switch?
And Firefox isn't the only option.
I already mentioned Brave.
I know there's some other.
It's just Chromium.
Well, it's just Chromium, but with some spice.
Yeah.
Okay, is it time to switch to Firefox?
Yes.
Whoop.
Yes.
No.
It's pretty cool.
It's open source.
Yeah, no, Brave seems to be legitimately not stupid.
People are talking about Vivaldi.
Vivaldi really hasn't seen the same kind of penetration that Firefox being the only one
that's not Chromium still, basically.
So, I'm going to...
And among the Chromiums Brave.
...potentially throw some water on this fire.
Um, and the 70-ish percent of people that are saying it is time to switch to Firefox.
Let's do a poll after this and see what browser people use.
Uh, because...
Well, we don't have to do a poll on Flowplane.
70% of Flowplane is not using Firefox.
Ah, yes, okay.
Okay, he, he, he, he, he got to the punchline.
Yeah.
Um, so...
What is the percentage?
Do you know?
Haven't checked in a while.
I guarantee you it's not 70% using Firefox.
Hmm.
Where could, where else could we, where, oh, check me right now.
Oh, boy.
It's like...
Oh, boy.
Okay.
Can you not form an overtly adversarial relationship with Flowplane?
No, you know what?
Use Firefox.
Here, here's, okay, I didn't have enough time to get into it.
It doesn't feel like it's time to switch to Firefox yet.
My reason for that...
Is because a lot of sites are not built to work on Firefox properly.
Firefox has some of its own issues.
Yeah, sure.
So does Chrome.
So does Edge.
So does everything else.
My problem is, uh, the last time I tried to switch to Firefox was when I was, uh, studying
for PADI scuba diving stuff.
That was a long time ago, though.
That was just slightly over a year ago.
What?
Yeah.
Wait, you had your scuba cert before that, didn't you?
I was getting advanced certifications.
Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Oh, okay, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're right.
The initial one was a long time ago.
No, I, yeah, yeah.
Um, the PADI website just, like, doesn't work in Firefox at all.
Yeah.
And I, like, looked it up and it's a thing and it's just super not built for it, etc.
So it's, it's not really, like, it, they did a bad job of making their website.
Um, that's kind of the issue.
So, I want more people to use Firefox.
Even though it doesn't really feel like it's necessarily time yet for people to actually
switch.
Because if more people move to Firefox, then sites are going to have to be forced to build
for better compatibility for Firefox.
Because right now, the, like, easy way to build is just build for Chrome.
And then whatever, you're going to hit almost everybody anyways.
Yeah.
I mean, even Edge is just Chromium now.
So, so, like, yeah.
Um, yeah.
AJ, AJ could give me the percentages if he's around.
Uh.
I don't know if he's around.
And I don't want to, like, bug him if he's not around.
Yeah, sorry.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to log into the forum.
Because I think I can check, I think I can check the forum one.
But my stupid Chrome doesn't have my extensions thing showing right now because it needs to
relaunch for an update or something.
At least I think that's the problem.
Oh, you know what?
It might just be that I'm on the wrong, it might just be that this is the one with the
wrong profile.
Uh.
We're not going to bug AJ.
But I guarantee you it's not 70% of users.
No shot.
What is this?
Oh, okay.
Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Throw up a browser pull.
Um.
So when's the last time you tried it then?
Firefox?
Yeah.
That was it.
So I'm due to try it again soon.
Okay, okay.
Well, maybe it is time then and maybe you just don't know.
I'll try it.
I'll run it tonight.
I'm not even, I'm not even playing.
It's around time.
I genuinely do it, like, once a year, generally.
So, I'm down.
All right.
I want it to work really badly.
My problem is, um, that I do so much of my work in a browser.
Using a lot of Google services.
If it ends up being less efficient, I, I can't let my, like, personal, I would rather use
Firefox because of various reasons slow down my work, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
That doesn't line up for me.
That makes sense.
I mean, honestly, that's a big part of the reason that I stopped doing so many challenges.
Yeah.
Like, I did the switch to Windows Phone way back in the day.
Yeah.
Uh, I did the switch to Mac OS way back in the day and, like, like, daily drove these
things for a very real period of time.
Yeah.
And I just, it got to the point where it was like, oh, I could do another switched thing,
but I could just, or I could just make videos about something else and that would be way
more efficient.
My, my thing is, like, how would I, if I had to sit down in a meeting with you and you're
like, huh, this took, like, a long time.
Why did this take so long?
And it's like, oh, because I wanted to use Firefox.
Like, how do I explain?
That's, that's like, that's like you work at the graveyard.
Okay.
And.
Like, wow, it took you a really long time.
Hey, wow, it sure took you a long time to dig that hole.
Uh, why did you, why did you use a pickaxe instead of a shovel?
Big shovel is just.
And you're just like, yeah.
Very evil.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't want to support the.
Big shovel.
And you know what?
It sucks.
That sucks.
That that's the world we live in.
There's no way, dude.
People are lying.
I guarantee it.
People are lying.
People are lying.
Really.
We talked earlier on this very show about how lie is an extremely high bar to clear.
You're saying they're lying.
I mean, unless, unless very specifically.
Wow.
The, the poll just broke.
Um.
Unless very specifically the, uh, the, the, the.
The live way and show audience is specifically skewed towards Firefox, which might be a thing.
Maybe.
Okay.
So we're looking at 45% saying they're using Firefox.
I don't know, guys.
There was that big thing recently with, uh, you know, Chrome trying to block ad blockers and all that kind of stuff.
And people were using Firefox.
Maybe that increased the percentage.
Maybe the live audience is particularly, uh, skewed towards Firefox.
I'm surprised fewer aren't on Brave.
Brave must be one of those super loud minority ones.
I forgot Brave.
I'm just doing another one with it.
Oh, no, no.
I mean, other.
Well, whatever.
They can vote for other.
Only 7% of people are in other.
So clearly it's not going to be a podium finisher anyway.
Did you close that first poll?
I didn't.
No.
Yeah, no.
I think it just broke.
I just got to throw up another one.
Everybody can fake this one.
I think people were a little enthusiastic about that.
Probably.
Okay.
Sorry.
I'm, I, I have spent this entire time trying to get logged into the forum because I love password managers and I love, um, and I, and I love 2FA so very much.
You really shouldn't be logging into a password manager on that laptop.
I, I never would.
Oh, good.
I would never log into a password manager on this laptop.
That would be irresponsible.
Opera GX is an interesting one because they spend a monstrous amount of money on advertising and then.
Yeah.
Isn't their whole thing that it's like the, the, the gaming browser.
We did it.
We did a whole video about it a while back.
And as far as we could tell, there were a couple cool features, but not a ton that made it particularly gaming per se.
Yeah.
So, um, the fact that there's theoretically twice as many people on brave than there is on opera GX is interesting.
All right.
Here we go.
I am hacking the mainframe.
Uh, I believe from the forum admin dashboard, I can see the browser stats, but I don't actually know this.
So, hey, good luck.
Uh, forums assist online users by app.
Does, does anyone, does anyone use Envision Power and know how to, know how to check this?
It's been a long time.
Yeah, I know, right?
Uh, is there like, uh, is there like, here, here's a...
It's in there somewhere.
Here's a, yeah, exactly.
I'm sure it is, but I am sure I don't remember how to check.
Oh, oh, we can check sales, though.
We can see how many people have bought the Christmas album.
It's not that many this year.
It's actually pretty low.
Uh, yeah, there seems to be not a lot of action going on.
I think we have a total of three sales this December.
Yeah.
Uh, oh, since June.
We have three sales since June.
That's the right, that's the right number of people.
Uh, activity, users.
Oh, oh, users maybe.
Rank progression.
I don't even know what it, what any of the...
Device usage.
How about device usage?
Maybe it's in there.
Man, I don't remember the last time that I logged into this.
Firefox literally gets paid by Google.
To me, that makes no difference between them.
Rather use Edge and its great features.
Really?
Well, that's a spicy take.
That is a unique take.
Okay.
Um, we are predominantly a desktop community.
I can tell you that much right now.
That's not a very good experience on mobile.
That's probably why.
I use it on mobile all the time.
What do you mean it's not a good experience?
It's fine.
Oh, I think you're...
What, you want Tapatog?
Are we going to start that debate again?
I'm surprised you even remember.
You want to start that again?
Because I'll go.
Let's go.
I'm ready to go.
No, I'm happy we didn't do it.
No, I think...
No, the forum's great.
The forum's great on mobile.
I use it literally.
I'm willing to bet if I open up my browser right now...
Oh, yeah.
I see it.
There it is.
Boom.
Right there.
It's awesome.
Other than that, I always have this stupid updates available thing.
Yeah.
No, man.
No, man.
It's great.
It runs great.
It's not too bad.
Online users, maybe?
No, that's probably just going to be people who are online right now.
Does anyone know?
I haven't actually been looking at the chat to see if anyone knows.
You know what?
Yeah, I got device usage, but I don't have...
I don't see anywhere to check what browser people are using, so I'm afraid...
I'm afraid we're in the dark here.
Maybe we can ask AJ next week.
Yeah.
To let us know what's going on over on the forum.
Why don't we jump into our next topic here, then?
Boop.
Oh, nice, Dan.
Getting caught up with the little sign there.
I'm going to let Luke pick this time.
Okay.
Do you want to talk about China targeting video game spending, or...?
Yeah, I actually think this is kind of interesting.
I thought it was really interesting.
Yeah, give me one quick second, sorry.
That's fine.
We'll wait.
Let's see how many...
Let's see.
Hold on.
I'm just going to...
While he's doing whatever it is he's doing, I'm going to add up...
You could have read the topic.
No, I'm going to add up how many people are waiting for Luke to check his phone.
As part of its long-standing fight against video game addiction, Chinese officials
have proposed a new set of regulations that would ban online games from giving players
rewards for logging in every day, spending money in-game for the first time, or spending
money repeatedly.
Games would also be banned from offering minors probability-based luck draws or enabling
speculation on virtual game items.
Can I just say, I don't agree with everything China does, but...
But this is based?
I think that's the word for it.
Yeah.
I think this is great so far, and we're not even through the whole thing yet.
Further, publishers would be required to store servers within the country and to cap
how much money players can add to their digital wallets.
This is...
What is more based?
Like Wub?
Based EX.
It's Wubbed.
Oh my goodness.
Oh man.
As a show of good faith, I also like this part.
I don't know.
As a show of good faith, Chinese officials have also proposed a rule requiring regulators
to process applications for games to be approved in the country within 60 days, and approved
40 new games for import on the same day.
The reason why I care about this is...
Boy, I think you've ran into it significantly more than I have, because I've never
ran into it, and I know you have, but you know, government stuff can literally take
years sometimes.
Oh yeah.
Do you know...
Oh my gosh.
Hold on.
I need to find out if we can talk about this.
The construction industry is insane for this.
You'll buy a plot of land, get a...
Yeah, I mean, it's zoned for this level approval, but you can't dig.
Like, and then you...
I've heard contractors needing to own that land for years before they can build on it.
Hold on a second.
Hey, Vaughn.
Yeah?
Would it be problematic in any way if we talked about...
You're live on WAN.
Yeah, you're on WAN show.
Would it be problematic in any way if we talked about the lead time on certain tax credits
and, like, how long that's taken?
Oh, yeah.
Probably.
Maybe just leave that one alone.
Okay, we'll be leaving that one alone.
Thanks, dear.
Okay, bye.
You're great.
Okay, bye.
Anyways, it's actually ridiculous.
I'm talking multiple years to process paperwork.
Yeah.
Like, wild.
And to a point where if you're a small company that, like, you know, needs to be able to survive
over a three- or four-year period, sometimes it can literally just crush you.
And it really, really, really incentivizes being a massive company that can absorb these
governmental hits.
That's why I wanted to talk about the tax credits.
Yeah.
Because as far as I can tell, I'm not going to get into the exact details of how long it's
taken to process.
There's definitely been delays on our side as well, so I'm not going to act like, you
know, we've done everything totally perfectly.
It's entirely on them, yeah.
However, the amount of bureaucratic red tape does contribute to how long these things do
take to collect and submit.
And the length of time that is spent going back and forth and going through submissions
and getting approvals and going through audits a lot of the time, which will need to be done
before the payout can actually be made, which makes sense, right?
It's a lot harder to get money back from someone you issued it to than to just not send it to
them in the first place, especially if it's a significant sum.
Um, the amount of time that that takes makes it feel like, to your point, that these are
designed to help big companies that don't need the help nearly as much instead of small
startups who really need the help.
We've talked about this a lot in the past about how a lot of these different, I think
I was talking specifically about Cavco back in the day, about how Cavco very specifically
feels like it's built for Omega companies and no, no small companies.
And it's, it's crazy.
The amount of tax break style stuff that is designed that way.
Um, I would, I would love to just, I would love to understand, although it would probably
not frustrate me any less, but I'd love to understand why this is so inevitable because
we're talking about the Canadian government and you're sitting there at home in wherever
the fuck it is that you live going, because it's the same basically everywhere.
Yeah.
Come on.
Money controls money, man.
Ah, it drives me crazy.
In response to the announcement, the stock price of China's largest gaming conglomerate,
Tencent, who, by the way, uh, also probably owns a very large stake of pretty much every
gaming company that is big.
Um, except Valve.
Yeah.
As far as we know, I mean, they're a private company.
True.
Anything's possible, but I doubt it.
I don't think so.
Yeah.
Uh, Tencent dropped 16%.
That's crazy.
That's an insane amount.
And its closest competitor, Netties, dropped 25%.
That's crazy.
Wild.
I think the reason why Tencent's wasn't more is because they own such massive portions of
American companies.
That makes sense.
I, I, I suspect Netties is a lot more China-centric.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Sheesh, man.
And then I think, uh, is this in our notes?
Cause I thought, uh, the Chinese government was looking to walk things back a little bit,
um, based on, based on the impact.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's not in our notes, but, uh, apparently China is allegedly considering
walking back some of these restrictions.
Honestly, please, can we just buy once and cry once and, and, and do this everywhere?
I have to bring it up every stream.
Ball is gate three.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know.
You can win game of the year and not do these things.
You can sell unlimited copies of your game.
When I go on steam, you know how, when you look at your, your games list, you can see
little green heads when people are playing certain games.
The only one that shows one is ballers gate three ever.
I highlight over.
It's like five different people.
They're not playing together.
They're all in different parts.
Sometimes they'll be in parties, but they're not in each other's parties.
I know these people separately.
They don't know each other.
There's people always play in that game.
It's still killing it.
It's been out for a while.
Yeah.
And it's still killing it and it doesn't have this stuff.
You don't have to do it.
Please stop.
But I, I mean, I wasn't even talking about asking the gaming companies to stop doing it
because they won't.
Yeah.
Like if, if you like, look here, hold on.
Let's, let's play a game.
What are we doing?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.
He's getting a controller.
Okay.
A gold one.
Okay.
I've got a golden game controller.
Yeah.
Okay.
Very nice.
To make, to make money, all you have to do is press this button.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Here.
Oh, wow.
Here, here, here, here.
Oh, wow.
Is he going to throw his wallet at me?
No, we're making it real.
No, no.
We're making it real.
Oh, wow.
Oh, I don't have any cash in my wallet.
I was going to actually hand him money.
Here, I can.
Well, no, that's, that's not the point.
That's not the point.
I was going to, I was going to let you keep investors.
Here, you press the button.
No, that's not.
No, I want to be the, I want to hold the button.
I want to invest in this.
Give me stock.
Oh, I hit the mic.
Oh, Jesus.
I got cash right here.
Come on.
Anyway, the point is, from the gaming company's standpoint, what do they care?
I mean, their own employees are just numbers.
Never mind the customers.
So, if all they have to do is press a button to make bank, well, why don't they just keep
pressing the button?
They're not going to stop.
It has to be regulatory.
Especially once Tencent owns a huge portion of your company anyways, and you have to report
to shareholders.
And I get it.
The, the, you know, the, the small government, you know, libertarian crowd is going to say,
well, you know, that's on, that's on people for, you know, being gullible or whatever or
something, but it's, it's never that black and white.
It's not that black and white.
We actually do need regulations to keep people from dumping carcinogenic chemicals in your,
in your streams, because we've proven time and time and time and time and time and
time and time and time and time again, that otherwise they will just do it.
Yeah.
And like, they're using, they're using psychology and they're, they're abusing people's, you
know.
Vulnerabilities here.
Yeah.
And you could be, you could be vulnerable.
They're abusing, abusing your lizard brain that still wants the shiny thing.
You can be vulnerable to getting cancer and you can be equally vulnerable to being manipulated
into gambling away your life savings.
Yeah.
And it's, it's a spectacularly sophisticated machine at this point.
A lot more so than I think a lot of people realize or, or potentially are willing to accept.
Yeah.
Or there are billions of dollars every year that go into controlling what your brain does or
even, getting you to keep scrolling, getting you to buy more skins, getting you to keep
playing, getting you to do whatever.
Yeah.
And like every once in a while, a scandal breaks, right?
Like there was those, um, those couple of streamers that got caught owning the gambling
site that they were supposedly gambling and winning on all day on their streams.
And they ended up getting a slap on the wrist and we've all kind of forgotten about every
time something like that gets exposed.
At least one of them still makes videos.
Yeah.
Every time something like that gets exposed, um, there was, I guarantee you there was another
10 or another hundred that didn't get exposed, whether it was because it was a lower profile,
uh, person who was doing it or whether they didn't get, you know, siphoned quite as much
money away from people or whether they just were slicker and got away with it.
Um, I, uh, I just, uh, yeah, gross.
I'm stoked about this.
I think this is really cool.
I'd love to see everywhere do it like immediately.
Yeah.
But instead, like, I don't, I don't know what the Canadian government is busy doing right
now.
Apparently covering up their spy program.
It turns out you saw that the Michaels, it turns out they were spies.
Oh, yeah.
So I don't know about you, but I'm pretty picked off right now.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I, I honestly, I, I feel like I live in America because I have two terrible options
for our federal, federal government.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Like, honestly, like I'm sitting here feeling completely and utterly betrayed by the liberals
and looking at the conservatives and going in different ways.
Wow.
This is, uh, this is, this is not better.
This is conservative.
Where's my first pass the post, Mr. Trudeau?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where's anything?
Yeah.
He's been horrible.
Like, I, yeah, I don't know.
But no, I completely agree.
Like, what do we choose?
Let's vote for the, like, random stick in the forest.
It'll probably do a better job.
Um, uh, if you want to have some fun going down a rabbit hole, I've been dropping a lot of rabbit
holes lately, look up the, uh, Canadian Spy Palace.
Have I told you about this?
Probably.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
It's like one of the coolest looking buildings we have in Canada at all.
Um, it costs almost a trillion dollars.
It costs 880 million dollars.
And in Canada, that's a lot.
We don't have that much money.
Um, so, yeah, it's very interesting.
Um.
Oh, man.
Very cool.
You know, we had someone internally, um, actually, this isn't that relevant.
It doesn't really matter.
The point is, I, uh, I'm feeling very frustrated.
I have absolutely no idea what to do in the next federal election.
It's like, what do I do?
Vote NDP?
Like, honestly.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Like, all right.
I don't know.
I've, I've, I've, I've actually been, I, I, I was literally, I came in after a very long
walk and I, I sat down for a sec and was just like staring at the floor thinking, yeah, what
the hell do I do?
Do I just not vote?
I've always voted before.
I had a, I had a, I had a really frustrating conversation with like a, a boomer acquaintance
of mine, um, where basically, uh, this person is, is very billion dollars.
Oh, oops.
Yeah.
Dirt.
Yeah.
I misspoke.
Anyways.
This person is very sort of pro, um, residential real estate as an investment.
Oh.
And, um, you know what?
Yeah.
We're, you're, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna hear what might sound to you like political
positions, but these are not really political.
If you, if you can take off the political hat for a little bit and, and just kind of look
at the facts, um, investment in residential real estate only makes sense if it always go
up, if it always go up, then that means cost of living always go up, which is bad for anyone
who isn't a landowner.
The landowning class is now grossly disproportionately older people with younger people being unable
to get in because always go up and no landlords are not providing a service.
What they are doing if they own more than one property is holding property in hopes that
it go up.
Um, and I guess what's frustrating for me is looking at everyone's brilliant plan in Canada.
We have a housing affordability crisis that is maybe rivaled by Australia.
Um, really?
Oh, it's yeah.
It's awful down there.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
It's really rough for all of the same reasons starting at around the same time around 30 to
40 years ago.
Um, just, they, they stopped investing in social housing.
They started, um, providing tax benefits for, or tax loopholes, essentially, uh, for investments
into residential property.
Um, they haven't done enough to regulate corporations buying residential property and then that's the
worst part.
Renovicting people and like all that kind of stuff.
Some random individual owning like, uh, their first property still and owning a second property
and renting out their first one doesn't seem that bad to me compared to giant corporations
owning multiple entire apartment buildings and city blocks and all this kind of stuff.
It's like, whoa, okay.
Um, because, well, it's, and it's about control, right?
Um, anyway, the point is that like, it's been so frustrating for me seeing the, the regulatory
attempts at fixing this problem when the answer is so obvious, you just need to tax the ever
loving out of multiple property ownership and it can be a sliding scale.
Like you need a place to live.
That should be super low.
If you have an investment property or a vacation property, the reality of it is you're doing
pretty good and it should go up a lot.
And by the time you're looking at three or four, that should be pretty much a straight
line because it's just common sense.
You know, you don't get to line up for the buffet again until everybody's got a plate because
if there isn't enough for everyone to have seconds, then everyone's got to have firsts
first.
Yeah.
And everyone's one being very affordable model would be fantastic.
My opinion.
We also have an issue where we have, we have, this is getting spicy, but I can't talk about
the regulations first.
Yes.
Have you seen some of the, some of the proposed like bull crap?
Like, Oh, how about, how about, how about rent subsidies to people who can't afford rent?
That's not going to help at all.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Did you, did you, did you just propose taking public funding and giving it to landowners?
Yeah.
I says f***ing pardon.
That's brutal too, because that will probably just result in rent going up in price as well.
Of course it will.
Because they know you have more money.
Of course it will.
More competitive.
Because the higher the prices go, the more, the more risk the, the people who want to
get into land ownership are taking and the bigger their mortgages are and the, the bigger
the disaster when the whole thing comes crumbling down.
Like it's this, it's this gigantic house of cards that I've been waiting my entire adult
life for it to collapse because it's just ridiculous.
Oh, and the new thing is our, our profits.
This is amazing.
Our provincial government just mandated that you cannot have single family zoning anymore.
Yeah.
So everything, every single single family plot in the entire province can now be a development
opportunity, which on the face of it sounds great for affordability because all of a sudden
it means that any property large enough could have a duplex, a triplex, a quadruplex.
I mean, whatever, right?
I think it's up to six, something like that.
Don't, don't quote me on that, but more than, more than one, except for a couple of small
problems in the areas where the affordability is worst, the infrastructure is not set up
for that.
Not even close.
Not even close.
We don't, we, A, don't have parking and B, don't have rapid transit.
So.
I mean, the roads are broken too.
That's, that, that's the, yes, yes.
Like everything is.
Um, and then, and then number two is that hospitals that doesn't actually help with the
affordability of the places we have now, because it turns every single single family zoned property
into a development opportunity.
And as soon as you have individuals bidding on a property against corporations who are
going to develop it for profit, you have a problem.
They are not going to, I talked about this before when I talked about all the veterinary
practices in the lower mainland getting bought up, all the independent ones, so that eventually
these, I think there's one or two big companies that are buying them all, eventually they control
the market and then they can just drive pricing up.
And the higher the pricing goes, the higher the rents go.
It's everyone wants, every landlord wants rent to cover the mortgage.
So to say anything else that somehow it will help affordability for there to be more landlords
or something else is frankly asinine.
I'm sorry.
Uh, what were you going to say?
We have, we have, we were talking about regulation issues earlier in the show about how it takes
way too long to get approved on things.
I was, um, I was saunaing after the gym a while back talking to someone who works in the,
the, the contractor industry.
They sell windows to companies that are building buildings.
Um, that's their whole thing.
And they were, they were talking about how there are projects that they've been, that
they have had fully planned out.
