What is up everyone and welcome to the WAN Show!
We've got a great topic for you guys today, that's right, one great topic, it's happened!
Sony has patented the automatic difficulty curve.
Wow!
That and, somebody made the build corner out of Lego.
There.
I went out of my way, Luke.
I went out of my way so hard to leave your topics for you, you couldn't possibly have
chosen either of those.
No, I didn't, yeah, I thought you were going to go for it, I thought you were going to
go for it, but anyways, ding dong, the witch is dead, Bobby Kotick is out, and I am a happy
boy, and we'll talk about that later.
Also, Google gives everybody kind of at least like two dollars, maybe more.
What?
Yeah.
Okay, I don't know anything about that.
Yeah.
The show is brought to you by Thorum, Maximum Settings, and Green Man Gaming.
Alright, why don't we jump into the headline topic today, which is of course, that Apple
may be investigated over Beeper.
Gonna try so hard.
Gonna try so hard.
We can do it.
I don't mind waiting.
A consulting firm used AI to reduce layoffs.
We can do that one too.
Sure.
The Last of Us multiplayer game has been cancelled.
Yep.
Yep.
They gotta remaster it again.
It got just as cancelled as me.
It's good.
What, so they're still making it?
Well, no, I'm coming back.
It's a different kind of cancelled.
Eventually.
Eventually.
All right, let's do it.
Ding Dong the Witch is dead.
Bobby Kotick, go.
Bobby Kotick will be leaving Activision December 29th after 32 years, unfortunately, entirely
voluntarily.
20 of those years have been as CEO.
Kotick oversaw the creation of many of the company's most beloved IPs, including Call of
Duty and Guitar Hero.
Does anyone actually beloved Call of Duty?
Guitar Hero, yes.
But as far as I can tell, the only people who hate COD as much as COD haters are COD lovers.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is one of those communities, I do believe.
He was also allegedly in a recently settled lawsuit to have knowingly created and for years
ignored a hostile workplace culture, which has included multiple employee walkouts and
strenuous calls for his resignation.
Also, including, allegedly, things like, you know, I'm going to jump to this screen, where
is it?
I think we need to do like a trigger warning here if you're going to talk about what I
think you're going to talk about.
Yeah.
Okay.
I was going to be somewhat indirect.
It's now done.
But yeah, there's that.
We don't necessarily 100% know what this means, but he was in Epstein's black book.
We'll probably learn, I think, in January?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I heard the black book is going to be becoming a white book with black letters on it.
Yeah.
So we'll know like what that actually means because, you know, just being in the book doesn't
necessarily mean anything.
I don't know.
I think, well, I think the only thing that's happening is they're publishing the flight logs
to the island, right?
Okay.
Well, that would also, that would be, I mean, that's a pretty big tell.
It would be a solid indicator.
That would, that's a pretty, that's a pretty big one, I think.
Yeah.
Also.
Are you in the flight logs?
Because I'd like to get a heads up.
No.
No, we're good.
If I'm going to find out that, you know, I'm going to be under fire because my longtime
collaborator was in the flight logs to Epstein's island, I would really like to know about
it right now.
I like, I like dangerous vacations, but not where I'm the danger.
So I did not go to the island.
Cool.
There's also, like, allegedly he has hid multiple allegations.
Because I've had enough, Luke.
I've had enough surprises.
Dan?
Were you on that island?
We might have to talk after the show.
Dang it, Dan!
How could you do this to me?
This is going in your employee review.
Anyways, yeah, there's multiple accounts of him hiding things that he knew were going
on at the company, including, I'm not going to go into details of things, but including
pretty much the worst things you could imagine when it comes to things like sexual harassment
and sexual misconduct at a company that should definitely have none of that.
There's also the time that he called his assistant and left a voicemail threatening to kill her and then settled a legal agreement for it.
So that's another allegedly.
But just in general, I'm very happy he's gone.
So that's, that's great.
Microsoft has not appointed a direct replacement for Kotick.
Hold on.
Here's my question, though.
Before we get on, before we move on from that, I mean, what is left of the company that you
loved at this point?
Nothing at all.
Like, is, is there really anything to celebrate?
Like, okay, you know, this is kind of like, um, yeah, honestly, it's like the end of the
dark crystal.
Okay.
So the Skeksis, like, I don't know, they, they eventually die or some shit because they
don't have life force to draw on or, you know, what, whatever ultimately happens to a Skeksis.
Um, but like the world is ruined.
Yeah.
Everything is, uh, horrible.
This is honestly, you know, I'm happy he's gone, but in a way this is actually a victory
lap for him.
Uh.
Yeah, because he waited it out.
Yeah.
He, he had a long, prosperous career in the gaming industry.
Every insane thing that he did that would have, like, just destroyed other people.
He was made of rubber.
He just bounced it right off.
Didn't care.
Didn't even bother him, really.
Well, I mean.
Stock price go boom.
Yeah.
Did it take a hit here or there?
Yup.
And then it went right back up.
We don't know for sure it didn't bother him at all.
The boy makes money.
That is conjecture.
I'm not saying that.
Bobby Bills.
I'm not saying I disagree with your speculation, but neither of us know him personally.
I haven't been to his island.
Have you been to his island?
No, he probably has one.
He might have a few.
Okay.
You can't say things like he probably has an island in the context of us talking about
Epstein's island.
Die.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm just saying that we can't say that.
Yeah.
All right.
That's his opinion.
Allegedly, he doesn't have an island.
No.
Okay.
No, you can't.
Oh, man.
Oh, boy.
Cool.
How's it going, Bobby?
Look, we're...
Just don't get us in legal trouble, okay?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, we're...
We're not in any legal trouble, okay?
It's been seven minutes.
No, no, no.
Microsoft has not appointed...
Did they hear you, Dan?
Were you muted?
No, I think I got muted for that.
Okay.
Microsoft has not appointed a direct replacement for Kodak.
Instead, Activision's existing leadership will be placed under Microsoft's game content
and studio's president, Matt Booty.
Discussion question.
What is Bobby Kodak's legacy?
What would you like to see out of Activision now that he's gone?
Bobby Kodak's legacy...
I'd like to see Blizzard out of Activision now that he's gone, because I never really
gave two shits about anything Activision ever did.
Yeah, me neither.
It's never happening.
Like, Diablo is a stupid, like, gacha game now.
Well, his whole thing was that he didn't want to invest in anything that couldn't be...
I believe his terminology was annualized.
He didn't want to invest in anything that couldn't have a release every year.
Something big for people to purchase every year.
Ah, yes.
The EA strategy.
Yeah.
That was, like, that was his big push.
His legacy for the finance bros is going to be line go up.
His legacy for the gamers is going to be quality go down.
I think that's what it is.
So you can talk about quality go down, but, like, we have to have this conversation.
Why do the gamers keep buying it if the quality go down?
Is the quality...
Okay, this is a tough one.
Is the quality bad if people willingly part with their money to have the product more than ever?
I think it's...
What is quality, Luke?
I think it's, like, addiction.
I think the things that are going up...
So you're saying it's quality crack cocaine.
Quality methamphetamine.
No.
So it's quality.
Wait.
You just don't like the product they make.
I think the...
I think the...
I think things, like, gameplay...
Because if you tried it...
Damn it.
I'm not getting past this one.
I'm stuck here, boys.
Sobcannon asks, well, is there bad cocaine, Linus?
I don't know.
Isn't that where the whole crack...
I don't understand things about drugs, but...
No, crack is the low-quality cocaine.
Yeah, okay.
It's my understanding, but this is all based on me reading on Wikipedia.
I actually know nothing about drugs.
I think that's right, though.
Breaking back division.
What even is this show anymore?
Oh, man.
That's great.
But, yeah.
I don't know.
I'm just happy he's gone, because it feels like now maybe, possibly, there's a chance.
Because I think there was effectively no real chance under Bob.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
How is there a chance?
Because this is Bobby's team.
This is a culture that, for better or for worse, he oversaw.
This is...
Yeah, I know a lot of the team that was good being gone is because he had this philosophy
of Blizzard games and Activision games.
There are a lot of obsession games for people.
So he was like, people are going to grow up wanting to be developers or writers or game
designers or level designers or whatever so that they can work on these games.
So we'll just pay them trash and massively overwork them, and we'll just always have
employees because everyone loves our games.
And that was actually a thing that they actually did.
That's such a quiet, out loud moment.
Yeah.
Like, oh, man.
There's tons of reports of people working at Blizzard and then working at other game
development studios in the same area making similar games and being like, wow, this is
a wildly different experience.
I get paid way more.
I work way less.
There's a bigger focus on quality, et cetera.
Like, this is a whole thing.
Like, I was blown away when I discovered what the margins are like in the model plane industry.
Like, to run a hobby shop, I was just...
This was back when I was working at NCIX, and I picked up some transmitter and, like,
an inexpensive plane because I was like, oh, this seems pretty cool.
And they're just like, kind of...
I wanted to try it, right?
And I was just...
I was chatting with them because I just...
I'm curious.
I'm a curious person.
And I walked into their store and kind of like with Keith's tech shop, there was a lot
of, you know, dead stock.
You know, a lot of...
Like, there were obvious challenges that I was looking at in this hobby shop that was
in, like, Coquitlam or something.
It was just like a random, like, mom-and-pop style shop.
Yeah.
And...
I've always noticed those types of shops have insane amount of dead stock.
Yeah.
And I was, like, chatting with the guy about it.
And as someone who has worked in retail, I have a pretty good understanding of that.
Just because something is $600 doesn't necessarily mean that you are being ripped off.
It could mean that the shopkeep got ripped off at some point.
Anyone could be doing the ripping off.
Or, in fact, there could be no ripping off being done.
And it's actually just a really expensive product to develop.
You can't make any assumptions.
And so, I was just chatting about it.
And I was just...
I was blown away by how little margin there was in it.
And the guy's basically like, yeah, well, the problem is that this is an industry where
the only way to survive is not if you're a more successful businessman than your neighbor,
but if you are more passionate and more willing to do it for nothing out of the sheer joy of
it, because someone else will.
And I was just like, ah.
But it's almost like it...
As far as I can tell...
Now, there's a lot of problems since then.
That was a long time ago.
And since then, there's been a massive amount of consolidation in that industry.
Like, as far as I can tell, between Horizon Hobby...
Hold on.
I don't want to...
I don't want to...
I don't want to say the wrong companies, but...
Oh, not Alerica.
Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, I think it's...
I think it's Horizon...
Here, who owns eFlight?
It's been a long time.
Yeah, Horizon Hobby is one of the big ones for sure.
Between Horizon Hobby and I think there's like one other one or something like that.
They've basically consolidated absolutely everyone.
They own absolutely everything.
And they have all the power.
Hobby Lobby.
People are saying Hobby Lobby is the other big one.
Don't they also like...
Buy like historical relics and hoard them?
Hobby Lobby?
Yeah.
Hobby Lobby.
Historical artifacts.
Okay, that I don't know.
Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal.
The Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal started in 2009 when representatives of Hobby Lobby chain
or craft stores received a large number of clay belay and tablets originating in the ancient
Near East.
The artifacts were intended for the Museum of the Bible funded by the Evangelical Christian
Green family, which owns the Oklahoma-based chain, international staff, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Okay.
This is like a thing.
Anyways, that's a fun rabbit hole people can go down.
We don't need to figure that out right now.
Hobby Lobby.
Yeah.
Own all the things.
Okay, cool.
Anywho.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Traxxas is still doing their own thing as far as I can tell.
I wonder if that's a matter of time.
Anyway.
I've heard very good things about Traxxas.
My point was back then, before as much consolidation had occurred, I was just, I was, I had this
sort of realization that I was never going to be able to make money doing something that
I was passionate about because there would always be someone who was willing to do it
for nothing.
Oh, yeah.
And then I figured it out anyway, which is great.
I get to do this job and, you know, this was pre the sort of YouTube influencer boom.
And these days, what's cool is you don't have to work in the traditional supply chain with
the traditional pressures, right?
There is no mega corporation that's going to come in and consolidate and then, you know,
force your margins down to absolutely nothing and then just, just dominate you with their
retail presence or whatever else, right?
Like you could just, you can just talk about these things and then you can take sponsorships
from those consolidators and mourn what was lost in the small community shops.
But hey, at least you have your online community now.
Yeah.
You know, it's, Luke, it's something.
It's a way of the world.
It's, it's something.
There's only so much stuff you can fight.
I didn't make the rules.
This is something that took me a long time to accept, but it is what it is.
Yeah.
Anyway, I forget.
You can pick your battles, but.
I forget how I got on this topic, but.
Hobby.
Hobby.
Bobby Kotick.
Bobby Kotick.
Yeah.
So, so it's one of those things where, oh, right.
The point I was trying to make is those dynamics existed.
In industries where it's competitive and especially when it's niche, right?
There's, there's an incentive to, to drive margins down.
And the computer industry has seen this a lot.
Like back when I got into the industry, there were countless little computer shops along Bridgeport
Road in Richmond.
They are basically all gone.
Not because Omega Corporation, you know, consolidated and whatever.
Amazon moving into Canada, Newegg moving into Canada.
That came way later.
And I'm not even convinced that Newegg is that successful in the country.
I think Amazon is.
Newegg, I doubt it's to the same degree.
That was just because they were all at each other's throats.
They would kill each other for a nickel of margin on a hard drive.
Um, and it was because you just had these people who were super passionate about computers and
building computers and electronics and all this stuff.
And I guess what I'm, the point I'm trying to make is that in some industries where people
are excited and passionate, there's always going to be that dynamic, but it takes a certain
type of f***ing a**hole to exploit it, to, to go, oh, this is good.
And min-max it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
His exact terms was that they, they need annualizable IPs that are exploitable.
Yeah.
So when I talk about line goes up, this has been talked about by like a billion people,
but I'm going to bring it up anyways.
Uh, where I have my mouse here, 2003 is when Bobby took over as CEO.
I think it said 20 years ago, you know, that should be right.
Um, you can see how the line was pretty flat before then, Bobby takes over line starts
going up, line goes up, line goes up, line goes up, line goes up, big hit line goes right
back up.
That's why people liked Bobby.
That's it.
Yep.
All right, then when it comes to like nameless faceless shares and people investing and just
trying to make money, it doesn't really matter what they did as long as that doesn't reflect
in line go down.
And when it did reflect in line go down, he got the line back up again.
So nobody really cared.
Yeah.
And he was protected because he got the lineup.
That's how it works.
See me, I'm protect tip, not protected.
Yeah.
Speaking of which, move on.
Protect tip.
Protect tip.
Uh,
Sony patents.
That's the worst thing I've ever said.
Protect tip.
Yeah.
Protect tip.
Can I do like a sad ding?
Like a,
no, no, I'm not done.
I'm not done with that topic yet.
So we're talking about sort of line go up and, uh, right, right, right, right, right.
We're talking about is a game, what's the, is the quality of the game good, you know,
if everybody keeps buying it, something, something.
Anyway, I want to talk about this.
Um, Sony PlayStation is reportedly has come up with a strategy to break through the, the
game's pricing barrier that we've talked about extensively in the past.
Like the fact that a, a, a game has gone from being what, like, excuse me, $59.99 in my
childhood on the Super Nintendo to being like $69.99 today, $79.99.
And again, this is Canadian currency.
So, you know, there's some, some of that's because our dollars aren't doing as well.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, it is, is, is wild when you consider that the, the end credits of a AAA title, you know,
in 1994 was like, it might've taken five minutes, but that was because they had one name on the
screen at a time.
And they'd have like animations between them and stuff.
And stuff, right?
Like not that many people worked on Super Mario World and that was a big game at the time.
Right.
And, um, so, so we've kind of talked about how, how wild that is and how, how is this
sustainable?
And obviously the industry has come up with some strategies, 10 people.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
Like I think when you watch the end credits, um, video, sometimes people's names come up
more than once because they did multiple roles on the game.
Don't quote me on that, but because this would be a memory from like being a kid, but I think
I was like, Hey, wait a minute, I'm not an expert of at Japanese names, but wasn't that
the same one I saw?
