What's up, folks? Welcome to the LAN Show. We've got a fantastic show lined up for you guys today.
I don't know about you, but I'm like a bundle of energy.
I am amped. I'm amped. I'm going to the first LAN party in, well, many years, actually, for me at this point.
Yeah, it was right before COVID. The past before COVID would have been my last one.
150 people. 150 people are over there waiting for us to show up, play some vidya games.
And shortly before the show started, I got the play button PC working again.
It was overheating. It turns out there was an issue where the heat pipes cross each other like this in order to bring the heat away from the CPU,
then out into the heat sink and the thermal pads that were in there weren't compressed enough.
So there was a thermal bottleneck, but we're good. We're good, ladies and gentlemen.
And we've got a great show lined up for you today. We're going to be talking about the rumors that Intel's Arc desktop GPUs.
You know, the ones where we had real live people from Intel sitting in chairs next to us talking about them?
Yeah. There are rumors now that that is canceled. Canceled? You can't cancel Arc GPUs.
Well, maybe you can. There's been some stuff going on over...
I was waiting for you to see that. Oh, my God.
The write up for this is literally three pages long. OK, well, we'll talk about that in a little bit.
In other news, also, Intel Optane is dead.
If you want Optane SSDs, get them now, because they're not making any more of them.
My goodness. What else we got? Other than all the Intel things, you know, I guess we talked to Overkill Computers.
We did. So that's interesting. And spoiler, Writer Plouffe, who chatted with them, kind of on their side now.
Interesting. Yeah, that's how the turntables have turned. OK.
That's gonna that that seems hard to accomplish. So we'll we'll see what happened.
Because that is interesting. Other than that, there's literally one topic.
It's AMD confirms four Ryzen 7000 CPUs, maybe by accident.
Whoops. Let's roll that intro. It didn't work. Is my stream deck not working?
Try it. I wouldn't try.
The show is brought to you by AMD, Secret Lab and Ubiquiti.
Oh, Ubiquiti is a WAN show sponsor. How fun is that? All right.
Why don't we jump? Good gravy. Right into this is a monster topic.
Yesterday. I don't know if it's still yesterday, but anyway, Moore's Law is dead.
Released a video claiming that Intel's arc may be canceled before Battlemage.
So that's the second generation architecture after Alchemist.
Canceled before Battlemage even comes out.
This apparently has not yet been decided,
but is being discussed internally because the whole project has apparently been a poo show.
And there are serious hardware level problems with Alchemist, allegedly.
So that's the first generation architecture. This is.
That's the that's the streaming PC making that noise.
Our streaming PC was all like, there's a heat wave.
There's a heat wave and I do not like it. I'm firing my laser.
All right. According to the rumor,
this is potentially tied to Igor's Labs findings that have shown that the performance in games,
even tier one games,
so those are the ones that perform best on arc does not scale well with resolution and can have brutal API overhead.
This points to a potential hardware flaw in the scheduler,
which would also help explain why the performance can be so bad without resizable bar enabled.
In his testing at low resolutions like 720p,
the A380 struggled to get above 100 FPS, even though it was close to that mark at 1080p,
which is a lot more resolution.
Can the viewers actually even hear that?
It doesn't seem to be bothering them. Is that is that a is that a fan?
I think so. I think it's got to be a fan.
Sounds like a fan or a pump or something.
All right. Well, at any rate, Moore's law is dead.
It's been saying for a while that Intel manufactured their cards in Q1
and that those dies have been just sitting in a warehouse waiting to be packaged.
When they made these chips, they assumed that the driver problems could be solved in the next couple of months,
then in May or June realized the problems were there to stay.
So and this is all allegedly they axed the A780,
which was supposed to be allegedly the top tier card,
which Intel says never existed and will only be launching the lower end cards.
Apparently, there were inconsistencies between what we were shown when Intel was here the other week
and what is being shared internally.
So there's a thing here with some skews.
Okay, above is apparently a schedule handed out within Intel.
I guess I might as well just screen share with you guys.
Here is my screen. Here you go. Some skews with some launch sketch.
So here's A360 at week 25, which is mid-June,
and then supposedly early July, we should be seeing A770, A750,
and then later on the middle tier.
So entry-level, high-end, and mid-end.
The cards were supposed to start launching at this point, AIBs.
So AIBs would be the add-in board partners who actually manufacture the finished cards.
Intel just makes the chips themselves.
At this point, AIBs are still in the dark as to what's going on.
Here are some quotes, also from Moore's Law is Dead.
Source one, to this day, we don't know what's going on.
Source two, why do you keep asking if ARK is launching this month?
We have no evidence that it's in this quarter. Source three,
we're going to sit this gen out as much as we can without entirely burning bridges.
It's just taking too long and we resent being strung along like this.
This apparently is backed up by leaked internal Intel documents
where the general availability date is still to be determined.
Even a couple weeks ago, internally Intel was saying cards would be delivered to SIs in July,
but July is going to be over on Sunday.
I don't think they're going to be doing a lot of deliveries on Saturday and Sunday.
Yeah, probably not.
And you still cannot get an ARK in a system integrator system.
A more recent Intel slide says ARK story, not ARK launch in September,
all of which means that as of a month ago,
Intel was saying they would be launching all SKUs to OEMs in July,
and add-in board partners would be launching in August,
but it is now August, essentially,
and add-in board partners still don't have the final bomb and design for any of them,
let alone the entire lineup.
It should be noted that when Intel came here,
so I'm off the script now,
when Intel came here, they showed us an Intel first-party board,
not a third-party board.
Whereas the A380, the one that's actually already launched,
well, that was with third-party board partners.
Anyway, apparently all of this has, quote,
annoyed executives at Intel because they don't know what an ARK story is
and are tired of the chaos.
This annoyance can be felt in this quote from Intel's latest earnings call.
So this is from Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.
This quarter's results were below the standards we have set for the company
and our shareholders.
We must and will do better.
The sudden and rapid decline in economic activity was the largest driver,
but the shortfall also reflects our own execution issues.
We are being responsive to changing business conditions,
working closely with our customers while remaining laser-focused on our strategy
and long-term opportunities.
Boy, is that ever a lot of words without saying anything.
That sure is.
We are embracing this challenging environment to accelerate our transformation.
That sounds like CEO talk to me.
Yeah, that didn't even really sound like annoyed with ARK specifically,
but I, you know, ARK is certainly something that hasn't gone perfectly this quarter.
Yeah.
Here are some leaked internal discussions allegedly.
There are high-level discussions going on regarding the cancellation of dedicated desktop ARK cards.
Data center stays for now,
but the dedicated gaming card may be canceled before Celestial even gets a chance.
Another source apparently said Tumor's Law is dead.
I cannot confirm the cancellation of discrete gaming ARK,
but I also can't say it isn't being considered.
It could be.
What I can confirm is no good news is coming out of the graphics division at the mid-level,
and if they do cancel Battle Mage,
marketing will still hype up ARK until that decision is actually made.
Now this rumor I've also seen.
There could be plans to have an Alchemist refresh in 2023
instead of launching Battle Mage because that is allegedly also having issues,
which could suggest there are silicon-level issues with Alchemist that can't be sorted out with drivers.
That would be, if you're going to refresh a sort of mediocre performer,
you'd think it was to like, fix something, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
This sucks.
Because I want this to do well because more competition in the GPU space would be good.
But this sucks for two reasons.
One, more competition in the GPU space would be good.
If it's not competitive, it doesn't really solve that problem.
And also if it isn't allowed to stay on the market, it by default doesn't solve that problem.
So hopefully they can figure it out.
Now, obviously Intel isn't just taking this,
these, whether you want to call them leaks
or whether you want to call them rumors or allegations or whatever,
whatever it is.
They're not just ignoring this, believe it or not.
I would have kind of expected Intel to just say,
sorry, no comment, you know, until we announce something, it's not happening.
But Raja Keduri has already responded to tech journalist Anshal Saag saying,
thanks Anshal, we are very much committed to our roadmap.
We are ramping Alchemist and will continue to improve the experience.
You will see more updates from us this quarter.
AXG is also on track to ramp four new product lines by the end of the year.
Wow.