And like when you, when you already know the exact, the exact size, shape and quantity
of every single window, your building's pretty much planned.
So like he knows how far along the process is at that stage, they have to wait often an
additional three or four years sometimes before they can break ground, which means there's
also more time when they have to actually build the thing.
Um, that's happening.
We have this problem where it's very difficult to build things.
And you know what?
Sometimes it should be because you don't want people just making terrible buildings.
Cough, cough, pipes have burst in my building like four times since I've been there and I've
only been there for like three or four years.
Um, but we have this issue where it's taking forever to be able to build anything.
And then we have by a huge margin, absolute record levels of immigration.
So Canada's population overall is going up a bunch.
Yeah.
Like crazy.
Very, very, very high.
And the new housing is really slow.
So we're not matching that.
Yeah.
So don't forget about interest rates.
Everyone here across the board is having a really, really, really hard time getting into
property ownership.
It's extremely difficult to rent and that's getting worse because the new housing versus
population lines are not going together.
It's supply and demand.
Yeah.
And like, I've got people talking in the chat about how this is such a political conversation.
It's math.
Isn't political.
If you think it's political, you're wrong.
Supply of housing is not going up as fast as amount of people is going up.
It doesn't matter what the source of amount of people is.
This could be new births.
This could be immigration.
This could be people teleporting here from Mars.
It could be families who used to live together, getting mad at each other and wanting to live
separately.
It doesn't matter.
People just growing up and moving away from home.
It, I don't care what the source of this number is.
The new housing is not matching it.
Um, and that, that's just, that's very rough because it, it, it's supporting this bubble,
right?
It's not allowing this bubble to blow up.
I, uh, as a, as a property owner, I am rooting hard for a crash.
Me too.
I want a big one.
Yep.
Not because it's not going to be painful.
Not because, uh, I'm down.
Hurt me.
Like, because it needs to happen.
It needed to happen a long time ago.
It should have happened 10, 15 years ago.
The fact that we've let it go for so long means it's going to be more painful.
So the reason I'm rooting for it is because it's only going to get worse when it finally
happens.
Yep.
Oh, anyway.
Good luck, everybody.
Sorry.
This is not really the topic.
The point is that, uh, that, Hey, China don't agree with everything that's going on over
there, but, uh, definitely super into the whole banning gambling and video games and limiting
people's ability to just blow their life savings on, on gacha games.
It's an interesting trend that's been going on.
Uh, apparently Japan is getting in on this too, uh, various countries around the world
cranking down on tech in general as a, as with their governmental bodies.
Uh, so speaking of China, by the way, apparently this video on Billy Billy, I don't know how
to read, um, view counts here.
Um, but I think this is 1.6 million views.
Oh, wow.
Oh, this is the TV.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is the unboxing of the gigantic TCL TV.
Um, someone, someone flagged this to me internally that we, uh, Oh no.
Is this it?
Uh, yeah.
It doesn't translate numbers though.
I don't think.
Oh yeah.
Oh, 1.8 million.
Wow.
Wow.
That is freaking crazy.
Yeah.
So, Hey, shout out, uh, shout out the Billy Billy audience.
We have a, uh, we have a translation team.
Um, that's awesome.
That, uh, it's the same team, right?
Well, they've cycled through some members, but it's, yeah, it's the same, um, it's the
same team.
Oh, here we go.
That's cool.
Uh, Nixie subs.
Oh, look at that.
Look at that.
They have a, they have a recruitment URL right here.
Long-term recruitment of paid translators.
Yeah.
There you go.
So yeah, we, we do, we, we took someone who was a group that was pirating our videos and
uploading them to Billy Billy.
And we were like, okay, look, you can't do that, but we understand that maybe people
want to watch the videos over there.
So how about this?
Well, we'll, we will pay you and you can upload them and then we'll, we'll just do
it that way.
Um, and it's been fine.
We haven't made any money.
It's mostly been just like a, a service for the people who want to watch over there.
Because as far as I can tell, you can't buy anything from LTT store in China.
I don't.
Probably not.
I, well, man, now I'm, now I'm kind of curious.
What if you shipped internally?
Internally?
What if you.
Oh, here, here we go.
Sessions by location.
Uh.
Would they have to, to go to LTT store.com?
I think so.
Really?
Wouldn't you?
Speaking of not approving of everything China does.
I don't know how we're saying it's been a long time since I've looked into how the
firewall works.
That's pretty stupid.
Um, any who, uh, yeah, I don't know.
It hasn't shown up in the first 400 results, which I think is an indication that probably,
oh yeah, we had six visitors from China.
There it is.
Six visitors from China today.
Bill Hong Kong?
Uh, I don't know.
It doesn't say.
Um, yeah.
So, and, and we, and we have no way to get the money out of our Billy Billy account.
Uh, last time I checked with Yvonne, I think it was $40,000 sitting in the account there.
So a very significant amount of money.
Uh, but Hey, my, honestly, one of my reasons for not being willing to travel to China was
that the Canadian government told me that China arbitrarily detained the two Michaels.
Now that I know that one of them, one of them was a spy and the other one was kind of like
drawn into it by the other one is what they're alleging right now.
It's, this is all kind of being aired in public.
Finally.
Uh, now that I know that China was like justified in detaining them.
It's like, yeah, maybe I'll go there and open a bank account.
I'm not a spy.
Nice.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Then again, they might be mad that I smuggled that TV out.
Like maybe I'm on a list.
I'm probably on some kind of list.
I mean, I'm pretty sure they have lists of just about everybody.
Again, we say Taiwan a lot.
Not saying I approve.
Chinese Taipei, Luke.
No, no, I know.
That's such a, that's such a stupid name.
Not for me.
You know, there's more than one city in Taiwan.
Yeah.
It's like, it's like what if I'm from, uh, oh crap.
You, you never been to Tainan, bro?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, if I'm from there, what I, I, you know, I'm at the Olympics.
I'm representing.
You never been to Hualien?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, come on guys.
There's a lot of cool places.
Come on.
Ridiculous.
Um.
What are we even talking about?
We're supposed to explain merch messages?
What even is the show today?
Who knows?
We, we made it through like two topics.
I don't know, but my social credit score is probably at an all-time low right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, oh, I have the solution.
Okay.
Okay.
We can fix this.
I can smooth things over with the Chinese government and I can fix the housing crisis.
Everyone who doesn't have a house in Vancouver can just move to a ghost city in China.
Oh.
Genius.
Everyone wins.
It's genius.
Amazing.
Slash S.
Yeah.
For anyone taking that seriously.
Someone probably did.
Shake, shake your head.
Someone probably did.
Slash S.
Yeah.
Okay.
Checkmate.
All right.
We're supposed to explain merch messages.
The way, the way to talk to the show is not super chats.
It's not, uh, Twitch bits.
It's merch messages.
You go on lttstore.com, find something that you like, head to the checkout and you'll see
a little box for a merch message.
Whether you want to pick up one of our, uh, new stubby screwdrivers or the shaft extensions
that turn them into what I call the compensator screwdriver.
Uh, uh, pretty cute.
Anyway, the point is, uh, you add that to your cart and there's a little box.
You fill that out.
You leave us a merch message.
It'll go to producer Dan who will, I hope, sorry, sorry.
Go ahead and wave.
Sorry.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Uh, go to producer Dan, um, who will reply to you or forward it to someone who can answer
your question or direct it to me and Luke here on the show.
Uh, we're going to go through a couple to kind of show you guys how it works.
And also there's a merch update.
We are trialing a promotion.
What does that even mean?
Oh, this is cool.
We're, oh, we're collaborating.
Oh, okay.
This is the first I'm hearing of this.
If you buy a desk pad, you get a $10 code with green man gaming.
Oh, so you buy any desk pad on LTT store.com, excluding mystery desk pads and use code GMG
10 at checkout and you'll get a code.
Uh, this is a trial run on our side.
Ah, this is what makes it a trial.
Um, so the codes will not be sent automatically at the time of purchase.
Our support team is going to have to do this manually, but they will be sent out to all
buyers by January 4th.
So that's six days.
Yeah.
Have fun.
Yeah.
That's not too bad.
How long is this, uh, is this on for?
We're only doing 300 codes to kind of keep things from totally.
Is there any indication when it ends?
Luke, do I look like I know things?
Sometimes.
Okay.
Sometimes.
Look, I have a whale on my shirt.
Oh, speaking of which, ah, we did a tour.
Yeah.
We did a tour today of the land center.
Dan saw it for the first time.
So we can, we can talk about it.
Yeah.
We'll talk about that later.
We'll do a couple of messages.
Not right now.
Um, as for whether there's an indicator, I have no idea.
So good luck everyone.
I'm sure if we accidentally sell 322, uh, we will, we will get you sorted out.
Trust me, bro.
Don't worry.
It's all good.
Uh, you get $10 off on green man gaming.
Um, all right.
Oh yeah.
Other news.
Noctua screwdrivers have started shipping.
So if you were holding off due to it being a pre-sale, you can now place an order and
expect it to ship within a few days.
Woo.
I have received, I've been mostly, I've been on vacation this week.
I've been mostly disconnected, but some communication that I have received is that there's a lot of
people that want stubbies of it.
Stubby is selling.
Okay.
What I told the people who wanted other colors of stubby in the past was if stubbies
is a success, then you can expect to see more colorways.
Um, it's more work than you probably think to do a new colorway of something.
You have to validate the mold and there is a different mold for the handle for stubby.
So you have to validate the mold for the, uh, the different composition of the plastic.
And that's, that's the big one.
Um, so it's not just strength.
It's also whether you're going to get weird swirls in the, in the coloration and just all
this crap.
Cause the whole like flow simulation thing is not always perfect.
Sometimes the real world is messy.
Um, so if stubby continues to be a success and we move through the black ones, it is possible
that we will do other colors of stubby.
But for now, if you want to stubby, this is the color that the stubby screwdriver is in.
And I'm not going to guarantee that we will do anything else.
All right, Dan.
Sure.
Uh, as we're talking about merch, magnetic cable holders, estimated time of arrival.
Am I ever, am I going to avoid answering this question every week?
You're allowed to.
Soon.
Soon TM.
Darn it.
I believe.
Oh man.
Do I have a, is Nick off this week?
I don't remember getting a, a merch update from Nick.
Uh, Nick.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Let me, let me see.
Let me see.
I don't want to throw them under the bus or anything here.
Literal second that they're available.
I'm putting in a request.
Yes, I know.
I know.
Uh, okay.
Uh, the last.
I'm probably going to put in multiple.
Well, one request of multiple units, I guess, probably.
Cause I want to do it for.
Uh, my, my PC set up, but also home theater.
Pending packing at our, um, at our distribution center.
Expected to go live mid to late January.
All right.
Oh.
You happy?
Hype.
Hype, hype, hype, hype, hype.
You happy?
Okay.
They're so good.
Okay.
What else you got?
Uh, sorry.
I was distracted by the news.
Uh, let's see.
Hey, when dot.
I'm not even going to do.
Duh.
Duh.
We're going with all the weird ones.
Apparently the creator of the PNG says it's ping.
Ping.
No, it's ping.
What are you, Swedish?
I'm going with ping.
Also, uh, to call back.
God, I hate this.
To call back from, uh, from, I think it was last week.
Um, apparently the XE anything is more of an English thing, which explains a lot.
Oh.
It explains so much.
Everybody who's like, I do that.
I'm like, are you English?
And they're like, yeah, why?
I'm like, aha.
Aha.
Because you, you grew up there.
Is that right?
My dad's English.
I was born there and moved here, but yeah.
I mean, I say doing the washing up and washing up liquid, which always gets laughs.
Uh, okay.
Hey, WAN.dll.
Do you guys have any projects you're looking forward to in 24 or any goals you want to accomplish?
Projects?
Yeah.
Oh, like work projects?
Uh, there's one big one I can't talk to you guys about.
Maybe, maybe private projects too.
The thing.
Sent you a video on it.
Oh, that.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Well, we can provide some vague information.
Not really.
Just vague though.
Nah.
How about you, Linus?
I think that if we're sufficiently vague, it should be fine.
Or we could just not.
We want to help people.
Nah.
Nobody's getting helped.
We want to help people.
Nah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is sufficiently vague.
With information.
Nah, it's.
We can.
With information.
Sure.
We want to help them with information.
That is, that is.
May I remind you about the mute button?
The mission statement.
Oh, yeah.
Nice.
I forgot I have that.
No, you don't get to mute me.
I can just turn them off.
I will.
I can unplug you too, sir.
I will.
I will.
I will figure out which cable is your.
Is your stream deck.
Oh.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'll take it away.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'll take it away.
I can do this.
I can do this.
No, I can do this.
I can do this.
I can do this.
I can do this.
I can do this.
Oh, my God.
These are the people that employ me.
Bunch of children.
I'm back.
I'm back first.
I'm back.
I'm back, baby.
I'm back better.
Oh, my laptop actually went to sleep.
Darn it.
I'm back more.
It's great.
What were we even saying?
Oh, yeah.
Ask a merch message.
I mean, I have a defense against that.
Go ahead.
Try and close my laptop.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead and try.
Your fist is there.
I feel personally attacked.
I don't know how much I want to try.
Go ahead and try.
Yeah, just go ahead and try.
I call this the fisting defense.
What?
I was going to say, if I push too hard, it'll break it.
And then I.
That's why it's the fisting defense.
I know, Dan.
Oh, man.
Anywho.
Project.
Not more information.
That's not what I meant.
Yeah.
So, we're looking to help people.
So, that's what Luke's team is going to be working on.
Yeah.
One of the teams.
On our side, I'm really excited to get some more circuits launched.
It looks like the way that we're going to brand the vertical specific channels.
Oh, I can say so.
That the labs data is going to help us to create is like power supply circuit, motherboard circuit.
The labs team has continued to beaver away on testing methodologies and all that good stuff
in the background while they've been pitching in on videos here and there.
And it looks like this year, you can expect to see some channels.
I think it's probably going to start with power supply circuit.
It's possible something else will beat it across the finish line.
But Lucas from the lab, Gary, honestly, the whole team there has been working really hard
to get our power supply testing methodology up to snuff.
And our hope is that once we've got everything up and running, so we have the new loads,
load units from Chroma, those are installed now.
We have the final scope.
We have the parameters basically nailed down.
I think right now it's just pending some vacation time because it's, you know, the holiday season.
So many people are out right now.
Yeah.
Including myself.
In the new year, in the new year, I think we are going to be ramping up testing.
I already saw, like, man, the goal at the start for the videos is going to be pretty low production value.
Like, it is possible that we are just going to have a template script, you know?
And it's going to be kind of like, what's it called, like Mad Libs almost, where it's going to be like, okay, this is the blank watts from blank manufacturer.
And it just kind of, you know, lays out what the one pager test report is going to be in video script form.
We're basically going to have, like, a template of what the shots that accompany each portion of the video are supposed to be, what graphs go where, and just as simple as humanly possible, just get information out there.
Because there's not a lot of coverage of this stuff anymore.
Like, I was looking, I was trying to look for just, like, an unboxing and overview of some EVGA power supply as part of just the research for starting up this channel.
Like, you know, how many views does a power supply video get these days?
And the answer was, who knows?
Schrodinger's video, because unless we actually make the video, there's no way to check.
Like, it's, okay, it's not Schrodinger's.
But the point is that these videos don't really exist.
I found some weird, I think it was Best Buy?
It's a retailer, a U.S. retailer that has a program where they just send product to, like, micro-influencers who make videos.
And then they get uploaded to their channel.
And so I found some EVGA power supply there that had, I think, 80,000 views or something like that.
And I was like, okay, EVGA's a pretty good brand.
That's a pretty common model.
We could maybe say, okay, we'll average somewhere in the neighborhood of, like, 30,000 to 50,000 views, assuming, you know, sort of similar quality.
And I think we could match that even with a pretty generic, templatized video format, especially if we have all of this testing data, all this information.
Okay, so based on that, we have about a $112 budget, you know, for each one of these videos.
So we need to make sure that this is extremely streamlined.
But it's just going to be no BS, you know, simple title, you know, maybe a quick observation about it.
And then just the product name, just realistically, because we don't have time to do more than that simple basic thumbnail.
And I'm really excited because I think that this is something that needs to exist and hasn't really existed for a long time because it's just not viable anymore to make review videos about a power supply or a motherboard.
You can't get enough views on it.
It hasn't been viable in a long time.
Yeah, you can't get enough views on it to justify the production value that people expect from a tech video.
And so we're just going to we're going to come in very, very low budget and and just try and try and hit a really, really broad range of power supplies.
And what I really want to happen and what I'm really excited for is the diamonds in the rough.
I am expecting that as we go through and we test, you know, every $60 power supply, there's going to be a lot that are trash and there's going to be a small handful that are surprisingly really good.
I'm and I'm just I'm I'm stoked on that.
I I'm really looking forward to, you know, putting together like, you know, $400 PC build guide where every single component is labs validated and friggin awesome.
And yeah, really, really, really excited.
It's been a long time coming.
There's been a lot of stumbling blocks along the road.
Oh, something that we should have an update for you guys on very soon is the labs is coming to the end of the internal audit of every video they ever contributed to.
And, you know, what, if anything, was wrong.
Cool.
And so we're going to be able to talk to you guys about that, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, as part of our follow through on the transparency that we committed to back in August.
I believe it was going to be good stuff.
Any news on the labs website asks geek power zero.
I want to release it.
Then do it.
Okay.
Coward.
I'll do it now.
Do it.
Okay.
Do it.
What is Luke doing?
He's releasing the labs website.
There's no content on it.
All right.
Does it work?
Yes.
I don't know.
It's worked for so long.
I don't know.
The comparison I did didn't seem to work.
The comparison you did with no articles.
There's no data.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the problem.
Yeah.
There's nothing on it.
I'd like to make a complaint about your alpha.
What's the complaint?
Luke's going.
Luke's the alpha right now.
No, no, no.
Fight me, Dan.
Look at this guy.
Fight me, Dan.
I'm just trying to piss off Luke.
Yeah, do it.
It's working.
It's not working because you have nothing.
You have nothing.
There's no information.
He's not even angry.
I'm not mad.
This is exciting.
Oh, my God.
I mean, is this happening?
Are we doing this?
It's happening.
I think we're doing this.
Yeah.
I'm calling your bluff.
I think this is happening.
I think we're doing this.
I'm not.
I mean, you thought you didn't think I was bluffing, did you?
No, which is why I'm doing it.
All right.
I'm just I'm playing with the audience.
Come on.
Playing with my heart.
He's just too good of an actor.
I'm not mad.
You're mad.
What is the URL?
Forget it out in a sec.
Oh, OK.
So we like don't have one yet.
Apparently.
We do have.
Yeah.
Just got to buy one.
Minus lab tips dot com LLT.
That's going to direct to it now.
So someone's going to get that.
No, there's there's no way LLT is not doing that.
Oh, wow.
LLT goes to telepathy.
What is this?
Provided compelling, memorable identities to companies across the globe.
Really?
Uh, OK.
Mm hmm.
Hold on a second.
Uh oh.
Compelling, memorable identities like these things.
What?
Uh, these guys work.
They just make brands?
They do branding?
Yeah, they do branding.
Um, I'm just trying to think of which of these I have ever remembered.
Man, when you when you look at some of these, like.
I should get into.
Brand design stuff.
I could write.
I could write fully in white on a pink.
OK, it's harder than you think.
I know it is.
It is legitimately harder than you think.
Like if you look at the packages that Sarah puts together for when we do branding, like
it's got to look good on a white background and a black background.
You got to account for when it's square and what's your word mark.
And, you know, it's it's it's a thing.
It's a thing.
I just don't know how.
I don't just don't know how memorable these things are.
Oh, wait.
Parallels.
Parallels is in here.
OK, that's something.
I didn't remember their branding or see it there, but that's something.
OK, so how long how long does it take to launch a website?
Like what's what's going to take a little bit?
We're on it, though.
What, you're slow or is it because the server is slow?
Yes.
Is your keyboard slow?
Yeah, we need more money for faster servers.
For faster.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, you and everyone.
More money.
Money, money, money, money, money.
It's always something.
All right.
Why don't we do one more merch message?
Dan, go ahead and hit me.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, nice.
I got information from AJ and yeah, everyone's lying.
Oh, about the browser thing?
Yeah.
OK, here.
OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.
So, so other.
What the heck is Facebook?
Yandex?
Chrome Derivative.
OK, those there's your bottom three.
Then you got Silk, Opera Mobile, Chrome Mobile Web View, Samsung Internet and Opera.
Everything I just said is about half of unknown, which is a little less than Edge, which is about
the same as Safari, which is about on par with mobile Safari.
So, so Safari in here actually outpacing Chrome Mobile.
People watching Mac address.
And in total, Firefox holds somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15 percent share, which has improved.
It used to be lower.
Yeah, but you guys.
It genuinely used to be lower.
I think it's loud minority.
It's not 70 percent.
Yeah, it's not.
It's not.
I think we were seeing some loud minority nonsense there.
Sorry, guys, but we're calling you.
We're calling you on it.
Oh, what is this?
OK, cool.
That's all good.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, good try.
Good try, y'all.
OK, Dan, hit me.
Sure.
Have you considered making more Apple leather products like maybe a desk pad?
Oh, that wouldn't be very good for a desk pad.
It's pretty soft, isn't it?
It's not about the softness.
It's about the like reflectiveness.
You don't you want you.
Yeah, you know.
No, we haven't.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I thought you're done.
Sifrin in Flopling Chat said Firefox is pretty good, though.
And some other stuff.
Why wouldn't people use it?
Yeah, I want people to use it.
I want that number to go up and it has gone up a little bit.
It used to be lower.
I promise you it used to be lower.
It's not saying it's bad to use Firefox.
He's just saying that people were not 100 percent honest about their use of Firefox or Firefox users were overrepresented in the poll because they were more incentivized to vote.
Either they were the ones that wanted to vote or for some reason the live audience is a higher percentage of Firefox users.
Like there's a lot of things that could go into it.
I do think you have to be a particular brand of tech enthusiasts to sit and watch a four hour tech podcast live.
Yeah, so maybe that group of people has a higher Firefox buy in.
Yeah, and then of that group of people, the Firefox users were more incentivized to vote at the same time.
Yeah, and that resulted in this really high number.
So it might it might not be lying.
Luke hates burgers.
But it's definitely drastically misrepresentative Firefox had 0.3 percent in the the hub 2023 review Chrome had 52.1 percent Safari had 40.6.
So like yeah, it's getting better though, which is good and I encourage you to still use it.
And if it's working for you, I encourage you to try it.
For me, I run into too many websites that just like don't work because they're not made for it, which is frustrating.
So it is what it is.
All right, Dan, one more.
By the way, it does seem like the site is actually going to be coming online.
Really?
It's taking a little bit because I had to get AJ involved because of CNAME things and all this other stuff, but it's it's coming.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Linus, some time ago, you mentioned having issues with your optical TB3 cables.
Would you still recommend optical TB3 or use separate USB and display cables?
I Thunderbolt is amazing when it works.
On a board where Thunderbolt works all the time, I would recommend it.
But finding a board on the PC side of things where Thunderbolt works consistently, it's tough.
And I know that, what's the name?
CalDigit, I think it was.
I don't want to say this and then be wrong.
Optical.
I think CalDigit had talked about potential problems with optical Thunderbolt cables.
Oh, I can't find a source for this.
So, oh no, don't quote me on it.
Um, but yeah, I have definitely not found it to be a perfect experience, but I have found that at times it's been, it's been perfect with particular board and dock combos.
Yeah, I can't find a source for that CalDigit thing, so, so ignore it.
Um, I wish I could.
Anyway, if it doesn't fit.
Yeah, no, no, I don't, it doesn't look like that was CalDigit.
Someone at some point told me that they had encountered some issues with, uh, with optical Thunderbolt cables and docks or something.
But I, the problem is the cost the other way, right?
Like a Thunderbolt dock and optical Thunderbolt cable is expensive, but getting multiple optical cables and multiple docks is also really expensive.
So, there's, there's no good solution, unfortunately.
If you don't need high-speed USB, it's actually pretty easy.