Um, yeah.
Don't quote me on that.
Don't quote me on that.
But I've definitely seen it in some game or another, even if it wasn't Super Mario World.
Yeah.
Over 6,000 people worked on Grand Theft Auto five.
So how is it even possible that these games cost the same amount?
Now, obviously there's economies of scale, right?
We're selling way more games these days to a much broader, more diverse array of gamers.
But, and, and, and GTA Online is a huge part of that success.
Being able to continually collect money from the gamers that are playing your game, cosmetics,
all of that good stuff.
But, Sony, and actually Nintendo to a significant extent, neither of them have really embraced
that the same way as other developers have.
Sony still does big single player games.
Nintendo still does buy once, cry once.
We never discount our games, but for better or for worse, you own them, kind of.
Just don't stream them, or have a tournament of them.
Or probably talk about them or something.
Or expect to have your save game, unless you give us a cloud subscription fee.
You know, just Nintendo things.
Seem like an intense bunch over there.
So Sony has a plan, or PlayStation, excuse me.
They're reportedly planning on selling games in parts now.
For $50 each, which would raise overall prices.
I have no idea how the math works on NicheGamer.com.
But by my math, would raise overall prices by $80 to $100.
Not to $80 to $100.
Because, according to the article here, they are, and this is from the leak from Insomniac Games.
According to the article, they are planning to release the next Spider-Man game in three parts for $50 each.
And this is something we've seen before.
Last of Us, with the Final Fantasy VII remake.
Wasn't that a big thing with Telltale back in the day?
Is episodic gaming back?
Is this, and, and, whatever you want to brand it.
Episodic gaming, one game in parts, however you want to sort of brand it.
Is this a reasonable compromise to you?
So, hold on, hold on.
I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Okay, so Bobby Kotick, for better or for worse, figured out a way to make that game company successful for its shareholders.
And if it isn't successful for its shareholders, it won't exist.
Yeah.
Which is a cold, hard truth.
And it sucks, but it's, it's cold and it's hard and it's the truth.
Nice.
Is this a better solution than some, you know, refried beans, you know, we scraped some cheese off the floor, we threw it kind of back in there.
And it's, it's, it's Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, the second Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops.
So my counter to that is that you're assuming that it's not just going to be both.
Well, these are single player experiences.
Okay, they probably will still have some cosmetics.
I'm sure you can buy a Spider-Man suit and, you know, flamboyant pink if you really want to or whatever.
But like, is this, is parts of a game better than a whole other game that's just like a crappier game?
Like, would you rather have bought Baldur's Gate 3, but three times because one of each act, one for each act, sorry.
And for like $150.
Yeah.
Or would you rather, or, or, or, or would you rather have, well, okay.
Or would you rather have Baldur's Gate 2024, Baldur's Gate 2025, Baldur's Gate 2026, and them not be an enormous, beautifully voice acted, rich, immersive game.
Now, obviously, okay.
They made it work with Baldur's Gate 3.
Yeah, they smashed it.
But the thing is that they took a home run swing.
They did.
And those home run swings either go over the fence or they're a pop fly and you're out and you're done.
A lot of company, a lot of companies die because of that.
Obviously, they killed it.
Amazing game.
Yada, yada.
Look, I was talking to a creator not that long ago who was planning to alter their release schedule from more frequent to, I think, their target was going to be one a month or one every two months.
Hold on.
With the rationale being that Mark Rober does it.
Ooh.
And I kind of went, right.
But here's the problem.
There is one person on Earth who is Mark Rober.
His name is Mark Rober.
Just because Mark Rober can consistently knock it out of the park or at least into the upper bleachers, right?
Just because he can do it.
The guy's a literal rocket scientist, okay?
And no offense, this was a very, very smart person who I respect a lot.
If they're watching, you know.
But they're not Mark Rober.
I'm not Mark Rober.
Maybe someday Mark Rober won't even be Mark Rober.
Like, to do that forever.
You also need to be in the right, like, content sphere as well.
Yeah.
Because you might make a type of content that even if you did smash it out of the park,
there just isn't enough people that are interested in that at all to watch it.
So, like, there's some problems there, too.
So, it's very, it's very, very, it's very challenging.
It's a challenging business model to just swing for the fences every single time.
It's like, it feels, it feels dangerous.
So, are we back to episodic gaming, and is it here for real this time?
I guess is my question.
Is episodic gaming going to fix, going to fix that?
Because I feel like it's not episodic gaming.
I feel like it's one game, multiple parts.
Because, like, if it was episodic gaming, it feels like Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne.
Is the one.
In that case, I'm totally down.
Genuinely good expansions, totally down.
If Baldur's Gate 3 was like, hey, there's an Act 4, it took us a long time, it's going to cost some money.
I'm down.
Okay, so then you are down.
I'm totally down.
But, I don't think this is what they're talking about.
Did you play Wolf Among Us?
No.
Have you, did you play any of Telltale Games' games?
No.
Okay.
So, what's, I guess, so then I can't even have this conversation with you.
Okay, Dan, did you play Wolf Among Us?
Yeah, I played Among Us.
Okay, cool.
Wonderful.
Wait, hold on.
No, I just, I had to make that joke.
I'm sorry.
No, I played, I played that.
Yeah.
Yes.
Sus.
This guy's sus.
No.
Okay.
Is it one game?
Eh.
Or is it six games or however many pieces it was in?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's, it's difficult.
Like, if it's all DLC, right?
The story was certainly not over after part one.
And as someone who wasn't familiar with episodic gaming, I was like, kind of annoyed.
Like, when's the next part coming out?
But I mean, that's the result, right?
Give me, give me Half-Life episode one, Half-Life episode two, same sort of vein, maybe?
Yeah.
Like, the story wasn't over.
I don't know if I agree, though, because like.
But were they full price?
Were they like $60 for each of the six?
No, they were, I forget, how much was episode?
BG3 hits a conclusion.
It could continue, but it hit a conclusion.
Warcraft 3 hit a conclusion.
It obviously could continue because Frozen Throne, but it did hit a conclusion.
Like, these are games that come to an end.
Yeah.
A reasonable end.
But you could continue the story.
It's not a problem.
Yeah.
But it's, you're not feeling left out.
It's not like, oh, and they just entered the building that they've been trying to get to this whole time.
$20, please.
Please buy part two.
I think there's a level of intention, in my opinion.
Because I've seen some games that launch with day one DLC that's on the disc.
You know, that sort of thing.
But if you're kind of releasing a $30 game, and you're reusing the same assets, and you're kind of just expanding on the story, and maybe there's more work that has to be done that way, I could see that as a reasonable level of business model.
I don't think just expanding on the story is fair to the writers.
Just saying.
I mean...
Yeah, get out.
No, I mean...
Okay.
Sorry, I meant, like, from the non-technical side of things, right?
You don't have to remake the engine or redesign the concept or anything like that, right?
I don't know, man.
I think that you put a lot of pressure on yourself with an episodic model, though, because people are not necessarily going to...
I think that whether it's developers putting pressure on themselves, or whether it's gamers putting pressure on developers, there is some expectation that if you have five episodes that release over a span of several years, the last episode is probably going to look a little better than the first one.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, Star Wars Return of the Jedi, the special effects are a lot better than A New Hope, because they, like, are, and probably should be.
Like, I don't think the technical team just goes on permanent vacation after you release episode one, and you just leave it completely to the storytellers.
I think you'd have to keep that somewhat within reason.
What about...
Sure.
It's still very likely that they're not going to iterate on the engine itself, but they might get better at doing certain things.
Yeah, I could see that.
They might expand their library of tools that the level designers and stuff can use.
What about, like, the requirement of the player to buy all, every single expansion just to get the complete story?
Well, the thing is that I actually...
Okay, so I don't mind that, and here's the reason.
Basically, episodic gaming is a tax on the people who can't wait to play it.
And that already exists.
Is it?
Yeah.
Can't wait to play it?
Yeah.
Because you're saying it's going to be discounted in a bundle at some point?
At some point, if you're patient, just like with any other...
Just like with a game that is in one piece, you can buy it at launch, and you'll pay $80 or $90 or, I don't know, however many dollars.
This all seems to be very much in flux right now.
The games industry seems to be trying to figure out how to make that number higher.
And I get it, because we went from 10 people working on Super Mario World to 6,000 working on GTA 5.
It's unfortunate timing, because the entire world is broke.
But yes, I also understand it.
Yeah, but like part of...
Calories are very difficult.
What did they say?
They lost like 5,000 or 6,000 jobs or something like that?
Like you're not going to fix people being broke by developers not getting paid enough.
Yeah, no, I'm...
Both sides of this suck, basically.
It just sucks.
So, one way or another, if you were so excited to play it that you're willing to buy it in pieces for $50 each,
and then if at the end of the day the whole thing is available for probably some reduced rate,
because games do go down in price as long as they're not made by Nintendo,
is it really any different than what we're doing now?
Like, what difference would it have made?
That's what I'm almost kind of trying to want.
Like, is Anno, whatever year it currently is, is Anno 18 whatever?
1800.
Oh, I thought it had additional...
They all add up to 9.
Oh.
I know.
Fun, right?
Yeah, that actually helps, but...
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Anno 1800.
Is that episodic gaming?
No, that's expansion packs.
Those are expansion packs.
Yes, those are expansion packs.
See, I don't think I like episodic gaming.
But I actually very much like expansion packs.
I am very down with expansion packs.
I also don't see expansion packs as DLC.
Okay, so...
I think they are...
It has to be different.
I see DLC as, like, you have a new shirt.
Let's go to a movie.
Okay.
Okay.
Is Empire Strikes Back an expansion pack?
Yeah.
Or is it an episodic game?
Okay, so now we're getting weird, because I don't think it's either.
I think it's just the next one.
What I'm asking is, did A New Hope give you enough closure to the story that you consider
it to be a standalone piece of media?
If there's, um...
What about A-plot and B-plot?
Like, Star Wars, all of them would be the A-plot, and then each individual episode's more like
the B-plot, and they resolve every episode, right?
Yeah, that's the point I'm trying to make.
So, my counter here is that each movie is a substantial enough piece of content that
I don't feel like it would be considered a part.
I don't know.
There were some balls bluer than the surface of Hoth after Empire.
That story was clearly not over.
Yeah.
But it was a full movie.
So, like, if we're taking Spider-Man, I believe that's a Sony game with Sony IP.
If we're taking Spider-Man, not the movie, but the game.
If it just chops literally midway through the game, then that feels like I'm getting
ripped in an episodic way.
Sure.
But if they're like, this is episodic gaming, you get a whole game, and then later you get
another whole game.
It's like, okay, sure.
I don't think that's what they're going for.
I don't think they're trying to deliver two movies.
I don't think that Luke and I are ever going to see 100% eye-to-eye on this, because, honestly,
I am mostly just kind of talking through it.
I don't really know how I feel about it.
And I think it's going to come down to the individual IPs.
And how they get handled.
Because I can fully imagine that there's going to be scenarios where this is totally fine.
And I'll tolerate a lot of bulls**t from something that I'm really, really excited about.
Yeah.
I am still playing that stupid f***ing Fantasian game.
I've put another probably 12 to 15 hours into it in the last couple of weeks, because I'm
just like, darn it, it's beautiful, and the music is amazing, and it sort of tickles all
the right spots on me for that kind of retro RPG sort of vibe, but with some modern sensibilities.
But it's a bad game, and it was done as two parts.
I shouldn't say it's a bad game.
It has very big problems.
And some of them are caused by the fact that it was done in two parts.
And it was done in two parts for business reasons.
In this case, not to make you buy part one and part two, but to keep you subscribed to
Apple Arcade.
And I put up with it.
So, basically what I'm saying is I'm just as bad as all of you.
Not quite.
Who are, well...
Not quite.
I am giving...
Do you know how much I've spent on Apple Arcade?
Because I have taken so long to finish the game, and I have been just like...
I know someone personally who has spent over $2,000 on League of Legends skins, and I guarantee
you in saying that, there will be a bunch of people in chat that are like, that's low.
I don't think it's the same.
Okay.
Do you want to know how much I have spent on Apple Arcade?
$150.
Hold on.
I don't know how much it costs monthly.
That's my guess.
So, it's $6.
Billing problem.
Okay.
They didn't manage to take the $6 from me there.
Okay.
I got a few billing problem things.
Someone in Flowplane chat, $4,900 on League skins.
Hold on.
Okay.
I got to add this up.
$12.
Damn.
$18.
$18.
Oh, they increased the price?
Someone who apparently spent a few grand on Valorant skins.
But why?
Someone in Flowplane chat, I mean, I spent $15,000 on a pay-to-win MMO, and let's not even talk
about Overwatch 2's complete farts of a sequel that I lost money on.
Okay.
Well, I've only spent $34 on Fantasian.
LOL.
Just my CS2 skins are $6,000 USD.
Not League, but $4,712 in Star Citizen.
Yeah.
I don't think it's the same.
$24,000 on Puzzle and Dragons.
I also would have spent about double that if my subscription hadn't had a problem because
the only reason I didn't fix it was because I didn't know because I didn't check that email.
So I would have spent like $70 on Fantasian, which I guess is a perfectly reasonable amount
of money to spend.
I'm on the final boss now.
Okay, the point is...
I don't remember what the point is anymore.
You made your point.
How about that?
You happy?
Yes.
You feel good?
Yep.
You like that?
All right.
I don't know.
Episodic gaming.
I see the problems, but I think we're going to accept it for the IPs and the experiences
that we really love.
I mean, if Valve came out and said, yeah, we're going to do episodes three, four, and five,
people would buy the f*** out of them.
Oh, yeah.
No question.
I wonder how much...
They would pre-order the f*** out of them.
Do you think there's a risk here of shoot self in foot?
Like, what if episode one comes out, it's cheaper than you'd normally sell a full game
for, and people don't like it, and they don't buy the further episodes.
I mean, if I had to guess, I'd say that might be the problem with episodic gaming.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not in the boardrooms at any of these, you know, at Telltale or at Valve
or whatever.
Does Valve even have a boardroom, or do they just have, like, lounge chairs?
I'm not sure.
Probably lounge chairs.
Who knows?
Are the lounge chairs in New Zealand, or, like...
The boardroom is one enormous circular table that everyone can fit at.
Yeah, I don't know.
Because the first thing this makes me think of is things like Telltale Games, where the
first one that comes out has a ton of hype, and, like, everyone plays it, and then the
further episodes come out, and people fall off.
Yeah.
Yeah, Knight Aaron Dykes...
I don't know what this is.
Anyway, the point is, that says people are accepting it with the Final Fantasy VII Remake
and are paying $70 for Part 1 and 2, with the supposed Part 3 on the way and a potential
Part 4 coming too.
Yeah, I mean, personally, I'm just gonna wait.
$280 for one game?
Yeah.
It's all just Final Fantasy VII?
Well, Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is...
Has...
The story has apparently been retooled significantly, so that they do kind of stand alone.
But it's just Final Fantasy VII.
But it's Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.
But what are the parts?
Is it all just Final Fantasy VII?
I mean, theoretically, I guess...
Like, this isn't...
You're not getting 7, 8, 9, and 10 or something?
I mean, Final Fantasy VII came on...
I think it was four discs, so, like, you know, it doesn't seem that unreasonable.
I mean, the last disc was basically just, like, very little content because it had to contain
so many of the areas that you had already explored, but that's neither here nor there, Luke.
Each part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake feels like a complete game.
If...
So then if you're okay with that, then it's all good, right?
I am personally okay with that.
Well, then what if the writers for Baldur's Gate 3, who are obviously very talented...
Yeah.
What if they were just given the objective of making Acts 1, 2, and 3 tie up in a nice
little bow at the end of each one, and then they could release a year apart and, you know,
give everyone something to do in that constant cash flow?
I don't think it would have worked as well.
Look, it won Game of the Year.
Yeah.
So obviously, to go back and say, well, maybe we should have done it, is kind of stupid
because it's been a huge financial success for Larian and been beloved by gamers.
Yeah.
But we're not talking necessarily specifically about Baldur's Gate 3.