Now, some of these things do kind of jive with my vibe,
if I could kind of put it that way.
So the overall opinion from Tom at Moore's Law is dead,
is this Intel manufactured the dies in Q1 with plans to sell this summer.
Then things went quiet until the recent media blitz that we were part of
and probably was brought on by our brutal A370M review.
Apparently this media blitz took people internally at Intel off guard
because in there it's still a poo show
and they have no clue when things will actually be launching.
Tom, and this is Tom from Moore's Law is dead,
read is that sometime in Q2 they discover
there's a fundamental hardware flaw that can't be fixed with drivers
and will require adjustments to silicon.
The problem is your shareholders, right?
They need to get what they've made out now
and launch it as low-end cards in order to recoup at least some of the cost.
All of this has prompted the top brass at Intel to seriously consider
if this is worth all the work given the problems with Alchemist
and apparently Battlemage.
Sag.
I don't know, man.
I have a hard time believing that Intel would allow this to be another project,
Larrabee, especially when you go back and look at Larrabee.
Was Larrabee really a failure?
Obviously as a desktop GPU, absolutely.
It never even made it across the line,
but it would become a Knight's Landing, Knight's Corner.
It would become Xeon Phi,
which was a viable product line for Intel for years to come.
And given that even the rumors seem to suggest
that the data center product is not going anywhere,
if you're going to build the data center product,
I mean, doesn't it just make sense to also have a consumer product?
Shouldn't you have as broad a product line
if you're going to build this IP as you possibly can?
I mean, there's a reason that Nvidia and AMD are doing that.
It's not though to be clear.
It's not that there aren't companies entirely focused on widely parallel compute devices for the data center.
So yeah, this is one of our discussion questions from Alex who prepared this topic.
As seen below, it's not like CEO Pat Gelsinger isn't against killing something that isn't working out.
Optane has now officially gotten the axe.
But the thing about Optane... Optane ran for a long time.
It did, but for Optane, the writing has been on the wall for much longer.
I mean... That's what I'm trying to say.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, I could have said it a lot better.
But yeah, Optane has been around for a long time.
When's the last time you heard about it?
Well, the issue is that Micron pulled out.
So Intel was left with basically no actual manufacturing capacity for Optane.
And then if... Didn't this say they had a ton of inventory still?
Yeah, and they had a ton of inventory that they were selling through.
The really wild thing is that... I guess we're changing topics now.
The really wild thing is that the Optane team was apparently showing off benchmarks
for their persistent Optane DC modules like a few weeks ago.
Look at this. This is next-gen Optane modules to go with Sapphire Rapid CPUs.
This lines up with what the previous topic was saying, though,
where they were saying marketing will keep pushing it up until the exact moment that it's cancelled.
So then I think in... Back to this topic...
Let me have a look here.
Back to this topic. What I was told prior to WAN Show...
It doesn't appear to be in my notes,
but what I was told prior to WAN Show is that we can expect a statement soon.
It's possible that this tweet from Raja Keduri that I read out to you guys earlier is the statement,
but I was told by Ryan Trout that we could expect a statement refuting these claims.
Man, I don't know. It's going to be hard for us to say anything without looking like idiots in six months.
You know what I mean? I mean, that's the reason that we don't really focus on rumors here.
We tend to wait for the actual product to arrive.
So in our case, we had an actual ARK Alchemist GPU that we were able to, in a limited capacity,
use and evaluate. And then, you know, from my perspective,
that's it until I get retail hardware that is actually launching and then I'll be happy to evaluate it again.
But you can't ignore rumors like this.
I mean, this is explosive for them after all these years,
after all these millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to just say,
you know what? Screw it. No GPUs. We're done.
We're out. It's weird. I don't like it.
I don't like it. It's hard to take off the,
I don't even know what hat you would call this, but the person who wants Intel to make GPUs hat,
you know what I mean? The enthusiast hat. Yeah, yeah, the enthusiast hat.
It's hard to take that off from a business perspective. Honestly.
I get it. If you have, if you have all this money going to this product,
if making it for literally any amount of time further is going to cost a massive amount of money,
like this, just just knowing what like the engineering that's going to have to go into that,
et cetera, is going to cost like it will be piles of mountains of money.
And you know that your next release is like already screwed.
Yeah, I can understand questioning it from a business side.
But yeah, you don't go out of your way to lose money for 24 months.
Yeah. When you've already been losing money for 36 months.
That's a, that's a long time to get literally zero
ROI like Intel. I mean, we know some of the high profile people working within the ARK group.
I mean, it's not like people like Tom Peterson,
Raja Khadoori, Ryan Trout for that matter,
like even the ones I can name off the top of my head ain't cheap to put it mildly.
And that's just, I mean, that's the tip. Yes, very surface, the snowflake on top of this iceberg,
right? So I get it. It's expensive project.
I at the same time putting the enthusiast hat back on,
it would be really good if, if, and then this is,
this is where we get into problems because if they don't then it doesn't solve that problem.
But if Intel had a competitive GPU,
I don't need it to be, I think some people were expecting it to be like the best one.
I don't need to be the best one. I need to be a competitive GPU.
If it's like a, if it's like a 4060 killer, then sweet.
If it's like better for it for then in a price to performance stance,
or or maybe it wins because it's thermals are way lower or something like that.
Then like sweet or maybe 5060 by the time we get out there.
I don't know, but like and I put on my conspiracy theory hat.
Okay. Yeah. If what Moore's laws dead says is true,
that people internally were blindsided by this media blitz that happened for ArcAlchemist.
If that's true, is it possible that the media blitz was a strategy to generate hype
and generate support for the project
because they knew it was possible that they were going to get the axe.
So it's people internally trying to avoid the axe by making it
by making it public getting gamers getting the community hyped
so that they can try and buy themselves some more resources and some more time.
Is that possible? I mean, I wouldn't put it. It's not impossible.
The iceberg you described has some smart people in it
and especially as you described on top of it, so I wouldn't put it past them.
You know, if this is genuinely the situation that they're in,
I hope that's it then because like I don't want this to go away.
It's really easy to say that when it's not my millions and billions of dollars.
Yeah, for sure, right. So like yeah, keep spending guys get her done.
Yeah, it's not my money. Let's go. So yeah, I hope they succeed
because I want to see it. I want to see it hit market
and I would hope it will do well.
And like if Battlemage is already screwed,
hopefully the third one that I always forget the name of.
Whatever it is. Hopefully that one they're able to fix it for.
If Battlemage is also screwed though. That's not good.
Yeah, because I mean, okay Alchemist not even out yet.
It's now midway through the summer.
So our best case scenario is what Alchemist is out in Q3 at this point,
right? So we're looking at like 2024 version 3.
You need to sell some Alchemist before you can launch Battlemage presumably.
So at best, at best if Battlemage still has problems.
I mean, what was really cool was recently we got to take a look at Intel's development process,
right? When we toured their design facility in Tel Aviv.
And so what I know then from talking to them about how it works,
where the design goes to the fab and then it takes like six to eight weeks
and then it comes back and then they start evaluating it.
They find a problem, send it back to the fab.
Oh boy. Now we get to wait another, you know, however many months, right?
Like if there is a hardware level problem with early Battlemage silicon,
which they would have right now, that could push it into 2024.
Like you said, and so if they're expected to, you know,
sit here and wait another year and a half to have any hope of making,
you know, what consumer graphics card, right?
What $300, $400, right?
Okay, at best the AIB is going to take,
you know, five to ten percent of the margin on this $400.
There goes 40 bucks.
The retailer is going to take five to ten percent.
Let's say worst case scenario, right? Like there goes another 40 bucks.
So that's $80 of your $400. Intel doesn't make every component of the board.
They don't make RAM.
So there goes, I don't know, maybe another 50 bucks, 60 bucks.
These things start to add, how much margin is there actually in making a GPU
and providing a reference design to board partners?
Especially when if Alchemist and Battlemage are both screwed,
what is customer sentiment going to be?
Are you actually going to even be able to ship that?
So if you're making, you know, 150 bucks,
let's say best case scenario, you're making 150 bucks per chipset.
Now, hold on a second. No, no, no,
because I didn't even factor Intel's cost fabbing the chip.