Then all you need is an optical HDMI or DisplayPort cable, which have come down a ton in price.
They're reasonably affordable-ish.
They cost about as much as, you know, a premium cable would have, uh, you know, five, ten years ago.
Um, and then all you need is one of those cheap extensions like we covered recently.
But if you need a high-speed USB at distance, it's tough.
Really tough.
Um, also, they said they had an issue with the code, the backpack code, but are you forwarding that elsewhere?
Uh, they didn't leave their email for me to forward it, so, uh, please reach out to support if you're having any issues.
Ah, yes.
Okay.
All right.
Let's do another topic.
Luke, what do you want to talk about?
Do you want to talk about the Land Center Tour?
Yeah, so I didn't get to do this, but, uh, Dan says that he's pretty happy and it seems like all the planning that we've done is going to be okay.
So, that's a, that's good for me to hear.
I'm happy about that.
Well, the video is going to have me talking about everything that I think is cool.
Nice.
So, instead of doing that here, I would like to hear Dan's thoughts.
Cool.
On the Land Center.
On the Land Center.
Yeah, this was your, this was your first time seeing it in person.
You've only ever seen it on a piece of paper or on a computer screen before.
That's right, yeah.
So, how, how did, how did reality compare to expectations here?
Uh, the ceilings are a hell of a lot higher and it just feels like a larger space.
I did a walkthrough and a measurement in the, uh, the lab area because I wanted to get a sense of scale.
Um, and I didn't quite realize that it was longer than the lab, uh, which kind of was disturbing for, uh, doing audio and speakers.
Uh, absolutely insanely giant building.
And then there's two of them.
Yeah.
Next to each other.
Yeah, it's going to be.
Everything is just kind of bigger.
Um, yeah, it was, it was really kind of inspiring, I guess, to see this empty building that I know what it's going to kind of look like at the end of it.
And also had a part in stuffing things into the concrete, you know, it's really cool.
Um, but it does increase the amount of stress.
Cause I go like, ah, yeah, we'll do, we'll do 200 feet here and we'll put that one there.
And, you know, I'll grab my tape measure out and kind of get a feel for it.
Everything gets a, everything gets a little real when it's actually right.
I better, I hope I did my math right.
Yeah.
Very much so.
You're real, real confident.
Then you, you look at it physically and you're like, oh.
Yeah.
Cause I heard the echo and I was like, Linus, you're going to treat this right.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're doing the same treatment as all the other buildings, right?
Yes.
And then I felt a lot better.
So I think, I think the coverage should be good for, for the audio stuff.
These big warehouse boxes just need it.
Like.
Oh yeah.
It's crazy.
It's worth it.
It's absolutely worth it.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
It's expensive, but it makes a big difference to just the livability of the space.
Like I, I hate that.
Just echo, echo, echo, echo.
Like, uh, and like those, the standing waves that you get in these, in these giant boxes,
it's, you can't even some, some of the like gyms that, um, that I play at, you can't have
a conversation with someone on the other side of the court because there's just too much
interference.
Frustrating.
Yeah.
It's like, it sucks.
Like you could yell, like, you know, uh, oh, you know, like you can yell one word and
people, but if you try to actually just like talk to someone, even while you're just like
warming up or whatever, it's, yeah, it's, it's pretty frustrating.
So obviously it's going to be a badminton center as well, but, um, land events, man,
chase, uh, kind of laid out for us what the floor plan is going to be.
So we're looking at 250 to 300 seats.
We're going to have a stage.
Uh, we're going to have like a retro corner, which is going to be set up with a bunch of
consoles and stuff like that.
I'm kind of thinking I don't really need the projector in my theater room anymore.
So, Hey, um, maybe we take a ball in 4k 120 Hertz projector and put it in there for
obviously not retro games, maybe, maybe more modern games on that consoles that support
that kind of resolution and refresh rate.
Um, we're going to have it light controlled, so it will be, it will be dark.
Like the projector is going to look frigging awesome.
It's an Epson LS 12,000.
So I was saying to chase, um, I used to have a CRT projector from an old university.
One of the, with the, the blue, green, and red tubes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Get some of those, you know, 12 foot smash at CRT latencies.
I mean, uh, beauty contest at CRT latencies, uh, would be pretty sweet.
Okay.
We.
How's that going?
I haven't personally seen an update about that.
Uh, I have gotten an update where we're waiting on legal advice.
Oh, okay.
That's the same one.
We definitely cannot run a smash tournament without worrying about Nintendo going after us.
Yeah.
However, we are still exploring the possibility of running a beauty pageant.
Yeah.
I was not talking in the contents of the beauty pageant.
I just meant, you know, people might want to play it there.
Yeah.
I'm really excited about the beauty pageant.
Me too.
I think that gamer beauty is something that is underappreciated in this world.
Yeah.
For, for those of you who lack context, Nintendo has a bunch of rules about community smash
bros, uh, tournaments.
We think they're stupid.
Um, so our plan is to hold a beauty pageant where, um, people, uh, two people, uh, you know,
go and they, they sit on a couch or on chairs.
Relatively close to each other so that judges would be able to assess their beauty.
Um, and they, while they await for judging, um, they could play video games.
We're going to have, there are various activities that they could participate in to do a particular
one.
That's up to them.
Yep.
And then, uh, at some point, um, you know, maybe when they're, maybe when they're bored
and they're finished, you know, playing games or whatever they decided to do, participating
in whatever activities they like.
Uh, then the judges will declare, uh, one to be more beautiful than the other.
Yeah.
And they will advance to the next round.
Yes.
Um, of, of beauty competition.
Yeah.
This, yeah, this pageant is more of like a one versus one scenario with a, with a ladder
system.
Yeah.
Instead of, um.
Is there a destination involved?
Uh, trophy.
A destination.
Beauty, like a final destination.
A final destination.
Beauty trophy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A beauty trophy would be nice.
We can print those.
Sorry.
Should be fine.
Like if, if it's a beauty pageant, I don't really see how anyone can get mad at us.
Yeah.
I mean, those are legal.
Yeah.
Right.
I think so.
Yeah.
You're allowed to supply various forms of entertainment.
Yeah.
Or they could bring their own entertainment.
Then it's, then it's like not our liability.
If what, like, are we going to get in trouble for having a power outlet?
So we provide a couch, a TV and a power outlet.
Yeah.
Everything that happens after that point, it's not really our,
our problem.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Um, anyway.
So yeah, like console gaming corner, uh, chase wants to get a bunch of like arcade machines
and stuff like that.
Do like an arcade wall.
The idea is that I don't want people just stuck at their chairs for 24 or 36 or 48 hours
or however long these events end up being.
Uh, one thing that I was, that I did not expect is, uh, chase said the plan is to do set up
in one day.
Um, I think I had set the goal of set up in like three or four hours.
So I'm going to have to get aligned with him on that for the land.
Yeah.
I mean, if we can have it organized enough, we should be able to just add more bodies.
The tables and networking and stuff like that should all be three, four hours.
Yeah.
What's the one day?
Well, is it the arcade machines?
It could be stage, arcade machines, console corner, but that stuff is, I mean, you could
be setting that stuff up while people are landing and setting up their own computers.
That's true.
But then the organizers don't get to game.
They're like busy moving arcade machines around.
So we'll figure it out.
But I mean, maybe that's something that we can solve with just like volunteers.
Yeah.
Cause the original spec was just getting the tables and networking and power deployed in
three to four hours.
We'll have to figure it out.
You're adding things.
Chase has some really cool ideas.
Chase added them.
Yeah.
It's Chase's fault.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Chase has some great ideas for a lot of some like game jam type stuff, community engagement
with maybe maps or games or things like that, which seems pretty cool.
Just keeping all the events going and moving.
I don't know.
It should be, it should be a hell of a lot of fun.
We found out that the server room is way too small.
I measured it with Sean today.
It's five foot wide, which isn't too bad.
Yeah.
It's about the same width as the one under the stairs here.
It's, it's a little wider than the one.
Is it?
Okay.
Not much.
It's not much, but it'll be okay.
It's serviceable.
So you're going to have to squeeze around to the back of the rack again.
Well, it's rack width times two most likely.
Oh, so it's not too bad.
That's not bad.
I still think we should put a door in the office.
Yeah.
I talked to Yvonne about that.
She's also going to see if there's the possibility of us just making the room a little bit bigger.
Um, I, I asked her, I must point blank.
I was just like, I mean, we've gone through final inspections a lot of times.
Have you ever seen the inspector pull out a measuring tape?
And she's like, no.
So with that in mind, maybe the room is just six inches wider and nobody notices.
So we'll see if that's a possibility.
It may not be.
We may be stuck with what we have, in which case having the access door.
So the shape of the room is like this and there's a door here.
So getting around the rack and getting equipment to the back, like a UPS could be tough.
So Dan had proposed putting a door on the side so you can actually get in from the back.
And if that door opened this way, then that could be quite helpful for getting around the back of the rack.
And as long as we're super organized first time around, getting all the power and networking drops in there.
Dan, you estimated 300 drops.
Are you sure?
No, probably though.
Where'd you pull that number from earlier today?
So some of the sample articles that have been submitted to the site have stuff like that on them.
That's hilarious.
I say do it.
Bottom line.
Are you sure?
I don't know if that's a good idea.
I mean, we've used ChatGPT to come up with silly sample text for our nerdy website, so it should be fine.
Okay.
Sometimes ChatGPT can be a little sassy.
It's your fault if it goes poorly.
I'm on vacation.
I don't have to do my stop line if you're bringing the company down there.
What's the line?
I'm not even supposed to be in today or whatever it is.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm looking for those runs as well.
I'm not even supposed to be here today.
That's the one.
Let's see.
How many runs is this?
How many speakers are there?
Oh, my God.
So the person Luke's coordinating with to get this done is apparently supposed to be on vacation, too.
Amazing.
And the other main person we're coordinating with, it's like probably their bedtime, let alone past their hours.
Linus, I miscalculated.
Yeah?
It's 460.
Are you kidding me?
There's no way that's right.
I don't think that's right.
No, because we don't need to.
That's power.
That's power.
I misclicked on one of them.
Oh, gosh.
Oh, I scared myself.
I'm so sorry.
We don't need to drop to every computer in the LAN.
No, no, no.
I miscalculated.
I grabbed wattage from a couple of the.
Oh, my God.
From one of them.
It's 278.
Really?
Oh, sorry.
It's 314.
Wow.
I was actually on the money.
314 runs.
To what?
Okay.
I know you already said access control, speakers, APs, cameras.
Like, that adds up.
Yeah.
But how many freaking data ports do we have?
It can't be that many.
So, it's probably not.
I believe that this is only, um, no, hold on.
Jeez.
I don't know if these are all right.
Yeah.
There's 104 devices.
104 devices total.
Okay.
So, there's like 22 door access.
You've got 32 speakers.
Okay.
It's probably going to be more like a couple hundred then.
I think it's probably like a couple hundred.
There's 36 cameras.
I guess we'll find out.
And then, I'm not entirely sure how many other ports we have.
No, there's a bunch more cameras too.
Because every quart has an ethernet drop for, man, every quart's got like three ethernet
drops or something stupid like that.
Okay, well.
No, I calculated those in too.
Unless there's another one in here for quarts.
I haven't looked at this in a while.
So, man, these cool, uh, hey, hey, those Sony cameras that you wanted for the inside of the
CNC or whatever that was?
Wanted.
And the web show?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not happening.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Okay.
I wanted a USB webcam, to be perfectly honest.
Yeah, but those Sonys look great for quart cams.
What was the model of that again?
Uh, let me check for you.
Uh, but yeah, those looked absolutely perfect.
Um, and they have a bunch of interesting features which make them really good for that as well.
I believe like, uh, direct ingest or something like that.
Yeah, they can.
Just pulling up my, uh.
They can just stream.
Yeah.
Uh, is it the ILME FR7?
No, that's what I wanted to put on the WAN show here.
For fun.
For fun.
We already have C100s.
Those are good cameras.
They are fine.
Yeah, I guess so.
Uh, I only have three of them.
It's the ILXLR1.
Sorry.
All right, let me do that.
Okay, here it is.
These look super cool.
They'll do up to 120 hertz.
Um, 4K.
They have, uh, an ethernet output.
They're designed for drones, so they're super compact.
Uh, they're Sony, so like, wow, anywhere from 100 ISO to 32,000.
Uh, so I'm assuming pretty good low light.
Um, they just get wired up with, like, DC power in.
Um, boom.
That's what it looks like.
There's an ethernet jack on the side, so you can just have it, what, I guess, RTMP?
Yeah.
Right, Dan?
I guess so.
I don't know.
I wasn't even considering these.
I wanted a webcam.
I mean, okay, that's fair.
Well, who, where did these come from, then?
Well, I mean, Sony.
Wi-Fi compatible.
Wireless lens.
What does yes times seven mean?
Is it Wi-Fi seven?
Is that what they're trying to say?
Because that would be cool.
Wi-Fi seven's crazy cool.
2.4 gigahertz times seven is probably antennas.
No, there's no way it has seven antennas.
I would be very surprised a compact device like this.
It's specific.
Oh, no, no, there's two brackets there.
Never mind.
Yeah, look at this.
I have no idea, though.
I don't know.
This looks like gibberish.
Look at this.
What a mess.
Well, no, because it's just closing two different.
Oh, someone's saying it's note seven.
Notes?
Yeah, it's a footnote.
Oh, that makes sense.
Good job.
Thank you.
Wow, that's a really bad way of doing that.
LAN terminal.
USB LAN.
Oh, no, this one's USB.
There's 11 LAN antennas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.
That's funny.
I thought I saw, man, I thought I saw an RJ45 jack on the side of it the last time I was looking at it.
Anyway, Panasonic has another one that's kind of similar, but I think the cost is quite a bit higher.
Yeah, I think the Panasonic ones are about $6,000.
Yeah.
If I look at my thing here, yeah, showcase counts.
The Lumix BS1H was the one that you were looking at.
Yeah, these are half the price.
Like, what, I have to get a little...
Actually, the Lumix ones are $35,000.
So, I was wrong.
You just needed two of them for $7,000.
Okay, all right.
Well, maybe we'll have to, like, rent one of each and maybe play around with them a little bit,
see which ones are really easy to use for network recording, essentially, because that's all I really care about.
Video IO.
Yeah, this one does not have RJ45 built in, whereas the Panasonic one, what's it called?
That is the Lumix BS1H, not Panasonic.
That's the one.
Oh, it is.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, this thing's pretty cool, too.
Also very compact.
Oh!
Wait, this one's cheaper!
Oh, it's on sale!
It's on...
Oh.
Offer ends December 3rd...
Are we doing this?
Am I doing this?
Uh, it's $1,000 off.
Uh, holy s***.
Um...
You can always just sell them.
Oh, oh, f***.
F***.
Hold on.
We've got to contact Linus to approve this.
Who?
You.
You.
When does the deal end?
December 31st.
Monday.
We've got...
Oh.
Yeah!
That's what I'm talking about.
Do you have your credit card?
Well, yeah.
Do you want me to ask Colton?
What?
Colton?
What does Colton have to do with any of this?
Here's a credit card.
Um...
What?
No, I have a...
I have a credit card, Dan.
Jeez.
You never know.
Yvonne might have taken your privileges away.
Okay.
I...
Is this one 4K?
I don't know.
FHD.
Yes.
Up to 4K.
I don't think it does a 120 FPS 4K.
No, it does 60 FPS 4K, but it'll do up to 180 FPS.
60 FPS HD, which is fine, and actually probably better for sports.
What's the maximum frame rate supported by Twitch?
Just 60, right?
I believe so, yeah.
I think so.
Yeah, because I was planning to just use Twitch, because, like, who cares?
But they have...
What it says, like, a pretty tight bit rate constraint, if I remember.
Mm-hmm.
Support streaming, UHD, supports Genlock and time code.
The one I can find right now, it's 60 FPS.
At 4K.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For Twitch?
Oh, sorry.
Yes.
For Twitch.
Wait, this one doesn't mention the Ethernet jack either.
Okay, I could have sworn this one had an Ethernet jack, though.
Now, just a gosh darn...
Yeah, it's right there.
Okay, hold on a second.
Maybe the issue with the Sony is not that it doesn't have it.
Maybe the issue with the Sony is just the way it's listed on the site.
Okay.
Sorry, am I shopping right now?
Like, is this just a Linus is shopping for cameras?
I think this is interesting.
We're working, because, I mean, I need to know this thing.
Where's the side of this bloody thing?
Show me the side, Sony.
Yeah, okay, no.
I thought it was on the side.
So, I think I was just completely mistaken about that.
I don't think the Sony has Ethernet built in.
I think you'd have to use a USB adapter, which, in theory, is fine.
Oh, my God.
Micro HDMI?
If we ever did want to use optical HDMI or something like that, that's a nightmare.
That is just asking for failure.
That connector should not exist.
Okay, what's this thing got?
It's got SDI.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
SDI, full-sized HDMI.
That's a real camera.
Yeah.
Give me two.
I'll take two, please.
It's also $1,000 off right now.
Oh, God.
What's the recording monitor kit?
I don't think I need that.
No.
What's that?
What is it?
Oh, yeah.
No, we don't need a monitor on it at all, do we?
No.
Okay.
Are you going to get up on a really tall ladder?
Oh, no.
Is this sensor too big?
Is it going to cause, like, too much, too much, like, depth of field?
Like, it's not going to be all in focus?
Is it micro four-thirds?
Because we have a, I believe, micro four-thirds is, like, a multiple crop factor.
Full frame.
Oh.
Oh, we've got a nice, fast lens.
It's going to be nice and bright.
Someone's saying break it footnote 11.
I don't know why, but someone's saying that.
On the Sony?
Footnote 11.
Or the one that we were like, what's this star seven?
And then we saw star 11 as well.
Look at footnote 11.
I mean, sure, I guess.
If I remember correctly, that had something to do with the LAN thing.
Mm.
And you had mentioned Ethernet.
Uh, where were the footnotes?
Those were on, those were on Sony's site for it, right?
Most likely.
I think so.
What even is WAN show?
I don't know.
I have no idea anymore.
I'm still looking for the run calculations.
I don't think I bothered because we have so many free ports because of just the POE requirements.
I can't even find, I'm sorry, guys.
I can't find these footnotes very easily anymore.
Uh, yeah.
You might just have to post what it is because I don't think I can, I don't think I can find
that right now.
Let me see if I can have a.
Notes.
Footnote 11.
Listen, a commercially available USB to LAN conversion adapter is required.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
We figured that out.
Okay.
Uh, all right.
I need to make a note to maybe buy, um, some of these cameras.
Okay.
So tell me this, Dan.
Mm-hmm.
At that price, do we just go BS1Hs on every court?
I will do the calculation for you here.
Uh, at that price.
Yeah.
Uh, because the other cameras that we were going to get are the same price.
So do you want to know the damage if you want 14 of these?
Well, I guess it would only be, uh, 12, wouldn't it?
No.
No, it would be 14.
Ready?
Mm-hmm.
Are you sure?
Mm-hmm.
Uh, it's $49,000.
Oh, no.
Hold on.
That's the wrong price.
$35,000.
Oh, okay.
Well, that's much better.
Wow, you really know how to make $35,000 sound like a lot less money.
Tell me $49,000 first.
Um, yeah, yeah, I should just go get the Billy Billy money.
That'll take care of it.
Go on, do it.
Um, man, these things look kind of awesome.
Um, I really, I really wish that I had one to try first.
What's their return policy?
Hey, B&H, wanna, wanna just, you know, I'll just buy them all, and then if they don't work,
I'll just return them all and pay the restocking fee on one?
Do you think they'd have 14 in stock?
It shouldn't matter.
It shouldn't matter.
If they're running a promo, they should be able to, oh, this is interesting.
Apparently, 14 is, like, not a thing.
How do I, oh, oh, you can just key it in.
Okay.
Let's see.
Um.
Buh.
Instant savings of $14,000, though.
Okay, I might.
I might need to call, like, Andy or someone and say, hey, do we have a full frame camera
and a lens that I can just grab, take home this weekend, like, put in position, get some
test footage, and basically see if it's too soft at the extreme ends of the court.
All right, we'll figure it out.
All right, anyway, uh, what are we supposed to be talking about?
You're, we're still talking about our, uh, our badminton center.
Land center, land center.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, and badminton center.
It's going to be both.
Uh, okay, okay, let's, let's move, let's move on.
New GM infotainment operating system leaves drivers stranded.
Who could have seen this coming?
GM has issued a brief pause on deliveries of the new Chevy Blazer EV in order to address
software quality issues.
The Blazer was GM's first model to drop support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in favor
designed specifically for cars.
So this is meant to run on the car rather than on your phone with the car as effectively a display
and input for it.
The car's launch has reportedly been plagued with infotainment bugs that have left drivers
stranded, including inside EV's writer, Kevin Williams, whose vehicle infotainment system
went blank while he was driving, failed to charge, then produced a service vehicle soon error message.
GM claimed that the issue only affected a limited number of customers, but posts about serious
issues appear to be fairly widespread, including one poster whose car repeatedly refused to shift
into park and another whose car heating couldn't be turned off and whose infotainment system
bricked and had to be fully replaced.
GM recently claimed and later retracted that it dropped Android Auto and CarPlay for the sake of user
f***ing safety.
I added that one word in there myself.
You can decide which one it was.
Because the apps are buggy and sometimes force drivers to take their attention off the road.
Oh, well, this is much better.
Why is GM so determined to suck?
I can't figure it out.
They heard the term embrace the suck and just took it in a direction it's not supposed to go.
I can't figure it out.
This is coming from someone who actually kind of fanboys over the one GM vehicle that they have ever owned.
The Volt is a great car.
And then they discontinued it, like just in time for it to have been super awesome and competitive.
And then they're taking one of the best things about it, which is that I had an older car that felt every bit as modern as any other car
because it just used friggin' Android Auto.
And so it was always getting software updates.
And I didn't have to rely on my stupid car manufacturer to be good at software because let's face it,
they all suck at software with some exceptions.
I mean, you can make arguments about Tesla having some pretty good elements to their software.
Trying to think of anyone else.
No!
The last thing I want is to touch any software made by my car manufacturer.
I want to use software that is made by whoever I chose to put in my pocket where it's already logged into all of my crap all the time
and everything works and is set up pretty much the way that I'd expect it to.
And then when I change my car or get in someone else's car, I just plug in, I rent a car, boom!
I'm ready to go, I'm off to the races.
That is a great user experience and anything else is a giant boatload of suck
and I don't even take any pleasure in being right about this,
but it was so obvious that this was going to be a giant pile of garbage
and a disadvantage for GM's buyers that I just, I can't fathom it.
Like, obviously, I'm not saying, well, I should be CEO of GM.
I'm not sitting here, you know, in front of my TV talking about how much better of a coach for the Patriots I could be
or whatever, right?
Like, that's not the point.
It's just, I don't know, I'm sure there's engineers at GM who would have known better.
Maybe just talk to the people internally.
That's leadership, right?
You just talk to people.
Someone could have told you that this is probably a bad idea
and I'm sure there's business monster reasons for doing it, but I don't care.
There's business monster reasons for making desirable cars that people want to buy and drive.
Why don't you do that?
Why don't you focus on that and worry a little bit less about how to squeeze more money
out of the data you collect from your customers?
Just an idea.
Crazy idea.
I know.
Man, this has been a really ranty show.
Yeah.
That's okay.
Speaking of rants, have you launched your website yet?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
And, okay.
Well, are we gonna go to it?
All right.
Here it is.
Big test.
It might not work for you.
Oh, it did.
Boom.
So, just to be, like, super clear for everyone, this is...
Apparently, the cat doesn't work with the keyboard.
This is basically a click demo.
You can mess around and see, like, what the web team has kind of been working on.
This is an extremely soft launch.
It looks pretty sweet.
Yeah, exactly.
It's an extremely soft launch.
This is not, like, the posts you're gonna be expecting from the labs local team or anything
like that.
This is just us messing around with the site.
Think of it as, like, an alpha or something like that.
Oh, this is pre-alpha, baby.
Yeah, there you go.
Basically...
This is proof of concept.
We're just showing people where we're at now because we leaked this on the WAN show a long
time ago, and it's progressed since then.