We're talking strategically about how swinging for the fences every time may not be viable
for everyone whose name is not Larian Studios.
Yeah.
Because I pretty much guarantee you whatever...
They're not Mark Rober, you know?
Yeah.
You're not Mark Rober.
You're not Larian Studios.
Sorry.
Yeah, because I can pretty much guarantee you...
I'm not trying to make games worse.
I'm trying to have a conversation.
I think it's a risky move.
Just like not doing it is also a risky move.
I think there isn't really, like, a safe bet here because if you release and Act 1 is bad,
you might be able to decide to just stop making the other ones.
So that might actually be helpful.
Except theirs was good and they just decided to stop making it anyways.
Whatever.
But yeah, like, so like, that might be helpful from a financial investment standpoint.
But I think your chance at like a really big splash kind of falls off after the first one.
Yeah.
Like, I'm wondering if, like, if Larian dropped BG3 Act 1 and it killed because it would have,
are they going to see the same amount of total success at the end if they release...
They're going to have a full year for that hype to kind of die down for people to get distracted and go play other games.
You know, maybe you don't get the same kind of, you know, incredible community around the game.
Constant discussion.
Like, I'm sure overall it still would have killed, absolutely, because it's a fantastic game.
I mean, we're going to find out.
Would it have done as well, though.
I don't know.
We're going to find out because clearly this is going to happen.
Yeah.
It did early access.
I know they had early access, but...
That's not what we're talking about, though.
It's not the same thing.
Okay, the last thing that I wanted to talk about, like, gaming-wise before we say goodbye to this topic is...
Do I have to beat the final boss of Fantasian, or can I just, like, call it here?
I, uh, you know, it did that, like, classic JRPG thing where the final boss has, like, three stupid f***ing phases
where they get, like, increasingly ridiculously difficult.
I've already spent about an hour fighting it, and then it's like, oh, yeah, it's...
There's another phase.
This is, like, their true god form, and I just, like, I, like, quickly looked.
I was like, how hard is this stupid fight?
Because I, like, scraped by the second phase, and the third phase is, like, ludicrous.
Like, I'm basically going to have to go reload a save point somewhere else.
Like, at this point, can I say, look, I played...
There was a no-progression bug.
This, like, stone golem at a river didn't fall over when I killed him,
so I can't walk over his body and, like, get to some good stuff on the other side,
and I'm just like, can I just be done with this thing,
and can I just watch the end credits, like, on YouTube?
What do you think?
Philosophically, I've put, like, 60 hours into it.
Philosophically, it's a video game.
Who cares?
Well, no, I just...
I just mean, like, look.
Do I...
Have I invested enough time to say, look, I played the game?
I had stuff, like...
Have I told you about my, um...
Oh, crap.
What is the name?
XCOM 2?
Have I told you about that?
I had to just watch it on YouTube.
Yeah, where you had the non-progression bug.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That sucked.
It was a hardcore run, so you only had the one save,
because they wanted, like, if people died and stuff on your team,
there was permadeath,
so they didn't want you to be able to go back and get them back again.
Yeah.
And then I got into a non-progression bug,
so I couldn't load a previous save and then avoid it.
Yeah.
It was so frustrating.
Yeah.
Final Fantasy Tactics was famous for that, too.
I want to clarify, because there seems to be confusion.
No.
Episodic content and Larian releasing Act 1 as a...
Standalone game?
No, not a standalone game.
A early access thing is super not the same thing.
Okay.
Like, very, very, very much not the same thing.
Yeah.
We're talking about marketing investment.
We're talking about a lot of people just straight up ignoring stuff
because of the early access flag.
I had pre-ordered Baldur's Gate 3 because I was a huge fan of Original Sin 2,
and I was pretty sure it was going to be good.
I had it loaded and never launched the early access version
because I'm like, it's early access.
I don't care that people say it's good.
I'm going to wait until it's out.
A lot of people are going to act that way.
It is very much not the same thing at all.
So, just we're moving on from there.
Man, they say I have to beat it.
You don't have to beat it.
Like, leveling in this game is so hard,
and it's because it was, like, part one, part two.
So, the leveling and XP curve is super messed up
because they didn't want you to level too much
toward the end of part one.
And then in part two, I don't know what happened.
Like, there's a whole thing with this game.
In conclusion, don't have Apple fund your game
and make it exclusive to Apple Arcade
because there's a lot of problems with it.
It's going to take forever.
If this was something like Diablo 1,
you would use, like, a trainer or a glitch
to boost your team up,
and then you would just go through the fight.
And by doing that, who cares anyways?
So, just go watch it on YouTube.
But if it was Diablo 1,
then you would just respawn back at the thing,
spawn a new generated dungeon,
go fight level 17 a couple more times,
and then fight them.
The problem is that it's really, really difficult
in this game to farm XP.
That's the issue.
Oh.
Is that it will take forever to grind levels.
And I just don't think I care.
The tedium of that does not sound valuable to me.
Yeah.
All right.
If it was a difficulty thing.
And yes, Jack Smoo says,
you don't have to beat a game
that's basically forcing you to keep a subscription
by making the game harder than it needs to be.
Now, to be clear,
there's a lot of things about the game
that are hard in ways that are really creative
and really cool.
I don't think I have ever played an RPG
where the boss fights are that unique
and that different.
Like, you have a party that's, I think,
a total of eight characters,
and you can swap them in and out
anytime you want in a fight,
except when you can't,
which is really obnoxious.
And I don't think anyone
has had exactly the same strategy.
You know, everything from, you know,
rocks that go around the boss
that you have to, like,
time to try to get your attacks through or around
because different attacks
either strike from the top down
or they go around or they penetrate
or they can be blocked,
but they're more powerful.
Like, there's, there's,
it's actually got a ton of depth to the combat.
I had some people really upset with me
about what I said about Sea of Stars last week
where I said I found the combat
kind of bland.
Is it because of In Contrast?
In contrast to Fantasian and Chained Echoes,
it's, it is bland.
I mean, Chained Echoes is easy.
So that's, that's a problem with that
because it just,
you just highlight any enemy
and it's like, yeah,
here's the weaknesses
and like, here's how much health it has.
I hear all of that,
but Aether Dark in Floatplane Chat
said it well.
He said, you're being milked.
If part of the game design is like,
make them, make them take a long time,
make it, make it really annoying.
They're really invested by the end of the game.
They're going to keep going.
Like, I don't know.
I'll get them hooked on the meth
that is excellent boss battles.
Yeah.
All right.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to cancel
my Apple Arcade subscription right now.
And if you can beat it in time,
then good.
And if I beat it in time,
then I'm done.
And if I don't,
then I'm not.
And as far as I can tell,
my save game will not be retained.
That was a big thing for me.
That's the reason that I waited
so long to play this game.
Your save game will not be...
Yeah, because it's stored in the cloud.
Isn't that ridiculous?
So that's why I held out for so long
until I found out,
because I didn't actually know,
because I didn't look into it,
that the game was completely funded by Apple.
And I was like,
oh, all right,
well, this is just never coming to anything.
Like, I thought it was just an exclusivity deal.
As far as I can tell.
You can't, like,
back up the save game in iCloud?
That's disgusting.
Well, yeah,
but I'm not going to pay for iCloud.
It makes me angry.
I thought there was a certain amount of iCloud
that's free,
like Google Drive.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
Guys, let me know.
Let me know.
Can you pirate the game?
I mean, not unless you've found an iOS emulator.
Like, not that I'm aware of.
So, you know what?
Five gigs of storage for free.
I don't know if that's possible at all.
I just don't think you're...
I don't know if your Apple Arcade save games go there.
Yeah.
Arcade save game.
Apparently, it's restored when you resubscribe,
but, I mean,
after how long?
Because I will never resubscribe to Apple Arcade.
So, I would...
Yeah, I really wanted to wait
until it was available on a platform
where I could back up my save game.
I wanted to play it on PC,
but now at least...
You know what?
I'm saying I've played it.
Yeah.
I left it...
I left it paused last night
because it was really late,
and I was like,
this is ridiculous.
I can't believe this is going to be, like,
another hour of fighting this stupid thing.
His health and his damage double.
With each phase?
With each phase.
And you've seen each phase, right?
I've seen the first two phases.
I'm about to see the third phase.
Okay.
I think that I could just say,
yeah, I could have gone and,
gone and, like,
got the legendary, you know,
whatevers,
and grinded for more upgrade crystals
and whatever.
Is there adventure slash story
to getting that legendary thing
you just mentioned,
or is it just grinding?
Not much.
I've solved most of the quest stuff.
There's, like, this void realm
that you can go to.
As far as I can tell,
it just has, like,
some juiced up versions
of some monsters you fought before.
It seems kind of lazy and tacked on.
Okay.
So I think I'm just not going to bother.
I'll try.
Lazy and tacked on, like,
a pool of experience
that they decided to
increase the difficulty by
so that you had to spend more time
playing the game, maybe?
Yeah.
Fantasian playtest on Steam?
Fantasian playtest.
I know that it's listed.
I know that it was listed on Steam.
This happened well after I had
already moved pretty deep into it.
Last recorded update
was five months ago.
Yeah.
This showed up then,
and as far as I can tell,
nothing has really changed since then.
Mm-hmm.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
It's possible it'll get released,
but like I said,
it turned out that it was
pretty much completely funded by Apple
as far as I can tell,
so I don't know if Apple
is strongly incentivized.
Like, does Apple really need
the, like, you know,
100 grand or whatever
that this game is going to make
when it releases on Steam?
I don't know how much hype
there is around it anymore.
There was a lot of lead up.
There was a lot at the start, yeah.
But now, it's also,
there's also been, like,
a retro RPG renaissance.
Absolutely.
Since then,
where the games just have been available
and you can just, like, buy them,
so there's not a lot of,
and they're going to have to do
a lot of fixes
to make this game ready
for a broader release, I think.
I don't know if I told you or not,
but AMD GPU update
no longer crashing.
Oh, you got a driver update
that fixed it?
Theoretically.
All right.
I haven't had problems since.
I didn't have problems
for, like, six months,
and now I haven't had problems
for, like, a week,
so I don't know
if I trust it or not yet,
but I will probably be diving
back into Final Fantasy VI
this weekend
with the hopes
that it doesn't delete
my progress again.
Oh, Hironobu Sakaguchi
apparently always wanted
to release it
on other platforms
and has been talking about it
a lot because he can't.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense
because Apple paid for it.
What a bummer.
All right.
Oh, we're supposed
to explain merch messages
and do two merch messages.
All right.
Dan, I'll do it.
I'll do it.
Merch messages
are the way to interact
with the show.
Ooh, and we have something
really exciting
for you guys this week.
Have you seen all these?
I was creeping them
before the show.
What?
I was looking at it
a little bit.
Why are you ruining things?
Why are you ruining things?
Luke.
Okay, well,
why don't you show them?
Yeah.
Why don't you show them
the pins?
Yeah, we have
Floatplane Dark Mode
because you can't get it
on the website
so you might as well
get a pin of it.
Say the line, Bart.
Yeah.
Poor guy.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
Then we have
rainbow
and non-rainbow versions
of the Floatplane logo.
These are actually
super clean.
When we did the
like fail print ones,
I was like,
oh, these are pretty good actually.
Like, these are probably fine.
They seemed okay to me
and then these are
really nice.
Ooh.
Sarah did such a great job
of the backings for these.
We've got the rest
of Series 3.
Drew some inspiration
from the screwdriver,
from the classic intro,
from the ABCs of gaming.
And then this.
My personal favorite.
You whined.
You b****.
Oh, come on.
And now you've got it.
Yeah.
The Luke enamel pin
from that old pin series
that had all of the LMG staff
at the time.
Luke technically didn't work
for Linus Media Group
at the time
so he didn't get a pin.
Yeah.
And he has been riding me
about that
for like five years.
Did you see what
the background is?
Yeah, it's Salty Luke.
From one specific episode
on the show.
Wow.
Amazing.
And it's resolved now.
We good?
Nope.
We're good.
So we've got our
Series 3 pins.
I don't remember
exactly how it works
with the like
hollow one.
Hollow one?
Yeah, there's
one special one.
Like the, yeah,
the float plane one.
Yeah, the dark mode one.
I think that one is,
I don't know if you can like.
It says Series 3 on it.
Yeah, but I don't know
if you can choose that one
or if it's random.
Oh.
I can't remember.
Oh.
Anyway,
they're in the bonus bin now
so that's cool.
Oh, hey,
we have a correction
from last week's newsletter.
One of the features
that we mentioned
for our upcoming
Precision driver
is that we said,
and just below the end cap
you'll find what we believe
is a first for a driver
of this size,
organized in-handle bit storage.
This wasn't correct
as the plastic version
of iFixit's Precision driver
does feature
a removable end cap
with integrated SIM tool
and three slots
in the end cap
for bits.
That is a thing they have.
Yeah.
I have never actually used
that one
and the only Precision drivers
that we bought
for comparison
were metal ones.
thank you
to the community
for the feedback
and correction
because I mean
iFixit is still
a collaborator
of ours
so we weren't
we weren't trying
to like
we're trying
to like
dump on their
their glory there
with the
integrated bit storage.
Our bit storage
is differenter
than what they did
and we don't
consider that
the plastic driver
to be a competing
product in any way
but yeah,
we should have
definitely been
more accurate
with our language there.
Hey, make sure
to sign up
for the
Creator Warehouse
newsletter
for more new content
in the next few weeks.
We're going to have
that at the bottom
of LTTstore.com.
All right.
Why don't we go ahead
and get to a couple
merch messages?
Oh, right.
How do you send them?
They show up down here
or they go to our producer
Dan who will reply to them
or forward them
to someone who can help
or maybe sometimes
forward them to me
and Luke to talk about.
All you got to do
is go to the cart
see the merch message box
that shows up
whenever we're live
and type out
your merch message
and then Dan will
maybe pick one
for us to talk about.
What do we got, Dan?
Yeah, I've got one
kind of on the last topic.
If you're okay with that.
Sure.
Oh, no, wait.
No, I uncurated that one.
Never mind.
Loved the ASL discussion
last week.
I actually took
my first ASL class
this fall.
Asides from cochlea implants,
what new tech
do you think
may help deaf
and hearing people
communicate with each other?
Honestly,
this is such a cop-out answer,
but AI.
The ability
for computers
to interpret
sign language
is basically
negligible
without
guesstimations involved.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Without some kind
of neural network
to rely on.
Because it's not going
to be an exact thing
every time.
Not only,
like you were talking
about last time,
is some amount
of it creative.
Yes.
But it's also
physical movements
that could be
slightly off
here or there,
or someone might
have a slightly
unique twist
to how they do it.
And it might be
able to be inferred,
but would,
yeah.
Mickers Aus
in Floatplane Chat
says,
I want to learn
sign language
just so I can
talk to my wife
across a public
space like a pool.
It is way more
useful than you
would even think.
It's incredible.
Crowded restaurant.
It's loud.
Let's go.
And you can do
that from across
a friggin' room.
Yeah.
I've noticed.
I'll meet you
over there.
Like, oh.
I've noticed this too.
Not in just you,
but I have also
noticed it in you
because you're
probably the person
I've seen do ASL
more than anyone else.
But you'll whisper
while you do it.
That's for lip reading
reasons, right?
No.
Actually,
a lot of signs
have a mouth gesture
that goes with them.
So like,
like,
like,
there's facial expressions.
It's a whole thing.
It's what you're saying.
It's where you're saying it.
It's how big
you're saying it.
Like,
if I say,
um,
oh,
so,
you know,
I,
uh,
like,
I got in my car.
This is a little car.
But if I say,
I got in my car,
well,
I'm in a,
I'm probably in a truck.
It's like a semi-truck or something.
Yeah.
Oh,
okay,
okay,
okay.
That matters.
Yeah,
yeah.
Um,
so everything matters.
Um,
how big
you're gesturing,
how sharp
you're gesturing,
like,
if you're like,
I'm angry,
like,
you stop.
Okay,
stop.
It's enough.
You know,
stop.
Like,
like every,
it's,
it has expression exactly the same way that our,
that our voices do.