I got all carried away with the extra cost. Right.
They still have to actually fab the chip.
Using up capacity that presumably they could use for something else as they build out.
Oh, that's the really scary one if I'm on the Arc team.
Capacity. Yeah. Now it used to be that Intel had a project.
They set aside their own fab capacity for their own project.
And that to a degree anyways is like it.
But if they could just sell this capacity to a third party,
like a TSMC or like a Samsung,
then all of a sudden Intel's internal products have to compete for profitability
for Intel's fab space with external products.
And it's going to, we know how long it takes fabs to come online.
I know, I know there's been some complaining from the other companies
about Intel getting this like whatever it's called,
but the grants they're getting to set up fabs in America.
Yeah. Now hold on a second. TSMC is fabbing Alchemist,
but I don't believe that TSMC has any kind of deal,
at least that we know of, to fab Battlemage.
So I'm talking about Battlemage
when they're actually trying to get some kind of a return on this investment.
It's like, okay, what's our best case scenario?
Maybe a hundred bucks a chipset?
I'm just, these are random numbers,
but it's got to be somewhere in between $50 and $150,
just looking at all the other components that go into making up a graphics board.
And that's the problem with consumer hardware,
is that that silicon costs literally exactly the same
as what you're going to put in a data center product,
but instead of making, you know, $1,500 on it,
you're going to make 150 bucks,
just because the pricing is an order of magnitude higher.
Sorry, what were you saying? I kind of ran over you.
No, it's fine. I was talking about the American fab,
you know, Intel's getting this, yeah, the chips act.
There's some other companies that are upset about it
because they think it's giving Intel an unfair advantage, blah, blah, blah.
That fab is going to take a really long time to come online.
Oh yeah, three or four years, easy.
And it's not even started construction yet.
Yeah, they haven't even broke ground
because they were kind of putting a gun to the US government's head,
like, hey, if you guys don't like pass this act,
we're not going to like build any fabs here, which is fair, I guess.
So we're like, that new fab isn't even in this conversation really,
because it's going to be so far out
that this thing is probably going to be axed or dedicated to before then.
Now, to be clear, some of the chips act funding is set aside for fabless makers,
but a big chunk of it is set aside for semiconductor fabrication,
which Intel is one of the top three
and TSMC and Samsung probably aren't building fabs in North America anytime soon.
Actually, I thought TSMC was looking at something.
Well, the chips act is pretty intense, so they might be because of that.
No, I think even before that.
Yeah, guys, I don't know, that's sort of ringing a bell for me,
but I don't know. All right.
What else is there for us to talk about?
Oh, we should definitely do some merch messages today
because we have a big launch on LTT store.
Let me just head over to my screen. No, it is not the backpack.
Sorry, sorry, not the backpack yet. Very soon, very soon.
But Stealth Hoodie Pro is here.
Thanks, pal. What's new? What's different?
We have improved the classic LTT Stealth Hoodie in every way possible.
It features a super comfortable, sleek-backed tech fleece,
which is two layers of fleece, meaning there's a small air pocket between them.
So it's got quite a lot of warmth for how lightweight it is.
Did you hand me Luke's by any chance?
There is a chance. You do look pretty small.
I think I have Luke's. Let's try this again.
We added supportive bar tacks on the corners of the front Kanga pocket,
an elevated Linus Tech Tips wordmark on the right arm,
and an elevated LTT logo on the left Kanga pocket.
We maintained the foam pocket on the right side, added accent taping to showcase the black...
Is this inside? Oh, bloody hell.
The black and gray front contrast and shortened the hood draw cords for easier use.
And of course, as always, it features a YKK zipper.
So if you're a fan of the classic Stealth Hoodie,
this is the upgrade that you have been waiting for.
It's warmer, more comfortable, and just generally better in every way.
So if you guys want to grab one, now's a good time to leave a merch message.
If there's something that you want to hear us discuss on the show,
when you check out on lttstore.com,
whenever we're live, there will be a field to leave a merch message.
Bell, our producer, is going to be monitoring those,
picking out some for us to discuss, responding to others.
Otherwise, it might just pop up at the bottom.
So you guys can go check that out, lttstore.com.
People are asking about the backpack because we've been saying it's coming soon for a long time now.
We have them in.
There's some speccing out and picture stuff we have to kind of solve.
There's pretty much no chance it's not launching next week.
Love Stealth Hoodie.
Did you talk about these? Are these new?
Yeah, those are new.
They're just a little bit easier to use.
I just like that they're captive.
That's really nice.
Yeah, it's improved in every way.
Okay, I can tell you when we're opening up backpack.
Oh, backpack backorders.
It's going to be mid next week sometime, probably Wednesday or Thursday.
Okay.
We had some issues with some of the pictures.
We wanted to improve them.
Some of the copy on the website,
we have a draft version of the site for it,
or the page for it rather, that has a whole bunch of pictures and like text copy and stuff like that.
Some of it needed to be improved.
The good news is that the early reviews are in and they're kind of amazing.
This one from Steven is just like incredible.
Looking for a quality backpack,
I found it.
This is someone who picked it up at the pop-up shop that we did.
Really amazing, amazing write-up.
And what's really cool is that Steven waited a little bit
and actually did a couple of overnight trips,
including a plane trip, before writing his review,
so he could like really give people the rundown on it.
So, I strongly recommend checking that out.
All right, we should do sponsor spots.
Wait, oh, we have a deal of the week.
Spend $100 and get a free tote bag.
You do have to add the tote bag to your cart
and your cart must be $100 outside of the tote bag cost.
So, if you picked up a stealth hoodie and a water bottle to stay hydrated,
maybe some cable ties, then you are ready to go.
You can get a free LTT tote bag.
And it's one of those like reusable bags that you could use a lot
because like everything we do, it's like way overbuilt.
Looks a little something like this.
There's the black and white one
and then there's also the fun colorful one and we have two different sizes.
There you go.
All right, the show today is sponsored by,
we'll talk about the overkill computers thing by the way,
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and is powered by power over Ethernet.
You can use the link in the description to check out the Ubiquiti store today.
Did you switch to your screen there for a second?
No.
Okay, interesting.
We had some echo.
Oh, weird.
I don't know if it's still happening or not.
But, well, I will definitely mute this just in case.
Sweet.
Uh, do we talk about overkill computers?
Is the audio fixed?
Let's talk about overkill computers.
Fixed.
Cool.
All right.
Overkill computers.
After discussing the OC, which I guess is overkill computers,
controversially last week, they reached out to us, which is cool.
And we decided to hear their side of the story.
So we're going to go through different things that were brought up,
like the cease and desist, the I'm not threatening you comment,
the six months wait thing, the pricing, the NDA, all this kind of stuff.
We're going to go through them section by section.
So starting off with the cease and desist,
this was apparently issued as a last resort after Lucas,
the owner slash founder, tried to reach out personally to circuit board
once a few videos were up.
It was a standard approach for dialogue, basically.
And this is, I'm reading this off the sheet.
I don't know if we got like screenshots of this or what,
but standard approach for dialogue, basically in quotes,
I think we should chat.
When's good for you?
Read receipts were on.
Apparently it was read three times, but was not responded to.
The cease and desist was issued after circuit board put out nine videos,
arguably defaming the company in the videos and in the comments.
Again, as we kind of talked about last time,
at least what we saw, I didn't dive into this myself,
but at least what we saw while we were live on the show,
it was just pointing out that prices were bad.
But there was nine videos.
We didn't see all of them.
So maybe there was other stuff.
I don't know.
Overkill Computers was getting frustrated by some of the comments,
some specifically talking about how one of their staff, who's quite young,
they pointed out and made fun of the amount of thermal paste
that they were using, but it's just a 14 year old.
So like going after a 14 year old on the internet is, you know, not great.
But criticizing a company that builds computers for money
that is improperly using thermal paste.
So it's like you're kind of, I don't know, interesting situation.
We were sent the full cease and desist.
We have it locally.
It looks pretty boilerplate, pretty standard.
Jumping to the next topic, the quote unquote,
I'm not threatening you in the slightest, which is obviously BS.
Apparently the wife of one of the employees
started defending Overkill Computers on Instagram and she was then insulted.