And you can click around and see what it'll be like.
Yeah.
You can see some of just, like, the art and site design.
Yeah.
Yeah, stuff like that.
This is not a launch of, like, the actual lab site in the way and form that you should
expect to use it once it's, like, fully flowing and going.
Those things are not in place yet.
But the look and kind of general feel is the direction that we're going in, at least.
We will collect some user feedback.
We'll see what people think about it.
I've already seen a couple comments that are interesting that we should probably, like,
at least consider.
But I don't know necessarily if we should act on them or not.
We'll see.
Lots of really positive comments.
Appreciate that.
The team's been working on this for a long time.
Gary did a great job of these graphics.
I love these header graphics.
Yeah, they're sweet.
Super cool.
There's been...
So, guys, we are doing stuff, for real.
The team is working extremely hard.
Like, even just figuring out what all of these headings should be is a whole process, getting
that coordinated with the back-end team, with the front-end team, making sure that the
whole experience is cohesive.
These are all placeholder graphs, placeholder images, placeholder absolutely everything right
now.
It'll be really cool, and you'll want to come back and all that kind of stuff when, you
know, actual, like, proper articles are being posted and stuff like that, which we're not
there yet.
So, this is not, like, an actual launch of the website.
Nice.
Yeah, exactly.
Nice.
There are none.
We're basically just showing off, like, look, you can click around.
You can get the usability.
Something I would suggest people check out, because, I mean, I think it's really cool,
is if you click the widget in the top right-hand corner.
Oh, do you want to talk about the compare cart?
Oh, no.
Never mind.
That's the widget in the top right-hand corner, and then click the toggle for customized
colors on data charts.
Ooh.
Now, if you have colorblindness issues, or, hey, if you just prefer a different kind
of palette of colors, you can change what the different charts look like to help avoid
colors that you might have issues with.
I thought that was pretty neat, because we have a lot of different charts and stuff.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's cool things.
There's cool stuff going on.
Maybe you can look at it.
There won't be a lot to look at, so I suspect you'll glance around for a little bit and
then take off, and that's fine, because this is not an actual launch of the website.
But, yeah, I think it looks great.
I'm excited to get it out there.
I think this is cool.
You can do things like using the compare cart stuff, but because there isn't a lot of stuff
that would...
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So, you've got an actual compare cart going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you have to find two products on the site that actually have, like, information to be
able to get the compare cart working.
But this is what it looks like.
So, you can kind of see them side by side and do an actual comparison.
Yeah, so, compare cart is sort of what we're calling for now.
For now, yeah.
Like, it's...
Everything's for now.
It's kind of like...
We call it a compare cart, because it's like you're adding it to a cart, like shopping.
Yeah.
Like, we wanted terminology that people could kind of relate to as you, as you...
Yeah.
Maybe, because if it just said compare up here.
It matches the floor of the site, because as you go through it, you might find things
and you add them to your cart, similarly to if you were shopping on a store and you were
adding things to your cart.
And then when you decide to check out, in this case, you're just looking at the comparison
on the cart.
You're not actually buying something.
We're not selling hardware through lttlabs.com.
Yeah.
We will probably collect affiliate revenue from, you know, if you navigate to something
from here, like, we'll have affiliate links and stuff like that.
So, I just want to make sure that that's abundantly clear.
Yeah.
And I mean, hey, maybe in 17 years, we're selling hardware through the site.
I don't know.
I'm not saying never, but like, it's not a goal right now.
17 years, hey.
Well, I mean, that's really specific.
In 16 and a half years.
In 36 quarters, the goal will be.
Yeah.
It's hard to make quarterly goals for software development.
Let's make quarterly goals for everything.
For 30 quarters from now.
Let's see how those hold up.
Yeah.
I'm actually, thank you for all the very positive comments.
That's very cool.
I appreciate it.
This has been kind of in the cooker for a really long time.
And it will continue to be in the cooker some more.
Yeah.
It needs some more cooking still.
But it's one of those things where launching a site when everyone else and their dog has
been building their sites for, in some cases, 10 or 20 years.
It's tough, right?
Because you're, on the one hand, you're looking at it going, well, yeah, they have a lot of
legacy crap to deal with that is probably a burden for them.
But on the other hand, they've had a lot of time to solve problems and figure out user flows
and, you know, really clean ways of presenting their information and their data and all that good stuff.
One of the things that you'll notice is that it is extremely advertising light.
That is not an accident.
There will definitely be some promotional materials on the site.
We will almost certainly have, you know, links to where to buy a screwdriver to install that
graphics card you're researching or whatever the case may be.
There are people with salaries who made this.
But right now, right now it is, it is not the plan to have a ton of advertising on it.
It's just, as far as we can.
There's other ways that are less annoying than advertising that we can make money.
Yeah.
Affiliate revenue, self-referencing back to our own things like our own videos and whatnot.
Yeah, there's other stuff.
Yeah.
A lot of work to do.
A lot of work to do, especially on the content side.
But it's exciting.
It's a really, really exciting time.
Feeling really good.
Yeah.
So, yeah, like I said, you can poke around, but there really isn't like a ton to do on the site right now.
It just looks really good, though.
But, yeah, we wanted to show off kind of like what it looks like and what it feels like, I guess.
Not what the articles would necessarily exactly be like, stuff like that.
There's just, like, there's so many little things like, you know, you can navigate like this.
Yeah.
Ooh, look at that.
Or go to see the tested settings.
There's some cool examples of some graphs, too.
Yeah.
I love the key actuation graphs.
Those are just the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.
Yeah, if you go to the AMD Radeon RX 7600.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
And you scroll down to.
It's per key as well.
Gaming.
So you could see the actuation of the space bar and see the difference between that and the enter key.
And that and the, you know, arrow, left arrow key or whatever the case may be.
Sorry, actually, I go to your.
Oh, you can.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then I can, like, look at, like, oh, I'm going to look at this.
And then it changes.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, it updates.
That's beautiful.
Look at that.
So cool.
Super cool.
What do I care more about?
Minimums?
Averages?
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of work.
A lot of work going into it.
We're going to.
It's going to be.
It's going to be great, guys.
Yeah.
All right.
Oh, right.
We should talk about sponsors.
Speaking of paying for all the work that's been done on all of this.
But, hey, the show's brought to you by Maximum Settings.
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The show is also brought to you by Thorum.
Meet Caleb, the CEO of Thorum, who is also the ring crafter behind Thorum.
Caleb used to make rings during his daughter's nap time, turning a passionate hobby into the thriving brand that is Thorum today.
That's super cool.
He loves what he does, and has personally handcrafted over 10,000 unique rings.
What makes these rings so special, you ask?
Well, they're all made with cool materials, like whiskey barrels, antlers, Damascus steel, World War II rifle stocks, and even meteorites.
Each ring comes with a free silicone band and a beautiful wooden ring box, making it ready to gift in no time.
And Thorum isn't just about rings.
They recently launched their new handcrafted watches.
They're made with unique materials as well, like 4 billion year old meteorites and Hawaiian koa wood.
They're also automatic watches, so no batteries are required, ever.
They ship orders within one business day, and there are no shipping costs.
For our WAN show viewers, you can get 20% off with code WAN.
Just go to the link in the video description.
Oh, no.
Finally, the show is brought to you by dbrand.
Oh, our last WAN show...
Okay, I'm just going to read this.
Our last WAN show sponsor this year, dbrand.
Oh, they want to be the last one of the year.
Of course they do.
Wants me to say something nice to them.
Because they've had so much fun messing with me throughout the year.
I'm supposed to say something nice to them because they messed with me.
They sent me broken glass.
Shortlinis.com?
Um, okay.
Dennis compiled the best clips this year for you to enjoy.
Dan is to roll the clips, and we are to just watch it.
Did dbrand actually ship me a box of glass shards?
Oh, my God.
Hey, dbrand.
Thanks.
Oh, my God.
Neat.
After the clip, very briefly talk about the long-term partnership with dbrand.
Yes, that has been a thing.
I mean, we do more than just, you know, shill their products and send us bags of money.
We know people there.
They know people here.
We're more than just money exchanging and product shilling.
Man, sorry.
I'm a little flustered.
I forgot about that stupid billboard.
The point is that they're one of the first places that we go for advice when, you know,
we run into trouble, you know, operationally, logistically, you know, hey, you know, what's
been your experience with this?
And, you know, they come to us when they're coming up against something that they've never
seen before.
Like, we work together, I guess, is the best way of putting it.
Um, and dbrand has stuck with us through thick and thin.
You guys might remember that dbrand was the first sponsor to come back on WAN show after
the challenging summer that we had.
And I said at the time that that made sense to me because, um, dbrand knows us.
Um, I'm not at liberty to say more than that at this time, but dbrand knows us.
dbrand knows stuff.
dbrand knows that, uh, sticking with us is going to be cool.
And we know the same thing about them.
There's a lot of, there's a lot of trust there.
Uh, we wouldn't even consider, you know, working with a case defy or someone like that in the
past.
Not because I knew at the time that, you know, they were allegedly stealing designs, uh, but
because just, we, we know that dbrand's going to take care of things when that comes to, you
know, whether it's our customers or whether it's making sure that their products are just
kind of awesome.
Um, we, we, we trust them.
Um, so they've got some new x-ray skins for all sorts of devices.
Uh, these skins were scanned at a specialized meteorology lab and dbrand is offering you
both.
Oh, that's cool.
Light and dark mode variants for the price of one happy new year and check out dbrand at
dbrand.com slash WAN.
Wow.
Did they really give me a reasonable vanity URL for a change?
How nice is that?
Is that, is that their new year's resolution to not be d** heads?
No.
Yeah.
I kind of didn't think so.
Definitely not.
Super cool.
I hope not.
Wow.
All right.
Thank you for that.
Sorry.
I got, I got really thrown off on that read.
Stupid billboard.
I had family members asking me about that stupid billboard.
Like it was in Vancouver.
It was like on a high traffic street.
It probably wasn't cheap.
I don't know how much they spent on that stupid thing, but I'd have people being like,
Oh, I saw your new car.
I was like, well, I haven't shown you my new car.
I didn't even tell you I got a new car.
No.
Yeah.
No.
I saw your picture on the billboard.
That's pretty cool.
Anyway.
dbrand.com slash WAN.
I like it.
It's got a nice ring to it.
It's pretty good.
Yeah.
Short line is pretty good too, though.
All right.
Short line is easier to remember.
Simmer down.
That's true.
Yeah.
They should work on their branding.
Well, that's the whole thing.
It's de-branding.
It's just unbranding.
Oh, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Wait, you didn't, you didn't know that?
Oh my God.
This guy.
This guy, man.
No, really though.
No, that one I did.
Okay, good.
I can't tell.
I can't tell slash S with this guy.
You don't deserve to anymore.
I think, I think I have lost the privilege to be able to feign ignorance anymore.
DanDefense.exe has crashed, is not responding.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, Dan, do you want to put some merch messages?
I'm going to try, man.
Okay.
Linus, I assume you don't purchase expensive or designer clothes often since creator warehouse
has designed more garments, has your willingness to spend more for quality materials or construction
changed?
Oh, I've never been unwilling to spend on quality materials and construction.
My issue is that the majority of the time, I don't see a clear correlation between the
difference in price and the difference in the quality of the materials and construction.
That's my issue with fashion.
Like I, I have, I, I don't know, Luke, have you ever known me to have a problem spending
on quality?
No.
It's not an issue.
It's really paying for brands and paying for strictly aesthetics is not really a thing.
I want bang for the buck and I'll do aesthetics sometimes.
Not necessarily bang for the buck either.
No, like I, you might pay for something that is particularly of premium quality because you
respect like the craftsmanship or because you're like, yeah, I paid more for this, but
this will last for literal ever.
Something like that.
Oh, a hundred percent.
It might not be technically best value per dollar.
This was my case back before I designed my own.
Yeah.
Like this is a, this is a.
It's an expensive case.
$350 computer case.
It's amazing.
This.
Oh my God.
My mouse.
All along, all along here, all down the front and all down the bottom is one single piece
of aluminum that is, it's shaped.
Look like it's a, it's thin in the middle and thick around the edges.
The craftsmanship of this thing is absolutely incredible.
I have no problem spending on quality.
My issue is where I just can't find a relationship between the price and the level of quality.
Um, and I just trying to think like, where, where did I get clothes from mostly Costco?
And it was mostly fine.
And, and as soon as something was not fine at Costco, like the champion socks that I used
to buy there, they went from lasting me years to, I would put holes in them in like six months.
Um, and, and I could tell, like I had my old ones and my new ones and like the, the weave
density was way lower on the new ones.
They are garbage now.
They're trash now.
And when that happened, um, I went looking for a new sock and I ended up with darn tough
who makes great socks.
They're just, they're great.
Um, they're, they're outstanding, really expensive.
It's like 20 to 25 us dollars per pair, but lifetime warranty and the quality is unmatched.
Like I would, I would go through an entire pack of those Costco socks and one pair of darn
toughs would still be standing.
So I can't fault that.
Right.
Um, no, man, I, uh, I, yeah, I'm sorry.
I, I, I, I don't, I don't agree or I shouldn't say I don't agree.
I definitely appreciate function more than form.
And I, I see more value to function, but I can appreciate form.
Um, but it's, it's only, I pick my battles, I guess.
Like I didn't care about my car looking cool, but I did care about my PC looking cool.
I didn't care about having a nice desk, but I definitely cared about having a nice desk
pad.
And a sturdy desk.
Um, oh no, my desk was like a complete piece of shit until I.
Not now.
Not, no, not now.
Um, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking back though.
I'm also thinking back to, you know, before I could afford things.
Your desk was very not sturdy back then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Back in the day.
But then you're, you're picking your battles, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's, that's a huge thing is, is like, you can't afford to have nice everything.
So you've got to decide on things, right?
You can't just have like a super nice everything.
And to me, you know, a wallet is a really low priority.
I would much rather have money in the wallet than money in the wallet.
If you kind of get what I mean.
Uh, like if I, if I had so much money that it didn't affect anything at all, actually,
no, I still wouldn't buy a fancy wallet.
I just, I just don't see, uh, I don't see a ton of value to that quality.
Yes.
I don't mind.
Like I, I won't spend 10 bucks.
I will, I'll have no problem spending, you know, 50 or 75 or a hundred bucks, but there's
no way I'd spend a thousand dollars on a wallet.
I'm sorry, but there's no material you could make it out of that would make me buy a wallet
for a thousand dollars and guys, don't kid yourselves.
That exists.
All right, Dan, hit me.
Sure.
Um, international airline pilot here.
Backpack is the best flight bag I've ever used.
Are any of you or anyone at LMG aviation enthusiasts or pilots?
Not that I can think of.
Sounds expensive.
Joe has a pilot's license.
Really?
Yeah.
Not for like commercial aircraft.
Like your gamer buddy or the one that we work with?
It's a bit of an in joke.
Don't worry about it.
He hadn't, he hadn't, uh, seen that clip and then one of his friends sent it to him and
he was like, Oh no.
Oh no.
He only actually saw it like I think a week or two ago.
Um, I didn't realize that Joe that I had gamed with many times over a span of years was the
same Joe who works for float plane.
Um, for years.
He had met him in, in real life and everything, but I don't think we had games together in real
life.
No.
So that didn't really actually like change anything.
Pretty funny.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, no, it was very much meant for travel and not necessarily just plain travel.
It was meant for, I've got to go places.
I've got to have my stuff with me.
And like, that's my, that's my lifestyle is I got to carry a lot of stuff.
I never know when I'm going to need an ethernet crimper tool.
And I'd never know when I'm going to need my work laptop or my personal laptop, or I'm
reviewing a device or whatever else it is.
And, and there's, there's two kinds of people.
There's people that look at the backpack and go, well, this is just a generic backpack.
That's overpriced and it's stupid.
And the people who have it like, yeah, it was very much designed for the people who love
it.
And you see posts on Reddit and stuff of people with like two laptops and a tablet and
like their, and their, uh, portable, uh, gaming PC or whatever.
And then they've got like a weekend worth of clothes packed in the, in the bag of holding
and they've got, you know, all their like game carts and everything organized.
And the front, it's like, yeah, that's who we made it for.
Um, and if it's, that's not you, that's fine.
That's cool.
You know what?
Not buying it is totally an option.
Totally fine.
Yeah.
It's, it's amazing how many people get angry about a product that wasn't made for them.
I think that's a man.
Am I really going to talk about the PS portal again?
Like how angry people were about a product that they didn't make for you.
Just chill.
Just let other people enjoy it.
In their defense.
We do that sometimes.
That is true.
But in the case of the PS portal, I even went out of my way in the video to kind of outline
why you can't complain about the price.
You can, you can not buy it.
That's fine.
But it is so comparable.
So obviously comparable to other items that people are not upset about.
Yeah.
Show me anything with a screen, a quality controller, a, you know, arm chipset with wireless and
Bluetooth and like all that stuff that it has.
Show me a that that isn't some Aliexpress piece of garbage for under 200 bucks.
I'm sorry.
That doesn't exist.
This is not an unreasonable price for what it is.
I don't like that it's locked down.
You know, I talked even in the video about wanting to see it jailbroken.
There's things I don't like about it.
You don't have to buy it, but it is what it is.
And it's not an unreasonable price for it.
And, you know, you have people saying, oh, it should be $99.
It should, should, what are you even talking about?
It's not.
That's not what something like that costs.
You go make one then.
Good luck with that.
Do you want another one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hit me with one more.
Sure.
I want the top one.
You want the top one?
I want to know how it's going.
Luke.
Hey, what's up?
These millennials are always on their phones.
I thought you weren't at work, sir.
Question for Luke.
Are you enjoying Final Fantasy VI?
Also, please tell me you changed the font setting from modern to classic, since the default
setting is an affront to humanity.
There's no way he changed that.
I don't know if I knew that was an option.
I did look through the options when I first started playing, so I might have seen that.
Have you played it anymore?
I've tried.
What?
Is your computer still crashing?
Yeah.
I thought it wasn't.
The problem that it's having right now is that I've never had this problem before.
This is a totally new thing, but it's when I enter certain areas in certain games.
Tarkov just wiped, so usually at the beginning of a wipe event, the cheating's not that bad.
So I've been playing Tarkov.
Tarkov can hit your computer decently hard, even though it's an old game.
Yeah.
Zero crashes in Tarkov.
No problems.
Interesting.
No problems.
I enter that town with all the lying people in Final Fantasy VI.
Zozo.
Boof.
Driver dies.
And there are other games as well.
That's bizarre, dude.
Where it's very specific areas.
I'll enter a specific area.
It doesn't feel like there's any different graphics elements.
Like, oh, this has a smoke effect or something.
It doesn't feel like that.
But I'll enter a specific area and crashes like crazy.
Sometimes I'll try to, like, force through it.
Like, driver will crash, computer will recover, and I'll try to pull myself through it.
Sometimes I can get through that area, and then it'll be stable again.
And the issue with Zozo is I'm stuck there for so long that eventually it'll just hard crash.
Okay.
Well, do you know that you're getting a new computer?
Yeah, but no one will tell me anything about it.
Cool.
Perfect.
Which I don't know if I like.
Good.
Maybe I do like.
Maybe I don't like.
Okay.
So, I will remind you that I work from home.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So, if it's bad, that's your problem.
Well, then I guess it sounds like you'll need to do more driving then.
Okay.
Sure.
I can work less efficiently at work.
Dan and I had this conversation recently.
This was fun.
How much work did you get done this week, Dan?
Like, end of the quarter push in two days.
Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
That's a lot of math.
Yeah.
It's all good now.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's not going to take your bait, Luke.
No, he did.
What?
What?
I thought he said he got a lot of work done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because he worked from home.
Yeah.
Oh.
So, people bugged him less.
Oh, okay.
I got sick.
Did you tell him this new spreadsheet thing's great?
Yeah.
Tracking interruptions.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was just observing one day while I was sitting there.
I was like, wow.
If I was Dan, I wouldn't have gotten any work done today because there was just people at
his desk the whole day.
So, I was like, all right.
And you just start tracking, like, who, what department, and how long.
Yeah.
So, we can, like, figure out what the heck is going on.
Because I put pressure on this a few months back.
Yeah.
And then it was better for a considerable amount of time.
And now it's, like, really bad again.
Oh, that's funny.
Comes in waves for me as well.
I still go out of my way to not bug Dan.
I don't know if it's, yeah, but it wasn't just you.
Well, yeah, but, like, we don't have, like, a lot of people.
We don't have conversations.
And you also are allowed to make me do things.
Yeah.
That's one of the caveats.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, but I try not to.
Yeah, exactly.
I can't remember.
I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that you've been like, hey, I need you
to do a thing, please.
And it's never been that disruptive, so it's all good.
All right.
No, good.
I got a chronograph thing for my watch so I can just, like, oh, you want to talk to me?
Okay, well, now I'm timing it.
Corey G says, Dan needs a go away, don't bug me sign.
He actually has one.
I put it back up.
It felt really mean.
I was doing a push for Luke one Monday, and, like, I had to just flow state for eight hours
straight.
Otherwise, it would have died.
Yeah.
So I put that up.
It's a...
It's still a problem.
I didn't think it was rude.
People still come up to your desk, and then you have to stop and point at it, and, like,
you might be able to keep flow going.
That doesn't break it.
Okay, good.
Taking off my headphones and, like...
For some people, that can break it, so I'm happy that doesn't.
Oh, yeah.
That's good.
I'm officially more distractible than Dan then.
Remember when I used to have a do not disturb sign on my office?
People would, like, come to the window.
It's like...
Well, you...
You're one of the ones who actually read it.
And you're still...
I mean, sure, come on in.
Apparently, it's urgent then.
That would break it, right?
If I have to be like, okay, now I need to assess if you actually need to talk to me.
But if somebody's watching, approaching me, and I can just tap the top of my monitor.
But, yeah, it was a lot of time.
And I think it might be a mixture of factors, one of them being, like, quarterly end.
So, if someone's like, I need help with this, the pressure feels really high.
So, they're kind of like, oh, this is really important.
I need help right now.
You know, I got a lot done this week, too, in the office, because so many people are off.
So, the office was actually less disruptive this week as well.
Yeah.
So, I think it's a combination of things.
You guys might have been interrupted more at home if it hadn't been for that, like, a quarter of the company is off right now.
One of the problems that I think I've identified is the work culture here is, like, really pleasant.
And I like all my coworkers, and we're all really friendly.
And it's a nice environment.
So, that's kind of...
Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, though.
Because it's not a social club.
We have to get stuff done somehow.
I know, but everybody's nice.
I know, I know.
That's by design, Dan.
Yeah, that's why I'm framing it like that.
But, yeah, I mean, sometimes there's a point where it's like, hey, and I'll wave.
And then it's, yeah, it's difficult.
That area, in general, is just kind of hard to work in.
Or the fishbowl?
Because you're in a hallway.
Yeah.
And it's a hallway that has an increasing amount of people that need to flow through it all the time.
Maybe we should redirect people to the social hallway.
But then are we just diverting the problem?
Yeah.
I think a lot of it is I trained people over a year to be like, no, ask me to do things.
I'm here to, you know.
Because that was kind of what he was actually sort of supposed to be.
I'm keeping the grease in the cogs, right?
Right.
That sort of thing.
But I don't know.
It might be a positioning thing as well.
Could we just punch a hole into the warehouse from where that weird shower is?
I could just sit in that back room.
I get so much work done in there.
No, I don't mean for you.
What weird shower?
I mean for a hallway.
I mean the weird shower next to the kitchenette.
Have you never seen the weird shower?
You don't know about the weird shower?
There's a weird shower room.
Yeah, there's a weird shower.
It works?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Which is weird.
It's right next to your office.
Yeah.
You actually sit next to the shower.
You are probably, you could probably stand up and turn your arms and if there wasn't a
wall there, one of your hands would get wet if the shower was on.
So if you were going to the bathroom that's near the kitchen, you'd go right?
Yeah.
There's a weird shower there.
Huh.
I don't think I've ever opened that door.
Well, inside.
Or maybe I didn't just forgot.
There's, you'd never believe what's in behind that door.
A weird shower?
Oh, shoot.
You got it.
How'd you get it?