Yeah.
Um,
and I forget what you were saying before,
but I was responding to it and I think I'm done.
I think so.
I don't know.
I think so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um,
yeah,
yeah,
yeah,
yeah,
you did.
I,
I,
I said,
uh,
you whisper when you,
Oh yeah.
Oh,
one great example of that is that the bird in ASL still means like,
you know,
kind of what it means,
but it's not nearly as strong as it is to like hearing people and the,
the mouth gesture for it is like,
like,
yeah,
yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
Like,
but it doesn't actually mean like you the way that it does in,
in like hearing culture or like,
you know,
up yours or whatever.
Like it doesn't,
it's not as bad as my understanding of it anyway,
but yeah,
no,
there's definitely,
there's definitely mouth things,
but if you see me mouthing along,
it's probably just because I don't speak.
Not quite as fluent.
So you're kind of running a lot of the time.
So I'm,
yeah,
I'm,
I'm not at the level of fluency where I just think in sign.
Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sorry guys.
How long will pins series three be on sale for?
Uh,
wrong side of Christmas to buy them all.
Um,
I don't know.
We produce them and then they are gone.
Forever.
Forever is a big word.
Uh,
we've talked about it internally.
No real like intention to bring them back though.
Yeah.
Uh,
well,
that's good for me to know.
Cause I got to answer these people,
right?
Yeah.
It's,
it's,
it's,
it's something we've talked about and it's one of those things where it's
like,
we don't want to,
we don't want to create like artificial scarcity.
Um,
that that's not the point,
but we also,
we also don't want to just have every pin ever like as a stocked item on the
store forever.
Uh,
so I think that it is never impossible that something would ever come back.
But I would say at this time that we have so many ideas for pins that to
loop back around and reprint them seems improbable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Might not be as cool for collectory people too.
One more.
What do you think?
Yeah,
actually,
that's an interesting question.
is it a favor to the people who haven't bought one or is it to reprint something?
Is it more of a favor to the people who haven't bought one or is it more of an FU to the
people who are collectors and who bought it wanting something exclusive?
NFT.
Yeah,
but that's,
that's a whole other thing.
That's,
this is an actual physical like thing that was crafted and,
and is like,
I mean,
that's me saying I'm not entirely sure.
I would feel bad if,
uh,
if I wanted something that was exclusive and then somebody else got it and then it was
like,
oh,
well I thought I was special,
but you're not marketing it as like a,
this will only be made once.
There's only a hundred of them.
I think there's been a couple pins that way,
but not in general.
Yeah.
I've,
I've seen,
I've seen people get very angry at we're doing a serialized number of one to a
hundred and that's all we'll ever make.
And then like they do another run of,
Oh yeah.
That's,
that's super.
I hate that.
I don't think it's the same as that at all.
That's not a good thing to do.
No.
Evil.
All right.
Hit me again,
Dan.
Sure.
Just flying back from Disney on my honeymoon.
Linus,
what did you and your wife do for your honeymoon?
And have you ever built a lightsaber?
Uh,
we went to Greece.
Uh,
we went to Santorini.
Uh,
our intention was to stay there for two weeks.
Uh,
it took about four days,
I think for us to start getting bored.
Uh,
we didn't realize,
you know,
we're from Canada where places are really big and we ATV'd the entire
circumference of the Island,
like on like the somethingth day and kind of ripped around across it as
well.
And we were like,
Oh,
um,
and we started kind of memeing on what there was to do on the Island.
Um,
so we'd be on the ATV and we'd be like,
uh,
we'd like get each other's attention.
Like,
like really excited.
We'd be like,
look,
honey,
scenery.
Um,
we're more doers than viewers.
Yeah.
If that kind of makes sense.
This is a problem that I run into when,
when traveling.
Cause there's like some specific stuff I like to do in traveling,
but I find not a ton of people like doing that.
So there often isn't like actually that many opportunities for it.
Yvonne and I,
since then usually come back from vacation far more tired than we were when
we left for it.
It's not a refreshing thing for us.
We went to Mexico once for,
I believe it was seven days and we dived 13 times or something like that.
Like it was ridiculous.
We went as many times as you can go without it becoming a problem for your
health.
Yeah.
That's what,
that's what I,
when I was in Greece a while back,
that's what I did.
I was either out on the water,
out under the water studying or sleeping.
There was like pretty much nothing in between,
I guess eating,
but I would usually only eat one meal a day cause I didn't have time.
Um,
so after that we,
we kind of went,
uh,
we had the,
I had the idea of visiting one of our like left for dead gaming buddies in
Dubai.
Cause we happened to be a lot closer than normal.
And it just turned out that it didn't really work out.
But we found flights and everything.
And we were just,
I think,
Oh,
the visas would have taken too long.
Um,
so again,
ignorant Canadian thing.
We just thought that,
you know,
Canadians just walked into any country.
They felt like,
because we do have a pretty good passport.
Uh,
but it turns out Dubai needed like a few days and it would have eaten up a lot of
our vacation,
our,
our limited amount of time.
Cause we still had to fly back out of,
I think it was Athens or something like that.
Um,
so we didn't end up going to Dubai.
Instead we flitted over to,
uh,
I think we,
I think we might've spent a couple of days in Athens and then we were like,
let's go to Rome,
uh,
where I have to,
man,
this is going to be super unpopular.
I did not like the food.
In Greece?
Rome.
Rome.
I didn't like the food in Greece either.
It's really oily.
I'm not that into,
I don't like oil on my food.
I found,
so I mentioned that I was having one meal a day.
I found this one cafe that I really liked.
I had food at a few places that I really didn't like.
Then I found one cafe that was amazing.
I ate there every day.
People are so upset with me.
Like,
man,
maybe it was just the touristy places or whatever.
That's a big problem.
No offense to the birthplace of like pizza or whatever,
but wow.
Where,
where,
like,
is that all the cheese you're going to put on it?
I had the best pizza I've ever had at a extremely Italian pizzeria in Germany.
So I,
I believe it's a thing.
It's probably the tourist trappy stuff though,
because the places I was eating in Greece that were garbagio,
um,
yeah,
were tourist trappy.
Sure.
And then I found this cafe place that was like a little bit off the road.
Didn't have anything on their menu in English type of situation.
And it was fantastic.
Very good.
Yeah.
I,
um,
I,
I just,
it was so expensive.
And it's just like,
remember guys,
this,
we were,
we were on our honeymoon,
which,
you know,
means we were splurging a little,
but we,
we had a house to pay for.
Like we had just bought a house the year prior and we were trying to put in double our monthly mortgage payments in order to pay down as much principal as possible.
So maybe if you go to Rome and you blow a bunch of money on like really high end food,
um,
like it's better.
But I remember at the time feeling like these meals are costing double,
literally double of what we would pay for a nice meal at home.
And it's like a flat thing of bread with like a bit of sauce and like some cheese sprinkled on it.
That's a pizza.
Are you kidding me?
That is sort of a thing.
Where's my toppings?
Oh boy.
Yeah.
Well,
I think that is a very Canadian.
Yeah.
I mean that,
and that's fair enough,
but it just,
it offends me from a bill of materials standpoint.
This is the thing that's going to get you canceled this show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like,
you can't,
you can't tell me that like 14 cents worth of flour and like half of a frigging cherry tomato and like a little bit,
a little couple of sprinklings of cheese is worth like the 20 euros or whatever it was costing me at the time.
There's also a single leaf of basil.
You're forgetting about the single leaf of basil.
Do you know the price of basil?
It's basil,
Dan,
but okay.
No,
I'll get canceled from my side of the pond.
Oh man.
There's things I can,
I can say about this,
but neither I nor anyone in chat is going to change his mind.
So it doesn't really matter.
No,
I want to hear it.
I want to hear it.
There's,
there's to,
to include expenses,
the,
the oven at like dominoes and the oven at whatever,
wherever you ate is probably not exactly the same caliber.
Sure.
But why would I,
why would I give two shits what oven it came out of?
I'm,
I'm eating the food,
not the oven.
Yeah.
But that is going to result in a difference.
People,
people do this thing where like when they,
when they analyze pizza,
they like look at the bottom of it to see the,
like the cook marks and all this other type of stuff,
because it like influences stuff that I don't understand or care about personally,
but it's like,
it's a whole thing.
It didn't taste good.
Okay.
And the portions were small and I was still hungry.
This set.
Okay.
Was it a tourist trap spot though?
I don't know.
Yeah.
It was well rated.
That doesn't mean much.
I know.
Yeah.
I know.
I found when I was in Japan,
by the way,
they are brutal.
Like nothing is rated five stars.
Most of the like good stuff is like 3.8.
Like it's,
it's,
they are so brutal.
I was looking around like,
wow,
there's like nowhere good.
What's going on?
I was like,
Oh,
good is like 4.2.
There is like,
it's like the highest rating in this entire town.
Yeah.
I can see that.
Yeah.
Anyways.
Uh,
okay.
Yeah.
Let's do some more topics before I get myself super canceled by the Europeans.
Yeah.
Avon Fox said,
do you charge for the two minute it fix or the years of experience gain to make it two minutes?
Well,
it depends if the IT fix like fucking sucks.
It doesn't matter.
He hates the pizza.
Yeah.
It just didn't taste good.
Yeah.
And it's,
it's look,
it's not like I can't accept different kinds of pizza.
Like I'll go to New York and eat like a New York style pizza or whatever.
Like,
I don't care.
Have you had Chicago deep dish?
Uh,
yes.
I went to a,
that's a,
that's a whole thing.
Reportedly fame.
I'm going to get canceled now.
I went to a reportedly like famous,
very well known Chicago deep dish place.
I can't say I'm a fan.
That ain't it,
man.
That was a mistake.
You're going to get,
you're going to get uncancelled by the entirety.
You're going to get Americans mad at us.
No,
but all of New York now loves you.
They can't do anything from over there.
The Americans are going to be like,
Hey,
what's it?
I don't know.
I can't do an American accent.
It doesn't matter.
They're going to come up here.
Hey,
what's it?
That's how,
that's how you sound Americans.
Hey,
what's it?
Yeah,
I found it soggy.
Oh man.
And it's just,
soggy bread is not a feature.
That's a bug.
It's just like a cheese meat pie at this point.
Sorry,
not sorry.
Just make a lasagna.
Yeah.
You know,
you use better things you can do with that mix of ingredients.
Use a wheat product that is not so susceptible to being a disgusting,
mushy mess.
Yeah.
God,
I was like actually pretty excited for it.
And we went and we had to wait in line for this place.
Cause it's like,
I don't even remember who I was with,
probably Brandon,
but we had to wait in line for this place.
That was like all well-known,
blah,
blah,
blah,
blah,
blah,
blah,
blah.
We wait in line.
We get our pizza one bite in.
I'm just like,
man,
I went to a supposedly famous Jewish deli in New York,
like in Manhattan and I ordered a Reuben and I was just like,
it's fucking dry.
Like,
are you kidding me?
How do you even like make a Reuben dry?
I don't know.
Like didn't have enough mustard on it.
I was like,
what?
It's dry.
Reuben is like,
it's like covered.
Yeah.
It's like covered in sauerkraut.
How do you even manage?
I don't know.
Okay.
To be clear,
you can make an amazing Reuben and you can make a disgusting Reuben.
And there's basically nothing in between.
It's,
it's pretty,
but like,
imagine screwing up at just being dry.
What the heck?
And like,
again,
there was like a line.
Yeah.
I'm just sitting here going,
I find a lot of the basic sandwich that like every,
everything else was like,
I was like,
okay,
I'm just going to go with like the one,
you know,
it's like going to a Thai restaurant and being like,
I'll have your pad Thai and some,
you know,
peanut sauce,
chicken skewers.
If you can't get this right.
Realistically,
nothing else on your menu is probably any good anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I,
I find a lot of the places that get the lines.
Yeah.
It's,
it's not the way to go.
Like my,
it's all hype man.
It's hype.
When my brother and I were in Japan,
I think I've told this story before,
but all the food that we had in Tokyo was honestly like not very good,
but it's because we weren't really trying.
We're just like walk by.
Oh,
okay.
We'll just go in there.
Whatever.
Just like a random ramen place.
Yeah.
So it was,
it was like fine,
probably fine,
but it wasn't amazing or anything.
And then we went to everything I had in Japan when I went was not bad though.
No,
none of it was,
I couldn't find anything bad.
I ended up having a one thing that I didn't like,
but it was a mistake on my part.
I ordered something I shouldn't have.
I just didn't take enough time when I was looking at the menu.
So that it's not their fault.
And then we went to the smaller town that we were staying at for when we were
doing the drifting event.
Yeah.
And spent a little bit more time picking the places and stuff every single time.
It was like mind blowingly good every single time,
but it was a lot of like,
you know,
not the first result on Google type of stuff.
I just like to jump in and say that Canadian food is too.
Yeah.
Like we don't even have a cuisine.
Poutine.
Honestly.
Oh,
come on.
When's the last time you had good poutine?
Have you ever had good poutine?
Costco.
Because legitimately,
I think it's eight years ago.
The Costco one is,
no Montreal,
Montreal is where they're acceptable.
Here's the problem.
Even in Montreal,
I found it's pretty hit or miss.
I lived there for an entire summer,
even in Montreal,
very hit or miss.
And the,
and it's,
it is always something basic.
They can have great fries,
delicious gravy,
real curds of cheese,
real curds.
And if you don't fucking heat up the gravy enough,
and it doesn't melt the fucking cheese,
you're not eating poutine.
You're eating fries in gravy that are cold and hunks of cheese.
You're eating them separately.
Now,
if the cheese is not melted,
it's disgusting.
What do you think about poutine abominations?
That's a,
that's a thing I came up with on the spot,
but there's a,
there's a,
I'm not even going to be able to find it.
And like,
honestly,
we put way too much sugar in everything.
I blame the Americans.
They're,
they're a bad influence on our dietary habits.
I put,
I eat too much sugar,
a hundred percent.
Yeah.
The amount of stuff that poutine crimes on Reddit,
I haven't heard about that.
But yeah,
there's this restaurant called streets.
That's local.
It's not streets as in the road.
It's STR and then eats.
Sure.
But it's one word,
whatever.
They have,
they have poutine.
There's no like menu.
There's just order online.
How do I see the menu?
Hello?
What a weird website.
But I've seen,
I've seen their menu before,
which I don't know if I can even find it right now.
But they have,
they have some weird,
it's definitely not poutine,
but it's in the poutine category,
but it's kind of poutine related poutine.
Can I find it?
Okay,
here we go.
I got a menu.
Bowls.
Fries.
All right.
Classic.
Classic poutine.
Okay.
Fine.
Sure.
Quebecois,
fries,
cheese,
curds,
gravy.
Then they get it.
Oh,
they just call it hot.
No,
pierogi poutine,
mini pierogies,
bacon,
sauteed onions,
shredded cheese,
green onions,
sour cream.
There's no gravy.
There's no cheese curds.
Buffalo chicken poutine,
crispy chicken,
Frank's red hot sauce,
gravy,
cheese curds.
I think they're taking some artistic license with the word poutine.
Yeah.
They're talking fries in a bowl with stuff on top of it.
That's as far,
that's the minimum requirement for poutine.
I mean,
by that logic,
you can get fish poutine and it's just like deep fried,
fried haddock on top of fries.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fish and chips,
but in a different physical orientation.
Yeah.
So I,
I think that's how like most people get around it is they just ditch the original,
what poutine actually is.
And they're like,
I'll have this other stuff.
Yeah.
And like on it,
like Japa dog,
Japa dog is supposed to be like super famous.
It's like,
it's a hot dog.
Yeah.
I had one of those.
I was like,
that is definitely a hot dog with stuff on top of it.
I find a lot of the famous places.
Personally,
I enjoy more flavor.
I find a lot of them to be on the more mild side,
both spice,
but then general flavor as well.
I find them to be more chilled out.
So,
so yeah,
I know we've kind of dunked on everyone's food.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we're just haters.
Yeah.
So don't take it personal.
Yeah.
Please America.
Don't come after us.