The employee then made these comments and they admit it was in poor taste
and they admit that it was a mistake to engage in that behavior,
which it absolutely was.
Also, you shouldn't like insult someone who's trying to defend
their like husband's company on Instagram, like leave them alone.
But both sides. The six month wait.
Apparently during COVID, all 70 plus customers were told up front
that there was a, I'm assuming this is people,
70 plus people that were affected by the six month wait.
I guess so. I guess so because I'm sure they have more customers than that.
I mean, maybe not. Also that, maybe not.
But during COVID, all 70 plus customers were told up front
that there was a big wait ahead of,
big wait ahead as all parts were getting sourced.
Apparently only a few customers then wanted to cancel and get their money back.
Probably because if you were shopping for a computer at that time,
you were waiting anyways. So it was basically,
you have someone else do the waiting for you or you wait.
Jumping into pricing. The website is bad and outdated
and they're in the process of updating it. Hence the old 11th gen Intel stuff.
So they're going through a website overhaul. That makes sense.
If you make an order, they confirm with you over the phone or by email,
what your parts list is. The parts are acquired once an order comes in.
A big part of the price has to do with paying for customer support
when things break in shipping, company overhead in general work.
Yeah, that's the cost of things from companies.
I don't think we need to list all that. There's a one year parts and warranty on all builds.
That was a confusing part. People,
multiple people were trying to tell me that there wasn't a warranty,
but I checked on their website and they stated there was a warranty.
Right. Yeah. And now they're stating that there is a warranty.
So I don't know where that confusion is from because they actually lay it out pretty clearly.
Sure. And they're reiterating here that it exists.
So like I'm not really sure like who started that,
but yeah, they have a parts and labor warranty on all builds.
Some of the more expensive builds like Project Unknown can involve artists,
painting intricate designs on the cases, sometimes taking 20 to 40 hours of work.
And copy of terms and agreement purchases are here.
Apparently we have a document for that as well. The NDA thing that we heard about that we both somewhat dismissed.
Yeah, I mean, it's normal to have an NDA.
Yeah, 100%. Any company will have an employee NDA.
Like it's just there's stuff you can't talk about.
It's that simple. Yeah. They said that they might not work with embargoed hardware often or even really ever.
So that's not really it. But they they record most of their builds and put that out on content as social media.
So it makes sense when the content is put out.
I'm not really sure what that means, but having an NDA as an employer makes sense.
So I don't really care. And then the discussion topic is interesting but unrelated.
So I don't know if this makes me, well, you can talk about it,
but not like right now. I don't know if this makes me on their side.
They still obviously did stuff wrong.
Yeah, I appreciate the like the I'm not threatening you in the slightest thing was honestly something that stood out to me a lot.
Particularly cringe. It was super cringe.
I appreciate that they just pretty straight up were like that was done in poor taste.
And it was a mistake to do that. I've said dumb stuff on social media.
So have I. A hundred percent. Yeah. So like like real bad. It's it's yeah.
Yeah. So like it happens. I appreciate bad mood like it.
Yeah. Well, and someone was going after this person's wife.
Yeah. It's like, you know what? Yeah, I get it.
So I don't know. It doesn't make me on their side,
but I'm a little bit more understanding now. I appreciate the apology.
I appreciate the relatively quick apology too. I'll say that as well.
It's not like they sat on this like not to drag Will Smith under the mud,
but he's sat on this for like months before making an apology.
That's weird like this was this was I don't know when this conversation happened,
but we talked about this last week like this was a quick turnaround,
right? Yeah, so I appreciate that.
I don't know all the details behind this so the whole nine videos thing.
I don't know if there was stuff in there that was genuinely like libel or whatever.
Yeah. Pointing out the the price discrepancy thing though is fair.
So if that's all that it was, I don't know that's a that's all that was,
but if that is all that was then I don't really agree with the cease and desist.
But yeah. I'm happy they apologized.
I'm happy that they're seemingly not trying to Artesium bills themselves.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was pretty rough.
Rockman o5 Linus say bad things on social media and never.
Yeah. Well that happens from time to time things happen.
Apparently Will Smith apologized long ago and there's a ball man now chats just talking about talking about the slap,
but apparently not to Chris Rock. So I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know wasn't this one more like I don't know.
I didn't even watch it. I'm not going to to be completely honest because I really honestly don't care.
I shouldn't even brought it up. But anyways,
yeah, that's the that's the overkill computers thing.
I'm happy that they followed up with us and I'm happy that we brought it to win show again.
Let's go ahead and have a look at some of our merch messages here.
We've got some curated ones Bell. You got something to read to us.
Sure do first one here is from Alex. Obviously. We are very pro rights repair.
Do we have any plans to do anything for our products in the store?
Maybe schematics or repair guides for the backpack or screwdriver?
Ah, I mean for a backpack if you want to repair it,
I think you get out the sewing kit and you put a patch on it.
If it really comes to that I like I don't like what repair guide do you really need?
I don't want to be like that about it. But it's a it's a piece of yeah,
I don't would you call it backpack clothing? No, right?
Well, it's still text. It's made out of fabric.
Yeah, it's textile is a textile product.
So, you know, if you buy a little patch sew it on I mean,
yeah, if it came to that as for the screwdriver,
we've you're not the first person to ask
and it's certainly something that we have talked about internally.
I think that from our point of view we I mean our policy
when it comes to defects in our in our products is pretty much no questions asked as it is.
So I have a hard time imagining a situation
where you would have a problem with this other than like
that you lost like that you would require schematics for I guess.
I can imagine products that we have talked about privately
but not publicly that could use something like that.
Yes. Now that will be different.
We do have products coming that will make a ton of sense to have maybe not schematics,
but replacement. I don't think schematics would even make any sense,
but replacement parts. Yeah for things and stuff.
But but the screwdriver like I don't know if you if you like bend the shaft somehow
like you're probably buying a new screwdriver.
Well, the thing is if you bend the shaft on this the shaft is is press fit.
Yeah with machinery you do not own and if you do own it,
well, then you probably have a shop that you could just turn yourself a new shaft with
and put it in then by all means be my guest,
right like it's it's a mechanical device where everything is is examinable at a macro level.
Like if you wanted to oh, here's a here's a funny story.
This actually did not make it into the making of the screwdriver video that we shot this week
because we're gearing up for launch.
But have I told the story on Wansho before about how the Chinese factory that we're using now
actually cloned our product and then sent it to us.
What? Okay.
Apparently I have not told this story.
It's a really it's a really funny story.
The point that I'm going to be making over the next little bit is that this is a macro product.
You can scan it and reproduce it.
Like what what like what schematics do you need?
It's not like there are it's not like there are ICS on it that
where it's impossible to term to determine what's under the hood and what function it's performing
and where you would need that in order to repair the board,
right like it's metal and plastic, right?
So what happened was we were working with the Taiwanese factory,
right that was supposed to produce these things for us like a year and a half ago
or whatever however long ago it was maybe a year ago.
And as far as we could tell what happened was they were acquired by a large tool manufacturer
in order to get around the embargo or it's not embargoes, but the tariffs on Chinese made tools.
So so this this tool brand stopped producing in China bought a Taiwan based tool manufacturer.
The one that was supposed to make our bloody screwdrivers
and then naturally stopped prioritizing our product
because they were busy making their own product.
There was not good communication around that.
I don't know exactly who to blame that on but someone
and so our project got just stalled and stalled and stalled
and the quality of the last sample we got from them was atrocious,
just unbelievably bad the worst we'd ever seen.
We wouldn't have considered working with them at that point
even if they we had had the commitment.
It was just it was awful.
So we pivoted we tried to find another factory to do the work.
The good news was that there were a lot of high quality high volume Chinese factories
that were looking for work all of a sudden.
Makes sense. Yeah because of these these embargoes and whatnot because of these tariffs, right?
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, so we found someone really good really high volume really good quality great reputation
and we engaged with them
and it was quite a bit later that we realized that the zinc housing the mold for it.
Well, there were just like a couple of weird like issues with it.
Right? So we got it and we were like,
yeah, this works but it's not the same.
And so what we found out had happened was rather than them making a mistake with our schematics.
We somehow got our wires crossed and our drawings were never actually sent to them.
