And we're live. Welcome to the WAN show. We've got a fantastic show for you guys, ladies and gentlemen.
That's right. They just can't catch a break. Poor Activision Blizzard.
Total victim. Total victim in this situation.
And I'm gonna go ahead. I've had some problems lately.
I've had some problems with people not detecting sarcasm, satire, verbal irony lately.
That is not real. That is not real. Activision Blizzard is not the victim,
but they do keep on digging in this pretty bad situation they've got going on.
In other news, what did I title the video?
Ah, yes, Dills Gaming PCs got banned in multiple states.
And it's even worse than you thought because they're also banned here in British Columbia.
And I had no idea. How did I not notice this? They've been banned.
Because you build custom machines.
Well, OK, yes, that's how I didn't notice it. But they've been banned for a while.
But also, also, so it's worse than you thought, but it's also not nearly as bad as you thought.
What else we got today, Luke? Intel renames their manufacturing nodes,
as far as I can tell, to be as intentionally confusing and misleading as possible.
Talk about that later. You know what? I'm going to defend Intel.
So you guys are going to want to stick around for that because, OK, all right, bring it on, Luke.
Exciting. Also, the wall. There's updates. Yes, there are updates on the wall.
Yeah, OK. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll talk about that.
And the show is brought to you today by. Let's have a look here.
Graphis dot AI, FreshBooks and SeeSonic. Thank you very much to all of y'all for making the show happen.
Let's do a little secret. I would do the show anyway, but hey, now I get paid to make the show.
Great. Why don't we jump into our first topic first?
Dell's gaming PCs got ban hammered in a number of U.S. states.
So these Title 20 regulations have reached Tier two of implementation.
What the heck is Title 20?
Well, if you saw the wildly exaggerated headlines about California coming through your gaming PCs,
that's what they are talking about.
So this latest tier of restrictions caused Dell to halt or cancel sales of their Aurora R10 and R12 desktops in California,
Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington,
because they either don't meet the power efficiency requirements
or they haven't been validated by a third party to meet them.
Incidentally, they also cannot be shipped to British Columbia due to,
I believe it's efficiency here, but don't quote me on that efficiency concerns.
The headlines, however, were blown out of proportion by media outlets,
as though gaming was canceled for Californians and Vermontians and Hawaiians is right.
That one I know. And that absolutely isn't true.
Title 20 regulations are about reducing the amount of wasted power,
and they actually do exist for a good reason.
The growing power demands of computing are outpacing the growth of power generation,
and currently the estimate is that by 2040,
there will be more computation demands than there is power to compute,
which is an obvious problem, because if you plug your PC into the wall and there's no juice bud,
then you're not going to be gaming at any FPS, let alone 500 FPS.
Dell has since adjusted their web store to clearly state which models fall into the restrictions,
and a Dell rep confirmed to us that new models and configurations will meet
or exceed these regulations in line with their long-term focus to address energy and emissions.
Now, that's the hey don't panic kind of message,
but we have a video coming that explains in far more detail what's going on,
because changes like this will come everywhere.
When we did our video on ATX 12 volt only, for example,
Japan was one of the countries that we pointed at as one that is really cranking up the heat
in terms of emissions and power reduction regulations.
So California is kind of at the forefront of eco-friendliness here in North America,
so that's why California is kind of at the bleeding edge of this, at least on this side of the pond,
but it's for a pretty good reason because we do need to reduce our power consumption,
but there also could be other ways to go about it.
So you know what? I'm going to tease the video a little bit.
Luke, the idea is that in the video,
we are going to try to build a DIY PC that would not pass the emissions,
or excuse me, would not pass the efficiency standards.
So we're going to try and build like a not super powerful machine,
but that is so inefficient that it would not manage to meet these efficiency standards.
And what we are also going to do is we are going to show off a balls-to-the-wall gaming rig
that would meet the new standards because it's just a little bit more complicated than fast PC,
you know, like, you know, slow PC.
What is it? You got to be like fast PC, you know, like that kind of thing, right?
Like it's not, it's really just not that simple.
It's not total draw, it's efficiency.
Well, no, it, oh boy, is it ever more complicated than that.
So there's some part of the regulation that has to do with like how much bandwidth there is to the GPU memory.
Like, yeah, yeah, I knew that was going to, that bit was going to blow your mind.
Like there's a whole, there's a whole host of requirements and you know how things are, it's America.
So every state is kind of, you know, plays by their own rules.
Sure. Yeah.
Often regulations are made by people that have no idea what they're talking about,
but that's really interesting. Muppet House says Jay and Steve have covered this to death this week,
but all right, we will definitely have a different angle on it.
I will give you my personal Linus Tech Tips guarantee.
True Scott says, says Linus who wants to buy the wall for his gaming room.
Okay, so we're going to talk about that a little bit more later on in the show because that needs its own AC.
Yeah, I might, I might be somewhat, I might be somewhat convinced.
I might be somewhat convinced. All right.
Why don't we jump into our second big topic of the day,
which is of course that Activision Blizzard just keeps on making this problem worse.
So if you weren't around last week,
there has been a slew of accusations against Activision Blizzard about sexist treatment of employees.
I mean, yeah, I guess that's a lot of it. Harassment,
one incident even allegedly went as far as an employee committing suicide on a work trip
with a superior who was in a sexual relationship with them
and something untoward was evidently happening there.
This is all, I believe we haven't confirmed a hundred percent what,
you know, this individual's, you know, reason, what the motivation was to take her own life,
but it's clear from the volume of accusations that there's at least smoke here.
We just, it needs to be looked into and the state of California is going after them for it
and looking into it and that's good because yeah,
like you were saying with the whole, there's a lot of smoke,
but there's a ton more that has happened in the last week.
So Luke, why don't you run us through it?
So this, this is, this is, we have another topic in a moment
that's more like more about what was revealed last week,
just some details that we didn't quite have. This, what we're going to currently talk about,
is things that have happened since then. In response to a lawsuit
accusing the firm of subjecting employees to constant sexual harassment,
including groping comments and advances in the workplace,
Activision Blizzard has hired the renowned union busting firm,
WilmerHale, to review the company's policies.
Ian Hazakostis, game director at World of Warcraft,
previously worked at the law firm.
He was an associate in the litigation department.
That would have been quite a while ago. Other clients that WilmerHale has represented
over the years include Swiss banks accused of profiting from the Holocaust
and firms such as Siemens AG and Krupp AG,
accused of exploiting forced laborers during the Nazi era.
The work with Activision Blizzard will be led by WilmerHale partner,
Stephanie Avakian,
hopefully I'm saying that right, previously serving,
previously serving as Securities
and Exchange Commission's Enforcement Director during the Trump Administration.
This comes alongside Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick
saying that the company's initial response was tone deaf
and his idea was to bring in a union busting firm
because that's not tone deaf. Fantastic.
When you lawyer up that's usually because you have absolutely nothing to hide
and when you lawyer up with people who have just a reputation of defending indefensible things,
then that's usually, I mean, I don't know.