None of my favorite places to eat around here serve Canadian food,
let alone North American food.
So it is what it is.
Yeah.
Honestly,
I think that's one of the best things about living in Vancouver.
Yeah.
Food melting pot.
Very good.
Yeah.
You can get like anything here and it's,
and it's good.
And I think honestly,
that's part of what kind of spoils me.
Like going back to,
so I was thinking going back to something we were talking about before,
but I forgot now,
but yeah,
no,
it's a,
no,
it's great.
It's great.
Yeah.
All right.
Why don't we,
Oh yeah,
we're supposed to do some topics.
Sorry,
Dan.
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
Sony patents an automatic difficulty curve,
right?
No,
this was the one I wanted to talk about with my,
what if you don't quite finish the game thing?
Because beating games,
all of a sudden,
what is just not going to be a thing anymore?
Sony has filed a patent for a system that dynamically tweaks the difficulty of a game
based on player performance using specially designed algorithms.
The algorithms would assess and project player performance,
then automatically and incrementally adjust parameters relating to movement speed,
delay or hesitation,
character strength,
number of competitors,
or other metrics until the player's performance matches an expected level.
This is never going to work.
They're never going to get this patent.
Similar systems have been implemented in past games.
Notably,
For years.
Beat'em up God Hand from 2006,
which grows more challenging in response to player successes.
So,
the discussion question here is not about Sony's patent.
I think they're going to have an extremely difficult time patenting this concept.
but what I would like to talk about is,
are the days of beating games gone,
dead,
over?
No.
Are you just being stubborn?
No,
I don't think so,
actually.
Okay.
I think maybe stuff like that is going to invade certain AAA things,
but people are going to resist.
Some amount of game developers are always going to resist to some degree.
And we saw like,
when was that?
Like 2014,
2015,
we saw AAA games go kind of in the hole a little bit,
and the indie scene just exploded because they saw a hole,
because AAA industry was leaving that hole open.
I don't,
I don't think you'd see a,
you know,
Elden Ring style game make itself completely unbiased.
unbeatable.
I don't think you'd see a Baldur's Gate 3 make itself completely unbeatable.
There's going to be these franchises that are like,
no,
there's a conclusion.
hold on.
That's not what I really meant.
I meant the achievement of beating a game being over.
Oh,
yeah.
I think people will beat games because they're going to design it so that when
you're playing Spider-Man,
you could barely be able to hold a controller and still be an unbeatable
badass.
So I was going completely the opposite way with this.
I still don't think that's going to be a thing though,
because I'm going to just constantly use Baldur's Gate.
I really tried to find another one with Elden Ring,
but even,
yeah,
I don't think this is a thing on Elden Ring.
I think there's just one difficulty,
right?
Uh,
I actually don't know.
I mean,
you just,
I think there's just make life harder for yourself if you just,
you know,
don't wear any armor.
Custom challenges and stuff.
But I think there just is Elden Ring.
It just is the game.
It is,
it is one difficulty.
Um,
but like there's three difficulties.
Wow.
Okay.
I didn't know that.
I thought there was literally one,
but anyways,
yeah,
there's,
there's only one to him.
Yeah.
Gigachad gamer.
Um,
Baldur's Gate.
Oh,
Elden Ring has one.
Sorry.
What?
Got him.
Uh,
Baldur's Gate three,
which is what they were probably talking about,
um,
has different difficulty levels that are actually very specific and change the game
significantly.
Um,
and I think there's also other games where people will play that game or at
least find replayability from that game due to specifically the difficulty
levels.
Yep.
I think there's going to be other games.
Like,
I think you mentioned Spider-Man.
Yeah.
Totally.
And at a certain level,
like,
I mean,
I haven't played the game,
but probably like who cares?
Uh,
you heard it here first folks.
What?
I mean,
you play Spider-Man.
I mean,
no,
I don't mean that.
Were you trying to accomplish something?
I've actually heard it's a fantastic game,
but like,
is the difficulty level of the game?
What matters?
Uh,
I,
I mean,
to someone,
I mean,
if we didn't feel a sense of accomplishment in gaming,
why would we do it?
Like that's,
that's the part of our brain that it,
you know,
lights up.
That's the whole point of it.
As far as I can tell.
Yeah.
It's to make you feel like you achieved something.
We literally have achievements.
That's what we actually call them.
Yeah.
I guess,
I guess the,
the hidden nature of the difficulty change is the annoying part.
That's what I'm talking about.
There's a billion games that will do suggested.
Sure.
Difficulty changes.
Yep.
Or even you can manually adjust it.
Like,
um,
back to sea of stars.
There's a whole class of items that as far as I can tell exists as a way of
adjusting the difficulty curve.
So I stubbornly refused to equip any of them,
um,
which made things just take longer.
As far as I can tell to go back again,
I probably just wouldn't bother,
but,
um,
doing it automatically,
I guess is what kind of bugs me about it because it's a matter of time.
It's also existed,
but it's usually revealed to the player.
Yeah.
It's a matter of time until they just don't until they just release the game.
And because remember what the goal of the developer is,
is to make sure the player has a good time.
Right?
Yeah.
And if they're going to do episodic episodes,
they need to make sure that you don't get stuck.
So I could totally see them shipping a game like this,
where even if you can toggle it off,
it's enabled by default.
And I just,
I,
um,
I don't know.
It just feels like too much handholding to me.
Like,
I mean,
even just the fact that Mario cart eight has the assistance on by default,
you basically can't crash a cart out of the box.
And the process of turning it off is,
I couldn't believe how obtuse it was to turn off the assist.
You can't do it from the menu of the game.
You have to be in a race and turn it off.
When the pause met,
why?
To Reaper and floatplane chat said something that sparked a thought in my mind.
Uh,
they said Ubisoft would make it harder to sell boosts and skips.
What about,
yeah,
you just have the same thought I did.
What if this started being used nefariously where they started crushing you with difficulty to try to incentivize?
Like,
what do you mean?
What if they,
I literally talked about that like 25 minutes ago.
Yeah,
but it's dynamic.
Yeah,
it's dynamic.
So they have,
they have ideas.
They have some,
I don't know,
Cambridge Analytica data or whatever on like who you are,
how much money you're going to spend on games and stuff.
And they push you just enough.
If they're like,
yeah,
this person will probably spend like 15 bucks on microtransactions to get it to the end of this game.
Then they'll poke you for $15 and then let you win.
Oh,
sticklier says you can change the auto drive settings from the cart selection screen.
Why isn't it on the main menu?
I'm,
I'm sorry.
I had to look it up by default.
I had to look,
well,
no,
that's not even my issue.
Oh,
that is an issue,
but I had to look it up.
I couldn't find it on the main menu of the game,
which is where settings go.
Sorry,
not sorry.
It's still dumb.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Games will also lower difficulty without you knowing if you're having issues playing on hard parts.
Yeah.
But usually that's still,
it's still granular.
Like if you looked into the settings,
you could see it there.
Whiskeynerd88 says Capcom uses this in Resident Evil.
After you die too many times in a spot,
they lower the enemies and the hit damage.
It,
it very often communicates that to you.
And if it doesn't,
it's usually a setting that you can still go manually change yourself.
But yeah,
this has been a thing for forever.
That is not the point.
There's people are telling me some people want to use it and some people don't.
I,
I know.
Okay.
I know.
It,
none of that matters.
The fact is that it's not obvious to find the settings menu is on the title screen of a game.
That's where the settings menu is.
It feels like a setting,
not a like feature on the cart.
Yes.
It's not a,
it's not a wheel.
I understand it's,
it's training wheels,
but it's like,
it's not the way that people would think about it.
Okay.
Linus likes hot dogs.
So he hates burgers.
Oh man.
Speaking of hot dogs and burgers,
should we talk about the next subject?
Uh,
yeah,
sure.
What is it?
I don't know.
Somebody made the bill corner in Lego.
Oh,
I haven't actually seen this yet.
Me neither.
Uh,
are you opening it?
Yeah.
Oh,
that's super cute.
Oh,
no way.
Oh,
wow.
That's pretty cool.
That is freaking awesome.
In awe of the Microsoft easy ball.
I don't even know what that is.
Yeah.
It was this,
um,
this like for kids mouse controller thing that we did a video about a little while ago.
That is so cool.
It always blows me away how detailed people can make even a small Lego model when,
you know,
the pieces are,
are so large,
right?
Like,
like this is super recognizably.
Yeah.
The workshop.
If you showed this to someone,
they'd just be like,
oh yeah,
that's,
I would have immediately been like,
wait,
what is that?
Is that the workshop corner at work?
This is pretty cool.
Oh my God.
People are still telling me it's a feature of the cart.
Yes.
I know.
Should be a feature of the game.
I know a lot of people,
myself included that have been surprised that they had trading wheels on.
It's totally a thing.
And you should be able to just turn it off at the menu level.
Yeah.
If you are just all playing the game and no one should be using assists.
Yeah.
Like it's guys,
please.
Yeah.
Wow.
Speaking of guys,
please.
Google gives everybody $2 sort of Google has agreed.
No guys,
please.
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All right, it's time for some merch messages.
Dan, hit me.
I feel like half...
I feel like half the merch messages today are just going to be...
People attacking us for our takes.
Dan was repeatedly yelling at Linus, saying that he's naughty, and then Linus told Dan
to hit him, and I'm feeling very weird.
I've got the cuffs on the shelf.
I mean...
You've been naughty, Linus?
Let me get my stockings.
Oh, no.
I've got some extra sandals for you.
Heyo, DLL, any updates on the LTT cable management clip availability?
My stand-up desk is jonesing from some magnetically held cable runs to tame the mess.
I don't have any to sell you, but we did set up ElectroBoom with a bunch of them.
Nice.
Nice.
Next year.
If you got, like, a $25 backpack credit, for example, you will be able to buy magnetic
cable management stuff with it if you wanted.
Cool.
I had someone ask literally that question in Philippine chat.
I don't know if you saw that.
Oh, I did.
But earlier in the show, someone was like, will I be able to use this on that?
No, the timing was not random.
It was a combination of that we can't have things on our books forever, and we wanted
to make sure that there was some very compelling stuff to check out with it if, you know, people
didn't see anything that they were interested in today.
Sweet.
Yeah.
Hi, DLL.
I'm attending CES for the first time as a PM with significant purchasing power.
I'm in my mid-twenties, introverted and don't drink, but have been invited to several
after parties with vendors.
Do you have any tips?
Go.
Yep.
Talk to people.
Neither of us drink.
Yeah, find the quietest corner and talk to the people who, you know, don't make it all
business all the time, but, like, a lot of people are there to get deals done.
That's, like, kind of why they're there.
And you just got to kind of, you got to kind of vibe it out.
Like, is this person in working mode or is this person in, I'm so drunk that I can't
tell that the waitress is not actually into me mode, you know?
Right?
Like, it's, and some people are in one mode and some people are in the other mode and
some people are somewhere in between the modes.
Uh, but you can get a lot of work done, you know, just having conversations, making connections,
you know, uh, just, it never came naturally to me either.
A huge part of, you know, why, uh, we have a leadership team that handles all outbound
communications to anyone but you guys is that I just don't, I'm not just, it's not really
a people person.
I, um, what?
I just, some of my calls with companies, I just, I probably need that at some point.
I told you about the most recent one, right?
Where I, like, I thought it was to re-sign a contract and then it wasn't.
And I was just like, why are we even here?
It's like, I just wanted to talk to you.
Why?
Yeah.
I'm not that great.
We really don't need to know each other, but okay.
Um, anyways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, alt car in Twitch says, do people still fall for the flirty waitress routine?
I've never seen it happen personally.
Do you leave your house?
Dude.
Dude, I, I.
That's the whole routine.
That's like most of modern civilization, as far as I can tell, is.
I have a friend, sex, friend group that has a large amount of.
Oh man.
Female waitresses, at least when we were.
They have a large amount of female waitresses?
That friend group does.
So they run, they run a restaurant?
At one point in time, they were the entire staff of one restaurant.
No, I was pretending to misunderstand you.
Anyways.
Good lord.
I don't, I don't know if any of them still work in that industry or not, but, uh, they
made bank back then.
Like, tons of money.
And it was off of that strategy alone.
So like, yeah, it works.
It definitely works.
They made more money than like everyone I knew.
Like, it was a big deal.
Yep.
And the main, uh, uh, like huge demographic of people that they would make money from was
when there was like a group of dudes going out to eat and one of them wanted to like show
off to their friends, like appear cool to the like waitress person.
That was like totally it.
So like sports nights trying to, trying to like be flirty, but with the whole group so
that they're like fighting against each other and stuff.
Totally a thing.
And people eat it up.
Just like microtransactions.
Like microtransactions.
They'll believe.
That's what tipping is to you.
They'll believe whatever.
There you go.
Luke's hot takes.
Tipping is microtransactions.
Actually, I think microtransactions are the ones that happen continuously.
And I don't think that's typical at a restaurant, Luke.
I mean, I don't know what kind of restaurants you go to.
You could load up the game more than one time.
You could go back to the restaurant multiple times.
It is what it is.
Um.
At a bar, your tab stays open.
Mm.
That's true.
Got him.
That's true.
Got him.
Um.
Casper asks, hey, I noticed you take your audio seriously with, you know, home theater,
headphones.
But I see a distinct lack of, um, Linus using monitor speakers for ear freedom at his house
gaming setup or at work.
What speakers are best for people who can't wear headphones for long because their ears
get hot and show-wetty?
Well, I don't find that my ears get hot and sweaty with the HD 600s.
So, it's not a problem for me.
I used to be a speakers at my desk guy.
I had the Clips Permedia Ultra 5.1s.
Uh.
Before that, I had a pretty cool pair of our set of monsoons.
Um.
I also tried out the Creative GigaWorks back in the day.
Uh.
Not because I, you know, it was so unimaginative that I could only know of, you know, computer
brands for speakers, but because that was a lot easier to hook up back then.
Yeah.
Uh.
Later on, I picked up a Kefset with an Onkyo receiver that I ran as my surround setup at
my gaming setup at Yvonne's parents' place.
Like, I was always a speakers guy.
And then I had a kid.
And my kid was not a good sleeper.
No.
And I am 100% converted to headphones, and speakers don't exist for me.
I shouldn't say they don't exist.
I still have a pair of Corsair SP2500s just sitting on my desk.
Um.
Occasionally, Yvonne and I will do a conference call from my desk at the office, or in the
office at home, in our office room at home.
Um.
And so, I'll put on the speakers because it's hard to share headphones unless I had two pairs
of headphones, which I don't.
But that's it.
And the SP2500s are fine.
They're okay.
I wouldn't recommend them because I don't know how they compare to something more modern,
but they were, like, decent back then.
And I actually have the same ones on my desk at work because they were just speakers that
nobody was going to need for anything.
And so, I grabbed them, and they are better than the built-in ones in my monitor.
Yeah.
I'm still running my Corsair speakers because I also am headphones 99% of the time.
And when it needs to be speakers, they're definitely more than good enough.
So, it is what it is.
Last one I got for you here.
Keep the content going.
Happy holidays.
Any updates on the old...
Oh, I thought it was going to end there.
I was like, oh, thanks.
That was easy.
There's not a question.
Any updates on the old PC equipment signature lottery?
I think we're waiting to release the last video in the series, which has taken far longer than
we'd like because it was Techtober and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
There's always reasons things take longer than we'd like.
We try, but it's one of those things where if we don't push hard enough, you guys are mad
that it takes too long.
And if we push too hard, you're mad because, like, we're crunch or something.
So, whatever.
We're just going to get it done when it's done.
But we have another video coming in the series, and then I think we were planning to do it
after.
But then, I don't know.
Maybe we'll just get lazy and kill it.
We'll see.
If people are into it, then, yeah, I guess we're down.
Maybe that's it.
Maybe we should just be gauging, like, community interest.
So, for those of you who are wondering, what they're talking about is all the things from
the tech shop.
Tech shop, we had talked about, like, having me painstakingly sign all of them, destroying
my wrist, and then putting them up for sale on lttstore.com for a fixed price.