What we sent them was example proper screwdrivers from earlier on in the sampling process with the Taiwan factory.
So we got back these these Chinese ratchets that were didn't implement any recent fixes
and weren't quite right because what they had done was they had never actually gotten the drivers
or the drawings got a screwdriver and they're like,
oh, we can make this from us the customer and they cloned it
and the wild part is that the clone in a lot of ways was actually better than the Taiwan one.
Even though they didn't have the drawings and the turnaround.
Wow. Unbelievable.
Like they had it back in our hands in like eight days or something like that.
So this is not being a lot cooler than I expected going into this story.
I was expecting like doom and gloom. This is actually pretty sweet.
So we so the good news is these guys are really good.
The bad news is that there.
Oh, is it? I don't know.
I'm changing nothing. So I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah. The bad news is that we ended up burning some cycles on this problem
and and it did cost us it did cost us some time,
but everything sorted out now and once we got the actual drawings over to them,
they were able to do an amazing job and the ratchets that we have now are better
than what we ever had at any stage regardless of you know,
who did or didn't have any drawings from the Taiwan based factory.
This is actually near final and I have a final one in my backpack now.
I because can I say both their names publicly?
Yes, AJ and Jonathan are here for the land and I was kind of showing them around
because since since they were here last, you know,
they haven't been here since ltx.
So since they're since they're here last the the grounds
as I will describe them now has changed quite a bit.
So I was kind of walking them around showing them new stuff
and we ran into Kyle and he showed us the production version.
So yeah, it's pretty sweet. How you like it?
It's I actually didn't get to touch it because I needed to get back to working.
So I was kind of rushing the tour a little bit.
But I've used previous versions and I was already pretty happy with it.
So yeah, I think it'll be good.
I'm excited nice. Yeah.
More more curated messages.
Yes, everyone's asking what happened.
I just blame Colton, you know, he was here last week.
He's not with us anymore though. So don't worry.
Don't worry, everybody. Perfect way of saying that actually dead.
From for main on Linus,
you've obviously put in a lot of new Wi Fi and the mobile signal booster.
Have you ever tested or use any radio survey software such as eekahow?
Have you ever actually mapped your radio signal?
That's a really good question.
I have played around with channelizer back in the day.
Yeah, I was gonna say a long time ago.
Yeah, the Wi-Spy I actually reached out to meta geek recently
because I'm having some issues at my new place
that I think will probably be resolved by spectrum analysis.
If they don't get back to me.
This looks freaking amazing.
This looks super cool design value maintain high-performing Wi-Fi.
Yeah, like I'm we're having issues where in my kitchen,
even if I don't have my microwave on like sometimes I'll Bluetooth audio cut out from like me to you which is wild like my old house.
I could go all the way downstairs and have it working.
It's not even through the concrete floors.
Like I don't get it and then when my microwaves on like everything becomes completely unusable those Sony wireless speakers in the living room.
Sometimes I get cut out issues with them even though they're not even that far away and they worked fine before
so I really need to figure out what the heck is going on.
Bell do you want to note this down because this could be a pretty cool potential partner right?
Like sometimes that's what happens.
We end up doing we end up covering something editorially and then they experience the LTT effects.
They're like I want me another hit of that we're like, yeah, but we already like covered your product.
So I guess now you pay and they're like.
Okay, it's happened so many times.
All right from Adam.
Hey, just wanna let you know I saw the Backstreet Boys and I want to let you know how great of a show it was not trying to rub it in.
They perform 33 songs.
You don't know what you're missing again.
I'm not trying to rub it in well Adam.
You can go this is working.
Yeah, you can go fuck yourself and go Backstreet back yourself.
I am going this summer Yvonne accidentally spoiled the surprise.
Oh, but I have a surprise birthday present and it is is it going to that?
I'm finally going to see the Backstreet Boys now.
We have said that we're at least thinking of planning ltx.
No, no, no, it's this August.
Oh, I'm going in a few weeks.
Okay.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've so for those of you who are not up to date.
I had Backstreet Boys tickets twice.
I've never seen them live and I love them when I was a kid, right?
So I was like, yeah, it's good.
I you know, I go see some Backstreet Boys, right?
I had tickets twice and then ltx ended up needing to be on exactly the day of the concert that I had tickets for this all twice two times.
I missed the concert.
Yeah, so I'm going I'm going no, there will be no emergency ltx this August.
From Justin and a few others, any updates on the 64 ounce water bottle?
Yeah.
Well, they're they're on the boat, but that takes weeks.
And then once they land or once they arrive, they could sit out in the water for weeks.
And then once they actually come on to land, they could sit at a facility for weeks.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
You tell us why don't you ask the nightmare that is the global logistics system now.
Sorry.
This next messages from Dominic.
I really like this idea had to buy a new mousepad because I had a second kids abide by office and big desk,
but my 13 year old daughter loves her new 1500 by 600 pad as a bed rug.
That's another way to buy it.
I'm not going to say that that's an officially supported use case for the LTT desk pad,
but hey, I can't prevent you from doing that.
Just like with right to repair.
We're not telling you how to use it.
I saw someone else in the merge messages today talking about using them as wall hangings for like noise deadening.
I'm like I we have not measured them.
We have no idea what their their acoustic management capabilities are.
That's funny, but hey, you do you, right?
From Ben, do either of you like or follow motor racing
and specifically the technology technological advancements in categories like Formula E?
No, I just don't have the patience for it.
I know if you're super into it, it's deep.
Like it's all like awesome.
And I and I know whoever whoever like bought F1 or whatever.
They've apparently been doing a fantastic job with it.
It's been popping off. There's tons of people talking about what not,
but like I don't even watch sports that I like played let alone anything else.
So yeah, it's not not for me.
Seems cool, huh? From ain't on a screwdriver holster win.
Okay, we're trying to find a good leather partner.
I got some belt samples that I am honestly not that happy with.
So we're still we're still working on it.
I do want to do like a dad Chad.
So that'll be driver holster. Oh the belt. Oops. Yes.
Is this it? Are you going to show it? Am I still wearing my microphones?
Oh, I still have my mic packs in from earlier.
All right, one moment, please. Don't I take those? No, no, I'm good.
Oh crap. This one's still rolling. Man.
Okay. Well, that's a lot of long clip. That's a lot of extra audio
and probably a trip to the bathroom or two on there.
I had no idea that was still going whoops.
Nice. Yes. Oh dead zone asks.
Do the LTT swim trunks have a mesh lining or is it like board shorts?
They do have a mesh lining.
Your donger will not be showing through the front of your shorts can confirm.
Otherwise those would have been some pretty uncomfortable try-on sessions with the ladies and creator warehouse and me.
So this is the this is the like prototype belt.
My complaints are that the the like,
I don't know like the finishing material on the top and bottom.
I'd rather it's just raw leather
so that it still looks like it did when it was new even if it doesn't look as polished.
Yeah, this is really thick and bulky like this whole part here,
which makes it so it kind of like sticks out even through your shirt and makes it kind of hard to like get this in.
I think this is kind of cheesy the LTT on the inside.
I don't know what we'll do. Are you planning on a reversible buckle?
No, then why is it two different colors? I died.
That's a good question. Okay, and this is a little bit too shiny.
I think it's a little bit too dressy right now overall and as much as I love the black finish on the metal.
You can see it's already coming off.
So just like the screwdriver shaft needs a bunch of work.
It just doesn't make sense.
You just have to go for what's going to look good in the long term versus what looks good in product photography.
Yeah, that's just that's just part of the philosophy.
I think going forward for us. We have echo again.
What even can it be? Well, I'll just not talk for a bit.
Does it happen when I'm talking? Is it both of us? Only line is though.
Do we want to do? Is there a merch message that I can cover?
Sure. Well, yeah, I don't know what it is or why.
I was hoping it was a bike and check it off and stuff like that.
From King, oh yes, finally.
I'm really excited for the backpack.
I thought I'm using the backpack to make my travel bag.
Once I'm able to travel around the world,
I'm going to need to use the travel tips based on who's going to use it.
Oh, trying to tie it directly into the backpack.
I think I've got a few it's bring extra cables.