I must have missed this note too,
but one of their most recent customers was Amazon.
When Amazon was trying to union bust, WilmerHale.
So yeah, very, very cool. Classy, classy.
Yeah, Bobby Kotick is definitely on the side of the employees here.
Definitely making sure that they are taken care of first
and is very concerned about all the things that are happening there
and is not just concerned about union busting.
Little note about sarcasm again. Moving on, more details about the Cosby suite.
I didn't really go into this last week because I didn't have a lot of details about it
and it didn't make a ton of sense to me, the details that I did have.
More details have come out and it's just super weird.
I think it's worse because immediately when I heard Cosby suite,
I was like, that sounds terrible.
And I think this picture is worth a thousand words here.
This is on Kotaku.com.
Okay, some notes. I'm going to throw a lot of stuff out here
because there's been a lot said in defense of this situation
and there's been a lot said against this situation.
So one thing is that that photo and a lot of the details that we have are from 2013.
He had been accused many times by that point,
but it had not gotten through. It wasn't me too yet.
Yes. So it was not a huge thing at that point in time,
but it was a thing. It's not that it wasn't a thing.
Some people have been like, oh, it wasn't a problem.
It was a problem. It just wasn't as blown up as it currently is.
During BlizzCon specifically, Alex Afrasiabi,
we mentioned him last week, ran something called the Cosby suite.
Claims have been made that the name came from the room resembling Cosby's ugly sweater
that he's pictured with in the photo and is somewhat known for wearing.
They said that there was either a rug in the room
or the room just looked like that or something.
The walls are just like white. There's nothing in the room that really resembles an ugly sweater.
So none of that really makes a lot of sense.
There's eyewitness accounts of this and there's literally photos
that the walls are just like white. Afrasiabi would hit on female employees.
These notes are specifically at BlizzCon,
but we're pretty sure this happens just like all the time. Afrasiabi would hit on female.
Yes, allegedly. Would hit on female employees telling them that he wanted to marry them,
attempting to kiss them, putting his arms around them, etc. That's employees again.
So they're at BlizzCon. They're not just courting fans.
They're courting maybe fans, but also definitely employees, allegedly.
There's screenshots leaked from a group chat centered around the room called BlizzCon Cosby Crew.
I've been showing these.
Rather interesting discussion, which I'm sure you can read on screen.
We do do podcast stuff, but I don't really want to say it all.
So yeah, that's fine. They've seen it all at this point.
I've been going through as you've been talking.
Yeah, okay. In one image procured by Kotaku,
a group of women are sitting on a bed in the room with Cosby's portrait.
So this is not shown in the article.
I'm not a hundred percent sure why. Maybe they weren't fully wearing clothes.
I'm not certain. One woman appears to have a hand on another's breast,
which is cheered on by men in the comments according to images.
Yeah. Two sources with knowledge of Afraf Syabi's alleged predatory behavior shared these various photos
and the Facebook comments because screenshots of like the group chat saying those things were posted to Facebook.
So it's not like this stuff was tried to be kept private.
This was this was like shared with his friends and potentially family.
It is quoted by a source that it was such a boys club that creating something like the Cosby Suite
was seen as like funny.
Yeah, it's interesting. One employee there, Cossack,
you can see the names in the screenshot, is definitely a part of it.
Comments on Facebook with hashtag cause approved and a bunch of other stuff.
However, this is where like things are kind of going every direction,
which is not surprising in this situation. However, one source told Kotaku that Cossack,
the same guy engaging in some of this behavior, was one of the few people who intervened in the past
when another Blizzard developer was sexually harassing them.
So he also came to the defense of things.
Okay. Yeah, it doesn't look good.
Now Neocortec was posts in the floatplane chat.
Look, even the guilty and downright vile humans need representation in court.
Defense attorneys don't need to like their clients, just defend them. And that's a fair point.
But if you go straight to the firm that is known for defending vile human beings
and the indefensible, it just says a little something about how good you think your case is.
You can find good representation that doesn't have a track record for,
you know, getting monsters off the hook.
For example, when you go for a certain style of lawyer,
you choose a lawyer or you choose a law firm based on what their specialty is.
And if their specialty is winning unwinnable cases,
there's going to be a premium.
And if you didn't think your case was unwinnable, you wouldn't want to be paying that premium.
Do you guys kind of understand what I mean by that?
Another thing, H. Hal made an excellent point in the floatplane chat.
Maybe they're using this firm because no one else wanted to represent them.
And why do you think that might be?
So it's this sort of this inference that you can make when someone is represented by a certain type of firm or a certain type of lawyer.
Birds of a feather, I guess, is the expression that sort of best sums this up.
Yeah. Cardinal says Linus has no idea what he is talking about.
He has never even come close to hiring attorneys at this level.
There's nothing wrong with WilmerHale.
If you want to win a case, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it.
I'm just saying that the type of firm that you hire says a lot about you.
That's all. All right, let's go ahead and jump into our next topic of the day.
AMD launched the Radeon RX 6600 XT at ChinaJoy.
So, I mean, Luke, at this point, what can we really say about GPU launches?
That they're paper launches, that they're somewhat predictable.
Anything else? OK.
Yeah, I guess that's pretty good. Good job, Luke.
I think the biggest the biggest elephant in the room right now is that GPU pricing,
it might get better, but I don't think it is for the foreseeable future
or maybe ever going back to normal like what we used to have.
Some of the some of the price increases that are affecting GPUs
are ones that the GPU industry actually doesn't have any control over.
DRAM is up 50% since 2021 began. Copper's doubled.
Aluminum is up 45%. Plastics are up 47%.
The actual costs of building these things are higher.
Anthony's got a point in here.
He says some say that this is hyperinflation from stimulus packages.
Not an economist, says Anthony, but unlikely. Building materials are being speculated
and not all prices are rising. For example, gold and silver equals confirmation bias.
Now, inflation is currently as high as it was during the 2008 financial crisis.
So it's greater than 5% for two months in a row. A year ago,
it was less than 1%. Of course,
it's worth noting that both AMD and Nvidia have reported double their revenue in the gaming segment over the last year.
So, you know, make of all of this what you will.
Many of our comments seem to default to this angle that AMD and Nvidia are plenty profitable.
So, you know, everything is fine.
And now that, you know, they've seen that there's demand at this price point,
it'll stick around. But I mean,
poor sales for the RTX 20 series cards and the 1060 staying top dog on steam,
despite two generations of two companies trying to dislodge it.
It's probably not all a corporate conspiracy.
There might actually just have been some pent up demand from people not upgrading to 20 series.
And then now being stuck inside a lot and being just desperate to game.
We're also seeing a big crash. I mean,
we're seeing it everywhere from views across like tech channels.
It's not just us. It's something that we track industry-wide.
People are just a little less interested,
you know, engagement with tweets. People are just sentiment.
You know, we see a lot of people who are just really frustrated
and tired of this passion that they have, this this hobby that they love so much,
becoming something that is either they have to spend all day to try to get their hands on the hardware to enjoy it,
or they just outright cannot afford.