So, for five bucks, you might get a GPU.
It is like a loot box.
You might get a GPU that, like, works, or you might get a GPU that doesn't work, or you
might get a broken motherboard, or you might get, like, a serial cable.
Like, it could be anything, but it'll be, like, signed.
It's, like, a piece of memorabilia or something like that.
We thought it'd be kind of cool.
But maybe it's just dumb.
I'm not sure.
Oh, you want more topics now, Dan?
Yeah.
Because we could do topics.
You better.
Um, I don't know.
Are these mostly boring?
Uh, yeah.
Oh, Steam lets users hide embarrassing games.
Finally.
Sort of?
I mean, that was the only reason that I didn't buy them.
The new Steam client beta is adding several quality of life changes, including finally
allowing users to mark games in their library, or even prior to purchase, as private and hide
them from other people.
This will hide players' ownership, in-game status, playtime, and activity in that game.
So you no longer have to worry about the social awkwardness of having, you know, 400 hours
in Motorboat Simulator, or whatever the case may be.
Waifu games sales go through the roof.
Yeah.
The new client will also allow items in the shopping cart to sync across devices.
Cool.
Nice.
The Last of Us multiplayer game was cancelled.
I don't think I really have a ton to say about that.
Uh, do you want to do the Google Gives Everyone $2 spit?
Yeah.
I'm going to enter the washroom, then.
Okay.
Google has agreed to a settlement of $700 million to end a lawsuit filed by all 50
state attorney generals over this one, that one, that one.
Got it.
Uh, uh, all the, the, the state attorney general has, this is written very oddly.
The state attorneys general have framed this as a major victory for consumers.
However, Google has admitted to no wrongdoing and the settlement only guarantees a minimum
payout of $2 per user with larger payouts going to users who've spent more on the app.
I think that wouldn't include microtransactions within games.
I think that would just be actually money that you spent on the Play Store itself.
Just to be clear.
Uh, Google has also agreed to simplify side loading for at least the next five years
and allowed third party app installations on new phones for at least seven years.
Leading to concerns about OEM bloatware.
That's weird that there's like a time limit on it, but oh, well.
In addition, Google's user choice billing system, which was in the pilot phase, will be expanding
to allow developers to offer alternative payment methods.
However, Google will still be able to charge them a service fee of 26% as opposed to the
Play Store's 30% cut.
So it's four, four, four, four, four percent off.
Hooray!
Uh, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney expressed dissatisfaction with the ruling and said that he and Epic would
continue to pursue their own antitrust case against Google.
Attorneys General is technically a plural word.
It's a confusing title.
Wow, that's, that's odd.
My dyslexia hated that.
Um, that $2 is like a cheeseburger from McDonald's.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
It did say $2 minimum.
I really wonder what it's going to be for people that have spent a decent amount on the
store.
Like, okay, if it's $2 per user, uh, if someone has spent $10, do they get, uh, what would
that be?
$2 and 60 cents?
Is that how that works?
Uh, is it 4% instead of 30?
Maybe that's it.
I don't know.
I don't know what the scale is going to be like after the $2, but the main reason why
I wanted to talk about it on the show is often case with these things, you have to like claim
it.
It doesn't just come to you automatically.
Um, and you might as well get your two bucks.
So I'm trying to tell everyone so they can take $2 from Google or more.
Go get your money.
I don't know when it's going to be available, but go get it.
Um, I find a lot of the times these lawsuits, they don't end up hitting the company that
hard because, uh, people don't claim it.
Um, so yeah, go claim it.
Hit them hard.
Do we have another topic, Dan?
I don't know if that was one topic or was it like three topics because you skipped most
of them.
Uh, do we have any left?
I thought you mean that I just did, but you mean in this, in this group?
Yeah.
I think we did two.
Okay.
Um, do you have any more that you want to talk about?
If not, I'll just turn the lights off.
I could try to do one more.
Let's see here.
Um, I'll, I'll do two kind of rapid fire.
VR declines while Meta spends billions.
Sales of VR and AR devices declined by 40% this year.
According to industry research, uh, firm Surkana, the entire market for AR and VR devices was
only estimated to be at $1.1 billion last year and is now down to $664 million.
Meta has continued to lose over $3 billion on its VR division every quarter of 2023.
And the MetaQuest 3 is suspected to, by some analysts, to be selling at a per unit loss
based on its likely material and labor costs.
Womp, womp.
No one cares about VR and AR anymore.
It's all about that AI baby.
Let's go.
Everybody's moved on.
Um, but I'm still taking home this like VR haptic vest for the holidays to play with
it.
I'm kind of into it again.
It's just really expensive, I think.
And everybody's broke.
It's, it's a really, very expensive thing to be a part of.
Um, I'll do another one really quick just because I find this interesting.
I'm very interested to hopefully see a follow-up to this to see how well it did.
Uh, but consulting firm using AI to reduce layoffs.
This year, London-based consulting firm Deloitte hired 130,000 new employees, but also found
that reduced demand for certain services meant that they might need to eliminate thousands
of existing positions.
Instead, Deloitte wants to experiment with AI to assess the skills of those at-risk employees
and create a strategy to move them into greater demanded roles.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Interesting.
I can't even imagine operating at the kind of scale.
Oh, yeah.
Where you're making a decision about sort of rehoming someone or no longer working together.
Um, in the thousands?
Yeah, based on anything other than that individual person.
Yeah.
You know, like to, to, to have so many people working at a company that you take the bucket
of people who are in this department doing this thing, who might be useful doing other
things, and split them into smaller buckets for reassignment is unfathomable to me.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to do that.
You heard it here first.
Linus Media Group and its associated companies will never be that big because I didn't want
to, not because I wasn't good enough at managing it.
There are, there are.
But also because I didn't want to.
Pains and sores and frustrations with getting bigger as a company.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
That sounds, that sounds awful, honestly.
Yeah.
Um, there was one other thing that I had wanted to do.
Yeah, Apple may be investigated over Beeper.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate
Apple for potentially anti-competitive conduct.
Really?
Huh.
After Apple repeatedly broke Beeper's Android-based iMessage service by closing the loopholes it
relied on.
DOJ lawyers reportedly met with representatives of Beeper last week, and the FTC has publicly
stated it will be taking a closer look at claims by large industry gatekeepers that competition
threatens security or privacy.
Because it turns out that was f***ing horse s*** the whole time.
I think there can be some legitimacy here.
There can, but this ain't it.
Maybe.
Yeah, I don't know enough about iMessage, but there, there can be legitimacy.
It is definitely possible to encrypt a thing.
Yes.
It is definitely possible for encrypted thing to pass through other thing.
Can you determine how something must be encrypted and decrypted though?
As long as it...
Can a government decide how you do your security?
I think that the government can decide it could have been done.
Because it could have been done.
There's plenty of precedent for that.
By Apple's logic, you know, Max shouldn't support email because it might have to pass through
someone else's server.
Like, honestly though.
Yeah, I just...
Security is an interesting one.
Sure.
I don't know enough about iMessage to talk about it too much, but...
As far as anyone can tell, Beeper legitimately had just found a workaround so that it never
left Apple's care.
Pun intended.
Beeper has officially announced that it will no longer attempt to crack iMessage on the basis
that each time that the service falters, it impacts their credibility.
Instead, they will use a method that they hope Apple can tolerate existing using a combination
of a jailbroken iPhone and a Mac or Linux computer to register an Android phone number for iMessage
through the Beeper mini app.
Beeper has also made the code for their original bypass method open source, which is super cool
and could undermine any of Apple's arguments that this was in fact due to security and not
due to them...
That's definitely why they would do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
I think it's time for WAN Show After Dark.
All right.
I'll help.
You just wanted to do it.
8%!
Oh, he just turned it off.
Oh my gosh!
I kind of like that, to be honest.
Okay, turn it off.
You want to turn it off?
What's 8%?
Really?
Could this be bad for epilepsy?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
12 cycles per second.
Is that a thing?
I believe that's one of the triggers, yeah.
Oh.
Is that 8%?
Doesn't look like 8%.
That looks like 8% to me.
That's 8%.
Okay, good.
It's definitely 8%.
I hope it was 8%.
I don't remember now.
It's just making it up.
It just felt right.
All right.
What are we up to?
All right, going to do some merch messages, I guess.
Let's do it.
Hey, Linus.
Sorry about the wing.
Not my fault.
Why are you sorry, then?
Sounds like it might have been your fault.
Yeah.
Admission of guilt.
Yeah.
Are you planning to do a follow-up daily usage video on the Fairphone 5?
What are your impressions so far?
Been eyeing that as a potential upgrade.
Yes.
I've been daily driving it for, there's a bit of a gray zone in between about when the LG
wing video came out and sort of the week after that where I still had some stuff I hadn't
transitioned over to the Fairphone.
But my intention is not just to daily drive the Fairphone for a review, but also to make
the Fairphone my new Note 9, if that makes sense.
Like my fallback, if whatever it is that I'm using right now doesn't have something on it,
this is like the one that will definitely have like all my two FAs or, you know, whatever else.
Like this is like the one that I can use if I'm in between other phones that I'm reviewing or
something.
So that's my goal.
However, I'm having some issues.
Some things are little, like when I'm watching a TV in the dark, I don't know what it is.
The ambient light sensor kind of struggles sometimes.
So it'll go bright in the dark and bright in the dark and bright in the dark.
And this one's really annoying.
So right now I have my ringer off.
And the reason for that is that if you guys would like to do a little experiment with me,
watch this.
Luke?
Yeah.
I am going to turn my ringer down to the minimum volume while still being above zero.
Okay.
So I'm now at the minimum.
Okay.
So that's off.
That's the minimum volume above the lowest setting.
Right.
Okay.
Go ahead and text me.
Or like teams.
It doesn't matter.
Just, just notify my phone of something.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
We can send anything.
It doesn't have to be.
That is really, really loud.
That's very loud.
That's, that's quite loud.
And it's, it's those kinds of little quality of life things that are making it kind of hard
to like it.
There's a lot to like about the philosophy, but, um, it's been a while since I've reviewed
a phone and I just kind of assumed they all just kind of worked at this point.
The fair phone proved me wrong.
Um, no, people want the loudest setting.
I mean, sure.
Uh, all right.
Hit me again, Luke.
Uh, okay.
Give me one second.
I've actually been texting other people.
No, I'm actually busy texting you.
Oh, but give me a second.
It's okay.
I just need to send it.
Well, it's fine.
It's fine.
You're going to, I'm going to send it to you.
You're going to see it in a moment.
No, that, that, okay.
Just, I think it's not bad.
Okay.
Okay.
Anyway, you're making like 10,000 people wait for you to send this text message.
Well, I wasn't going to, but then wait, that's max volume.
I think so.
So there's just no difference.
Yeah.
I'm at max now.
Is that actually the notification volume that you're adjusting?
Oh crap.
You goof.
No, no, no, no, no.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
No, the ringing notification one is, is down at the bottom.
Yeah, but it wasn't at the top.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, do it.
We're doing it again.
One more time.
One more time.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, here's max.
Here's max.
Oh yeah.
That's another thing that's been kind of annoying.
So it gets louder, which is, I guess, a feature.
Not enough louder for it to go up the entire bar, you know?
Yeah.
So it's.
That minimum volume is still very high.
Do you want to compare it to mine?
Sure.
Because I don't think I've actually tried this.
I just realized though, there's zero.
So there's zero without it being silent.
Try one more time.
Maybe there's a, maybe, maybe 0% is audible, which was not intuitive to me, but hey.
No, that's five.
Yep.
So that was minimum volume on this phone, which is a problem for me because if I don't have
my ringer on, I don't notice things because I am distracted doing things.
And if I have my ringer on, but too loud, it can't be on when I'm shooting.
And if it's not on when I'm shooting, I won't remember to turn it back on when I'm done shooting.
So I basically just don't find out about people messaging me until later when I look at my phone
anymore, which is not working.
Why are you saying, why, why do your messages say penis?
Grow up.
Okay.
Let's see how loud your minimum is.
I should hold it in front of my mic though, because this is.
Mine only has seven volume levels.
Yeah.
I think mine only has about that.
Oh, okay.
Like on Samsung, I know that for media volume anyway, there's a third party app that I installed.
Are you holding it the same way you're holding your phone?
No, not yet.
That gives you way more granular control.
I don't know if there's an equivalent for this.
I haven't tried to solve this yet to be very clear, but there's just been some annoyances.
Pretty quiet.
That's super reasonable.
That's the kind of thing that I could leave on to make sure that I notice things.
But if it goes off in the middle of a take, then I can still continue to do it.
We honestly don't even need to play full volume.
It's like reasonably loud.
It's what you'd expect.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that sucks.
Anyways.
Hey, DLL, first time listener, long time caller.
Oh, hold on.
I should say there are a lot of things I really like about it though.
Like the fact that you could like kill someone with it.
Yeah.
Like, feel how heavy it is.
That's good.
Feels many generations ago.
Yeah, it's as big as my wife's in a case, but it doesn't have a case on it.
Yeah, it is heavy.
Yeah.
It's thick.
It's like, you know?
Yeah.
It's fair though.
Yeah.
All right, go ahead, Dan.
First time listener, long time caller.
They never said great phone.
They said fair phone.
That's a good line I should use.
How many like fair use jokes do you have in the script?
As long as they're not free use jokes, we should get away with it.
Huh.
The best part is he can't take any kind of moral high ground because he knows what I'm talking
about.
We can't react at all, can we?
I mean, Luke, please explain it to me.
I don't know.
No, we're good.
I don't know.
No, we're good.
We're good.
We're good.
We're good.
We're good.
First time listener, long time caller.
What are you looking forward to gaming wise in 2024?
I was hoping you'd have something for this.
Is there any games you're looking forward to?
Is there a follow up to CrossCode?
I want to try.
I want to.
Oh, yeah.
When's Radical Fish's next game coming out?
Radical Fish.
I'm one of those people where I just like, I don't really follow things as they're coming
up.
I just, I just wait for them to arrive and pleasantly surprise me.
I games, Project Terra, working title.
Our list of games is short.
We've been around for over 10 years, something, something.
Okay.
Yeah.
Nope.
I don't know.
At some point, new action RPG.
Yeah.
It sounds great.
I'm really excited to play that.
Eventually at some point.
I don't know.
I heard Halo Infinite's really good again.
And I want to, I'm down to play some more.
Oh man.
It feels hard to believe, but I'm down.
I don't think I'm allowed to talk about what it is, but I tried a new piece of hardware
that blew my fucking mind.
I swear to you.
Okay.
Have you games with Ploof before?
No.
Okay.
I don't think so.
Very respectable gamer.
Yeah.
Dude's a gamer.
Yeah.
I can see it.
We were shooting.
Unfortunately, we didn't catch all of it on camera, but some definitely caught some of
it on camera, but we're shooting this video and I'm putting together combos of just like
off the rack, scopeless headshots, I don't think I have encountered a piece of hardware that
has changed my gaming performance like this that I can remember.
What?
What?
What?
I know.
What?
I was like, dude, I'm deece.
Like I know how to operate WASDA and a mouse, but you know, I'm not this good.
And he's like, dude, I know, but it was the same for me.
He actually went on a trip to try this thing a little while ago before it was sent to us
in the studio and he was like, brother, I was on some wireless mouse on a tablecloth
just putting together killstreaks.
What?
Is it, is it like, does it, does it like.
You can't guess.
It's, it's embargoed.
I can't talk about it yet, but there's a video coming.
Okay.
So I'm like not allowed to guess.
We're talking multiplayer games.
There's no cheating.
But I just, I couldn't believe how much it changed things.
So I want to guess so bad, but I won't.
I'm definitely excited to jump in some like Halo Infinite public lobbies.
Wait, do you have it?
Yeah.
Nice.
Okay.
Yeah.
I haven't taken it home though.
I was kind of thinking, should I, should I just like buy everything at retail for my
house from now on?
What do you think?
No.
But like, okay.
I mean, sure.
There's the obvious reasons why I shouldn't.