Bring extra use like figure out what your your main device cable is probably at this point USB-C,
but figure out what it is. If it is USB-C, bring some extra USB-C cables.
I would also recommend bringing some extra cables that aren't what you necessarily use.
So say you're like a USB-C Android person bring some lightning cables as well.
Just so that you can aid other people in your travels be the hero have extra battery banks that type of stuff.
Use your bag as the like catch-all solution for like everything usually when I'm traveling.
I have a couple like Clif bars. I don't have to be Clif bars,
but some type of like something that you can eat to sustain yourself.
Just in case you get caught in a bad situation the second you land
because you obviously can't take it across the flight with you.
But as soon as you can when you land acquire water store in your bag.
Yeah staying hydrated is huge. It helps with jet lag.
It helps with just not being at well,
okay jet lag not being as tired helps you just you know,
keep moving hydration is massive.
And even if you're going on a trip that you think is like really tailored and stuff.
You're not at home. So if something happens knowing that you have food water
and like these other supply battery banks whatnot to keep your keep yourself going very easily
without needing to panic and have big anxiety and stuff like that is just fantastic.
So the question was apparently Bell was muted the question was any travel tips.
Oh Stunner Elf on Twitch asks Jesus guys.
Can you like monitor your own stream please?
How does the setup constantly break? The answer is we don't know the computer is cursed.
It has ghosts living in it. And yes,
we are monitoring it and there's no echo in my ears ever.
I don't yeah, there's no echo for me.
I don't know exactly what happened but due to the how the setup is going right now.
I'm pretty sure one of the fins on one of the fan blades for the graphics card like blew off.
Yeah mid like actually broke off and flew out of the computer midway through the show.
So they had to somehow stop the GPU fans from spinning
and put a big box fan in front of the computer all that happened live.
Yeah, well, we were hosting it's just when show things.
Yeah, that's what when we were way earlier when we're like,
do you guys can you guys hear that that's because the the computer was going
where because one of the fans was unbalanced
because the I actually thought it was in the stream.
It sounded like some kind of weird electrical interference or some kind of weird noise.
Yeah. So yeah,
we're you know, we're working on it actual ghosts Raxus over on floatplane says don't take sh** from Twitch.
No one cares about them true story true story for Twitch for Twitch.
I don't feel bad for losing all their creators now.
They made their bed. They no one loves them anymore.
Time to sleep time to sleep twitch go to sleep.
All right, next one. Yeah from a non now that I'm not muted.
Is there anything consumers can do to prevent companies?
I eat Google killing products like stadia
and taking away purchases made on or through their product.
Nope. Not until there's like huge legislation that's going to come out.
That's that's happened recently with stadia.
It's happened recently with with Ubisoft has happened recently with Nintendo.
There was a there was a rant on Twitter recently talking about physical games
and I couldn't agree more if you have the option.
I think it's a good idea to buy a physical game PC games.
You're screwed because you'll buy like a physical case
and it'll just be empty just be a download code which is really annoying.
But stuff like switch like you know,
Nintendo is going to screw you over on your digital purchase.
They have shown historical patterns of this forever.
They will shut down the store that you bought the game on.
You won't be able to download it anymore.
All these things are going to happen if you can buy physical
so that you will be able to play that game in the future.
I would highly highly recommend it. Because yeah games you you don't own it.
They can take it from you at any time
and they can stop giving it to you even though you've purchased it at any time.
And even if you like a game if the community didn't dive on top of it super hard,
like whatever that VR title was with Ubisoft.
It was only like a couple years old or something.
Yeah, what if you bought it
and it was still for sale after they announced they were going to take it offline.
Yeah, like insane absolutely ridiculous.
What about the same issue with digital media for movies music and video?
Yeah. Yeah for sure.
If you want to make sure that you have access to a movie buy them blu-ray.
And then back it up yourself.
From Dylan, how much of the GPU issues with Intel do you think is caused by executives
not really understanding the market if at all?
Well, it's not an executive's job necessarily to understand the average gamer.
For an executive they work for the shareholders
and the shareholders want executives to spend money wisely
so that it generates a return on that investment.
With that said I think the best executives do understand the product
but they also have to understand that other thing, right?
So are the product and the customer, right?
So they also have to understand how to get good investment on money
because if I'm a shareholder my options are to invest in Intel.
So let's say I have a hundred dollars.
I want to invest in Intel and I want to get some target.
Let's say five five percent of that back each year.
That's a pretty like okay investment.
I ideally I'd like more but hey, it's certainly better than a GIC, right?
So I don't really have a choice as an executive is particularly like a C-suite a top-level executive.
If I am not generating an acceptable return for my shareholders,
they will sell my stock which will inhibit my ability to borrow money
which will inhibit my ability to reinvest and basically I'm done.
So it's not that they do understand.
They just understand different things than what you know,
you or I might consider to be important to understand.
And as I said before the best executives will understand both sides of that.
Yeah. Question from Alejandro.
Linus, would you encourage your kids to continue the LTT legacy?
I would only want them to do it if they wanted to.
I mean one of the things that I say to you know applicants,
interviewees, people internally who do work here is that enthusiasm is infectious
and boredom is also infectious.
If you're not actually passionate about this,
you don't actually want to do it if you don't live and breathe it,
you are not going to succeed.
And I know that I've been accused of being like a toxic boss.
You know when I talk about how my expectation is that for you to be successful here,
you are living, eating, breathing this stuff outside of work as well.
But I don't make the rules guys.
That just is what it is.
We are in a hyper competitive industry
where the people that you are up against the young, hungry,
scrappy YouTubers do live this.
They eat, sleep and breathe nothing but whatever it is that they're making videos about.
And so at the end of the day,
I do not determine this.
I'm not actually the boss here.
You guys are and you guys are fickle.
If we do one thing wrong,
we see it in the analytics.
If we do one thing right, we see it in the analytics.
So apparently the echoes back again.
I can't fathom this.
Is it something to do with you activating and disabling your mic possibly?
No? Okay. Well, I don't know.
So I would only want them to do it if they really want to.
Next question here.
Since I am on the Twitch stream and can't hear it,
I'm assuming you're fine.
From Stefan.
I remember Linus talking about his ADHD as a mental health advocate.
I'm curious what sort of things you do as a company to ensure good mental health and care for your employees.
I don't know. I think it's probably better to hear from the employees.
Bell, Luke, any thoughts?
Nothing. We crush people's souls.
We try to destroy them.
No, I don't think there's a huge amount you can do other than just try to be accommodating.
I know like in certain situations,
we've tried to had quiet areas or areas without way too much light.
We have the flex time system
so that if people are having like a really stressful period of time for whatever reason,
they have that option. That might overheat.
That's probably fine. I doubt that's making a difference.
The flex time one is big in my opinion,
because I know in regards to feedback from some of the people that I manage that I've heard,
is that the people that you work with don't always necessarily have insight on what's going on in your real life.
And if something really intense is happening and you just need some time,
it's nice to be able to take some time without major questions,
and it doesn't have to take away from your vacation time
so you don't feel like you're like sacrificing in that way and whatnot.
Yeah, I don't know. There's only so much that you can do as a company,
and there's only so much that you can do as a company at our size.
And I think we, I would argue that we notably exceed expectations in those realms.
But I agree. The flex time is huge and we actually get to use it, which is a big thing.
Like I obviously am a channel manager of a couple different things,
and I got to take a week and a half off and not have to worry about it,
and actually take off and being taken care of and being able to have people listen here as well,
if there's ever any problems, which they're infrequent for me at least.
It's always very listened, especially with Linus who is very busy.
Don't kiss ass.
He'll personally make time, which is very nice.
So we have a good team here for sure.
Yeah, I mean, obviously this is sort of me talking about it.
There are other things that we do as well.
We have summer fun program, which we actually just recently relaunched.
I forget what the exact terms of it are, but I think as long as you have five LMG employees,
we will cover up to $100 per employee for you to just go out and do something fun together.
And we're pretty, we're pretty liberal in terms of what that thing is.
So if you just want to like go blow a bunch of money at like an arcade,
like we're like, I'm sure someone's trying to go to the track and bet on horses.
I saw an application for that.
I think we're probably going to reject that.