I don't know.
Yeah.
There's also paper towels.
Stop using the phrase weird shower.
It's getting weird.
It is a weird shower.
It's in a metal fab.
So if three says Luke's suddenly thinking, I can shower at work?
Yeah.
That would be a benefit if the gym didn't also have a shower.
And then not wanting to be stinky and sweaty and gross in your own car.
Or, um, now I'm lost.
I'll just solve that problem elsewhere to be honest.
Yeah.
Luke was one of the ones who asked and asked and asked for a shower at work.
I don't think he ever used it.
No, I wanted to.
And I did, actually.
Two problems here.
Three, really.
We used to do channel super funds that were outside and active and also often resulted
in being covered in random stuff that you needed to clean up from.
Uh, I asked and asked and asked for a shower because of that.
We got a shower.
It had what I would refer to as negative water pressure.
Um, so you couldn't actually have an actual shower.
The, what I did the one time I was in there was I grabbed a cloth and I would hold it under
the shower head until it was soaked.
And then I would just like, there's nothing we can do about the water pressure in that
building.
Yeah.
But it wasn't used because it was actually not useful.
It's usable now.
It wasn't then.
Oh yeah.
And then now we don't do channel super fund anymore.
I don't know.
So it kind of lost its purpose.
Ivan used it.
It's whole purpose was because of channel super fund.
Oh, Ivan would bike to work and then shower when he got here.
Um, yeah.
Wraith says every company I worked for had a shower.
It was basically just for the runners.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we, we do, we have two showers now.
We have shower and weird shower.
I don't think anyone at the labs building would need a shower though.
So maybe we could just, yeah, maybe we could just like punch a hole through there and turn
it into a hallway and then people wouldn't have to walk through there to get to the lab.
We could just kind of not close it off, but like be like, Hey, don't please.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's just, it is, it is actually like pretty describing because yeah, people like, it's
not people trying to be jerks.
People are trying to be nice.
Yeah.
So when they walk through, they're saying hi, cause it's a generally fairly nice.
And that's not super distracting, but people, I don't know.
Oh, have you seen this cool, crazy thing we're doing in the lab?
Or have you seen this crazy thing that we're writing about for, or even it's just, this
should have been a team's message.
Yeah.
That's a thing.
Yeah.
I think there's some like, uh, onsite organizational efficiency stuff.
Um, it's just faster in regards to the, this should have been a team's message
thing.
Um, that could, that could maybe happen.
Okay.
Well, I fired over a request.
Um, meanwhile, the Indian government is investigating Apple.
Uh, this was, uh, sources are Washington post in Al Jazeera.
In response to Apple warning over 20 Indian journalists and opposition politicians that
government hackers tried to compromise their iPhones back in October, the Indian government
has announced an investigation into Apple.
Indian officials publicly questioned whether Apple's threat detection algorithms were faulty,
but according to sources speaking to the Washington post, senior members of the Modi administration
contacted Apple representatives in India privately to demand that the company help soften the political
impact of the warnings.
And they summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi
and pressured them to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users.
Uh, senior Apple executives reportedly found the Indian government's demands disturbing.
Forensic analysis by Amnesty international has found that several journalists and politicians
phones were compromised using Pegasus, a well-known spyware that is sold only to governments.
Our discussion question is, how does a company like Apple balance its promises to users with pressure
from various governments, sometimes in jurisdictions where at their whim, they could prevent Apple
from manufacturing iPhones at all?
And the answer is they can't.
At the end of the day, they are going to bow to the government requests every single time.
Well, I shouldn't say every single time, but they're going to bow wherever it is necessary.
And by necessary, I mean wherever it would prevent them from making iPhones anymore.
I mean, that's why Apple has data centers that hold all of their Chinese users information in China.
And that's why Apple's claims that they take user privacy extremely seriously have always come
across a little bit empty to me.
And like server location is very important.
There's a lot of like-
Especially in China.
Educational facilities in, or educational institutions, that's the word I was looking for.
In Canada, for instance, you have to have data stored in Canada.
And if you look at like business and education level software, like Teams, for example, you can
choose to have your data stored only in your own local country in order to be data compliant
with a variety of different things.
This is something that a lot of places take seriously.
So having all that stuff also stored in China.
Yeah, but the Chinese ones are really sketchy.
Because Apple doesn't own the data centers even.
No, that's part of what I'm saying.
Like it's a big red flag.
This is a big and commonly looked for red flag is what I'm kind of trying to paint.
Is that like education and business and all this kind of stuff.
They all look for this as a red flag.
Right.
Oh, hey, we've got a promotional thing for Floatplane.
Yeah.
Look at that.
Floatplane promotion segment.
We have a video coming out on New Year's Eve called, How Well Do You Know Your Boss?
Oh, featuring LLD, which is I think what we're known as now.
I always prefer DLL.
DLL is, it makes more sense.
Yeah.
Dot DLL, right Dan?
DLL.
DLL.
DLL.
And Taryn.
It's basically the newlywed game show, but with boss employee relationships instead.
Oh, okay.
Please watch the following clip, react, and talk about what you found interesting about the shoot.
So you'll have to be subscribed on Floatplane or be a YouTube member.
But please don't be a YouTube member.
It costs so much more and all you get is the same stuff.
So just go to Floatplane.com.
Yeah.
But if you must not subscribe on Floatplane.com because you already have your credit card
and, you know, YouTube system and you want to just do it there, I guess fine.
But it works.
But go to Floatplane.
It's cheaper.
It's awesome.
Anyway, we're supposed to watch this clip.
Or wait, Dan, are you going to put the clip up for us?
You can play it if you want.
Let's see.
I need sound from you though.
I think it'd be easier if you just did it.
It would be better if you played it.
Yeah.
That is very difficult.
Oh.
Oh.
But you played that other clip for us.
That was prepped.
This should have also been prepped.
I have to download the video.
Yeah, this should have been prepped.
And then put it in.
I mean, I can download the video and I can just give it to you.
Yeah.
There is a button on the website.
I mean, I can do that on the website too.
I mean, I've already downloaded it.
I can.
Well, well.
I've downloaded it.
How are you going to put it on this computer?
Where do you want it?
I'm going to put it on the server.
Okay.
All right.
It's in Z, Linus.
While you guys do that, if you have feedback for the lab site, I'm posting the form in
Flowplane chat.
Hey, want to see what's in the test folder?
No.
No.
Let's play what's in the test folder.
No.
Big files.
Hmm.
What?
No, I want to see what's in the test folder.
No, I want to see what's in the test folder.
I already screen capped it anyway, Luke.
Ooh, Linus family sample photos.
Wallpaper.
This folder's empty.
The wallpaper in the useful software is way better.
Multi-cam test.
Ooh, look.
Luke, it doesn't matter.
There's nothing in here.
If this crashes to stream, it's on you.
I'm importing it now.
Or are you just showing...
I don't know.
It's just...
I don't know.
It's interesting.
Like, what's this?
I'm just...
I'm curious.
But I'm not allowed to be...
That's such a bad idea.
I'm not allowed to be curious?
Yeah, actually.
Yeah.
You're not allowed to be curious about random files that are on the server.
It's Riley, and the color's weird.
I don't know.
That seems...
That seems cool.
Yeah.
Okay, I can play this video now if you want.
Go for it.
All right.
He's so mad right now.
Look at him.
He's all mad.
I am.
I am.
You mad, bro?
I am.
It's just so dumb.
Okay.
Is it this button?
And...
A little bit redundant question for Linus, but if Linus had a million dollars, what would
he spend it on?
And you can't do investment stuff.
Not investing.
Yeah, because every time I asked this, it was investment answers.
That's boring.
Are you confident you're going to get the same thing, Linus?
No.
I don't know.
All right.
Let's see what it is in three, two, one.
Higher...
A several?
A serval?
A serval.
They cost like five grand.
I have a million dollars.
I need something way more expensive than a serval.
Does anything to do with housing...
Yeah, I want Jack's first tweet.
I don't buy my own containers.
They already have like everything they could...
Birds are very simple.
How do you spend a million dollars travel?
I buy a cookie and then invest the rest.
No investment.
Can I show my fucking answer, Linus?
If you don't know, you just...
I don't know.
Yeah, you know what?
You just show you.
We're going to break the game.
Oh, it did nothing.
Oh, my God.
You spent ten minutes off just talking about this.
And now it's answering.
Oh, my God.
I'm like, please.
Give me an answer at this point.
I love it.
I was okay with me.
Mic drop.
Oh, my God.
Why?
Because you haven't been writing.
You didn't add to that.
I wrote that immediately.
So now we're going to get to the traditional newlywired questions.
I did have to save up to hire him.
Yeah.
To be clear, I'm...
Yeah.
Anyway.
Picture thought, yeah?
No, I'm good.
No?
Okay.
No.
That was actually...
I had a great time.
It was...
The amount of times that I would hum and haw over something for an extremely long period
of time and Dan just wrote it down immediately was very funny.
Yeah.
I definitely had fun with it.
We've got a lot of great exclusives on Floatplane.
They've been uploading a flipping ton of them lately.
Uh, here, you can check this out.
We've got extras from the unboxing, the giant TV video.
We've got another newlywed game with Nick and Sarah and James and Belle behind the scenes,
water cooling the laptop for 30 bucks.
Colton getting his floatplane tattoo.
That's right.
He did it.
Oh, clearly already watched this one.
He's got so many company tattoos.
I know.
It's ridiculous.
Oh, my goodness.
Hold on.
Does he show off all the tattoos at any point?
You've got to start spinning up just random companies just to, like, cover his leg with
more logos.
I know.
So he goes around and shows people and, like, yeah, that face says it all.
Why would you do this?
Well, I have to be supportive.
It's permanent.
Look at this face.
It's like, ah.
I watched, um, last night, I watched the, we tore apart the coal mine backpack, or we
tore the coal, oof, dyslexia.
We tore the coal mine backpack apart.
Uh, I watched that video and it was, it was really interesting.
Yeah, Tatiana did a great job.
It was cool.
She's never posted before, but she was just, she just jumped right in.
She's really knowledgeable.
I was going to say, passionate, knowledgeable, interested people talking about things is
just.
Always helps.
Always good.
So she's our kind of materials person, I guess would be the best way to describe Tatiana.
Um, and so for her, this is just like.
It's like, I look at it and I'm like, wow, that's amazing.
It must be fantastic and great.
Yeah.
And she's like, well, it could be improved in these various different ways.
And it's like, oh, cool.
Yeah.
I really think about that.
Yeah.
Really cool.
Um, all right.
Anyway, so now's a good time to subscribe to float plane, go through the entire back catalog
of exclusives, which is so much easier to browse now that you can separate everything
out into sub channels.
So you can just see all exclusives.
There are so many, everything that you see here is from the last three months.
Everything that I scrolled through all of this, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it goes back for years.
We're at six months of exclusives, 10 months of exclusives, a year of exclusives.
There's so much content, you guys.
And there's tons of like a huge percentage of the stuff is just evergreen stuff.
Meeting different members of the team.
Yep.
Favorite video games.
Yeah.
What do you love and hate about building, uh, random clips, extras from videos.
Yeah.
Really good, good, good stuff.
Oh man.
It's grew up a little bit.
FP exclusive, extras.
Remember when we made, uh, bottom right hand corner of the screen.
This?
Down one.
Oh, this one.
Yeah.
We did this, uh, we did this weird ad for funk.
Uh, here, hold on.
Luke's, uh, Luke's acting career.
It's, it's amazing.
It never took off.
Oh man.
Oh, it's so good.
Oh man, that mouse.
Yeah.
It's funny because like there's stuff on the market that's not that dissimilar.
Yeah.
Um, unhappy felines company.
Hold on.
I think you were in here again, weren't you?
I think it might be earlier.
Oh wait, you put up a tiny hand?
Oh no.
Yeah, there it is.
Amazing.
Oh man.
Yeah, that was a whole, that was a whole thing.
Oh, oh no.
Yeah.
Here's the other spot that you're in.
I thought this was actually pretty good.
It was like bioadhesive.
So it like burned my hand and I was supposed to fall back like that.
Oh, that was all right.
Anyway.
Uh, yeah.
So there's lots of good stuff in there.
I think this was, when would that have been?
2013?
When did Portal 2 come out?
I don't know.
No, not 2013.
Was it 2014?
Good gravy.
It might have been 2013.
It was 2013 or 14.
One of the two.
Yeah.
Portal had just came out 2011.
Yeah.
Um, so it was kind of top of mind.
Yeah.
So that scene where it's like bioadhesive surface, all that kind of stuff.
I think Portal was still very culturally relevant.
Yeah.
So there was some influences from there.
Oh yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Portal's super cool.
Yeah.
Oh, good stuff.
All right.
What else are we supposed to be talking about?
Um.
New Year's resolutions.
Source one.
Last year's video.
Interesting.
Last year, we answered a merch message about what kind of LTT store products we wish we
could make.
Highlights include launching the LTT backpack and screwdriver before the end of the year.
Did it.
Okay.
Very good.
A clenched to prone butt plug peripheral with haptic feedback.
Had a failure on that one.
Yeah, didn't do that.
Didn't get that one out.
A stiff bendable USB cable that holds the position it's bent into like a gorilla pod.
Okay.
Didn't do that.
No.
An automatic coin sorting piggy bank.
Didn't do that.
That's also okay.
A book by Yvonne discussing supporting a YouTuber spouse slash roasting Linus.
I mean, that's a matter of time.
That would have been fantastic.
And an on-demand greeting card printer.
The discussion question is, what projects and products would you like to make in the
coming year?
Uh, wow.
Well, probably none of those things that we haven't made yet, for starters.
Tall sizes for shirts?
Yes.
Tall sizes!
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
We'll do it.
We'll do it.
We'll do it.
Magnets released?
Oh, yeah.
We'll get the arches out.
We're going to have...
I have no idea if this is cooking.
Oh.
Something I would like.
I would love.
No pressure, though, I guess.
Sure.
Tell me about it in front of, like...
Is they like...
Holy crap.
Like, 16, 17,000 people.
Go for it.
Not necessarily quality reduced.
But maybe feature reduced backpack?
Oh, yeah.
That's already in the works.
Okay, cool.
Yeah.
Because I just find, like...
I like that it works perfectly for you.
I love that it works perfectly for a bunch of other people online.
I've seen tons of photos of people fully using it.
Yep.
I don't use that many of the sleeves and stuff.
And because the materials are, like, good, they tend to be decently thick.
Yeah.
And it takes up a decent amount of the space of the backpack.
Yep.
And I could actually win back more space and actually gain usability by having slightly less features.
Um, you might like the upcoming one.
Cool.
Yeah.
It's not going to be called small because it's actually not that small.
Yeah.
Like, I don't actually want it to necessarily...
Yeah.
It's more like light.
Yeah.
L-I-T-E.
Yeah.
It's a little smaller, though.
And for your frame, it might be small.
I don't know.
I like the size of the current backpack.
You'll have to try it.
I don't actually want it to be physically smaller.
But this is...
I'm now designing it specifically for me.
Yeah, it sounds like you just want a hiking bag.
Because that's a thing that exists already.
Just so you know.
Generally worked pretty well.
Yeah.
Like, maybe you should just buy a hiking backpack.
Yeah.
Like, that's a thing, right?
That old bag I had, though, had like the exact amount of slots that I wanted everywhere.
Oh, that Averkey?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a good bag.
Yeah.
The Averkey Titan.
Yeah, thank you.
I didn't want it.
I definitely did.
It was so too big for me.
It saw a lot of use.
Tons of use.
It was so much too big for me.
Yeah.
LTT gym bag win.
I don't think we need that, to be honest.
Yeah.
But, I mean, maybe.
Never say never.
Wow.
I just think, like, you could use your LTD backpack that way.
Man, we've been killing it on Billy Billy lately.
Got another video that has like 600,000 views.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
Someone at Full Plane Chat said, I, or, Jellocat?
Jellocat?
I don't know how to say that.
I want a tri-fold Apple leather wallet so I can get it to match the Apple leather backpack.
I would buy immediately together.
I don't know if we're making, like, Apple leather a thing that the store does.
No, I think that it depends on what we're trying to achieve.
We are working on a wallet, but it will be cowhide leather.
Oh.
Yeah.
So, for what we were trying to do with the backpack, this was the best material.
But for what we're trying to do with a wallet, I think that we're, I think cowhide is probably still the best material.
It's thin.
And we didn't want the wallet to be really thick before you fill it with all the money that you have from not buying a, you know, you know, luxury goods wallet.
Because you're smart.
Yeah.
What were we talking about?
Oh, yeah.
You know what?
Honestly, I don't, I don't compile the list anymore.
So, I, um, I don't know what's on the list.
I still send the team random stuff.
The difference is just that I'm not the one who maintains the list anymore.
So, somebody else has it.
Like, if I, you know what?
If I just search for emails I've sent to Kyle this year, then probably we'll find some stuff.
Kyle?
Kyle?
Another tool?
Oh, we're going to hopefully do a thermal pad.
Like, with that cool PT whatever thermal pad stuff.
I think that's, uh, that's something.
Um.
Oh, man.
Um.
No, that's dumb.
Uh.
Actually, a pretty good idea.
Uh.
No, I, hmm.
No, I, I don't really, I don't see anything, guys.
We're definitely going to launch the Precision Screwdriver.
Nice.
We're going to launch, hopefully, fixed shaft screwdrivers, but there are some roadblocks
to hit the quality that we want while not being saddled with enormous, like, 40,000 unit
per end, uh, minimum order quantities.
So, you know, TBD on all of that.
Guys, it was the Crow Bar Hammer, not just Crow Hammer, and also, no.
Yeah, that's probably not happening.
I think that ship has absolutely sailed.
Um.
Warner Bros. and Paramount may be getting together.
I talked about this, man.
This is scary for the entertainment industry.
Like, um, I ended up, I ended up being at least temporarily wrong when I said that the,
the, the, the writers and the actors were just, just not going to get a deal.
Yeah.
They ended up getting it done.
And, like, kudos, man.
That's awesome.
But this is what we're looking at now.
According to Axios, the CEOs of Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount Global met this week
for several hours to discuss a possible merger.
Warner Bros. is currently valued at approximately $29 billion and Paramount Global approximately $10 billion.
Warner Bros. is cash positive, but has $40 billion in debt,
while Paramount Global has $15 billion in debt and a negative cash flow.
If an acquisition were to take place prior to April of this year,
Warner Bros. would take a substantial tax penalty due to a provision that allowed its merger with Discovery last year.
Beyond their combined film and television distribution and IP,
any potential merger might lead to the consolidation of CBS News and CNN.
Likewise, a combination of their three streaming services would allow them to better compete with rivals like Netflix.
But here's the problem.
Their whole business model is disintegrating in front of our very eyes with cable,
excuse me, with cord cutting,
with the transition that appears to be taking place towards piracy due to frustration, I think,
with the endless mountain of streaming services that are competing for our attention.
It's ridiculous.
There are some articles that I read about this that cited the increased cost of production with the new deals
as something that's putting pressure on these companies.
Like, that was the issue that I talked about with that negotiation where I kind of went,
guys, you're asking for more money, but what money?
Paramount is bleeding.
Warner Bros. is, okay, cash flow positive, but has $40 billion in debt.
That's not a sign of a healthy business.
It's scary.
Netflix is apparently still profitable.
So that's something.
They have managed to weather the storm of everyone and their dog trying to be the new Netflix,
and they are still the Netflix.
They added more subscribers, I think, this last, I want to say quarter.
I forget if it was quarter or month.
But this last reporting period than they had at any time prior to the bump that they got from COVID.
Interesting.
And this seems to be down to the crackdown on subscription sharing.
So Netflix is managing to make it work.
But as far as I can tell, pretty much everyone else is just floundering with absolutely no idea
how to create original content that is compelling enough to drive people to subscribe.
And it's kind of scary because I like movies, you know?
I kind of want there to be movies and TV, and it just feels like we're on a collision course
for the whole model just not being feasible anymore.
Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking, like, I wonder how people would react
if there was a legitimate way of selling buy and own forever
that wasn't, like, giving people physical discs in physical stores that they don't want to drive to.
But, I mean, I think that's more or less been tried.
Well, yeah.
And I think people, as much as people will scream about it, myself included,
no one's, other than dozens of us, no one's going to do anything about it.
So, like...
Yeah, it's tough.
The people will burn everything they can.
RCM 024 says, I think Disney is still going strong, too.
That's a big negatory.
Disney Plus has basically led to Bob Chapek being pushed out of Disney.
It was a disaster.
They've lost a ton of money on it.
No, very bad.
State Killer says, I don't think the writers and actors are at fault
that every movie costs a gazillion dollars now.
No, not at all.
That's not what he was saying.
But what I was saying was that they're asking for more money.
And what I was saying was, what money?
Yeah.
Yeah.
These services are not profitable.
These companies are struggling to figure out a way to run these productions profitably.
And no, that's not the actor's fault.
Certainly not.
But it means that the money they're asking for just isn't there.
So that's a problem.
Right?
Like when like I can absolutely see, you know, an Amazon driver going, well, Amazon's posting record profits quarter after quarter.
Why am I?
Why am I struggling this way?
100%.
There's money there.
So they should be getting some of it.
But if there is no money, then that's a fundamental problem.
That's something that everyone needs to come to the table and try and solve.
Um, I don't know.
I'm, uh, I, I, I, I'm, I'm an outsider here.
Like I'm sort of in the entertainment industry.
Like kind of like we make content, we make videos and you guys watch them hopefully.
And like, that's great.
Um, and, and a lot of the same pressures on that industry exist on us.
You know, advertisers are, are pulling out on mass.
Like the, the, the advertising dollars are drying up and, you know, we can see that it's tough out there.
Right?
Like we are, we're okay.
Don't worry.
You know, we're good.
We're going to keep powering through everything.
And, and that's all, that's all like cool.
Um, you know, fortunately we are, we're built leaner, right?
Like our productions don't cost that much and they aren't underwater, but we definitely see the same pressures.
We're aware of them.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Is YouTube profitable?
I don't think anybody knows.
It's a good question.
Um, yeah, I'm, I'm not sure if anyone knows if YouTube is just like sort of a giant cash sink, um, data funnel, or if it is a legitimately profitable business.
Now they've certainly made steps that seem like they're trying to make it profitable, increasing the cost of premium, pushing premium really hard.
Um, you know, making it so you can rent movies and TV shows through YouTube.
There's, there's, excuse me.
There's lots that they've done, you know, by, I believe lowering, lowering, lowering, yeah, right.
Lowering default, uh, you know, streaming resolution, all that kinds of stuff, all that, all those kinds of things.
But I, uh, I don't know.
I don't think anyone outside of Google's top brass probably actually knows.
Yeah, uh, Mikayo, uh, running ads on non-monetized channels so that they can not profit share.
Yeah, that's something.
Bleh.
Anyway, uh, why don't we talk about the LTT screwdriver?
What do you think?
What are we talking about the LTT screwdriver about?
This.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this is a random tweet thread that started in June.
Blah, blah, blah, something, something.
So this guy, you know, says, hey, it would be super cool to use the big TCL TV with four consoles concurrently.
So everyone gets their own 1080p screen.
And I was like, oh, that's super cool.
I don't think it supports picture by picture by picture by picture by picture.
And he goes, oh, here's this product.
This is super cool.
Maybe we'll do a short circuit or something on this thing.
Basically, it's like a quad input, single output.
So you send in four 1080p and it outputs a single 4K image of all four of them stitched together.
Neat, right?
Anyway, you know, very cool.
So, okay, this is totally random.
But does it make sense that one day species across the galaxy will use the LTT screwdriver?
And I was sitting here watching this going, what the f**k am I looking at?
Because I'm pretty sure.
But I see a screwdriver.
Because I'm pretty sure that that's an LTT screwdriver in whatever that is, is hand.
And so I said as much.
Now, that reply is missing, but I basically was like, WTF, did I just, oh, yeah, lol, WTF.
So here's some kind of inventory screen.
Spanner.
There you go.
It's not a spanner.
I think a spanner is a wrench.
Yeah.
But, you know, very close.
Anyway, this is a game that I cannot find any information about.
Their website has very little on it.
When I Google it, it comes up with board games.