There's there's a lot of anger and that cooling,
that cooling is happening and it's happening while demand for these products has not completely fallen off yet.
So what I think is that the prices remaining high is almost like a,
like a false positive sign that the gaming industry is is okay for from NVIDIA and AMD's perspective.
I think what's going to happen is they are going to encounter a lull in demand right around the time they catch up with supply.
And it's going to be a bit of a crash.
Now, a crash isn't going to look like $30 GPUs.
Don't kid yourself. It will just look like NVIDIA reporting a quarter
where they have higher inventory than forecasted and their stock might take a dip or whatever the case may be.
We also have to consider that cryptocurrency prices are a huge unknown,
unknown factor in all of this. I mean, Bitcoin's been tracking back up again since about the beginning of,
I think about a third of the way through last month has gone from around $30,000 USD to $40,000 USD.
So apparently China's crackdown and rumoured upcoming ban are not enough to take down the almighty Bitcoin.
And I'm kidding. I don't mean that I think a Bitcoin is almighty.
It's just a play on the almighty dollar. That's all.
Yeah, it's down today, but it's up over the last five days from around $37,500 to around $41,700.
So to be clear, I am not a financial advisor and I am not recommending in any way that you jump on that train.
I personally own zero Bitcoins. No Bitcoins for me.
Ah, we're hoping that the RX 6600 XT is going to help to address these problems.
It does have a roughly 50% smaller die area than AMD's previous cards.
So that should mean better yields and therefore not just more GPUs per wafer,
but also more-er GPUs per wafer because when you've got a smaller die size, you already get more.
And when you have a smaller die size,
you also get fewer defects because when you have a defect in the wafer,
the chance, like the amount of silicone that it is likely to ruin will be smaller
because if it's right smack dab in the middle of a small die, then you just lose that one small die.
If it's right smack dab in the middle of a big die, you lose that whole big die,
if you guys kind of catch what I mean. It also uses 16 gigabit DRAM chips,
which is different than what Nvidia is using for their lineup.
So that's a kind of separate allocation, separate production stream.
So that might help, but don't hold your breath.
I was really hoping that that was the end about a month ago when China's crackdown happened
and when mining cards were starting to make their way into the used market.
I was really, I mean, I remember saying on the WAN show, here's what's going to happen, guys.
Those used cards are going to eventually saturate the demand in China
and they're going to start leaking out on sites like eBay or AliExpress.
And that clearly hasn't happened.
So that that decline that we saw in prices has somewhat stalled and going on Newegg right now,
you know, a 6700 XT, you can find them in stock.
They're still, they're $900 brand new and searching for 6600 XT brought up quite literally nothing.
So yeah, I mean, at least not at the top of the, oh, okay.
There's three, three references to it on the page.
Oh, this is hilarious. I'm going to share my display with you guys.
Here's the three references to 6600 XT on this page.
There's my search, the search results, and the other more different search results all up here in the top left corner.
So we found, we found a whole lot of, we found a whole lot of nothing.
Whole lot of nothing here, ladies and gentlemen.
Sorry about that. In other hilarious news, Intel renames their manufacturing nodes.
Now Luke, go through this and then I'm actually going to defend this.
Intel has renamed their upcoming nodes and associated roadmap as part of Pat Gelsinger's plan to bring Intel back to performance leadership by 2025.
Enhanced SuperFin is now Intel 7. 7 nanometer is now Intel 4.
They have also introduced Intel 3 and Intel 20A on their roadmap.
20A refers to 20 angstroms, which is the equivalent of 2 nanometer.
Using angstroms makes sense as below 2 nanometer,
improvements to process density may be measured in increments below 1 nanometer, which makes sense.
These names may appear confusing at a glance,
but Intel's numbers have historically been higher than the rest of the industry in terms of the density naming.
There isn't a standard type of measurement for semiconductor nodes.
So Intel's 10 nanometer, for example, was actually close in density to TSMC's 7 nanometer.
Along with this renaming within the roadmap, each process has attached metrics to it.
Per generation, claims are between 10 and 20 percent performance per watt gains.
Intel 4 will fully utilize EUV lithography for 20A.
They're vaguely claim breakthrough innovations in the first half of 2024.
Okay, I've never seen it said that way.
Yeah, that's just how they denote it.
That's odd. I've seen Q1, Q2, not 1H.
Qualcomm and Amazon have onboarded with Intel as new foundry customers,
with Qualcomm committing to the 2024 20A process.
As forum user Lulz, that would be the LTT forum, because I recognize that name, pointed out,
these have positive implications for Intel as it means that they're likely to, man,
if you can do that, I can't read.
Oh, I'm sorry. I highlight while I read.
So I was reading along with Luke and I'm like highlighting the text.
Go ahead. It puts your name there.
So it literally blocks the words.
They're actually on track with the roadmap and third parties are confident in them.
That's it. So I'm going to go ahead and defend Intel,
not because Intel is necessarily doing the right thing,
but because they have to kind of fight fire with fire here.
The thing about nodes is, like Luke said, there isn't an industry standard for how you measure the size of a node.
Back in the old days, when they were measured in microns or micrometers rather than nanometers,
it was a little bit more cut and dried.
But these days, now that the approach to fitting more transistors per square,
whatever unit, let's say millimeter, more transistors per square millimeter is different from one fabricators,
from one fab to the next, and with different approaches, you can't just use one measurement.
We actually did an excellent Tech Quickie video about this,
where we leaned on both flags, like super hard for fan boyism by both sides or something.
The comments on that one were super stupid. I remember that.
Yeah, we leaned on both AMD and Intel to do background research for this one.
We ended up using most of, we ended up citing Intel most in the episode,
and therefore some people concluded that it was a shill piece for Intel or whatever the case may be.
But the truth is that per square millimeter, Intel had better density at the same numbered node
than their competitors in the industry, including TSMC and Samsung.
And in fact, it shouldn't have even been surprising to anybody watching that video to hear this,
because we went through the same whole thing back when Apple was dual sourcing their A-series chips from Samsung and TSMC.
Apple dual source, SOC, TSMC. I'm trying to remember what generation it was.
The A9, the A9 was dual sourced at, if I recall correctly, they were both at like the same process node,
but they didn't have quite the same characteristics.
And so that's not, oh no, TSMC was 16 nanometer and Samsung was 14 nanometer,
but then TSMC, if I recall correctly, actually performed slightly better.
So what I'm trying to say is that it is not as simple as how many nanometers you have and how good the manufacturing process is.
But for the lay person, they think it is. Like I remember watching Jim Cramer talk about, you know, why AMD was a good stock to buy.
This was a number of months ago and he kind of goes, because they have the seven nanometer chips
and everyone wants the seven nanometer chips.
And it's like, OK, you're kind of not wrong,
because at that time Intel had delayed their 10 nanometer chips many times and it had become a problem.
So his analysis that AMD had a superior manufacturing process to Intel and that that was a competitive advantage was not wrong.