Like if there's one sitting collecting dust in a warehouse here already, then maybe I should
just borrow it and play with it instead of like buying another one.
Yeah.
But also I feel like it would make for some good content because it will force me to encounter
some of the same challenges that other people would around availability.
I think as a piece of content doing that sometimes might be good, but I don't think
you should do it always.
I think it could be an interesting approach to certain things though.
I just feel like sometimes we end up with kind of dumb stuff in the videos because, okay,
here's an example.
When we put together the land center, we bought a lot of it and the stuff that I bought has
a way different rationale behind it than the stuff that we got.
For example.
So I think, I think you approached it in two different ways.
Is this a more recommendation style video or is this a like showcase Ferrari version type
of, no, it's just for, it's just for like what we're going to talk about.
Like we, we, we went with 3080s from EVGA cause I thought it was pretty cool to build,
you know, gaming PCs with EVGA GPUs for the last time.
Yeah.
And so I bought those.
What, what, what EVGA is going to like send me GPUs?
No.
Um, and so, you know, there's a cool story there, but then for our SSDs, we went with these
like Gen 5 T700s from Crucial because that was what Crucial had in their like sampling
inventory, not because there's any compelling reason to use that.
And in fact, we ended up with the build just kind of imbalanced because of that.
And we talked about it in the video.
We basically said, yeah, we recognize that these are totally overkill.
As long as that's addressed in the video, I think it's fine.
But I feel like there's been a, um, I don't know, man, there's been like, uh, uh, a new
resentment around us doing crazy projects with stuff provided by sponsors in our videos.
And if we just bought it, then maybe people wouldn't be mad.
Or do you think people are just mad and it doesn't matter?
I think people are still going to be mad because then they're going to be mad that you
had the money to buy it.
Um, I mean, that's sad.
Yeah.
Just means there's like nothing I can do about it.
Then in your mind, I think so.
I think there's always going to be a certain pool of haters.
Okay.
So tell me this, you know, we, we're going to have the video coming on the 115 inch TV.
Um, do you think it would have made any difference to the video if we hadn't paid for it?
We unbox it.
Yes, actually in this case, because I think a very interesting story is how you got it.
Okay.
So then shouldn't part of the story of any project we do be how we got it to a certain
degree.
And if how we got it is we dialed a phone number and someone put it in the mail for us, um,
isn't that just boring?
Yeah.
Okay.
So if it needs it, then I don't know.
Yeah.
Like I, I, I think that's part of the story.
If you're like, we're going to try to do the most insane home theater room ever and we're
getting all this stuff sourced for us and it's going to be balling.
Sure.
I don't think you need that prequel story.
Right.
I see.
But I think with the TV, yes, it's like the most insane TV I've ever seen in my entire
life and watching it in person was wild.
But I think that story actually helps that video a lot.
Like the getting, this is actually wildly difficult if you're not in China TV is like an interesting
story.
You can't find this in North America.
Yeah.
I don't know.
That's tough.
Tekken photo enthusiast and float plane says, I think buying it yourself may help review it
differently than it being handed to you and told the price for it.
But like I, I, I go out of my way to review things as though I am the customer for it.
Like when I, like I took a bunch of flack for this.
I talked about this last week for the PlayStation portal.
I'm not going to buy a PlayStation portal.
I could have unlimited money and I would never buy a PlayStation portal because I'm not interested
in the PlayStation portal, but I reviewed it from the perspective of someone with a PlayStation
who wants to play games, their PlayStation games specifically away from their TV.
And I think that you're, you're never going to be able to bridge that gap between people
who can understand that I'm trying to review this for the customer for whom it might be
applicable.
Um, and people who don't understand that.
I just, I just don't think there's any way to bridge that.
Um, yeah.
Fast Philly says, I, yeah, Luke, I think if there's an interesting story, like the TV, it
should be included.
I mean, could the, could the story be as interesting as, you know, yeah, they provided it, but getting
it exported was a challenge.
I was going to say, honestly, I think even if you got the TV for free supplied, the, how
you got it and how exclusive it is and hard it is to get out of China and, and some of the
details that I know about it that might be exclusives for the video.
So I'm not going to say, I'm not sure.
Um, those things would have been interesting anyways.
I don't know, but I do think there's an angle, like if your next computer, if you were like,
I bought everything from my own computer, I had to like, I don't know.
The thing is like the decisions more, we buy a lot of stuff and my whole thing up until
now has been, that should never matter to the content of the video.
Yeah.
Like I've talked to you about that extensively.
You should, one of my, aside from disclosure, my philosophy this whole time has been that
from the conclusion of the video and everything that we say about the product, you shouldn't
be able to tell if this is a brand that sponsors us and sends us anything that we want, a brand
that doesn't talk to us at all.
And we have to buy absolutely everything or anywhere in between.
You should never be able to tell has always been our philosophy.
And in some cases we've even swung a little bit hard the other way.
Um, like I think we've gone pretty hard on Intel, for example, at times, knowing that
as a long time sponsor, we're going to be under increased scrutiny for the way that we treat
them.
But that doesn't seem to have, I don't know.
It doesn't seem to have really like resonated.
That doesn't seem to work anymore.
So I'm just trying to figure out what's the, what's the new meta right now?
I don't know.
Luke, do you still watch The Yard?
Currently binging the whole show and love whenever you guys come up.
Hope the barn was empty though.
Uh, didn't really watch The Yard so much as listen to it.
Um, and I, I started again recently, but will also probably quit very soon.
Uh, I, I started listening to it because I was like way overweight and needed to go on
lots of walks and, and do things that would take a long time.
And I was bored because there was very little that I could actually do in order to get the
cardio in.
So I'd listen to it while I would go on like walks or, or do whatever cardio stuff.
Um, and then I got more in shape and was more in like weight room situations and was less
interested in listening to The Yard.
So I stopped.
And then recently I got very, not very sick, but I got sick for a very long time and it
stuck in my like lungs.
And whenever I, uh, would breathe deeply, I'd start coughing, which made weight room difficult.
So I've been walking again.
So I've been listening again, but now I think I'm sort of over that.
So I'm planning to go to the gym again tomorrow, in which case I'll probably stop listening again.
It's a great podcast.
I just don't usually like sit there and listen to a podcast for that long.
Um, so there's very few podcasts that I, that I frequent, but whenever I want a podcast,
I do come back to it.
I can think of one podcast you listen to every week.
I do sort of listen to this, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's here.
I mean, sometimes I can't tell if you're listening to yourself talk, but you hear, you hear me,
I think most of the time, at least Dan talks less than I do.
I can't even see you.
Yeah.
That might be an improvement to the setup.
Yeah.
I'm doing other things.
I'm distracted.
I barely listened to this.
You want me to turn around?
I mean, I prefer to be like in another room.
Um, let's see, where are we?
Merry Christmas, LLD.
Out of the three of you, who is the hardest to choose gifts for and why?
I'm impossible.
Me too.
My aunt got me a gift that she says is perfect and I will love it.
And that is the biggest red flag because the more perfect someone thinks the gift is,
and the more they think I'm going to love it, the more certain I am that it's going to be
f***ing terrible.
Yeah.
And I'm going to have to like say, thank you.
And because this is someone who comes to my house a lot, keep it forever.
I don't like clutter and I consider most gifts to be clutter.
Like literally go on to a website and go to the gift ideas tab.
I promise you every single thing there is manufactured garbage.
It will be thrown in the garbage.
My family's like frustrated with me because we're all supposed to come up with Christmas
lifts and I couldn't come up with one for myself because I couldn't find anything I wanted.
And I like, I had a few people just say like, well, you're like not getting anything then.
And I was like, yeah, that's fine.
That's cool.
In fact, if we could just not do the gift exchange and I could not buy anything, that would be great.
No, I got, I got things for everyone else and I, and I don't mind.
I just like, I legitimately really tried.
I took like a whole evening and was like, yeah, but you also do prefer if you just don't have
to deal with that shit.
So yeah, it is what it is.
Merry Christmas, by the way.
I got you nothing.
Yeah.
Nice.
Merry Christmas.
Yeah.
I remember there was, there was one year, a bunch of employees came together to get Linus
something and it was like actually pretty cool.
Yeah.
I remember being like, you know what?
It was pretty cool.
They got me a badminton racket and they signed the sleeve.
Everyone signed the sleeve and it ended up being a really good racket.
Not because the people organizing it had any idea how to pick a badminton racket or what
my tastes were, because it really come at a certain point.
It's not just higher quality.
They're all the same quality.
It just comes down to personal preference and your play style.
They happened to pick this kind of spiritual successor to the one that I really liked that
was EOL and I couldn't get more of anymore because they do break.
And so not only did I use that one, but I actually bought two or three more of them for
my racket bag so that I'd have multiple rackets strung.
Because if you break your strings in the middle of a game and then you switch rackets can be
a little discombobulating.
So that was a smash hit.
Pun intended.
Pretty much, oh, there was the keyboard one.
That was cool.
But that was a display item.
I think some people legitimately thought I was going to daily drive it.
And I was like, guys, it has no Windows key.
Like it was a Model M that was also like signed by everybody.
It was pretty cool.
Yeah.
In both cases, I warned the people organizing it.
I was like, ah.
Don't feel bad if.
Yeah.
I was like, this is a great idea.
But just a warning.
I wanted to get Luke emotional damage, but I ended up not making it happen.
I'm very sad.
Okay.
It was a funny idea.
Oh, yeah.
Hi, DL.
Regarding the Luxe backpack, are you ordering small batches or are they actually made to
order?
If it is a small batch, have you placed in the first order for them?
It's small batches.
And I am not 100% sure if we've placed the first order.
As you might imagine, we've got some back and forth to do with our backpack supplier right
now.
So I think we're working on getting all of that resolved.
And once we do, we very much do intend to move forward with the Luxe backpack.
We're going to fulfill those orders.
But in terms of how many we're ordering and, you know, what the scheduling for all that
looks like and the payment scheduling and blah, blah.
Everything.
It's all business-y stuff that I'll let Taryn and Nick and Yvonne deal with.
I'm just having visions.
Don't interrupt the vision.
You should probably go to the doctor.
My vapors.
Have you thought about doing the whole home RGB?
Using RGB strips to have exterior lights programmable for any holiday.
Yes.
But the only justification I could possibly have for doing that would be to make a video.
And I don't really feel like doing that as a video.
I, you know.
It does sound like a kind of boring video unless you bundled it in with other things.
Yeah.
Or if the end result was incredible.
Yeah.
Then that's great.
But like, do I really want to invest that kind of labor hours into a light display on
my house?
I don't think so.
I think it's going to end up looking weird because if it needs to be incredible, then
I think they'd need to take shape.
And for them to take shape, it would be different shapes for the different holidays.
Then you just have LEDs that aren't on often, which wouldn't look good.
But I don't know.
Hi, DLL.
Long time enjoyer of the show.
I'm a junior in a physics lab at Stanford, and I'm applying for applying to Google for
a quantum information internship.
I'm curious what your technical thoughts are on quantum computers.
They asked for our non-technical thoughts, which is good.
Sorry, I got stuck on the year.
Which is great.
Yeah.
Technical thoughts are going to be a challenge.
You could have tried.
My basic understanding of it is that it sounds absolutely incredible and means absolutely
nothing for gamers for the foreseeable future.
So for the vast majority of our audience, this is going to be one of those world-changing
shifts in computing, but Lord only knows how long it's going to take to actually make its
way into something that changes your day-to-day life.
So back to what I said before, I'm in wait and see mode.
Let's see.
Yeah.
Well, I'm very interested in the potentiality of the encryption bomb.
Have I ever talked to you about that before?
I think so, yeah.
Countries, organizations, individuals are all collecting encrypted files because there's
this theory that once quantum computing gets to a certain degree, it'll just be able to
remove encryption extremely easily on basically anything.
So there's countries hoarding like incredible amounts of other countries encrypted data, like
just monstrous amounts of data that has been fairly easy to intercept for a long time, but
has been heavily encrypted.
So what was the point?
But they've just been collecting it because maybe we can unencrypt it eventually.
And that future might happen with quantum computing.
So good luck, everybody.
Yeah, pretty much.
Hello, WAN crew.
Question for Linus.
What are some of the oddest or most interesting problems that you have had with your smart
home setup?
Dropout reasons, things not talking to each other.
Some of my eco-bees drop out for no apparent reason.
I even went as far as to get a different, I thought maybe it was like a weird ubiquity
thing or something.
I went as far as to bring back one of the ruckus APs and just put it in a central location
and connect all the eco-bees to that and nothing but that.
And I still have one, two that are dropping out for no apparent reason.
They don't just drop out.
Like I go all the way to the console and like I can see the access point or the SSID in the
list and I can connect and I can put in the password.
It just won't connect until I rip it off the wall, put it back on the wall to the power
cycle.
And it's just like, why?
Just freaking why?
It's Wi-Fi.
It's supposed to work at this point.
So other than frustrations, no.
Not that interesting.
What's up, boys?
What's been your favorite WAN show topic this year?
You know, I was...
Okay.
What?
I just read them like they mean, you know, right?
You go.
Is it going to be Adblock equals piracy?
Or, you know, what are we going to go with?
Some of the classics.
I don't think that's even from this year.
That was ages ago.
Really?
I don't think that's from this year.
When was...
When did the shirt come out?
When was that?
Minus tech tips.
Oh, wow.
This is hilarious.
2022.
Whoever this was, I don't know, changed their mind, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that was a while ago.
2022.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I feel like this is a bit of a cop-out because we've had a similar question that I answered
with the same thing.
But I think it was the day that we were messing around with Bing chat.
That was really fun.
That was fun.
Okay.
I'll take it.
Yeah.
Agreed.
Very nice.
Okay.
Hi, DLL.
I work for an underwater robotics company with a pressure tank.
What tech or LTT store item would you want to pressurize to deep ocean depths?
What?
I love this question so much.
What?
It's so off the wall.
None?
You wouldn't want to squoosh a tech item or an LTT store item?
Let's see what happens with the backpack.
Like how much?
We've cut through it, but have we really put it to deep ocean depths of pressure?
How deep could you put a water bottle into the ocean?
Can the single bottom layer hold up to deep ocean pressures?
Can fairly hold up to screw day.
No one's broken through it ever yet.
Jeez.
Maybe the deep ocean will.
Um...
Bread!
Yeah, full plane shots and bread!
That doesn't...
Can you deep ocean pressurize a loaf of bread?
I mean...
It's just gonna...
It's water.
It's gonna melt.
But no.
It's the pressures.
It's...
I don't think...
Yeah, I think it would just...
It would just go into the...
It would seep into it, and then it would also be pressured from the outside.
Like, it's gotta be...
It would be very boring.
It has to have a cavity inside it for any of this to matter at all, is my understanding.
Water bottle.
You gotta do your water bottle.
I mean...
That's just gonna...
Yeah, everyone knows what's gonna happen.
Yeah, but at what depth?
I don't know.
That...
But just don't take it...
That's the point of an underwater robotics laboratory.
It's never gonna get there, because it's gonna be full of air.
It's gonna float.
Neither of you have just fun.
Ever.
I have fun!
You don't just like doing stuff because you wanna know things.
I have fun vicariously through my children.
That is really sad.
Ask...
Ask...
Ask...
That is kinda sad.
Ask them what they would want to deep ocean pressurize.
Maybe...
Maybe a sheep, which is a comment that no one's gonna understand except for Linus and Dan.
And it will not be explained.
I'll explain it a little.
I got a letter from one of my kids' teachers about a gruesome story that they wrote in their creative writing class that involved a sheep being nuked from the inside.
I have good kids.
If you read the whole thing, it's like...
It actually doesn't not make sense.
Yeah.
Just kid creativity, but also like...
Yeah.
Maybe a little far on that one.
Yeah.
You know, Minecraft, I guess.
Or something.
Something.
Yeah.
Anywho.
Oh, man.
Any updates on the bidet?
Yeah.
No.
Well, it's nice and easy.
Hey, WAN-X-E.
Noticed LTT is now a...
Dan, can you not?
You're driving me crazy.
What do you want?
Really?
WAN-X-E?