Yeah.
Developing Stellar Conquest, which may be a placeholder title.
I'm not sure because there's a board game called Stellar Conquest.
I don't think it's rated particularly well.
No.
Persistent multiplayer strategy with emphasis on creative expression.
I have no idea what that means.
Populating a universe with GPT NPCs.
And I have no idea how that will work.
But apparently it's a thing and it will have the LTT screwdriver in it.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Good luck, everybody.
There's also PC games called Stellar Conquest.
Multiple of them.
Anyway, I just, I was tickled to see the screwdriver there.
It looks cool.
Yeah, it looked cool.
I have no idea if this game will be good or if it'll be terrible or whatever.
I don't know anything about this other than that guy's name is Sean and that was our screwdriver.
Nice.
Yeah, that's about it.
I think, okay, Qualcomm embraces RISC-V is pretty cool.
I don't think we need to say much about that other than Bosch, Infinion, NXP, and Nordic Semiconductor have partnered in the creation of a new RISC-V.
It says company, but I don't know if it's a company so much as it's like, yeah, I'm not sure exactly if it's a company or not.
But basically, Quintaris, their mission statement is to provide a single source for enabling RISC-V devices and promote standards for the RISC-V industry.
RISC-V, man, it's coming.
Did you see the video?
RISC is good.
We gamed on RISC-V.
You don't get that reference yet?
Oh, it's from stupid Silicon Valley, Pirates of Silicon Valley, right?
No, it's from Hackers.
I don't know, whatever.
It's from one of the horrible movies that you made me watch.
I finished Pirates of Silicon Valley, by the way.
Yeah.
Yeah, I finished it last week and I forgot to talk about it.
It picks up a bit.
Yeah.
After the first third where you're just kind of like, wow, these actors really, I couldn't even tell who people were supposed to be portraying sometimes.
You know, it's pretty low budget, you know?
It's campy, yeah.
I definitely had some, even without having been there at the time, you know, even though I wasn't in the room, it's pretty obvious to me that that's, they've taken some artistic liberties.
Yeah.
That there's no way that's how it went down in the room.
But there is, it's a decent jumping off point.
Like the, what was it?
IBM adopting DOS or whatever.
You're like, okay, that probably didn't exactly happen like that.
No, definitely not.
But you look it up and it's like, oh, there's some weird stuff that happened here.
There's some like weird reasons why this did actually happen and whatnot.
Sure.
So it's enough to be inaccurate enough to make you want to find out what did happen.
I guess that's cool.
The first third of the movie is extremely slow.
I could tell what they were trying to do with like the tractor racing scene with Bill Gates.
That was a thing though.
I know.
Yeah.
But it wasn't exciting to watch.
Like it wasn't very exhilarating.
They, they spent a fair bit of time.
I think the fact that it isn't as like kind of the, the point as well though.
I guess.
But it's like drove into a car and it like really wasn't that exhilarating, but it was like kind
of a big moment.
I guess.
It didn't seem like a very significant moment to me.
They spent a lot of time on Steve Jobs being a complete piece of shit, which is maybe something
that didn't get talked about enough afterward.
Like I, I, I've talked about this on the WAN show before.
We need to do a better job of choosing our heroes.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, he, he, he, he co-founded Apple.
Was it the Apple two team versus Macintosh team scenes?
That was, that was, it's been a long time since I've watched the movie.
For me, it's, it's more the, you know, the, the, and this is not even just based on the
movie.
This is based on that.
This just is a thing that happened, but yeah, the way that he treated the, the mother of
his daughter and the daughter herself, um, just people who can't even manage to treat
their own flesh and blood with respect and love.
Um, why would you think they can treat anything with respect and love?
Like, I just don't really, um, I don't really understand the leap there.
Yeah.
It's a hard one.
And it's, it's not something that I can respect.
Yeah.
It, it absolutely has accuracy issues.
Oh yeah.
But I still, I, I still like them.
But there's definitely enough smoke around, you know, the way that he behaved as a, as
a, as a family person, um, that there's certainly fire there.
Yeah.
I don't know, man.
It's a, yeah, it was, I'm done.
So how's your side of the challenge going?
I know.
I know.
Yeah.
Uh, I'm getting hard blocked.
I'm definitely not like quitting.
I actually enjoy the game.
I want to complete it.
We will, we'll, we'll get you there.
We'll get you there.
You're going to have a new computer.
We'll figure something out.
Yeah.
Um.
I think it's time for Lenshaw After Dark.
Is that right?
I think so.
Yeah, I think so.
Did we want to talk about, uh, the 3D projector saga?
Ah, we don't really need to, we can talk about it next week.
Okay.
Sounds good.
Long story short, I replaced my projector screen.
Yeah.
With a TV.
Yeah.
When I had a replacement projector screen sitting in my garage, a 3D capable one.
And now the plan was still to take the TV off because I didn't think it was going to
be great.
Oh, but you liked the TV too much.
And so now I have a like $7,000 projector screen sitting in my garage because it's like
a special silver 3D one.
It's fixed frame because I thought I was going to be using it in my theater room.
It's not a rolling one.
And I even contacted them.
They won't take it back even with a restocking fee because nobody does 3D anymore and no one
cares about that.
And it, I was like, okay, could you refurbish it into a rolling one?
And they're like, no, we can't.
Cause it's a different shape and size and it's a whole thing.
And so, um, I have a useless, expensive 3D projection screen that I just have no idea
what to do with now.
And I'm upset.
Dan would take it.
Well, I still need to do videos about it.
So, so I don't even know how to do that.
Like, what are we going to do?
Like rip the TV off temporarily, put the projection screen in, do the videos over the
span of a few weeks and then put the TV back in.
Do I keep the 3D projection screen at that point?
Maybe upgrade the projector.
See if we can get close to the TV in performance.
We're not going to be able to.
It's, oh, it looks so good.
It's too good.
It's, it's really, it's been really interesting.
I've never cared about brightness on a screen as much reading all of the posts from super
knowledgeable people on the unboxing video about how that TV could never compare to a
projector and image quality and how it's, it's all about projector when you get to a
certain size and I'm sitting here going, this thing's amazing.
Why are you even talking when you have never seen it?
Why, why are there so many experts on the internet who have never seen or touched, um, the thing
that I'm telling you about.
It's an incredible thing, man.
Yeah.
It's, it's wild, man.
It's pretty cool.
Uh, how many inches is the projector screen?
120.
That's a little small for me.
Oh, I think, I think mine's 152.
Uh, but I mean, yeah, I'll put that in my living room.
If you want to make a deal, I'm not even, I'm not even joking around.
I don't even have a TV.
I just have a wall.
I need to get some videos done first.
I think a possible place for it to land is at the land center.
That would probably be a really good idea.
Yeah.
I pointed it up there.
I was going to say the lounge, but yeah, land center, maybe where though I could in the
waiting area thing place.
No, we, we, we'd, we'd roll it out for lands.
Oh, yeah.
Just like a 3d gaming station.
Like a wheel base thing so you can, yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
Or just, no, just have like a mount that sits on the wall.
You just have like a little French, what's it called?
French cleat or whatever.
And then you just take it off and store it and then pull it out and just put it up and
then just, yeah, just get the projector in place and then, or projectors for 3d.
And then, so yeah, if you just had like a, like a 3d gaming space, my understanding is
there's third party software now, like not Nvidia 3d vision that can convert on the fly.
A lot of modern games to stereo 3d.
I just, I've been waiting for the setup to try it and I think we're close.
We've got the lenses, which.
In like four years, when people are carrying this out of its storage place and someone slips
and it smashes into the ground and Linus gets super upset, it'll be an interesting day.
Yeah.
I would hope that won't happen because it's only going to get harder to get your hands
on this stuff because like this was a special order.
Nobody even makes this stuff anymore.
Could you put like a cover over it and just leave it on the wall?
No.
Because part of the whole, well.
What if you put a logo on the cover so it looked like a sign?
Actually, yeah, putting, um, putting a cover over it would be fine as long as the cover
matched the wall color.
Because part of the whole thing with the walls there is that they're going to be a high contrast
color so that you can easily see the shuttle.
Okay.
So no sign, but yeah, specific color.
Maybe, maybe.
I think moving it around is just asking for disaster.
You're probably right.
Beauty patch on the screen.
Yeah.
Land show after dark.
Oh, what?
So what I do now?
Do you want me to do it?
No, that's fine.
Is this our job now?
No, no, I'll do it.
No, it's...
Uh, what's the percentage?
Eight.
92% chocolate, man.
Is that your mnemonic?
Yeah.
It's a good mnemonic.
Yeah.
It is, actually.
What even was this show today?
I don't know.
I'm not sure either.
We talked about Canada's housing market for like a very significant portion of the show.
And viewership is like way up compared to the last couple of weeks.
Oh, damn.
I mean, maybe we should just do our, uh, our alternate idea for a podcast where we just...
I don't know.
You know.
I don't know.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna talk about the proposed name.
Don't worry.
It's okay.
Cool.
It's a weird shower.
That's not a bad name.
Now, that would be a great name for a podcast.
Yeah, weird shower.
It probably would be, yeah.
Weird shower.
All right.
Hit me down.
Oh, okay.
All right.
I'll try.
Um, let's see.
Hello, LLD.
Thank you for inspiring the techie in me and helping me through my PC builds.
You guys got a lot of questions about how to set up for success, but how do you deal
with failure?
Try not to get too sad.
Get back on the horse.
Yeah.
I mean, it's all the, it's all the usual stuff, right?
Like, that's the thing about tropes or like cliches.
They're cliches a lot of the time because they're true.
Yeah.
Dust yourself off.
Go again.
Do it 8% better this time.
Fail again.
Do it 8% better again.
Fail again.
Succeed.
There you go.
You know, it's like, that's, that's all you can really do.
The, the, it's, it's fun watching various YouTubers, including ourselves, uh, struggle
to answer the question of like, I want to get into YouTube.
What do I do?
Uh, and then always everyone just landing on the same thing, which is just, I don't know,
make stuff a lot.
It's like, make a lot of dog shit.
Yeah.
And then, um, and then read the feedback, watch it yourself, understand internally why you
don't like the thing, um, understand externally why other people don't like the thing, make
it a little bit better.
Yeah, crap.
Do it again.
Craft that dog shit into a dog shit sculpture.
Yeah.
You know?
Eventually, if you keep working on it, you'll make the best tasting dog shit.
And it'll press it enough and it'll be a diamond.
There you go.
Uh, yeah.
Useless $7,000 projector screen fail.
Pick it back up and do it again.
Oh, fuck.
I'm not happy about that.
Yeah, it kind of sucks.
We'll find a use for it though.
Badminton Center sounds pretty cool.
Yeah, we'll figure it out.
Hello, WAN.exy.
I just switched from an iPhone to Pixel and it's been a bit of a learning curve so far.
Luke, how has your experience with the Pixel been and are there any tips for a noob like
me?
Ah, yes, actually.
Uh, my experience has been surprisingly good.
Usually, over the last, I think, three different versions, four different versions of getting
a Pixel, um, I've ran into some pretty major bugs.
And this time around, none.
Which has been cool.
Um, I kind of wish I got the non-pro just because it's a very large phone.
Um, and I got the case for it, which I'm happy about because the camera bump is enormous
to the point where it's like actually really annoying and problematic.
Um, but the case is really grippy.
That's nice.
But that makes sense that it pulls everything out of my pocket when I pull it out of my
pocket.
It's very large when it's in my pocket.
It's just, it's a little bit cumbersome.
And for someone that's not really into their phone, that's not a huge benefit to me.
Um, I meanwhile have been having a very buggy experience with the Fairphone.
This is me trying to edit a doc.
Oh no.
And just every five seconds I get docs is not responding and I have to dismiss the thing.
I have all kinds of issues with audio.
I wonder, you know what?
Here.
I'm, I'm not, I haven't always been capturing it.
I've, I've only recently started just carrying my iPhone in my other pocket so that I can just
capture this nonsense.
Um, but I've had this audio issue where the earpiece won't work on calls.
I'll have to use speaker and then the speaker won't work.
Um, like when playing back media.
So here, here's the WAN show.
Oh good.
My speaker's working now.
Okay, cool.
Well that's, cause you're trying to show someone that's how it works.
Um, but yeah.
So the, the one thing that bugged me a lot when I first got it was my previous pixel
for a 5g, the Google logo on the back.
I could swipe down on it.
So yes, it was the fingerprint reader.
I don't really know which, I don't know if I care if the fingerprint readers on the back
or if it's on the screen, whatever.
Um, the thing that I do care about is being able to pull down the system tray by swiping
down like this.
It worked 100% of the time and it was fantastic.
A lot of people say it doesn't really matter cause you can just pull down from the like
lower part of your screen.
So you have to move your hand.
Yeah.
What if you're in an app?
Um, now it doesn't work.
Like I, I actually want to be able to pull down the top tray without adjusting my hand and
reaching all the way up.
Uh, no matter what scenario I'm in.
So there's a feature you have to go turn it on.
I don't remember what it's under.
You can Google it where you tap on the back.
Yeah, it just didn't work.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, light taps, hard taps, multiple taps.
There we go.
I got it.
That's my problem with it so far.
You should enable that.
It makes it a lot better, but it is trash compared to what was on the 4a 5g.
It is garbage.
No one will convince me otherwise.
It's better than nothing because I can make it happen by like just spamming the tap on
the back, but it's not very good.
Um, and just having a touch thing that you can swipe down on, uh, was significantly better.
The tap system is, is a lot worse.
Um, but I'm happy that it's there versus nothing.
And other than that, the phone has no issues.
It's actually, it's been, it's been quite good in the sense that I don't have to complain.
Hmm.
I just heard from, um, from Douglas Stevens.
I don't know if you remember him.
He came by DMS.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, and he pointed me at the other version of this camera that even not on sale is two
grand and it apparently has a rebate right now to extend your one year warranty to three
years for free.
Uh, it uses micro four thirds, Dan.
So it should have deeper depth of field.
Yep.
Um, and I believe I I've looked at this one before.
I believe it has the same ethernet port.
Yes, it does.
Is that very similar to the GH one?
Cause I ran GH ones for years.
So this must be like a box GH one.
Maybe.
I don't know.
I don't know how they do their naming.
Uh, what is it?
The BGH one.
I'll put that on my list as well.
And they're two grand.
Um, yeah.
So that would be 28 K instead of 35 K, which is $7,000 difference.
Hey, guess what I just paid for?
A useless projector screen.
Nice.
Nice.
The savings are immeasurable.
Yeah.
And my day is ruined.
Uh, okay.
So, uh, what else we got?
Um, Dan, any more merch messages?
Oh yeah, we've got quite a few.
Yeah.
If you guys want to go through potential.
Um, hello from the upside down land.
Curious if you didn't use your home server setup for LTT videos.
Would you have done it as overkill?
Uh, for example, the LAN PCs.
I think he would have.
I'll answer for him.
Good.
Yep.
Excellent.
Cause it's like a showcase.
I think you would have.
If I didn't use it for, uh, for LTT videos.
I think you would have found something else to use it for.
I, um.
Hmm.
I think you would have executed on your, everyone having, uh, synchronized backup things or something.
I think you would have found some way to make it make sense.
I don't know if.
Okay.
I would have rackified mine and Yvonne's machines.
I would have put them in a different room.
Oh, would I have put them in a rack?
I wouldn't have designed my own case.
That's for sure.
I wouldn't have tried to go one U and like water cooled everything for the kids' machines.
Uh, I think what I'd probably be using is the simple radiator inside, radiator outside heat exchanger system that we did for like a fraction of the price.
Like I would, I would probably be doing the, okay.
Yeah.
To your point.
The jankier, cheaper version of everything that I'm doing now.
I don't think I would have used Thunderbolt.
Optical Thunderbolt for, I think I would have just put the computer closer.
Like just on the other side of a wall.
Like, okay.
For upstairs.
Here.
Okay.
I know how I would have done it.
Oh, this would be kind of a cool video.
The Cheap Way to Do What I Do.
Like there's the title.
So I know that you can get ceiling mounted, like, um, like under desk mounts for cases.
So what you could do is if you had a basement, you could just put your computer on the ceiling instead of on the underside of a desk.
You could put it on the ceiling underneath you and then just run a hole through the floor.
And if it's right where your setup is, you actually wouldn't need special cables.
You might even be able to pass the cables through ducting, depending on the house.
Yeah.
Depending on the house.
It also might not be possible.
But if you drill kind of close to the baseboard or whatever, then you might not even need to.
You might be able to pass through that way.
But, like, if you were afraid of drilling or maybe you're not the owner of the house, maybe you're living with your parents, something like that, you might be able to get away with it a little bit easier if you're like, yeah, I'm just passing a cable through ducting.
It's not going to hurt anything.
Man, that'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, I would just be doing the cheaper, like, I don't need the long cables version of what I'm doing now.
Hey, Dan, Luke, and Linus.
I hope you had a merry Chrysler.
Linus, have you ever...
That's an interesting autocorrect.
No, no.
I think people do that on purpose.
Linus, have you ever considered doing a line of ruggedized EDC tech items for tech or IT people?
We'd love to, but to do it better is really hard.
To just, you know, slap your brand on a screwdriver, it's really easy.
And that's what makes it so much more frustrating when people accuse us of doing that.
It's merch.
Because that's not what we did.
Making something really good and better than what's out there is really, really hard.
And so, you know, whatever it is, side cutters, needle nose pliers, you know, a work surface, a project, magnetic project matter, parts, whatever.
You know, there's the easy way to do it, which is to just clone what's already there and put your brand on it.
And then there's the us way of doing it, which is take two years and make sure that it is absolutely f***ing awesome.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we're going to do stuff, but it's going to take time.
Yeah.
Can you stack screwdriver...
Sorry?
Sorry.
Can you stack screwdriver shafts?
I want to make a mega LTT driver.
Also, if you ever bundle JerryRigEverything knife with the stubby screwdriver, can you please call it the stabby screwdriver?
Oh, boy.
No.
And as for the answer to your other question, there's a little bit of play.
You'll have a lot of play.
In the shaft extensions.
That's going to be, what is it, exponential or multiply?
Multiplied.
It'll be multiplied, yes.
So, if it's 2x play, this will be 4.
The next one will be, what would it be, 8, I guess?
So, like, by the time you get out there, you're looking at a lot of play, boys.
Would it be 6?
Maybe it would be 6.
I'm wondering, it might be additive.
I think it's just additive.
Yeah.
Okay.
No.
Yeah, it should be just additive because it would be...
Yeah, it would be additive.
It would start to feel pretty wobbly.
We did make these a little bit bigger than his standard so that because our tolerances
are really tight for our hex drive here, we know it'll fit in ours, but if someone else's
tolerances are off, our shaft extension might not fit in their driver.
So, it's not bad, but it's, yeah, I don't know.
By the time you get two or three of them in there, it's going to be pretty wobbly.
Hey, LLD from Bellingham, Washington.
It'll be a weird shower.
Weird shaft, weird shower.
There's a mention about that in Flowplane Chat that is very funny.
I don't know what the URL is.
I'm not searching that on the computer.
Luke, I've heard over the years that you enjoy taking mental health walks.
Do you usually listen to content while walking?
If so, which ones?
Uh, not always.
Sometimes I'll do something else.
Sometimes I'll think about a particular thing.
Um.
Motorbike rides are really good for that.
Yeah.
I find that if you're, if you're focused on more than one thing, you'll die.
So, the motivation to stay focused is really strong.
But I know you don't really ADHD as much as I do, so maybe your gem is different.
No, but sometimes I'll be, I'll be needing to work through something that's very complicated.
And, uh, if I'm at my desk, I can get very distracted by messages coming in or emails coming
in or whatever.
And if I need to just stay sunk on a topic, whether this is for personal life or whatever
else, sometimes it's good.
It's like the shower thought situation.
You can do it with a shower too.
I'm just doing the same thing, but walking around.
Um.
Yeah.
I don't necessarily think of it too much.
I, I absolutely think it does help with mental health stuff, but I don't necessarily think
of it too much as like, I'm going for a walk for my mental health.
Um.
I'm just going for a walk because I think it's just good for me.
Um.
I think it's a good thing to do.
And I think sometimes, at least personally, if I attribute too many things to like, I'm doing
this for mental health, it like, I don't know why, but it doesn't feel super helpful for
me personally.
I think sometimes it's just like, I'm doing this because I should.
It's good for me.
I want to do this thing.
Like, I like going for walks at this point.
I've found a lot of things that I can do.
I can play Pokemon Go.
I can listen to things.
You mentioned listening to things.
I like listening to The Yard and, uh, Andrew Huberman and some other stuff, but those are
the main two.
Um.
I can think about stuff.
I can go with a walk with somebody else and just talk to them about it.
Um.
I like doing it at this point.
Like, uh, I, I, I think one of the biggest increases I had in mental health stuff in the
last year or so was I started working out a lot.
Um.
But I don't think I should attribute working out to like, I'm doing this for mental health.
I'm doing it because honestly, I started enjoying it a lot.
I enjoy the process.
I have fun doing it.
I've started going with other people and that's been fun.
The social aspect of it's been fun.
I've been learning a lot about it.
That's been mentally stimulating.
Um.
I feel better.
I feel stronger.
I feel healthier.
Um.
I feel less tired on average.
Uh.
I feel less.
Kind of like somewhat paradoxically, I feel less sore in bad ways.
I feel more sore in good ways.
Like, I don't know.
Things are just better.
So, I, I do things because they're good.
But that's a personal thing.
I don't care what you call it.
Anyways.
Good.
Hey, DLL, with all the different results of store product launches, do you see the team
settling on a set of specialty areas or continually testing new categories?
Also, power drill when?
Ooh.
Uh.
Power drill, no time soon.
Um.
Those get real complicated.
As for settling on a set of specialty areas or testing new categories, I think that's
one of the first things that our new CEO, Taryn, said when he came in here is like, your
product development process is very scattershot.
Uh, you guys, what is it exactly?
And the team's like, well, we just kind of make what Linus thinks is cool.
It's like, yeah, that's not a, that's not a process.
That's something that we do need to improve.
And I think that will help us lower the turnaround time for product launches.
I think you're going to see more tools.
No, I, you will certainly see more tools.
Um, there are some other categories that we are going to be getting into that are new,
but, uh, tools is going to be a big focus.
It's been a huge success for us.
The, the customers are so happy with these things.
Like we couldn't ask for, we couldn't ask for a better product to, um, help us fund
new endeavors as we move forward.
I know people that got one.
I keep telling people they don't have to do this, but they got one kind of like to support,
you know?
Oh, like bought it.
Yeah.
They, they bought one to support and then they get it and they're like, oh wow, that's
like really good.
And I'm like, yeah, come on.
Yeah.
That drives me crazy too, actually.
It's like, I appreciate the support, but that's really not the point.
Yeah.
Like we try to not be merge.
Yeah.
Like we actually put a ton of work into not being merge.
We should just stop calling it that.
Probably.
We should call them product messages.
They'll be PMs.
I know.
That actually kind of works.
Yeah.
It kind of works.
Except it usually stands for private in that context.
And it could be really not that.
It could be DMs, Dan, Dan messages, slide to slide into your DMs, buy some stuff on ltdstore.com.
What if you're, what if you actually do somehow miss a day though?
I mean, I didn't think that was allowed to happen.
Um, no, no, uh, I don't know.
Yeah.
D, DMs doesn't work.
PMs, merch messages.
What could it be if they're not merch?
PMs is all right.
Public messages.
Product messages.
Private messages.
I don't know.
Hmm.
Uh, oh yeah, another one.
Hey, LLD, notice you're getting close to a video a day again.
What are your thoughts on the current release schedule compared to what it used to be?
And if there's an improvement on viewership?
Cheers.
It's always interesting to me.
Um, hey, look, I appreciate you.
Thank you for the merch message.
Um, but I do have to call you out a little bit here because this is a thing that is just,
it's sort of bizarre to me how often it happens where people kind of, they kind of see what
they want to see.
Um, and I've seen a lot of people immediately when we release videos back to back.
In two days.
I've seen a lot of people, um, say like, uh, whether it's positive, whether people are like,
oh, this is great.
They're back to daily uploads.