But the degree to which that was a competitive advantage was not correct,
because Intel's most advanced 14 nanometer process was probably closer to what a 10 nanometer from TSMC would be.
So that's why Intel is rebranding their 10 nanometer to be seven,
because in terms of actual transistor density, it's a more apples to apples comparison.
Until everyone else goes and changes their nomenclature to be like ahead of Intel's and we end up not having a meaningful number at all.
And we're just going to have to, as enthusiasts, come up with our own number or something that might just that might actually not be a terrible plan.
Yeah, that's what we should do.
I'm not a huge fan of it just being a completely separate number, which they don't base their stuff off.
I almost wish a number wasn't even necessarily involved.
I don't know. I just I'm just not a huge fan of the naming.
But like sitting here listening through you talking and just even reading it myself, I was trying to figure out, like, what would I call it?
I don't know. So maybe it's fine.
Usually I have some form, like if I'm going to complain about a product name, there's something I would have preferred it to be called.
Right. See, Gremlin Injector says, Linus, how about transistor count per square millimeter of dye?
The problem is that it's not that simple. Structures like cache can be crammed much more tightly than actual logic, for example.
One of the reasons is that they don't produce as much heat. So they're not as thermally dense.
They're not as difficult to cool.
So it's just the cold, hard truth is that unless you are an actual microprocessor design scientist,
you are not going to understand it well enough to name it.
And whoever it is at Intel that's working on the naming has determined that that's an appropriate name.
As far as at least protecting themselves against like, you know, class action lawsuits for misleading their investors.
And they're calling that good enough. Is it is it correct?
No, but it's a response to their competitors also not using correct naming schemes.
And if they're going to have Jim Cramer talking about how AMD has the seven nanometer chips and Intel doesn't and that tanks their stock price or whatever,
they're going to have to respond in some way,
especially if they do have a technology that is largely equivalent in terms of actual real world performance,
because the lay person is going to see the model number.
Oh, Core i9 is good. Or, you know, Radeon 5000.
And they're going to make some assumptions based on those model numbers.
And companies are always going to leverage that while the tech savvy are just going to have to say,
look, we have to let the benchmarks do the talking.
I mean, we could maybe it could be like Cinebenches per millimeter.
But that doesn't tell us anything about the manufacturing process because now you're throwing the actual architecture of the chip into the mix.
So it's just not good enough, right? Yeah, I.
Yeah, minimalism to the same conclusion of just like, I can't name it.
So minimalist says, let's be honest, it probably wasn't an engineer deciding these names.
They would be 20 digit numbers then. That's that's a very good point.
But also, Intel finally has an engineer in charge of the ship.
So I don't know, maybe maybe the engineers are more in charge than before.
That's the exact type of point that I would normally try to jump on as well.
But I don't think it's necessarily relevant anymore.
Yeah. Oskeller says it's the same thing AMD did with their Athlon CPUs compared to Intel's gigahertz, their PR or performance rating.
Yeah, it is totally the same thing.
And AMD totally took advantage of the goodwill, the brand equity around that naming scheme that they built with customers.
And it became misleading after a while.
Like they had multiple chips called 3200 plus that all had dramatically very different performance characteristics.
Some that were not even close to an Intel 3.2 gigahertz chip.
And some actually outperformed it by the time the Athlon 64 3200 plus rolled around.
It just isn't that simple.
AMD also took advantage of consumer goodwill when they changed their mobile naming schemes to be 1000 numbers ahead of their desktops compared to what the underlying architecture was.
Intel is no angel here.
I mean, I freaking I've railed on them so many times for naming their high-end desktop processors a generation ahead of their mainstream consumer ones.
That was so frustrating because they'd have these high-end HEDT enthusiast overclockable chips that from a single threaded standpoint,
even if they did boost to the same frequency, didn't have the same performance as the mainstream freaking cheaper thing.
So nobody is innocent here.
Everyone is guilty. At least at least they're all guilty now.
So that's good or equally guilty because I won't say it wasn't guilty before.
It's just degrees of guilty. I suppose. Drosa says,
I love how Linus has to explain that a company isn't your friend almost every episode.
Yeah, I mean, it's so true, though. It's important. Silence brand.
It's like my favorite meme ever. The Wall? Yeah.
Yeah, let's talk about sponsors and then I will talk about The Wall.
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OK, I'm going off script a little bit here, but this is this was a huge freaking deal.
Did you see this in the news? Luke, there is.
Here we go. I'm going to pull up the form. I'm sorry, graphics.
I'm going totally off the script here. Master Disaster posted this on the forum.
You got to check this shiz out. A warning to YouTube creators.
Scammers have worked out an almost foolproof method of phishing your account.
The mind blowing thing about this is Jim Browning.
Jim Browning was one of the victims of this scam.
Like, what? No kidding, right? Is this the same thing that happened to?
Oh, what's his name? Sorry, I'll find it.
Keep going. OK, there's a couple of people that have gotten hit by it already.
But basically, the scammers have worked out a method of sending people emails that are originating from a genuine Google domain.
That makes them indistinguishable from authentic Google emails.
So the scammers, they're bouncing the emails through Google chat.
So when they arrive in your inbox, they look like they are authentic.
So they'll get in a chat with you and they convince you that you have to talk to Google support
because you have multiple AdSense accounts or something and you have to delete one.
And Jim basically did the right thing.
Can I just say how cool it is that in spite of the fact that so much of his brand is built around like scams and people getting scammed online,
admitting that this happened so that the word gets out and other people will be protected.
It's the right thing to do. And Jim is setting an outstanding example,
even though, you know, for some people out there who don't recognize what a good guy move this is,
he could have just pretended it never happened.
For people who don't recognize what a good guy move this is, yeah, maybe there's a hit to his reputation.
But from my point of view, his reputation just went up by 5x.
I think it makes a lot of his content even more valid than it already was
because it shows like that we all need to be aware of this stuff.
So back to our message from our sponsor. To be clear,
Jim Browning has nothing to do with Graphis or anything like that.
It's just this was a news topic that didn't make it into the doc that I was like,
oh, wow, fishing. Haha, that's a thing.
Oh, Anthony just messaged me. Spiffing Brit was also one of the victims.
Not a dumb guy at all. Don't kid yourself.
So if these guys can fall for a fishing scam, don't sit there and go, not me.
We actually did a video like that this week about how bad is it
if you leave the plastic on the bottom of your heatsink?
It's one of those things that, you know, it's very tempting to go,
oh, not me. I could never be that stupid.
But it could happen to anyone. I actually did it about a year ago.
All these years of building computers. I had never done it.
And then finally I did it. I got like distracted doing something else.
And I came back and I was mid build and I was like, I don't know.
And I put it together. I had plastic on the thing.
Yeah, Jake saw the PC had bad thermals and was like,
you left the plastic on. I was like, really?
Anyway, we have a video coming on just how bad it is,
where we do it on purpose and see how bad it is.
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All right, you want an update on the wall, don't you?
I do.
This update is not from Samsung.
Samsung actually does not want me talking about anything
that they've told me about the wall.
I did have a call with them, but it was a little...