What the fuck, Dan?
You know he's doing...
See, look at him.
Look at him doing this on purpose.
Do you see this?
That is the face of a...
No.
That is the face of a man doing it on purpose.
Is an X-E a hockey player, too?
Look at this.
Oh, no.
Hold on.
How do I...
How do I F-11 this stupid computer?
WAN-X-E.
Okay?
No.
No.
That is not what we do.
What do we do, Linus?
Not that.
What do we do?
Do it again.
Okay.
Carry on.
WAN-FULL-STOP-X-E.
Noticed LTT.
How would you prefer...
You're the writer here.
WAN-DOT-EX-E.
Oh, don't you say ROG as well?
ROG-BOOT.
Oh, okay.
So I can't say X-E, but you can say JIF.
JIF is correct.
I don't want to open this debate up again, Tan.
We're going to fight about this.
I've always said X-E.
What?
Are you actually serious?
I thought you were...
No, no.
I thought you were taking the piss.
No, I'm going to take the L on this one.
I have always said X-E.
Whoa!
What?
Yeah.
Why?
I don't know.
Okay.
I actually don't know.
Is this one of those, like, you read it for a really long time, but no one said it thing?
No.
Well, I mean, it's executable.
People went like this from being mad at me about JIF to being mad at Dan about X-E.
I knew we'd have some sort of solidarity on this.
Executable.
You don't say X-E-Cutable, though.
You're still doing it wrong.
Executable.
Dan, you know how right I have to be for them to side with me, right?
Oh, yeah.
It's actually, this has been my favorite thing for years, is you just generally automatically
win against Linus because people like watching him lose.
No, no, no.
Losing is fun.
It's entertaining.
I didn't even know that this was, like, a thing.
What?
Nobody says the word ever.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, they do.
Yeah, I've probably said something.exe, like, a lot of times.
I just assumed that both were acceptable.
No.
It still drives me nuts.
This is amazing.
I'm having, like, an epiphany moment here.
Your explanation was X-E for executable.
Yeah.
It's easier.
But then you don't say X-E-Cutable.
You say X-E-Cutable.
I didn't say Jaffix, either.
You know?
Jaffix is nothing.
That's not anything.
Jaffix.
Jaffix entertains format?
Yeah, sure.
Oh, man.
Damn.
This is, uh...
No, I don't...
This is life-altering.
I have to go for a spirit walk after this.
J3D, I don't think he's trolling anymore.
No, no, no.
Like, swear on my life, I have always said X-E.
Wow.
I feel like I want to pull this.
This is weird.
This is very weird.
Okay, here.
I'm going to start texting you some things, and I'd like you to say them out loud.
Oh, this is exciting.
Brilliant idea.
I love it.
I'm going to make a poll at the same time.
I'm going to lose my job over this.
No, no, no, no.
We might just have to use AI to find you a new job.
Can you find a job for someone whose primary skill is being wrong?
I'm...
Okay.
I'm the chief vision officer of Linus Media Group.
Yeah.
We had to wait for him to take a drink, Dan.
We almost got him.
Thank you for that setup.
That was great.
You almost got him.
Oh, I'm proud of myself for that.
Okay.
Oh, I'm really interested in the results of this poll.
I never...
I messaged you.
I messaged you.
EXE.
EXE.
All right.
Let's have a look.
Let's see.
Roughly 20% of people are trolls.
PNG.
Okay.
So you do PNG, not...
Hold on.
Hold on.
I have to send him more stuff.
Well, see, I would kind of use EXE and EXE interchangeably occasionally, right?
Like, I'd never say...
There's a look on your face right now.
So I would never say ping.
Even though I kind of want to now.
I like that a lot more, to be honest.
I like ping.
If you're going to do one of them, you might as well do ping.
I'm so sorry, Letus, because you sent this to me as a ping.
I would just call that a text file.
What?
TXT, I would just call text.
Oh, oh, I thought you...
No, I'm just...
I'm sending him common extensions.
Yeah, sorry.
So we have PNG, we have TXT, which I...
So you've never said TXT?
I would never, ever say TXT.
I would always say...
Send it to me in a text file.
Yeah, but how would you...
What if it's a directory?
What do you mean if it's a directory?
Like, what if you are...
What if you're on the phone with someone?
And you're like, okay...
File extension.
Yeah, CD, whatever, and then just open...
I would spell it, obviously.
I mean, I would do the same with EXE.
I would do the same with EXE, right?
Okay, all right.
Well, I've sent you more.
Yeah, okay.
JPG.
I would say JPEG.
Okay.
Okay, well, he's doing...
Okay, so far.
Okay, I mean, I've sent you more.
Yeah, so BMP...
Do I look like I know what a JPEG is?
I put that in the documentation.
So BMP, again, I would say bitmap.
But, you know, we would spell it if we're talking about it.
Oh, any.
No!
Or I and I.
Both interchangeably.
No!
Yeah, that's an interesting one.
Throws it on the ground.
I'm learning about myself.
My phone's on the ground.
You got an EXE and an ENI.
Do, uh...
I want to find more.
ENI?
Really?
Wave.
Okay, yeah.
All right.
Can I try one?
Can I try one?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man, this is...
Wait, do you have a phone?
This is awful.
You're always on your phone during the show.
The one time you can't...
It's for work!
The one time you can't find your phone.
Oh, man.
Okay, what'd you send?
What'd you send?
Uh, Doc X?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
I'm scared now.
I was expecting, like...
I gotta be honest, because this is hilarious.
All right.
No, I'm using...
Dot MSI?
Bing is all I'm saying now.
Bing.
Bing is great.
Bing is...
I'm keeping that.
Dot MSI?
Dot MSI?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just say that?
I would say MSI.
Yeah.
We need more that it's the...
It's also the beginning of the word.
But why is it XE?
No.
Why is it XE and ENI?
Uh, it's not.
Well, no.
But, like...
But why those in particular?
Because, like, you know, PNG or, like, bitmap, right?
Well, at least they're letters that conceivably could go together.
Whereas, like...
Because I would never say...
Boomp.
I would never say WAN.executable.
That would be weird.
But, yeah.
Would you say WAN.exe?
I mean, you did, right.
I did, of course.
Because I'm just, like, reading it as words?
I forgot.
I forgot that such a thing was possible.
It's, like, short form.
You know, it's WAN.exe.
Not WAN.exe.
Which I didn't read, right?
If you lose the dot, then I don't know.
Anyway, I'm cancelled.
Yeah.
Way to go, Dan.
Don't worry.
You're doing great, Dan.
Okay.
Hit us again.
Oh, wait.
Did we ever actually finish the...
I didn't get to finish the question.
All right.
Jacob's question.
Let's get there.
Oh, you want me to read it?
Yeah.
Okay, fine.
Noticed LDD is now a sponsor of the McMaster University Baja team.
Yeah, what?
Would love to hear how that partnership came about.
And if you'd sponsor more Canadian Baja teams in the future.
We had a co-op student here who was very passionate about this sponsorship opportunity and made a case internally for why we should consider it.
And so I basically said, you know, from my point of view, I leave this to, I believe it was Colton and Taryn who ultimately made the decision.
I think Gary was involved as well.
And I basically said, okay, I mean, if you guys think there's a good business reason to do this, then do it.
And so evidently they did it based on, well, no, this is not the first I'm finding out about it.
It was actually that particular co-op student who came into my office and was like, thank you so much for sponsoring the team.
And I was like, huh?
Yeah, I mean, I definitely had some involvement, I guess.
Apparently, I hadn't found out about it yet.
Didn't get my statement yet.
But, you know, I did yellow light it.
You know, I basically said, I'm good if everyone else is good.
You guys make the decision.
But, you know, you may want to go talk to them about it as well.
But our pleasure, I suppose.
Yeah, no, it should be cool.
I think it looks like a really cool project.
Baja team, they build like buggies or something like that.
And then they race them.
It sounds incredibly dangerous.
And I hope that this student doesn't die.
Yeah.
Oh, the student's in the chat.
I guess I don't have to anonymize it anymore.
Hey, Ariel.
I just sent Dan a few more because I'm curious.
Oh, God.
These are all like contextually dependent on like what you're talking about.
No, Dan, they aren't.
Ugh.
They're all file extensions.
They're all dot and then that.
Yeah, but would you say 7Z?
Would you call it a 7-zip file?
The question is, would you?
No, I'd call it a 7-zip file.
So you would go WAN dot 7-zip?
No, because if you say the dot, then you would spell the extension.
Yeah, I tried to think of ones that were like interesting.
7-Z-I-P?
Who would say that?
Yeah.
It's just 7-Z.
Yeah.
It's just 7 and then the character Z.
I didn't say WAN.
I would have said WAN dot EXE if I had said the dot.
Yeah, well, that's not an extension then.
So 7.
Yeah, I would say 7-Z.
What about dot...
Okay, dot zip though, right?
I sent you a few.
I sent you a few.
Go through.
Oh, Jesus.
You're putting them on the spot again.
Yeah, that's the whole point.
IMG?
Would you call that an image?
I don't think I've actually ever used that extension.
I don't know what it is.
Okay.
Tar?
I would say tar.
Okay.
Tar ball?
I think that's...
I think most people say tar.
Yeah.
Okay, alright.
So you can have a couple of them, but you can't...
I hate this.
Liz R says, Luke, I adopted two cockatiels and I love to spoil them.
What are your birds' favorite toys?
Anything they can destroy.
Seriously though, that's a thing.
Birds like picking at things and pulling it apart and doing stuff like that.
So there's like this confetti paper, really thin strings of confetti paper that will be
in like kind of wrapped around things and stuff, and they enjoy like pulling at that
and pulling them apart.
Anything with strings.
So violins then.
I mean...
Honestly, if they got up the, you know, the bravery to approach the violin and start messing
with the strings, they'd probably love it.
That's fair.
Yeah.
Because they can pick at something and it like makes weird noises and stuff.
Yeah, they'd probably absolutely love that.
Okay.
I've got one for you guys then.
I'd be worried about the material of the string.
We are never moving on from this topic, are we?
I'm just angry.
This is how you guys must feel when I'm digging myself into a hole.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm...
Okay, let's come back to it.
I'm not allowed to say X-E, but you can say tar.
What about R-A-R?
Rar.
Rar.
Rar.
Yeah.
Rar.
So what's that?
So why is X-E wrong?
Or any wrong?
It just is.
But you can say Rar or tar.
It just is.
I mean...
I mean, I get it, but like, yeah.
This is English.
Even when there is rules, there isn't rules.
I didn't know that this was a rule.
I feel like I've been just wrong my whole life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And nobody told me.
That's not a feeling, Dan.
That's a fact.
And it doesn't care about your feelings.
Oh!
Got him.
Oh.
Shreked.
Uh, okay.
Uh, Linus, would you ever move to the States?
Okay, so I see that your goal now is to get back at me for making fun of you by asking
me questions that are going to get me cancelled.
I love it.
Uh, no, I wouldn't.
I, um...
Believe it or not, and this may come as a surprise to Americans, but other people who live in other
countries are actually proud of their countries, too.
It's...
I know.
It's one of those...
Sometimes it's hard, but yeah.
Yeah, sometimes it's hard.
We have our own challenges.
Um, but I, uh, I'm a proud Canadian.
What can I say?
Uh, there are places that I would consider moving, but I haven't seen anywhere in the
States that has floated my, floated my boat.
Um, I, at one point, considered Vancouver, Washington, the other Vancouver, but that wasn't
because, you know, I looked at it and I went, like, wow, I really want to leave the Pacific
Northwest.
It wasn't because I was thinking, wow, I really want to leave Canada.
It was more along the lines of, there are significant financial advantages to living here.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, you live in, uh, Washington state where income taxes, if I recall correctly, at least
at the time, nothing.
Um, and then you're right across the Oregon border.
So you can cross border shop in Oregon state where there's no sales tax.
So your money, you're, you're essentially, you have like a tax, you can double dip, um, on
the, on the taxation policies of the taxation approach of these two States to really stretch
your money in Vancouver, Washington.
Um, that was, that was, that was what I was kind of into.
Uh, and as far as I can tell, everyone kind of in the Pacific Northwest is our, you know,
PNW bros.
Yeah.
Like we, um, we ran it, we've, we've multiple times when traveling, we've run into, you know,
Oregoners, Washingtoners, whatever they call themselves.
We all feel pretty similar.
And it's like, it's almost like being, being forged in the fires of no fire and just constant
rain and cold and miserable all the time.
Just gives you a certain outlook.
Yeah.
Everyone's pretty similar.
Yeah.
Um, oh yeah.
Apparently that's still true.
Washington still has no state income tax.
So yeah, that would be, that would be just like a Supreme hack, um, hanging out there,
especially because like I said, as far as I can tell culturally, we're pretty, I'd say
we probably have more in common with our PNW Americans, uh, up here than we do with like
the rest of Canada, some Eastern Canadians.
The Rockies is quite the divide to be honest.
Canada changes a lot.
Once you cross the mountain, loving my windbreaker and backpack combo in unseasonably
rainy Chicago question for all, how do you handle being told you are the best for promotion
by higher ups and developed for it, but passed up?
I mean, I think the way you handle that is you start handing out resumes.
I mean, I don't think there's another real answer.
And then if you don't get any bites, then, you know, maybe they were just giving it to
you soft.
And if you do get any bites, well, then you've got a bite and then you've got either a new
position or ammo ammunition.
Recently received a screwdriver and flannel the other day, and we'll definitely buy more.
Linus, you once mentioned how using primer paint combo is lazy.
Would you mind elaborating on that?
When and why?
That may be one of those things where I'm a little bit old school.
Um, it's possible that there are primer paint combos these days that are really, really,
really, really great.
But the thing is that primer and paint have different compositions.
Primer is designed to be an adhesion layer, um, to act as, uh, an intermediary for the wood
or metal or whatever it is that you're trying to coat and the paint that's going on top of
it.
Paint is designed to act as a barrier layer and it has good adhesion.
I mean, if you've ever tried to get paint off of something, you'll have some idea, but
it's not necessarily designed for blocking stains or for that, that, that maximum adhesion.
So, um, as far as I've ever been able to tell a paint primer combo is not going to get you
quite the level of resilience that primer with two layers of paint is going to get you.
And to be clear, I'm talking like house painting.
I don't know the first thing about airbrushing or like various other ways of applying paint.
I'm talking like your typical, uh, you know, latex, uh, acrylic latex house paint, or yeah,
I mean, even, yeah, I mean, even oil-based, like an alkyd-based, um, coating as well.
So that's, you know, maybe not as true anymore, but primer still exists.
And if it didn't need to still exist, it probably wouldn't.
And if what you're trying to do is reduce the number of coats, A, don't do that.
And B, there are ways that you can kind of hack around it.
You can tint your primer.
So that way, at least if you're, if you're using something with a really deep base, like
a really vibrant orange or something like that, um, that way you can reduce the number
of coats of that poor coverage orange, uh, by having an orange primer underneath it rather
than like a vibrant white primer.
Cause the, the more coloration pigment you have to put into the paint, the less blocking pigment
you can have in the paint.
So there's, there's definitely reasons to use tinted primers, but I would personally
avoid paint primer combos because I'd rather just do it properly, traditionally.
I think that's it.
Uh, yeah, it looks like people, it looks like my knowledge is not out of date.
Yeah.
Primer and two thin, even coats.
That's apparently still the way to do it.
Repaint.
You're right.
And you're right.
Separate separate products.
Combined products are a lot better than they used to be.
Okay.
Yeah, there you go.
Um, so they have improved, but, um, yeah.
No, I was going to say something and then I forgot what it was.
So goodbye.
See you again next week.
Same bad times.
Same bad channel.
Bye.
Bye.
Happy holidays.
Merry Christmas.
All that fun stuff.
Oh yeah.
I kind of forgot.
This is the last show before then.
I know, right?
I snuck up.
I know.
All right.
I insist that we take the Apple boxes up for super checks tonight.
Sure.
Because I think that your poor performance the last couple of weeks might be ergonomic.
But I don't know.
I'll see you guys next week.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
interrupting.