That's pretty stupid, but don't really want to support gambling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's really not, that's really not the point of it to be.
I just want to make something clear.
Flex time is separate from the provincially and federally mandated vacation time.
So it's on top of that and it's something that we rolled out during
COVID just to make sure that a people were able to take time off
when they needed it during an extremely stressful time
and be that anyone who was sick wasn't feeling pressure
about losing money to show up at work when they when they really shouldn't be there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to.
There's also the spontaneous day of fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, you can't really count stuff.
That's like a one-time thing.
Why not?
They were asked about things that we've done.
Yeah, we we try to we try to just pay fairly.
I think that's that's something that can't be can't be understated,
right?
Like it's all fine and good if we had like summer of fun,
you know, yeah, we'll we'll cover you like to go do a team building exercise with your colleagues.
It's like, yeah, clearly there's something in it for us there,
but also just like paying people fairly.
I think I think matters a lot compared to a lot of media industries in spite of how competitive we are.
And in spite of the like I said, the this the scrappy the the scrappy up-and-comers that are constantly gunning for us,
right?
Like we we still try to work a nine-to-five schedule.
That's really important to me.
Nine to five, five days a week.
There are exceptions.
The land that we're running right now is obviously an exception.
But for the most part, we try to help people maintain a work-life balance.
There's there's only so much you can do to help people maintain their mental health at work.
You just have to like not be at work sometimes.
And yeah, that's what I was trying to get across earlier.
Like there's there's only so much that we can do.
I can't like yeah.
Yeah, that's another thing too is like just listening, right?
Like there's a limit to what you can do other than just listen sometimes.
Yeah.
From Tyler, always been interested in using an external GPU enclosure with a laptop.
Is there a silence-oriented enclosure I should be looking at?
Is it even a good idea anymore?
Hmm. Silence-oriented enclosure.
I don't think they're going to be silent silent because they all have small form factor power supplies,
which are just not very silent.
I know Gigabyte is still in that market.
I think that there are some more Mac oriented brands that are still in that market.
I'd say that, you know, compared to your laptop, they're probably not any less silent.
As for whether they're a good idea.
Are you sure an RTX 2060 Legion laptop would have Thunderbolt 2?
It's got to be Thunderbolt 3. If it's a Type-C port, it's either Thunderbolt 3 or 4.
I really doubt it's Thunderbolt 2.
But is it a good idea anymore?
I mean, it's not the most cost-effective thing,
but once you've made the investment into the enclosure,
as long as you get one of the more generic ones,
nothing would prevent you from changing out the graphics card as you go.
So it's a one-time cost at the very least.
And so far it looks like Thunderbolt is not going to evolve beyond the Type-C interface
or at least connector.
So yeah, I mean, I'm super into it.
I think it's super cool.
But the most practical thing
and the most cost-effective thing is to have a portable laptop
and then a powerful desktop compared to having like a powerful laptop
that you then like hook expensive dongles into.
Yeah. We're echoing again.
Yeah, I sent Bell a message.
Apparently it's something to do with one of the lower thirds potentially.
I don't know. That was one theory. Right now it's covered,
but no, no, no, it's not the one that we thought it was.
So I don't know. It's a mystery.
Yeah, I don't that would be extremely surprising.
Pretty mild. So I think we'll have to live with it for the next little bit here
because we've we're not quite sure what it is.
Okay. From Samuel.
Love from Quebec. Love the water bottles.
I've seen LMG grow up from the house era.
Are you afraid about the possible coming recession affecting the growth of LMG?
Yes. Yeah, we've been making a lot of investments lately.
The timing couldn't be really, well, it could be a little worse for us,
but we're at a somewhat vulnerable spot.
We're in a, yeah, it's not a great time for consumer confidence to be going way down
for there to be just geopolitical conflict around the world.
And then we're expanding and yeah,
we're expanding, you know, a big,
a really important thing to us is making sure that everyone still has a place to live and food to eat,
you know, taking care of taking care of our own.
So nothing's getting cheaper, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, it's been it's been really, really stressful.
I think last time Yvonne and I sat down and looked at it over the next 12 months,
we're projecting something like maybe 60% of the profit level of what we had the previous 12 months.
So it's been pretty heavy. Backpack and screwdriver,
if they are just smash hit and knock it out of the park successes could change that.
But you know, I'm not going to count those eggs before they're hatched.
Also timing for stuff like backpack and screwdriver is is rough.
They're worth it. They're great products, but they're premium products.
And you know, premium products can get hit by by recessions.
To be clear, the hyper premium product, you know, like your $3,000 pair of shoes or whatever.
I sent Luke a hilarious article that like hyper cars in the UK are up 17% year over year.
It's like, okay, sure.
But it's the it's the premium but not, you know, that tier that tends to get hurt.
Yeah. From Frost Coder.
Always enjoy the Twitter back and forth between Linus and dbrand.
If you had a dbrand your house, what design would you go with?
I'd probably go with a big thing that says f*** dbrand.
Yeah. Nice. F*** those guys. Nice. Fair.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the homeowners Association wouldn't be super into it,
but it'd be there for a little while.
Yeah. Until I get fined.
From anon. I've been getting into pricing together in NASA and some of your videos mentioned VMs.
What would be the use case for a NAS VM for home users?
Well, I couldn't speak from experience here,
but you know somewhere to something to use for all your torrenting
so that you're not using your daily driver machine is something that people would use a VM for.
Another thing you might use a VM for is running server software
that just you don't want to deal with like some command line Linux install.
So Plex media server, for example, can easily run in a Windows VM that would sit on your NAS
rather than having that running on a desktop in your house that might get shut down on a regular basis like a server.
The expectation is that it's going to be running all the time.
It's not a VM, but it's a Docker container, which is kind of related,
but you know Home Assistant is running on in a Docker container on my server.
So things like my lights and blinds would have their commands run through that particular server.
Can you think of anything else? No, that first one,
you know, I don't remember exactly the details of what you're saying,
but that seems like a really good point.
Yeah, if you ever want to just download something sketch and you don't want to do it on like your computer.
Even if you're not worried about the tracking of it, if you're worried about it being bad.
Just like a virus to be clear, using a VM does not mean that it can't spread all over your network.
For sure. But there are malware's that do not spread on your network.
So that could be a way. I mean, Docker containers, yeah for sure.
One thing you can do is that you can access a VM without it actually being on the network.
So you could just disable its network interface and execute whatever executable it was and see if it's,
you know, horrible. So as long as you've got it network gapped,
probably you'll be fine, but not a guarantee as well.
It's not something that we would necessarily recommend.
If you actually want to play around with stuff that you think is like probably malicious,
it should be completely air gapped. That is to say not physically connected to your network at all.
And a VM is sort of inherently connected a little.
Yes. Tom asks if you'd heard of the ODD class action lawsuit,
if you had any thoughts or would be participating. What?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. That's pretty funny.
You can get 20 bucks because of like price fixing on optical drive media and like the 2000s or something,
but you don't have to provide any proof of purchase because the class action found that
like it could reasonably say that anyone who was alive at that time was affected by it.
So you just fill out a thing and you get 20 bucks. Sweet.
Yeah, I should do it. Yeah. Nice. This is in Canada.
Sorry, everyone else. Nice. Finally something for us Canadians.
Yeah, I know, right? Taylor asks, it's so cold.
We win those. Is there a particular channel super fun activity that stands above the rest for you?
Ah, I really enjoyed playing like knee hockey upstairs,
even though I think everyone got horrible rug burns and I injured my wrist like badly like it hurt for weeks.
That was that was pretty fun. I'm trying to think.
In the dark like glow stick fight was pretty fun.
It's like hucking glow sticks at each other. I remember we did something where we were like catapulting water balloons at each other.
That was like the first one. Was it? We hit you right in the junk.
Yeah, I'm surprised that stood out as like a good experience.
I did not remember that part of it to be fair.
I'm trying to think the pranks were really fun. The two like big ones.
Those are really fun. Yeah, the the the office theft prank.
That one was my revenge was so sweet.
That one was crazy because both of those pranks.
I was so convinced by I guess partially mine,
but mostly I guess everyone else's reactions that I started getting wrapped up,
even though I knew what was actually happening.