Oh man, how do I say this without sounding like a jerk?
Neither the sales representative nor the technical person had any idea who I was.
And I mean that both from a, hey, you work in the tech industry,
you've never managed to catch one of our videos.
Okay, you know what? I buy that, I believe that.
But from a professionalism standpoint, this is a $350,000 product.
You don't even bother to drop the client's name in a Google search
before you get on a call with them.
I was literally asked, so what do you do?
And I was just kind of, I was kind of stunned.
Oh, yeah.
It doesn't seem very pro.
It's just not a pro move.
No.
You know what I mean?
I would do that.
I would Google my customer's name.
I do that.
I even do that when it's kind of the other way around.
If I have to jump on a call with some company that we're working with
and it's some big wig there,
I'll look them up just to see if there's like anything interesting I should know
before we jump on the call.
It takes less than a minute.
It's not hard.
Yeah, it takes seconds to have some idea who the heck you're talking to.
And try to like the name and text, right click, search on Google.
Oh, hey.
To be clear, you know, I also don't like it when someone gets on the phone with me
and they go, oh, yeah, I'm a huge fan.
I just watched.
And it's like the video we released yesterday.
And clearly you like don't let on, you know,
don't tell someone that you Googled them right before you got on the phone with them.
Although I have done that.
But you got to be self-aware about it.
You got to be self-aware like when I get on the phone with another creator.
If it's one that I don't follow what I will do,
my general routine is I will Google them, you know,
I'll go creep them on Social Blade.
How many subscribers do they have? How many views do they have?
I will go watch like their most popular video.
I will watch one recent video and then I will admit it.
I'll be like, look, the truth is I you know,
I don't watch a lot of YouTube.
I hadn't I haven't seen a ton of your content,
but I did really enjoy this and this
and I will give specific things that I enjoyed about the video
and I will I will admit that I you know,
I did look at it as preparation because I want to seem prepared,
but I don't want to seem like a liar,
you know, don't tell me you're a great big fan.
If you're not I I had I had a really awkward moment with a representative
for another creator once this is oh boy.
We're getting into line of story time.
I promise I'll give you an update on the wall later.
I I was working on a collab where this particular creator had moved into a new office
and wanted a tricked-out Wi-Fi setup.
They wanted way better Wi-Fi in their office
because they just had whatever crappy router their ISP sent them over
and I was like that sounds great.
That sounds like a fantastic collab.
Let me see if I can pull in a sponsor who can get us the hardware.
Yeah, I'd be willing to come down and travel and we'll do a video together.
But you know from my point of view that should be a video on the main channel
and they they come back to me and they kind of go.
Well, it can't be on the main channel because we don't do that kind of content
and I go well, I'm sure if I can get on the line with the creator
instead of their representative because I'm on the line not my representative
so they should probably be on the line not their representative.
I'm sure if I could get on the line with this person
we could figure out a way to come up with a creative idea that would work
and they basically dig in and dig in
and eventually I say okay look I do need to talk to them
if we're going to do this collab.
So they schedule a call.
It gets pushed.
It gets pushed again.
And then finally I show up on the call
and it's literally that same representative again.
The creator does not show up
and I get this song and dance about what a big fan they are
but they just can't they just can't make that work.
It just has to be on their secondary like really small vlog channel
and but they yeah, they still totally want to do it.
I'm like, yeah, I'm sure you still totally want a free Wi-Fi upgrade good for you.
But the best part was that they assured me like what a big fan they were.
Okay, but the funny part of that is that a few months prior
like this is months not years prior.
I ran into this person at PAX Prime like in the hallway
and said hello and they had no idea who I was and that's okay.
That's totally fine.
There's literally hundreds of thousands of creators out there with a million subscribers.
These are people with enormous followings that I wouldn't recognize on the street.
There's nothing wrong with that but that representative
I don't know if they were acting on instructions from that creator
or if they were going rogue don't lie because you never know.
You never know man awkward that looked real bad.
That was real bad optics.
We never ended up collabing with that particular creator
and they're on my list of creators whose names I just don't say
because I'm just not gonna I'm not going to do it.
I'm just not going to be involved in any way
because it's just it's a way of doing business that we don't do.
We're just not about that.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
There's another note here.
What's what's this about?
So Ryan here says you're talking about business and stuff.
They have thousands of commercial clients who don't make videos.
You really think it's unprofessional.
They don't Google any random guys name lol,
please know I do actually think that's extremely unprofessional
for a purchase of that magnitude whoever this person is.
They're probably in a Google search somewhere.
I didn't say they make videos.
In fact, I don't think there's probably a ton of people who make videos buying of the wall.
The vast majority of people buying them are probably business owners
that your Google search will very likely come up with a LinkedIn,
but it will show you what they do
and that could inform your suggestions and your yeah.
And the thing about business owners is even more than YouTubers from my experience.
You do not ask them.
So what do you do if they run like a billion dollar company?
They're going to go what are you kidding me?
You couldn't even be arsed to find that out before you got on the call.
Don't kid yourself.
It's just really really lazy.
It's really really almost no effort
and it can make a massive improvement to to the call.
Jake Foster says salespeople for high-end cars Etc.
Definitely do research.
Yeah, they do.
They absolutely do that is absolutely basic.
This is VH9 network says maybe if you were applying to work for them they'd Google search.
Yeah, exactly for entry-level positions at McDonald's.
You're going to have your name Googled.
So don't kid yourself guys.
Oh, man Euler says so how do you know that they didn't know who you were?
Because they didn't why would you ask someone?
So what do you do and they were they were absolutely surprised
when I said like there I think I've got a pretty good BS detector.
I know they had absolutely no idea who I was which again is fine.
It's just the the utter lack of research that was pretty surprising to me.
So anyway, I can't really talk about anything that came of my call with Samsung.
I not because I've signed any kind of non-disclosure agreement,
but just because I've been asked not to talk about it.
So I'm like, okay sure whatever but what I do have is an email from an installer
who works on the wall system like who is a the wall certified installer
or works for a company that does it
and has also installed similar competing products from the likes of actually,
I don't know if they've specifically worked with Sony or LG solutions
because LG is in particular I don't think is prime time ready,
but they've worked with competing solutions they say
and they basically did not recommend a the wall.
I'm just going to read out their letter because it's full of really great information.
I was listening to the recent WAN show where Linus
and Luke were discussing the video wall and ideas for content.
We do these types of installs all the time
and as cool as video walls are they have a number of downsides.
Now some of them we talked about before heat cost those are definitely downsides.
This thing kicks off somewhere in the neighborhood of I think it's okay.
I'm just trying to make sure I'm well,
we showed you guys the installation guide last week
that required two dedicated 15 amp circuits for a 4K the wall.
So somewhere between you know,
1500 watts and 3000 watts should give you some idea.
Apparently the panels constantly need to be replaced.
The panels don't always match although there's another vendor Sony.
Oh, okay. Yeah,
Sony apparently does color matching of each panel when they install it
and they actually keep yours on record.
So if you ever need to get it replaced you will get something that matches.