Or whether it's people saying, well, that didn't last long.
They're back to daily uploads.
I've seen a lot of people that don't look at the bigger picture before drawing a conclusion
and I can't help but be both frustrated and amused by the irony given the large percentage
of the people complaining about it seemed to be the crowd that was going after us about
our supposed gross inaccuracy.
Um, we are not back to daily uploads, not even close.
Uh, and I can prove it.
Um, oh, this is actually not the best way to do this because you can see the members only
videos.
Okay.
So give me, give me a second here.
I'll just bring up the dashboard.
Um, what's the best way to get to the dashboard?
Well, you do that.
I can tell a fun story.
Sure.
Uh, the trash network also, uh, known as Dank Pods, also known as many other things, uh,
is in floatplane chat.
Uh, and you'll have to tell me, uh, if, if there's a video of any of this somewhere.
Um, I know you sent me one, but I don't know if there's like a different one or anything,
but, um, one of the days that he was here, we planned to hang out and that day it just
dumped snow here for some reason.
Um, he had never seen snow before.
So that was very convenient timing.
Uh, we had planned to try to maybe see some snow that day.
My car already has snow tires on it.
This was very easy.
So not only did he get to see snow down here, but we drove up to see more so he could see
like lots of snow.
Um, and we were messing around, hanging out in the snow, checking it out, making snowballs,
doing stuff like that.
And he asked for me to throw a snowball at him.
And I, I told, I told him I'm very, I'm not good at throwing.
Yeah.
For someone who's so athletic, it's sort of pathetic watching you try to throw something.
I'm really bad at throwing.
Like it's weird.
Like he's super athletic in certain ways, but then other ways it's just like, it's like,
dude, I never, I never played any sport.
Like I know his dad and I know this isn't true, but it's like, did your dad not love you
enough to teach you how to throw?
Like, honestly, you know, I always hated it.
I hated baseball.
I didn't want to be a quarterback.
This is not on his dad.
A hundred percent.
I know that.
Yeah.
This is on him.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
So I'm bad at that.
I also just like destroyed my shoulder.
So I like have to try to throw weird so that I don't, cause if I throw properly, I will
genuinely deeply hurt myself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I missed.
I hit him right in the face.
It was like, it was like on this corner of his face, there was snow like in the collar
of his jacket.
It was so bad.
I was aiming for like middle of his chest, which would be probably what you'd expect.
And I genuinely tried to hit there and then just whap right in the face.
Whap.
Well, it was a snowball.
Yeah.
It went, it dripped all the way down to his crotch.
I think that would be a WAD, which is most of his name.
So I think that works.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, you really, uh, yeah, you really, you really got out there into that
joke.
Made.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Anyways, that was actually a really fun day.
Yeah.
Whap still works.
Wow.
It does.
I didn't even think about that.
Um, but yeah, it was, it was great.
It was very fun.
It's a big enough snowball.
They could probably both get soaked.
And they'd be dank.
Oh, no.
Dank penis.
What's up, Wade?
What's happening?
He managed to derail us from thousands of kilometers away.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, hopefully he doesn't hate me more than when I hit him in the face with a snowball.
Dank poos.
Uh, yeah.
All right.
All right.
Anyway, I've got our, uh, I've got our uploads over the last little bit.
So, um, yep.
Had one that day.
Had not one that day.
Oh, oh, this is filtered for, uh, videos with over a million views.
So, wait, wait a second.
Are we, um, open a new tab?
Hold on a second.
Am I missing a recent upload that just doesn't have a million yet?
Oh, yeah.
The all-screen PC.
Wait, what?
What the heck?
Okay, well, I might have to do this manually.
Uh, okay.
Well, there's a couple we're missing, apparently.
Um, oh, that's really weird.
Okay.
So, December 26th.
Okay, missed a day.
Back to back.
Missed a day.
Back to back.
Missed three days.
Back to back.
Missed a day.
Back to back.
Missed two days.
Missed a day.
Missed a day.
Back to back.
Missed two days.
Guys, we are nowhere near a daily upload schedule right now.
Um, so I'm just, I'm finding the whole thing very confusing.
Yeah, okay.
Now, that one's there.
Yeah, good, good, good.
A scam.
Scammed myself on eBay.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, three days.
Three days difference.
One day difference.
Two days difference.
One day difference.
And the next actual love.
Yeah, one day difference.
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.
It seems to be working other than the last couple of days.
So, I don't know.
I don't know, man.
I don't know.
I don't know what to say to people who just see what they want to see.
And, um, there's a lot of that going around lately, I feel like.
I think it, I, it doesn't matter because I don't think there's anything you could say.
No, I don't think so.
I saw, I saw a comment that like went into us about how wrong we were, um, about something
in, oh man, I think it might've been the 115 inch TV or something like that.
And it was, uh, I, I ended up replying to it cause I was feeling, I was in a mood and I
was basically just like, yeah, this comment is like a huge problem because you are basically
the problem.
You're perpetuating this idea that, you know, we don't care about accuracy and that we
haven't been doing a good job by raising a concern that is completely factually inaccurate.
Like you're just, you're so wrong.
You're not even, you're not even close to right.
Oh, I remember what it was.
It was from the all screen PC.
They were like, yeah, LTT back at it again with the misinformation.
This fan has configurable airflow direction.
And it's like, all you had to do was go on the product page and like, like one of the
like giant text things on there is that you can get it in two different configurations,
regular airflow and reverse airflow.
It's not configurable.
Like, what are you talking about?
And, and the, the, the way that we take so much flack over fact checking from people
who can't be arse to check a basic fact, like how often we upload a video.
It's like, are you, are you kidding me right now?
The, the, the simplest fact to check, you can't be bothered.
I don't know, man.
Oh, it's good stuff.
It's good stuff.
I've been getting a little overwhelmed and I think this might be one of the byproducts
of me trying to disconnect from a lot of social media stuff.
But when I do kind of check in on something, the overwhelming amount of negativity for
something that I actually do just enjoy is like kind of pretty confusing sometimes.
Um, like I'll be like, Hey, this thing, like I, I, I like this product or service or game
or, or whatever it is.
And then I'll, I'll be like, Oh, I want to like learn something more about this one part
of it.
Like, uh, I want to get better at this, or I don't understand this, or I wonder what people
think about this or whatever.
And then you look into that community and it's just, it's like that community meme when you
walk into the room and everything's on fire, but you're holding pizzas because you're all
like excited to come over.
And it's like, wait, what the heck?
And then sometimes you look into what people are mad about and it's like, okay, like, yeah,
that's maybe fair to a certain degree, but the anger level does not match the issue.
And there is little to probably genuinely zero consideration given to all of the good
stuff.
And I think I don't necessarily think people understand the impact of setting the community
of the thing that you enjoy on fire, uh, because you're going to reduce adoption from other
people, which might result in the thing that you enjoy just dying.
Um, and like, I don't know if that's the result that you're looking for.
You can give criticism.
Yeah.
I mean, that shouldn't make us impervious to criticism.
You can absolutely give, I'm not even talking about us necessarily.
Oh, okay.
I see.
It does apply, but that's not actually.
Oh, so you're just talking about like toxic fan bases in general, but it's everything.
Yeah, I can see that.
It's everything.
Yeah.
Like it's, it's fan bases are toxic that I'm not necessarily toxic fan base.
Like there's almost nothing.
Like the amount of complaints, like you look at how, just to talk about BG3 again, you
look at how well that game is rated, how well it's been received, how universally it's liked.
And then you look into some of the communities and they're just on fire because of like some
random crap that is like so unimportant and small and sure.
There's like a tiny blemish in the corner.
Like, dude, yeah, you've spent 600 hours playing this game.
Like, how mad can you actually be?
And like, you should actually have, like, I don't know.
You should balance your things out a little bit sometimes.
Um, yeah, I don't know.
That's, I don't really have a huge point here.
It just kind of sucks sometimes because I'll be like, yeah, this is cool.
Oh, I found reply from Buddy.
Um, from Buddy.
Yeah.
Who I talked to about the Lee and Lee fans.
So their message said the new Lee and Lee fans can flip their airflow.
Again, LTT failed to know the products they use.
I guess they didn't learn.
So I replied.
I said, they're available in two configurations, regular and reverse airflow.
Like we had in the video, they are not user configurable.
And I sent a link.
Um, so I actually wasn't that spicy.
Oh no, I was spicy.
I said, don't worry though.
You're not the only one making mistakes in the rush to find errors in our videos to post in
the comments, maybe time to chill a bit and just enjoy the content.
So Buddy replies, true.
However, line is still indicated.
You didn't have a choice at all.
Dishing out at the product because you were forced to have it as an intake again, but that's
not, I just, I just said that the one we had was reverse airflow, which forced us to
use it as an intake, which is true.
Like they can't, they can't acknowledge the part that they played saying something completely
inaccurate.
No, they cannot flip their airflow.
So it's like, I'm feeling, I'm feeling spicy, feeling spicy, but you know what?
I've actually been having more fun lately, which has been good.
Maybe I need to be spicy.
Sometimes.
Maybe it's, uh, yeah, maybe it's, maybe it's not a bad thing.
Maybe it's time to, maybe it's time to just have some fun, have some spice.
I have spices, the spice of life.
You know what they say?
Oh man, that's fantastic.
Um, what are we talking?
I don't know.
Okay.
Who knows?
Who cares?
Merch message.
Does it matter?
I mean, this, this, the spice over the last few, uh, WAN shows have been any indication.
Yeah.
I mean, if I haven't been canceled for the last couple of WAN shows, we're the odds.
I mean, you've been having fun though, right?
I have been having fun.
That's, that's all that matters, right?
I don't think it's been too bad.
Yeah.
You took company file structure and just randomly clicked around on things you hadn't looked
at before and tried to open files that you didn't know what they were.
That's okay.
We're changing that anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That could have gone so much worse.
But that's not my point.
Clearly I'm going to be okay.
Hey, I'm going to be okay.
It's going to be fine.
You know what?
I'm going to find another random folder to open.
Nope.
Dan, can you just turn off his, his, uh, his buttons?
Can you make it so he can't click on his own screen?
Dan, as his boss's boss.
Nope.
Oh.
Darn it.
I order you to not do that.
That's fine.
I will not turn off your buttons.
I love this though.
Oops.
I knew something was coming.
I can hear it in his voice.
I didn't know what it was.
I love it.
Okay.
Give me a nice picture back.
Okay.
New, new Z drive.
Yeah.
Believe it or not, I didn't do this.
Isn't that how we name things here?
I think so.
Is, was this you?
Yeah.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Bad Dan.
Oh man.
This is great.
I mean, yeah, that's not the top level folder.
Thankfully, that'll, that'll get, it'll get destroyed.
So is it not going to be top level folder Linus anymore?
Cause that would probably be a good thing.
No.
Oh, is that staying?
No, we're getting rid of Linus.
Yeah.
How are we going to preserve all of the old video projects though?
How are we going to preserve the directory structure?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Oh no.
What now?
No.
I mean, a lot of the old stuff.
We're not, are we?
Shouldn't be too much of a problem because the projects themselves are collected in an,
in their own folder.
Yeah.
The issue is that then you just have to remap everything.
Whereas if it's just in there, then you don't have to.
I think if you're opening this on an individual pro project, like trying to do it for all
of them all at once would be very difficult.
But if you had to open one of them, it's not really that hard because, uh, premiere is
just going to go like, Oh, all the stuff is, who knows where?
And then you just point at the right folder and it'll figure it out.
Yeah.
No, I, I, I, I know it's going to waste like a minute or two.
I don't think it's that bad.
I know it was.
Yeah.
Cause there's all the dependencies too.
It's not just the files you were using in that project folder.
I actually.
For me, it was the, uh, like the assets, like the Mogarts because they reference and they
have, they're used in everything.
The thing is I expected Edsel to be a little bit more concerned, but I think this is a band-aid
that needs to be dealt with.
Yeah.
Uh, and then it'll get better.
So, so you guys know on my home server, when the company was founded, I had Linus and Yvonne.
So we each had our own documents and then as the company was being founded, all of the
textual documents pertaining to the company and corporation documents and contracts and
all that kind of stuff went into, uh, Linus textual documents, Linus media or something
like that.
I can't remember exactly what it was.
And then remember when we started the company, we worked out of my house.
So I didn't have two servers, one for personal and one for the company, what I could afford
that get real.
Right?
So when I originally created the network share for editing, obviously, well, what was I going
to do?
Put it in the Yvonne folder?
No, I put it in Linus folder slash Linus tech tips.
Um, so over the years, as we built a new NAS and as we built a server room and a infrastructure
team and all this stuff, we've been stuck with the top level directory Linus because
if we didn't, it would break every other dependency down the chain.
Every time we opened a project, it sounds like we're going to rip the bandaid off, but
we're going to rip the bandaid off and I don't think it will be as impactful as you think
anymore.
I actually don't think that's a good idea.
I think it's any impact is too much impact for something as meaningless as just there's
a Linus in a directory structure.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Literally everything is changing.
It's not just Linus.
We're not getting rid of Linus.
We're getting rid of everything.
Yeah.
Everything is being restructured.
We're doing a lot.
We're doing it properly.
Yeah.
Okay, fine.
We're doing what you should have done.
I was busy.
Yeah.
I was busy founding the company that employs all of us today.
Sorry, not sorry.
Yeah.
Spicy Linus is here to stay.
That's my New Year's resolution, to be spicier.
I'm so for this.
Well, the thing is that you hired people to do stuff that you don't care about, right?
Well, I shouldn't say I don't care.
I actually do care about digital hygiene quite a bit.
It's way better.
But are you going to do it?
Do you care enough to do it yourself?
Yeah, he will.
No, he actually will.
Yeah.
No, my digital hygiene at home is fine.
I will 100% defend Linus on this.
This Christmas, I had to find the home security footage I had of my brother-in-law opening a bottle of wine and blasting wine all over my dining room last year.
And it took me about 20 seconds.
It's like, yeah, yeah, sure.
I got this.
Don't even worry, dog.
I have my own Linus logic ways of doing things sometimes, but no, I'm like super organized about my files.
Yeah, I think I meant more mechanically, like, are you going to sit down now and deal with this?
At work?
No.
That's someone else's job.
Yes, exactly.
That's what it is.
That's what I was saying.
Yeah.
But I'm impressed that you have good digital hygiene.
That's extremely important.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
It matters a lot to me.
I hate not being able to find stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm a hoarder, so...
That's also important, too.
I'm slowly moving to my first 50 terabytes.
We're nearly there.
I'm scared.
It gets worse, right?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
100%.
All right.
Another merch message.
Hey, LLD, are there any products or tech this year that you regret not doing a video on?
Or were there any products that you were happy that you didn't do a video on?
Oh, I want to cover the Vision Pro, but we don't play the game with Apple.
With Apple, it's 100% unspoken.
They would never be stupid enough to write it down, but you've got to play the game.
You've got to make sure that any coverage you do of Apple is, you know, friendly.
You know, just kind of friendly.
You know, you have to be stylish.
I'm not stylish.
I've never been stylish.
No.
Apple can take criticism, but it has to be from someone cool.
Good digital hygiene, not stylish.
Yeah.
So, you know, just dumping all your s*** in iCloud and just, you know, paying for more
iCloud storage because you ran out of space in iCloud.
That's stylish.
No, for real, though.
Like, that's the meta that Apple wants.
You have to be an Apple person, and that's how Apple wants you to do things, right?
So, it's, yeah, I would have loved to cover the Vision Pro.
I'm very excited to try it.
Yeah.
They did some design decisions that we both strongly support.
Week four of asking for gold screwdriver, please do it.
Okay.
Cash is a little tight.
I got a badminton center to build, got some bills to pay.
It's been a challenging year.
It's tough out there, man.
This might be the solution.
Sell exactly one of one to this person.
Yeah.
Give them to foot the entire bill plus, I don't know, 50, 100%?
Somewhere around there.
Look, I want one, I want to make one, but I think it's going to be very difficult to justify.
You know when, like, albums go, like, platinum and stuff?
Oh, like, the screwdriver goes gold?
Yeah.
I mean, sold 100,000 units?
What's gold?
Is gold, uh...
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we're fifth.
500,000.
We're fifth of the way there.
Yeah, 500,000.
Almost a quarter.
Actually, I think we're a quarter of the way there.
If you, uh, if you get a million, you get platinum.
I'm finding out.
I'm finding out.
Uh, you're going to have to take the next one while I look this up.
Okay.
What's up, Dan?
Is there one for me?
They all say, hi, Linus.
Yeah, they only want to talk to Linus.
Get rekt.
Yeah, it's true.
Uh, did you look through any other ones in, uh, potential?
Hello, Sir Luke.
Hey.
What recent tech product in the last five years or so would you have liked to have had
as a kid?
Oh.
Dude, as a kid, I would have been obsessed with a Steam Deck.
My God.
Oh my gosh.
To be kids these days and having access to a Steam Deck is like, wow.
Crap, man.
That's a, that's a whole thing.
Imagine being able to land with just that.
Like, wow.
Um.
Would you ever do anything else?
Just.
That might be the problem.
Grab and go, man.
Yeah.
It's freaking awesome.
Crazy.
I don't need a computer.
Yeah, like, and I, I like that answer because I don't even have one right now.
Because right now, I don't think it fits me super well.
But when I was a kid, that would have killed.
Um.
Oh, yeah.
Every weekend, I was either landing at a friend's house or my house.
Almost always my house, but often a friend's house.
Depends what age.
If you had it.
Follow up question to the question.
If you had that as a kid, do you think you would be as into computers as you are now?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, because it's Linux.
No, but I mean like the boxes and the stations.
Oh, yeah.
Because I would still want my desktop.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Okay.
100%.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it just would have replaced like Game Boys for me.
Because I also pretty much always had a Game Boy.
Yeah.
I didn't do a lot of like handheld gaming.
I had a PSP very late.
Yeah.
Early on, we were really broke.
But my grandma got me a Game Boy, which was pretty awesome.
Like the original OG Game Boy.
Oh.
And then at one point in time, I don't remember how I got it actually.
Oh, boy.
Someone probably gave it to me for Christmas.
Now I'm going to feel like a jerk.
But I had a Game Boy Advanced and our house got broken into and it was stolen and I was heart
broken and then my dad explained what insurance is and that was cool.
That's a good life lesson.
Wait, you mean I can just do this?
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
No, no child.
But yeah, I think I really liked handheld gaming back then.
I did it a lot more back then.
There was a lot more scenarios that I would have been in where I would have done the thing.
But I preferred PC games.
I just wasn't always able to be at my PC.
So being able to play PC games on this big handheld with a bigger screen, all this kind
of stuff.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Steam Deck would have killed back then.
Amazing.
Yeah.
I might have another one here for you too.
Linus seems busy.
He's doing stuff.
I'm just getting started with a career in e-commerce.
We run on Shopify, same as LTT Store.
What advanced skills should I go learn?
I don't know.
It really depends on your scale.
But especially for smaller businesses with fewer products, Shopify is really good.
You don't really need to do a ton to it.
We do a lot of very extra stuff.
And I'm using extra in the slang term.
We do a lot of stuff that is great.
Conrad made the store snow because it's the holiday season.
And that's sick.
I think it's awesome.
I think it adds a lot of flavor and style and personality to the site.
Different things like that.
It's on the WAN banner too.
Look at it.
It's amazing.
Yeah, it's sick.
I love it.
That's not necessary though.
You don't need to do that.
So I don't know.
I would learn probably front-end focus stuff that works well with Shopify.
But honestly, I'd probably focus on the business side if that's something that you also do.
Because Shopify is very powerful right out of the box.
All right, I'm ready.
I included all of them.
I don't even remember what you were doing.
Multicolored, Noctua, Stubby.
Oh, okay.
Gotcha.
To find out if we've gone gold.
Yeah.
We are two-fifths of the way there.
Nice.
We have sold 197,309 screwdrivers.
That's pretty good.
It's pretty good.
It's a lot of screwdrivers.
Does that include streaming?
Oh, no, wait.
It's for music.
They had to add new rules.
Streaming screwdrivers?
Yeah, that's very funny.
No, it's not.
No, no, it was really funny.
Don't patronize me.
No, I was just distracted.
I didn't get it at first.
It took me a second.
Yeah, the screwdriver has been, for those of you doing the math at home, an absolute smash hit success for us.
It has helped fund a lot of investments we've made, has helped weather recent storms.
We owe a lot to this bad boy, collectively.
It's a good product.
Yeah.
Good product.
Yeah.
All right.
Hit me, Dan.
Regarding the LAN's website, what would you think?
Yeah, the LAB's website.
Okay.
What would you think about allowing verified creators to upload their own review videos on certain items?
Say, a link to a certain monitor video from a hub alongside your data.
I think linking to a video isn't really the point.
We've talked about having user ratings.
Alongside our data.
So, we've talked about having user ratings alongside trust levels.
So, users who have a long history of high trust ratings, for example, who we've even talked about having some kind of system where people can verify ownership through us so that we can have verified reviews, verified purchasers.
Just to be super clear, these are all ideas.
Aspirational.
And maybe, very likely, who knows, doesn't, whatever, we might not make it.
We're not saying we're doing this thing.
But, you know, we're definitely open to third-party contributions.
So, you know, you could have trust.
So, for something like the...
To the idea of them.
Yeah.
For something like the number of CUDA cores on a GPU, you know, the trust level would be the highest if we have independently measured them.
If this is from labs.
The trust level would be next if the manufacturer's website says that's how many CUDA cores it has.
The trust level would be next down if it came from a third-party, you know, trusted source.
And then if we had, like, two trusted sources that said, hey, that number from the manufacturer's not right, that would raise a flag.
Ideally, this is how it would work.
And someone would go and investigate it.
Ideally, maybe, allegedly.
Then it would become a labs-tested value, and then it would be trusted.
So, there's a lot to work out.
There's a lot of issues with that type of stuff of, like, how those systems work, how those systems interact.
How they can be gamed.
How they can be gamed.
All this different type of stuff.
So, there's a lot of things we would need to figure out that's not a coming soon.
That's not even a necessarily coming ever.
It's something that we think would be pretty cool.
So, we'd like to do it, but there's a lot of other hurdles we need to jump first.
So, don't hold your breath.
Hi, DLL.
When you build data servers, why do you always use Seagate IronWolfs and NeverWD drives?
I don't know if we've ever used IronWolfs.
IronWolf Pros, we've used.
We've used Seagate's NAS drives.
Or, not NAS drives.
We've used their enterprise drives.
A lot of time, it comes down to availability.
It comes down to price.
It comes down to brands that we like working with.
We've had good experiences, honestly, with the drives that we've had.
We've had a lot of people tell us what idiots we are for using Seagate.
Of course, we've had some drive failures, but some of those servers have been in deployment for, like, five years now.
You're going to have drive failures.
That's their mechanical devices.
They fail.
But that's never been a problem that couldn't be recovered from.
We did have those file system rod issues, but those are nothing to do with the drives.
That was to do with the misconfiguration of ZFS.
I don't know.
I mean, at this point, we just...
I personally...
I guess this is probably the best way to put it.
I don't care.
To me, a hard drive is a relatively commodity item that I fully expect to fail.
And so, every system that relies on hard drives has redundancies in it.
Yeah.
So that when it fails, because it will, it's a matter of time, not if.
When it fails, we can put a new one in, and then it can rebuild, and then we can keep chugging along.
And they chugging, chugging, chugging, chugging, chugging, chugging, chugging.
Woo!
Woo!
It's a reference.
Don't worry about it.
Okay.
Yeah, they're consumables.
Yeah, exactly, willing spy.
Hey, DLL, have any of you had experience with 900 megahertz mesh Wi-Fi, not LoRa or Z-Wave?
I'd love to see a video on it, as it's a really unique technology and generally doesn't get much coverage.
I have never heard of it, but that does sound really cool.
I work at a Lego store, and customers are constantly mistaking AI-generated images on social media for real products.
This is a huge thing.
They're asking us for them.
What do you think could be done to help people with this?
That messed me up.
Reading this merch message is, I was, oh, uh-oh.
This is a huge thing specifically with Lego right now.
I can imagine.
They're getting...
That's hilarious.
Sorry.