I started like you had to like go somewhere.
I think I think they like disabled your car.
So I was going to like drive you and my brain wasn't like I need to tell him at some point.
I was like, I'm driving to the airport and like I remember
when we were pretending that the the office was robbed.
Yeah, like people started like running around trying to like see if we could find the person
because if I remember correctly, we had someone run out the back door.
Yeah. Yeah, and I was like, I'm going to find it.
Yeah, I'm going with you. How is it that you get to play both sides all the time?
Every single time about every single prank.
Why I don't know why that's not fair. I think Luke no.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's see Luke naked plant a bunch of cameras in Luke's house for a change.
That's ridiculous. Yeah, that might not be a good great idea.
From truth. Hello.
Thoughts on the call me Chris clap after some time now that six-hour cut is wild.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun on it was funny.
It was good watch Chris is one of the most talented content creators
that I've had the pleasure to work with.
There are there are certain people that are like,
you know, pretty good and then there are just absolute professionals.
Like Justine is just such a pro.
She crushes it Chris such a pro,
you know, there's I don't know there's there's just there's two kinds of YouTubers.
So the ones that there's the ones that are just really passionate who
I think Wouldn't have succeeded in traditional media
because they just didn't have that,
you know that Polish right and that works on YouTube.
It's good to be raw. But then there's the ones that could have done it.
They could have just been that that point zero zero one percent of the population that just just sleigh.
They're just impossible not to like they just turn it on and it's like wow,
you make that look really easy.
I remember when we had Tom Merritt on the WAN show.
Yeah, I was actually gonna yeah and the guy like much smaller audience than us for some reason,
but he basically gave us a lesson on how to host a podcast on our own freaking show.
Right like just approach after that show both of us sitting back and going like,
huh? Yeah, kind of suck at this.
So that's cool. Yeah, Chris Parillo was the same.
The guy was balancing talking about the topics interacting with us
and interacting with the chat and was doing all three of them better than I could do one.
And I'm just like darn. Can you just make tech videos again?
Yeah, like for real Chris. I don't know. He's probably doing these things,
but I don't know probably Star Wars something. Yeah.
Anyway, but yeah, Chris is Chris is one of those people just who is an outstanding wit.
She's sharp. She's always ready with something
and you can really appreciate that over a long tedious many hour project.
The fact that she is on so consistently for so long when she's so tired,
just gives you some idea how talented she is.
Also a savage. Some of her snapbacks were pretty good.
Yeah. Yeah, it was it was to the point where I didn't feel like I had to pull any punches.
No, like I'd go at her. I'd go at her as hard as I as I can at that point
because I knew that I was just going to get it back just as bad.
Like yeah, it's one of those things where I really I really appreciate a snappy putdown.
Like that's that it's it's part of my sense of humor is I like,
you know, got him, you know, like I love it.
I love it and like I'm never I've never serious.
I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I'm not about that.
But I just I do like that style of humor.
And so sometimes I will end up in situations where because I appreciate that style of humor.
I will just I'll go hard at someone and even if they don't care,
even if they don't give a fuck and they're just like I yeah,
I think that's funny. But they just like take it.
They don't dish it back. I'll feel bad.
And then if it ends up on camera, I will look bad.
I will look like just a complete monster.
So honestly, it's just kind of a mental load off for me.
When I'm hanging with someone that is going to dish it back as hard or harder
because I can just let loose. I'm just like yeah,
I'm gonna say whatever the most horrible offensive thing that pops into my mind is
because no one's going to be like a poor Chris.
Oh, what a victim because she's going to be equally evil to me right back.
I don't remember what she said, but she said something that was really good
and I saw your reaction
and I think you played for the camera a little bit
but I could tell from your reaction that the the overwhelming reaction was like damn.
That was pretty good. Yeah,
that was pretty good. That was funny. I like it.
Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I don't it's not it's not going to hurt my feelings.
I don't care. Yeah. Yeah, but I appreciate a really snappy putdown.
I like it. Question from Kayden.
Do you think certificates like CompTIA Plus are worth it?
Neither of us has it. It's kind of an old time thing at this point.
I would argue. I think it was much more viable back in the days of early operating systems
and liquid capacitors less internet less internet.
Yeah, like it was I wouldn't bother
unless there was a specific place that said they were looking for it.
And then I would just get it and that's it.
But like honestly, if you're applying there and they require it,
that's like a little weird. There's some people asking if I'm going to have Chris fix my hair.
No, Tasia already did it so you can see my hold on.
It's not like it's not like done properly or whatever.
But like the fade is good. Yeah, it looks way better.
Yeah, it's fixed up. Yeah. Tasia was the one who coached Dennis.
So I had the pleasure of hanging out with her for an hour and we talked she watched the video
and so we just basically like talked shit about Dennis the whole time
because she's like, yeah, I don't know where any of that came from.
That is not what I showed him like I'm watching the video.
I'm going along. I'm like what the **** is that when he just starts doing stuff.
It's like yeah, that's not how I coached him.
I promise I will give you a competent haircut.
I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I believe you. I'm here. It looks good.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks from Cole Linus.
How much longer do you think you have to wrap up your new house?
What's left and how's the pool progress going?
Are you going to be like that? Because I asked you yesterday.
Why are you going to be like that Cole? Cole?
Yeah, that's who said it. Oh, yeah. Rough.
And I don't know. It depends how much I can turn into video content.
So one of the things that's going to take just a really long time is getting everything
like perfectly cable managed like ordering cables in the right lengths
and getting all the chargers like wall mounted and all that kind of stuff.
So we're going to make that a video. So I've had Harrison working on that for like over a week.
It's great. So things like that will accelerate it.
Theoretically the trades are supposed to be back in this week.
They showed up only today. So I don't know what happened the other four days.
Maybe they'll finish up in the next couple of weeks.
Who knows? They're supposed to shoot the concrete next week for the pool,
but they probably won't. I don't know.
I don't know. The backyard's like kind of exploded.
It's actually a dumpster fire. Yep.
From Si. Sal? Maybe I just have dirt on my screen.
I think it's Sal. Si. It is Si.
Okay, we're good.
What was the decision you made when growing LMG that in hindsight was maybe too much risk?
Doing it at all.
That's a good answer.
Yeah, that's the worst part. That was the dumbest thing ever.
It was so sketchy at the start.
Yeah, it was like you have no idea.
All right. Well from Alex, Linus and Luke,
which wireless earbuds would you recommend? Linus,
were you able to find any replacement for the AirPods Pro?
I still rock the AirPods Pros.
I have not found a replacement for the excellent active noise cancellation.
There is really good active noise cancellation.
Sony's is excellent. Sennheiser's is very good.
LG's is okay.
But Apple's is excellent tier. The size of the carrying case,
like nothing is quite there. LG's is quite strong.
I'm trying to think who else is in pretty good shape as far as that goes.
It's just like, oh, so good.
Mine is close, but not the same.
I don't like it when they go in your ear.
My ears are a little weird and they just push them back out.
So I have the just OG AirPods.
And even though I'm on Android,
I like them the most out of everything I've tried.
So yeah, sorry guys. It is what it is.
Yeah, Adam liked the new Beyerdynamic Freebird earbuds that they just released.
Apparently the battery life is insane.
I think it's 11 hours. Wow.
Yeah, so it's he was pretty impressed with those.
Can't have to check those out. Cool.
From Anon, is there a dream collab?
Anybody that you would love to have on the show or do a video with?
I think someone asked this like last week when you weren't here.
And I basically was like, I don't really watch a lot of YouTube.
So I don't really know. I like people in general, mostly.
Okay, I mostly don't like people, but I like YouTubers in general.
I don't know. There's something about YouTubers.
I just like I'm like, yeah, we all kind of cut from the same cloth.
Like I just kind of get along with them automatically.
So it's always fun, but it's hard for me to just get out of my focus bubble sometimes and think about that.
And to be clear, I like you people. You guys are my tech people.
It's just like when I have absolutely nothing in common with someone.
I'm just a lot of the people that I would say to you.
I don't know a lot of people that I would like to collab with the most we already have.
Yeah, that's fair. That's it for merch messages.
We got a land to go to. Yeah, let's get out of here. See you later.
Bye.