They will pre-tune it for you.
So I thought that was pretty interesting power consumption that goes along with heat output.
Obviously the need of a level 5 finished wall.
So man the apparatus that you mount this thing on they sent me a picture.
It looks absolutely insane.
Apparently it takes days to install.
Get this the tiles will apparently shift with the building as it settles and moves.
That's a problem.
I didn't foresee and the depth of the panels.
These things are not thin I had thought they were like maybe like this
but with the mounting on the wall,
they are crazy thick the email continues.
Now you could get some additional content on the design process
that goes into the pre-install side of things.
But the other direction you can go is projection using something like a Christie projector
that is capable of 4k 120 Hertz.
Now I had heard of Christie before but because they're crazy expensive.
I'd never really looked at buying them.
But then all of a sudden if I was tempted by this the wall thing.
Yeah, if you're in the market for that,
I guess I might as well look at it.
So they have a 4k 120 Hertz projector and this is crazy.
They have a few options that have fiber-coupled projection heads.
So what these allow you to do is put the projection head in the room
with little power heat requirements and super quiet
and then you remote the light sources from a closet that has cooling and power in it.
That's crazy.
That's really cool.
I know right.
I had never even heard of that before that just go to your like maintenance room.
Yeah, totally.
Well, actually I don't know about the distance.
I don't know how far it can go,
but it could almost definitely go out of the theater room.
The projector is a little under half the cost of the wall
and would need much less infrastructure
and they say there are a lot of brands of LED walls that offer better value compared to the wall
and sent a picture of a Samsung the wall that they did for a client
that I was hoping that the borders between the modules would be a lot more seamless
and it's the kind of thing that's like full array local dimming.
Okay, when you're consuming content
and you're just chilling on the couch watching a movie.
You probably wouldn't notice it what a big deal
but at that kind of cost I would want to be able to look at it
as closely as humanly possible
and not see a freaking seam.
So are you are you considering the projector over the Sony option?
The biggest obstacle to the projector from day one has been the wife approval factor.
One of the things for Yvonne.
One of the big things is that she doesn't want the theater room to feel like a dungeon
because she's not going to feel comfortable there
and she won't want to go down there.
And so for me that's important because a I love my wife and I value her her,
you know feelings but more importantly be I want to use the theater room
and I'm not going to sit and watch a movie alone.
So I need her to want to go to the theater room.
So what a projection what a projector means is a you need to have the room dark
when you're consuming content, right?
Because if you want to get those deep blacks,
you're limited to whatever the blackest black absence of light in your room is
and B in order to control the light that you're going to shine at the screen
because it's going to be bouncing around the room right, you know ray traced.
Okay in order to control that light you need to have the room be as dark as possible.
Hold on. Yeah.
Okay, you want the room to be as dark as possible
so that you don't have like let's say even you know,
you've got the pitch blackness of space
and then you've got a bright point a star.
You don't want that star to shine light out into the room have it bounce off the white walls
and then light up that pitch blackness of space.
So it turns into more of a gray.
So the wall is a way around that it's a way to have enough brightness
that you can you can have light in the room
or you can have light colored walls like the other walls not the wall.
I hate the name of this product without compromising on image quality.
So to give you some idea of how important it is to have complete blackness in the room.
This is amazing. So I was chatting with Rob H.
So he's from he does the AV rant podcast.
He's buddies with Tom Andrew from AV gadgets.com.
He's been incredibly helpful
and he's told me some stuff that's pretty been pretty enlightening actually.
So projection HDR is apparently targeting a mirror.
What is this control F HDR?
Come on. Come on. Where is it?
Knit. Give me knit. There you go.
They call for a peak of just a hundred and eight nits.
That's it. That's that's what you would have in a full-sized commercial Dolby Cinema with Cinema Dolby Vision.
So, you know, when I look at a projector that's rated for a mere 2200 nits compared to,
you know, Sony has this crazy one that'll do 10,000 nits.
He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not actually what's important.
What's important is that it handles HDR tone mapping really well
and that you have enough brightness for the room that you're in.
So he figures that room with an NX9 from JVC, which is about 20 grand to be clear.
That's still a very expensive display.
That room would be perfect for projected HDR on a 135 inch screen with the only challenge being that
if you want to get perceived high brightness out of a 100 and knit peak brightness screen,
you are going to have to be sitting in complete darkness with nice dark walls in a dungeon.
So I think I've made a decision.
I hadn't actually before I started talking through all of this.
I think I've made a decision now.
I am going to buy a micro LED screen, but not now.
I am going to pursue some other option because the reality of it is this is, this technology,
and I knew this, I just didn't want to, I just didn't want to face it.
I just was like, I was wowed by the cool factor.
This technology is in that stage of its development where you can expect,
it'll be like buying one of the first plasma TVs, you know, literally 18 to 24 months later,
you'll be able to get something that is not only half the price, but way better.
And I don't know, it's still one of those things that from a content standpoint,
if it was a third of the price, you know, and I could get like 10 videos out of it,
I'd be sitting there going, yeah, let's do this.
I'm going to make this work.
I'm going to find a big like title sponsor for this series.
We'll do some like really strong call to action.
We'll do some kind of like brand integration like we've done with dbrand in the past
where we like do a custom skin or something like that and a drop.
We do a bunch of promotion and we build like a campaign around it.
Like I could have found a way to make it work,
but at that price, even if I managed to find a way to write it off as a business expense,
it's just not tenable.
There's way more responsible things that I should do with that money.
And I still want a micro LED display because I think it's the future.
I'm super excited about the technology.
I've seen it in person at trade shows and it's drool-worthy.
It's amazing, but it's not the right move right now.
Not the right move.
Yeah.
All right. I'm committed.
So I'm I'm I'm happy I think because I think it was not a good plan.
Yeah, it wasn't a good plan.
It was yeah, it was a it was a it was flex first.
So wait, what are you going to do short term?
Are you going to use your current TV? There's lots of options.
I mean the Sony A90J is 83 inches.
That's not exactly small. It's gorgeous.
Boy, is that an amazing TV and in a relatively light controlled environment,
unlike what I have now, it could only look even better.
I could explore the JVC projection option.
We have projection screen companies that I think would be willing to hook us up.
So that would make the price a little bit more palatable.
Or not need to necessarily but even with a with a wouldn't you need to make it somewhat den-like, cave-like?
A little bit not to nearly the same degree though.
I often get the vibe with projectors that the space feels empty
unless the projector is playing as well.
Not as much for the TV personally.
That's fair.
I mean one of the things you can do is you've got the speakers there,
right? You can put a little kind of stage under it.
That's where I'm going to have cable management.
Like there'll be a little raised section under it.
I think that I wouldn't go with a retracting screen.
I don't think I'm going to try and do the whole TV behind a projector.
When we did it in the lounge,
what we found was nobody used the TV because the big screen,
even though the latency is worse and it might not have as many Hertz.