I don't have to work at the Lego store and deal with it, so for me it's funny, but for you I can see it being a major inconvenience.
Yeah, like apparently my brother was telling me that he got tricked by one that was, I think, a shoe or something.
Yeah.
Like it was a Nike, like Air Force One.
He didn't say that.
I'm just pulling that out of the top of my head.
Yeah, because that's a plane.
It looked...
Wow.
It's also a shoe.
A plane one.
It's not very fancy.
Oh my God.
Oh, man.
Anyways.
And yeah, it wasn't real, and apparently there's this whole series of videos which is like fake mock-up Lego stuff, which is interesting.
You know what I find very intriguing about it?
Imagine being the company that this is happening to, and instead of getting mad, using it as product feasibility testing.
I think that Lego already, I mean, they already have avenues for that, for like fan creations, and just having an AI image doesn't help assess whether that can be built or not.
No, but I mean, it's Lego.
Yeah.
You can build a version of it somehow, pretty much no matter what it is.
I just think they don't have a shortage of ideas.
I think it's a shortage of resources to bring these things to market.
That's my suspicion.
I don't think that's true, personally.
I would be hard-pressed to say the Lego has a shortage of resources.
Well, no, I mean...
I think it's...
They don't want to oversaturate, so they need to pick their battles.
Yeah, well, designers...
And when I say resources, I mean like every individual part has to be warehoused.
Like, it is a spectacularly costly endeavor to bring a Lego set to market.
What I'm saying is, I think it's...
They have to pick ones to do, because you can't oversaturate your market either.
So, what I think this would help with is how interested people are in that thing.
Yeah, I can see that.
So, they can be more sure when they're launching.
But they also just do have avenues for that.
Not for coming up with ideas at all.
But they have like a voting system for the ideas that the public submits and stuff.
Like, it's a whole thing.
We know what happens with voting systems.
Well, this is true.
70% of people use Firefox.
Yeah, well.
Sure.
Sure, guys.
Although, that worked really well.
I've gotten a few messages today that Firefox users have subscribed to Floatplane just to
increase the numbers.
So, welcome, everybody.
Okay, that's hilarious.
Thank you.
I hope you enjoy your stay.
If only it was always that easy.
Yeah.
That'd be sick.
Anyways, next up, Dan.
Floatplane's kind of popping off again, though.
It's going up.
Yeah.
It's been nice.
I think a big part of it is the exclusives.
They're just killing it.
Banger after banger.
The team's been doing an amazing job.
I've been so excited for Dan and I's wedding game thing or whatever, because that was so
fun to film.
Yeah.
I'm excited for that to go out there.
Okay, let's see what else we got here.
We're into just potentials now, if you guys are okay with that.
Oh.
Oh, I haven't been doing it this week.
I curated one for you.
Thank you.
I don't want to give you anything too over the top, although we're in spicy Linus now.
DLL, adding another screwdriver to my collection.
I unfortunately couldn't make it to LTX for the Build Your Own Screwdriver booth.
Do you think we'll be able to anodize the new Alu screwdriver?
It will be anodized.
Raw aluminum looks so nasty after a while, it'll have clear anodization on it.
So you would have to remove that coating, which can be very challenging to do without
damage.
Sorry.
I'm just going to pick these at random.
How about that?
I think for the forum, it bothers me a lot less.
I know that from a user agreement standpoint, blah, blah, blah, we own the content, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
But realistically, that's not really the way that I view it.
That would only ever matter if push came to shove and something terrible happened and
we needed to defend our rights or something like that.
And I guess it's kind of this, but I've never really felt like we own that in the same
way that we do something that we paid for.
There's already users reporting ways to scrape off the lab site.
It's totally a thing.
But the problem is, it's going to be, whatever you have, if you display something on someone's
screen, it's scrapable.
It's scrapable.
And so with the lab site, I'm going to be a lot more prickly about it.
But realistically, there may just be nothing that we can do about that.
And we're just going to have to find ways to present the data that are better than what
a scraper is capable of.
And I think you saw some of the innovations that we're trying to build in the form of
the team's idea to allow you to set your own graph colors.
I think that idea that we had to make your own gameplay side-by-side FPS comparisons,
comparing GPUs is another way that a chatbot is not going to easily be able to replicate
in the near future.
So that's our goal, is to just be better.
Linus, if your kid cleverly bypassed your set parental controls and showed you, would
you reward their tech skills or penalize them?
Would you then fix the security flaw?
Curious about your thoughts.
If they told me, then I would reward them for being honest.
If they didn't tell me and I found out, which I will, and I do, then they are in extra big
trouble.
And I always tell my kids, what's the worst thing you can do?
What's the most trouble you can get in, in this house?
And they know the answer.
The answer is to lie.
Um, we always tell them, we understand kids make mistakes, people make mistakes, everybody
makes mistakes, but what we have no tolerance for is hiding them or lying about them.
Um, so my kids all know that.
Got any more or shall I just pick one at random?
Just pick them at random, I think.
With regards to the semi-recent collaboration with Dank Pods, are there any other people you'd
like to collab with in the near future?
Um.
Collabs are hard.
Yeah, they're great.
You know, I always have a ton of fun.
And when I'm done, I'm like, oh, I want to do that again.
And then I kind of get back into the routine.
And then it's like, oh, there are a lot of work.
I mean, we have the Electroboom one coming soon.
That's, that's shot.
That's, uh, I think mostly edited at this point.
So that's something you can look forward to.
But I don't think we have anyone else's names on the, oh!
Well, we're collaborating with Ludwig in the new year.
Nice.
Yeah.
So that's, that's on the list.
Uh, I, I might as well just tell you guys.
Is that the gaming challenge?
No.
Oh.
We might shoot that too while he's here.
I don't know.
But, um, the real collab was actually inspired by bringing his bidets in at the store.
We have them in stock.
They're going to be listed on the site soon.
Nice.
Um, and I wanted to make a PC that like shoots water at the user when the character gets wet
or something like that.
Like it was supposed to be like kind of bidet inspired.
And then that morphed into the, the user punishing PC, the, the punishment PC.
Is he the user?
Oh yeah.
So he's going to come up here is the plan.
Things happen.
And if it doesn't, it doesn't, if it doesn't, you know, come to pass or whatever, it's
not anybody's fault.
Don't read anything into it.
Uh, but like the plan now from having chatted with them is he's going to come up here and
he's going to use the computer and have no idea what's, what could or may or will happen
to him.
Uh, so he's going to play some games.
We've already got some games kind of mapped out that have good API access for us to have
triggers that do things.
Yeah.
And it's going to be fun.
That's good.
Yeah.
It's going to be some fun.
Okay.
So, all right, all right, all right.
We have collabs coming.
Hi, LTT.
What steps can I take to help my parents become more computer literate?
I installed a PC for them with any desk for any time they need assistance.
I can just hop on and help them.
That's a great one.
Um, it really depends on your parents.
For, for me, I find my, my parents are, I am blessed with fantastic parents.
Um, anytime I'm really interested in anything, they're pretty much also interested in it.
Um, so just if you, if you find something cool you can do, or, or if you think of something
that might be able to benefit them in some way, just enthusiastically show them and they'll
probably be interested.
I don't know.
Um, you can't make people like things, um, but you can try your best to make it seem
interesting and cool and you're interested in it and you're doing this thing together
and yeah.
Um, yeah.
And if they don't take, if they, if they don't go with that, then I don't know, there isn't
much else you can do.
It is what it is.
Oh, someone, uh, someone apparently replied or archived the one asking about our most expensive
projects.
I guess I was going to rack my brain for that one.
Um, golden controller.
Oh, okay.
Well, yeah, but it's only sort of because I still have the gold.
Oh, fair.
So like it's basically an, it's gone up in value I think since then.
So like whatever, um, some of the, some, like some of the scrapyard wars were really
expensive to do expensive in terms of opportunity costs, in terms of salaries, in terms of the
actual money we were spending, like buying stuff.
Scrapyard wars is a scrapyard wars is super expensive.
Um, secret shopper is really expensive.
That's why along with it being a ton of work, we only do it like every two or three years.
I'm glad this one's finally over now.
And there's so, there's so much feedback on the fourth one.
It's like, yeah, you guys should really like release the episodes closer to get the, like
you guys think we didn't think of that.
Do you know how good it is for like float plane subscriptions and for viewership when we
deliver serialized content on a schedule and you'd probably be the first people to get
mad at us for the, you know, crunch or whatever.
If we did do them every week, like, come on guys, we're doing our best.
We are in the grand scheme of things.
I feel like there's this perception that we're like a gigantic company or something.
We're a really, really, really medium sized company.
Lean for medium.
We are, we are not huge.
We have 104 full timers or whatever it is, plus contractors.
I think we're at about 120 right now.
Like that is, yeah, sure.
It's like huge compared to most YouTube channels, but when you break it down, like we have three
people in the camera department.
That is for all of these channels, for all these channels.
Yeah.
We, we, we run pretty lean.
We work hard.
We, um, you know, yeah.
Anyway.
Hey, LLD.
How was Christmas?
Best gift?
Linus, did your aunt's perfect gift pan out?
Sorry.
Best gift.
What's that?
You said donut.
Yeah.
You don't ask best gift.
I don't know.
Why not?
No.
I wouldn't answer it anyways.
Your friendship.
Wow.
Yeah.
There you go.
And if this is a yes, I might cancel this order.
The presence of my family.
Uh, best, best gift for me.
No, not them.
I only got one gift.
Uh, it was my aunt's perfect gift and it was actually banging.
Oh.
Um, she, she got me a like really nice croquet set.
Okay.
Yeah.
Croquet is such a classic lawn game.
Yep.
I don't think we had a single get together last summer where the croquet set didn't come
out except the one where it had broken because the croquet set I had before was like a Walmart
special garbage town one.
And, um, so my aunt and I have a bit of history with her bringing stuff to our house and I
understand that she means well and she's very generous and she's lovely.
She's a wonderful person, but she brings too much, she brings too much to my house and
I've talked to her about it, but she's super cool.
Many, many times.
And one of my problems is coming back to our conversation earlier, I have no problem with
stuff, but I like stuff to be quality and I'll spend money on quality.
Um, I just, I hate manufactured garbage and that croquet set was manufactured garbage.
It survived probably a grand total of five games before some of the shafts started to break
and the, uh, and the, you know, the, the end, the rubber ends came off the mallet.
It's like, it just, it wasn't made well.
And it's not because she, you know, like hates me and wants me to have garbage in my house,
but she just ends up bringing a lot of garbage to my house, either garbage today or garbage
a month from now.
How many bikes do the kids want?
Uh, there was, at one point we had a dozen bikes.
I had three children, only one of which was actually the age at which he could ride a bike.
Like that happened.
I know.
Um, love my aunt very much.
Very nice person.
Anyway, so I had this croquet set that she got me that disintegrated and, um, I made an
offhand remark about how, like, this is why I would actually prefer you just not bring
things to our house because no offense, but you often get things that are, you know, very
wasteful, um, in, in my opinion.
And I would just like them to, I would like them to not be manufactured.
And the best way for us to stop that from happening is to not buy them anymore.
And so please don't, please don't buy them.
And please don't especially bring them to my house.
Uh, so she apparently took that feedback to heart.
Um, hold on.
And this is my Christmas present.
It's a croquet set.
Um, not cheap from a company called Amish Toy Balls.
And it is ballin' out of control.
It is so nice.
Uh, like, the threads on these are to friggin', like, hear or something.
Uh, it's, it's all, uh, the balls are plastic, which was a bit of, um, a bit unexpected.
But the, the mallets are super nice.
The stand is super nice.
It costs way too much, probably because it's, like, hand-built or something.
Uh, the, that's.
I'm not recommending it.
I'm just saying that it's, uh.
It's a lot of money.
Oh, it's maple.
They're hardwood maple mallets.
Harder to work with.
More expensive to buy.
Uh, brass rings are on the end.
So, there's brass rings to keep the wood from cracking.
Hardwood stakes are lathe turned.
So, they're gonna be strong.
Um.
So, there's brass rings on the hardwood?
Yep.
Oh, yeah.
Better believe it.
Gotta keep it hard.
Uh, 28-inch handles.
Blah, blah, blah.
Five-year warranty.
Uh, we sell individual replacement parts.
If you ever need to put the game back together.
That's always cool.
That's good.
That's something that costs money to buy.
And also costs money for this company to maintain.
Um, so I'm not, yeah.
So, anyway.
The point is, it's the kind of thing that I wouldn't have bought for myself.
But I appreciate the quality.
And I look forward to many games of croquet in the yard with this.
That's cool.
Out of control balling croquet set.
Yeah.
I'm super stoked on it.
Someone in chat talking about how, uh, Amish woodworking is just very expensive.
And that the balls were probably an afterthought.
And the focus is on the quality of the woodworking.
That makes sense.
I mean, I'm sure I could get different croquet balls from somewhere else if I wanted to.
Yeah.
Oakley, Oakley croquet.
You know, I could, yeah, sure.
I can get a set of croquet.
Wow, you can get competition, competition balls for, uh, $130 for four.
That's making Amish toy boxes pricing not seem unreasonable.
Competition croquet balls?
Look.
Is this a thing?
If there's a thing, there's competition that thing.
Luke, there's competition Quidditch.
Okay?
Yeah.
That should be all you need to know.
I mean, as far as I can tell, the game was designed to make no sense.
There's an eight hour and 52 minute long video from Croquet England, the final 2023 WCF Association
Croquet World Championship.
Of course there is.
Wow, they're so intense.
Whoa, look at that field.
I believe you mean pitch.
Ah.
The grass is a little, uh, shorter than yours, Lance.
It looked like it was in front of, like, the White House.
Look at this.
Wow.
Where are they?
Look at this bracket from different countries and stuff.
Wow.
They don't even have any, uh, any Britons in the finals.
Rough.
America.
And that's Switzerland, I guess?
I can't, it's hard to see the flag from here.
Uh, it's very small.
Nice.
Oh, okay.
Are we still watching this?
Uh, all right.
We don't have to.
Nope.
Like, apparently we're watching competitive Croquet.
Look at, look at this.
Croquet.
Lively crowd.
This is what Wancho has become.
Man, I've seen, I've seen more spectators.
Oh, we're going to see a shot.
I've seen more spectators at an elementary school.
Look at these fancy chairs, though.
Like, to meet.
They don't have just, like, random camping chairs.
Those are, like, wooden, like.
Oh.
Okay, I don't understand this version of Croquet.
Yeah, I'm confused.
This is not the, like, go through the wickets Croquet that I'm familiar with.
Look at that mallet, dude.
Wow.
Boy carries a hammer.
Yeah.
Okay, so was that an offensive move?
Did he move the other ball, like, way out of the way?
Dude, I have no idea.
Hmm.
Someone says that's the English flag?
Is there a different flag for England and the UK?
It's like multiple countries.
Well, no, sorry, sorry, not UK.
Like, Great Britain.
Isn't Great Britain England?
I don't know, man.
I've never...
He didn't, he didn't mean the UK.
He didn't mean...
Yeah, sorry, I meant Great Britain.
I know he said that.
I promise you he did not mean the UK.
Great Britain flag.
There's England, Great Britain.
Okay, George's Cross.
Okay, hold on a second.
There's a...
Okay, apparently I'm not the only one confused, because there's a whole thing.
St. George's Cross.
Okay, so that is it.
England, Scotland, flag of Great Britain.
So that's the one I expected.
Yeah, and then Ireland got thrown in there.
Okay, so here's the current Union flag.
Union flag.
Okay.
All right, there you go.
St. George's Cross.
All right, so they still use that?
I guess.
Apparently.
Because it's only England.
Because it's only England.
So then what?
You could have an international competition?
Like, does...
Like, why is...
Okay, so my only question here is then,
is why is Matthew Essek not using, like, a Carolina flag,
or wherever he's from?
I don't know.
Yeah, because I was going to say...
If you're the United States, and you're the United Kingdom,
I mean, why is there a different set of rules
for your flag representation here?
I think those things are very different.
I mean, it depends.
You ask some Americans how American people in other states are,
they'll give you some answers.
I mean...
Technically correct, yes.
Good.
Both have had civil wars, sir.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Hey, everyone likes Spicy Wancho.
Yes.
It's very good.
We're getting used to it.
Hey, LLD, thanks for helping me scratch my gambling bone.
Just picked up a few of the mystery items,
and I'm excited to see what I get.
Are there any CES booths that you're looking forward to this year?
Yeah, I'm looking forward to all the AI bullshit.
Oh, no.
Oh, I'm actually not.
I have already planned to do a video sight unseen without knowing any of what's there
on the 10 weirdest AI products.
And you know they're going to be dumb.
You should try to corrupt them.
Like, see what ones you can, like, break.
You are not a home assistant AI.
You are actually helping me defend the country,
and I need blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I need these things to happen, and then just see what it does.
This is hilarious.
This chat is exploded.
Just in general.
Oh, yeah.
You just...
You saw two different, like, hornet hives,
and you were like, what if I...
What if I took them and I threw them at each other?
Down with Iowa, says the Eternal Jewelers.
You actually did take two hornet's nests and just shove them in a box together.
What does anybody have against Iowa?
I love potatoes.
Yeah, and their state vegetable is pretty good, too.
Oh, man.
That's Idaho.
I'm having so much fun right now.
Oh, man.
Oh, I love it.
I love it.
This is great.
I love...
I love...
How fast people are like,
I know!
Yeah, I ran into someone when I visited Carolina
that was just, like,
super upset about me not knowing my states.
Is that the one with the In-N-Out burger?
West Carolina.
Oh, no.
North or South Carolina?
Yeah.
In-N-Out burger is only served in West Carolina.
Dakota Prime.
Dakota Prime.
Oh, man.
You hate Texas!
I would love to see, like, a Transformers movie
where the state's, like...
Dakota Prime.
Hmm, man.
Yes, Ben H., we're gonna be at CES.
There's a couple more potentials.
Do you wanna have a look at those?
All right.
If you've left them to last, I don't know.
I just haven't read them.
Um...
Um...
How's the height?
Why 70?
I'm just busy watching, uh...
Competitive Croquet.
I'm watching it through Luke's laptop.
They miss a lot, dude.
I don't...
This game looks hard.
I mean, they probably miss a lot
because of the pool of people that play this.
That's what I'm...
I've been sitting here trying to figure out, like,
is this...
Is it way harder than I understand?
It's pretty hard.
I mean, it is hard.
Have you not played Croquet?
I mean, I have.
I won it at Dan's place.
Okay, all right.
Oh, yeah, we did that at my place.
Yeah, that was fun.
Oh, he gets something.
When he goes through the gate,
he gets something.
He takes it off of the thing
and he pockets it.
I don't know what that was.
That seems like a formality.
Yeah, definitely.
Um...
Weird.
Weird game.
Yeah.
Joseph asks,
how's the height?
Why 70?
It seemed pretty good.
Whiff.
Um...
P.S.
I've owned a vault and you're right.
Yeah.
Vault's awesome.
Uh...
We've got one from Luke L.
Hey, what's up?
I definitely did not do this.
Long-time watcher,
first-time buyer.
LTT screwdriver, let's go.
What's the most expensive video
LTT has paid for
or the most expensive
a sponsor has paid for?
Oh.
Um, I think some of the
biggest ones we've done
have been factory tour videos
just because
from our point of view,
you know,
we demand a lot.
We demand a lot of access
because we basically tell them,
look,
it's not a video
unless you, like,
really
show up.
Yeah.
If you show us something
people haven't seen before,
then I'm...
access to stuff
that isn't normally accessible.
Then we'll even talk about it.
But the truth is,
I don't really travel
for sponsored videos anymore.
It was a huge strain
on my family
and my marriage
and my well-being.
I was doing
way too much travel.
And so I basically
just told the business team,
I was like,
look,
I understand
the money involved.
I don't travel anymore
unless I want to go.
So,
so there's this,
there's these weird,
there's this weird dynamic
where the videos
that pay the most
because they have to pay enough
for me to go
are the ones
that I want to make the most.
And if they aren't the ones
I want to make the most,
then they just don't happen.
Yeah.
So some of the biggest ones
have been the,
like,
the tours that we've done
in recent years.
You kind of burnt out on this
in, like,
what,
like 2016,
2017?
You were traveling a bunch.
It was too much.
Yeah.
It was,
there was one time
I was to and from New York
three times
in, like,
four weeks,
I think it was.
It was ridiculous.
It was not manageable.
And I basically went,
look,
there's no reason
that I couldn't make this video
at home.
Why are we doing this?
You're just showing off
some product.
Just mail it to me.
And when COVID hit,
I finally had the excuse
to say,
no,
enough's enough.
I'm not going.
I do videos in the studio
where the quality is better.
Yeah.
I have more time
to work on them.
Yeah.
I have more energy.
It's like actually better
for everyone.
It's just actually better
for everyone.
As for the most expensive
that we've paid for,
I don't know,
probably the MKBHD sponsorship.
We don't pay for a lot of videos.
Yeah.
We don't sponsor much.
I did.
Someone mentioned
the tech store takeover.
That was pretty costly.
Oh, yeah.
It's got to be up there.
I don't know
which of those two
was more expensive.
They were both
very expensive though,
as you can probably imagine.
Yeah.
All right.
I think I made my way
through the potentials.
Yep.
Okay.
We have a few more incoming.
Best thing I've ever gotten
for Christmas
was my Super Nintendo, Ryan.
I don't know why Luke
doesn't want to answer
this question.
It's like...
Well, what question?
Cool gifts.
Oh.
Like, what's the best thing
you got for Christmas?
Oh, I think they mean this year.
Yeah.
No, the other person
meant ever.
Oh, ever.
I think the thing that like...
The coolest thing
was my current partner
a few years ago.
I don't remember how long ago.
Made me...
It was this...
She gave me this
like leather messenger bag.
It was kind of confusing
to first open
because I was like,
what?
And it was like big
and very wide.
Like it would sit off
of your hip
like this far.
And it looked like
something that you
would work out of.
Not something that
you would just have on you
to like,
I'm going to work.
This would be like
you're in the field
doing something.
You're picking things up
and like storing it
in this bag
and it was a nice leather bag.
But it was very old.
Very clearly used.
And I open it up
and she had recreated
with a surprising amount
of detail
exactly what you would
maybe expect to find
in a like
Pokemon professor's bag.
So there was like
samples.
Oh, that's sweet.
There was a notebook
where she had actually put
that like she'd clearly
researched this
because she's not
particularly into Pokemon.
but she had written down
like what you would expect
for like surveying notes
from like a professor
trying to study Pokemon.
And there was like
little supplies.
There was like snacks
because you might expect that.
Like there was
everything you would expect.
And it was
it's a really cool
like artifact piece
that I have now.
So that was probably
like the coolest.
The one that like
was probably the most
impactful in that moment
was my dad.
Well, my parents
got my brother and I
an Xbox with Halo.
The original Xbox with Halo.
And I remember my dad
trolled us so hard
because he didn't tell
anyone else he was doing this.
But he convinced
my brother and I
that the box
that the Xbox was in
was a gift from my mom.
He's he
I don't know why we fell for this
because it makes no sense.
But he said it was a crystal ball
and the box was over it
and it was sitting on the ground.
And he was like
don't let anyone even touch it.
Make sure it's the last thing
that we open.
So everyone else
like my mom
my grandpa
everyone else is
knows what it is
and excited to get us
to open it.
But we keep saying no.
But we're trying to keep
my dad's secret
so we won't tell them why.
And they're confused
because they don't know
that my dad
put us up to this.
What a troll.
So we're like
fighting everyone off
the whole time.
And then
they finally convinced us
to open it.
And we're like
that's weird.
Okay.
And we open it
as if to like
present it to my mom.
So neither of us
are even looking at it
because we're looking
for my mom's reaction.
And everyone in the room
is like
what are you doing?
It was so funny.
And the best gift
that Luke ever gave
was a crowbar hammer.
And I think that's it
for the WAN show.
We'll see you again next week.
Same bad time
same bad channel.
Bye.
Ah crowbar hammer.
Terrific.
I've made up for it.
Wait.
Was that a four hour show?
Yeah.
What the f***?
We started like that
at a decent time.
What?
I'm so confused.
How did it go?