The big screen experience is just so much better when you're in a big group gaming
and that's what almost everyone used the TV for. Otherwise,
why wouldn't you just sit at a monitor? You sit so close to it like this 39 inch monitor,
38 inch monitor, whatever it is in front of me.
I mean, this could easily be a 150 inch TV for how close I'm sitting to it.
Like if you're gaming by yourself, use a monitor.
And if you're gaming with a group, man,
does that projector ever make something like Smash Bros?
Just totally different. It's just different,
you know, Mario Kart, that kind of stuff. Farowind says,
I'm not happy. Linus just cost me 10 bucks on a bet.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry. It was a scary one, but we pulled through.
It's okay. Yeah, I mean,
I think you've known me long enough to know that I didn't think you were going to buy it.
The odds of me making it that far were, they were pretty slim,
but I was, I was tempted. It was just exciting.
It was cool. I thought if they came at you with something that wasn't,
who are you, that there was maybe a chance.
Like if they came at you with like an, okay, like,
we're really hoping to see some content,
but yeah, here's the TV or like we'll sell it to you at a discount or something,
that maybe there was a chance, but I thought there'd have to be some type of thing going on.
If they, if, I was thinking about that after the call,
and what I came, what I concluded was that the discount would, to make it,
to make it justifiable, the discount would have had to be so deep that it would not have been realistic anyway.
I don't think there was any way to make that a win-win for both parties,
because just the amount that we can make making YouTube content,
versus the amount that it must cost them to produce that thing,
those numbers weren't going to intersect, was what I concluded.
And full price, I was still considering it,
because maybe over the years I would be able to milk enough content out of it.
But the problem with that theory, like,
if I thought that this thing was going to stay top of the line for two or three years,
actually, I could consider it, because I could keep milking it.
New graphics card comes out, I game on the wall.
New game comes out, I game on the wall.
I'd be the only one that has one. I'm serious, though.
I think it would get old, personally, from a viewership standpoint,
I think it would get old. Maybe, maybe you're right.
Because the I game on the wall thing, like, the first time you see it, that's huge.
I think that video blows up. Yeah. Gaming at whatever that screen size is.
Like, whoa, that's huge. And you got a few different angles on it.
But, like, playing Halo Infinite on the wall.
It's like, okay. Well, we already saw him play four other things on the wall.
So. Yeah, I don't know.
This is maybe with, like, a very key new game drop.
Like, anything that had Cyberpunk in the title right before Cyberpunk came out,
it was kind of blowing up, and then everyone realized it was terrible.
But I don't think there's enough of those. Anyway, sorry.
Ambler says, this is on Floatplane Chat,
got to wonder if they actually want you to buy it from a PR standpoint,
considering all those downsides that you heard about from the installer.
That is a good question. Whenever a company isn't trying to put a product like this in the hands of influencers,
you do have to wonder if they have something to hide.
If maybe they know, you know, it's kind of, it's one of those things like,
I've actually been wondering for a while now, why Nvidia even seeds a card like the RTX 3090?
Why do they even bother sending it to reviewers?
Because we all already know the conclusion.
The conclusion is, cool technology doesn't make sense at this price.
What else are you supposed to say about it?
It's, it's, it's, it's flashy.
It's flashy, you know, stuff for people who don't really care about what the price of their computer is.
That's what it is.
And so someone like a Steve from Gamers Nexus or Anthony from our team or other more different Steve from Hardware Unboxed,
their conclusion is always going to be more skewed towards the general consumer.
And we even tried, we actually tried to cover a very high-end card recently from the point of view of the pay whatever it costs consumer.
And we got absolutely crucified for it.
So clearly you guys, you don't even want to see these products covered from the perspective of the actual customer for it,
which raises the question, what do these companies stand to gain by having the press cover these things?
If, if nobody wants to, if nobody wants to hear about it, right?
So, yeah, I guess I get it.
So maybe they're trying to cover up downsides.
Maybe they just realized that there is no point having the press cover this because no conclusion could possibly paint them in a favorable light.
And the last thing they need, you know, if they, if they went and they, they dropped, you know, let's, let's say, let's say their gross margin on it is 35%.
OK, so if they went and dropped 200 grand on a review sample, so someone would review this thing and it ended up with a negative review.
If the Mark Zuckerberg books and, you know, Jeff Zuckerberg, Jeff Blue Origins of the world see that review when they Google it and ultimately don't buy it.
What a waste. Right. What a waste.
So. I don't know. I don't know.
Maybe I'll you know what I should try and do if I'm going to go projector,
I should try and get demo units from a whole bunch of different guys and then just do a video where I try like a whole bunch of them out.
The projector gauntlet. Yeah. And I basically just make a commitment at the beginning of the video that I'll buy one of them,
but it'll have to be the one that wows me, whether it's from an image quality or price performance standpoint.
You should do it as like a tournament and have like have brackets and have like so like have one and one go against each other and then it like they like.
Yeah. Video title. There can only be one. Yeah, that's awesome.
I kind of like that. I kind of like that. Oh, I also like telling you guys about new products on LTT store dot com.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I kind of teased them last week, but that's not it.
Where is it? Almost teased something else. Yeah. No, no, it's all good.
Ah, yes. The GPU shirt designed by the one and only Sarah Butt has launched.
It's in like a retro pixel art style. You can get yours on LTT store dot com.
So head over there now and get one. Yeah. Good stuff.
You are no longer funding my purchase of the wall, though. That is that is officially over.
It's over. Oh, for those of you who don't feel like going to LTT store dot com, that's too many characters for you to type.
I will go ahead and I will fire it up for you and give you guys a look at what the GPU shirt looks like.
Got Nicole, Alex. Hey, what is he doing? What is that? Stop that. Madison.
More Alex. He didn't drop this one because this one works.
He dropped the dummy unit that we have. All right.
What else we got for topics today? Oh, yes, this is a good one.
Valve delivers a scathing response to antitrust lawsuit.
Luke, walk us through it. This was bound to happen, man.
This was bound to happen. Back in April, independent game developer Wolfire Games,
creators of Humble Bundle, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve over the dominance of their Steam storefront.
And Valve responded this week saying that the case should be dismissed because there's no other way that anyone would ever respond to anything
because it fails to allege the most basic element of an antitrust case.
Hmm. You say you don't say. Interesting. One focus for the case surrounds the ability.
If you keep doing that, I can't read. Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for the ability for developers to generate free Steam keys and sell them elsewhere.
However, Valve prohibits those keys from being sold at a lower price on other storefronts than on Steam.
Wolfire claims that it is bad as they have to keep their prices high in order to afford Valve's 30% cut.
Wolfire also alleges that Valve tries to enforce pricing parity for non-Steam versions sold on other platforms as well.
Valve says the lawsuit should be dismissed because, again, of course they do, and that they have no duty under antitrust law to allow developers to use free Steam keys
to undersell prices for the games they sell on Steam or to provide Steam keys at all.
They also defend the 30% take, claiming that it's not out of the ordinary, writing,
in fact, 30% has become the industry standard while Valve has faced competition from some of the largest companies in the industry,
including Microsoft, Epic Games, and Amazon.
Now, if it was even three weeks ago, I might have said that Valve is making an unfair comparison here.
Because, particularly comparing themselves to Microsoft, a maker of hardware products that they sell at a loss,
that their store sells software to run on, that's an apples to oranges comparison.
But now that Valve has jumped headlong into the console market with the SteamPad,
I actually think that is a very apt comparison, and if anything, Valve kind of looks like the good guy,
looking at how things are shaking down for the SteamPad.
If only a 30% take is...
It's tough, but hardware development costs do have to come from somewhere.
Looking at the price of the SteamPad, I don't think they're coming from the SteamPad. That is my honest take on this.
I don't think they are.
I don't think they need 30% to do that.
I didn't say that.
Yeah.
I didn't say that.
You said...
I said they have to come from somewhere.
In defense of the 30%, you said it has to come from somewhere.
Oh, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait.
In defense of Valve's argument, Valve's comparison of themselves to Microsoft.
Okay, okay.
I would have said that Valve shouldn't compare themselves to Microsoft when they didn't have a hardware product
that they were supporting and developing that was intended for their...
That was what their store supported.
Like, if they didn't have that hardware-software synergy,
I was going to say it was hard to make that comparison to Microsoft.
That was all I was trying to say.
And what I was going to say was that relative to others in the industry,
Valve may be taking 30%, which I may not think is reasonable,
but they are still coming across as a relatively good guy.
Compared to Microsoft, they allow you to use someone else's store on the SteamPad.
They allow you to install someone else's operating system on the SteamPad.
They allow you to take their Steam Marketplace and run it on other platforms.
They are, relatively speaking, taking an open approach here.
I also can't think of...
Like, the fact that they do allow you to sell those Steam keys elsewhere,
even if you can't sell them at a lower rate,
I can't think of any other platform in any other space at all.
And I could be totally just ignorant or misinformed,
but I can't personally think of any other platform that does that at all for anything.
So, interesting note.
I don't think Valve is a saint, just to be very clear, just in case anyone's watching.
Yeah, not even remotely.
But yeah, this is interesting.
I'm not surprised at all that Wolfire is trying to get at them in any way that they can.
I mean, as soon as the Epic Games lawsuit against Apple and Google happened,
this was going to be a response.
Yeah. Now is the time, right?
The winds are flowing in this direction.
I've got some people in the floatplane chat pointing out,
hey Linus, doesn't Apple make hardware?
Yes, they do.
But a key difference is that in the mobile operating system and app space,
you could make a much stronger argument that Google and Apple are a duopoly
than you could make for Valve being a participant in some kind of monopolistic market.
I mean, the gaming space is still,
a lot of developers are getting scooped up by larger entities,
but you could still make the argument that there's fairly vibrant competition in the gaming space.
There's also quite a few different stores
and there's genuinely quite a few different games that don't use that.
I guess the Riot launcher is no longer just for League of Legends.
So maybe that doesn't count.
But Escape from Tarkov, for instance, is definitely not done through a modern nice store experience.
It's this super rough website.
They have to go buy the game on and then just download its own launcher
and they are doing more than fine.
There's lots of games that don't have to operate through the Steam store.
So yeah, it's a bit different.
Now, we've got enough viewers now that I feel like I have a large enough sample size.
I need to talk to you guys about something important.
This actually isn't in the doc,
but we did a video this week about a product that I think is really, really important.
It's made by a company called Framework.
So their website is frame.work
and it's a laptop that takes a far more open approach
than what we've seen from the rest of the industry.
So all the parts internally have these very clear labels,
QR codes even, that will take you to information about how to upgrade them or replace them.
Things like the battery that have been deemed, you know,
not worth replacing and you know,
other manufacturers will just glue their devices shut.
So you just have to throw the whole thing away when the battery dies.
They've gone out of their way to use standardized components.
So that will not in fact happen to your laptop.
Even the screen, the bezel comes off magnetically
and you can replace the screen with something else in the future.
It's just a really, really different approach.
Oh, look at this. They've already got my quote on their site.
The team over at framework has managed to not just create a laptop
that is easily repairable and upgradable,
but it's also a thin gorgeous performant laptop.
Linus Tech Tips. That's hilarious.
They really didn't waste time with that. In the video,
you know, I talked about putting my money where my mouth is to support an initiative
that I have been saying is important for as long as I've been making YouTube videos.
Things being more easy, things being easier to repair,
things not just being dead-end devices that have no upgrade path,
whatsoever. They even go as far as to provide the schematics
for the main board to repair shops in the event that they need to repair them.
Like these guys are taking a way more open approach.
It's something I respect a lot.
And I said in the video that I wanted to put my money where my mouth is
and that was in two ways that I'm willing to do that.
One is I ordered one. They sent me a review unit.
I could have just kept that but instead I ordered one.
So I put down my like twelve hundred dollars
or whatever once I had configured it with the all the options I wanted.
So it's got modular ports so you can have whatever I owe you want on the sides.
And number two was I said I would be willing to invest in the company
if they still needed investors. And Framework has reached out
and they are interested in taking me up on that offer.
So the reason I need to talk to you guys about this
and obviously Luke I'd like you to weigh in as well
is that this creates a potential conflict of interest for me
that I have never had to deal with before.
I don't own and I have not throughout my YouTube career owned any stock of any tech company
unless it was through like a mutual fund or something like something completely blind
where I had no idea what I owned.
So this would be new.
One of the reasons that I said it in the video
and one of the reasons that I felt at that time
that I would be comfortable investing in this company
and owning a share in this company is that everything that they stand for
and this is not just words I can see it in the product.
They even provide extra screws.
All the internal screws are color-coded
so you know which ones go where without having to like measure
which one's the two and a half millimeter long
and which one's the three millimeter long one.
Not only are they color-coded they include extras in case you lose one
while you're performing maintenance on your own machine.
Like this is what I've been asking for all this time.
What they stand for seems to be what I stand for to the letter
and I just wanted to find a way to support it.
That's what made me comfortable offering something like that.
But what this does is this has the potential to color my coverage, right, of other products.
However, let me make an argument to you guys.
Would I be saying if I were a shareholder in Framework
or I don't even know what the company is called.
Framework Computer Inc.
That's what it says at the bottom of the site.
If I were to own some shares in Framework Computer Inc.
Would that change my stance on any of this?
When I got a new MacBook
and I criticized it for having everything soldered to the board
and for not providing repair documentation to technicians.
It would bring to question motivations for sure.
Sure.
And like so if someone knew,
like I don't think it would genuinely change anything that you would say about anything.
But if someone doesn't know you,
that doesn't mean anything to them.
And your viewership is going to constantly change.
You're going to constantly be seen by new people.
I believe legally you would have to disclose.
I would have to, absolutely.
Every time you talked about any form of laptop,
right? I think. I think I'd have to mention it.
Yep. We could probably do a text to disclosure on screen to keep it from being too disruptive to the content,
but it I'd have to I'd have to acknowledge it in some way.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah,
I don't know. It's tough because for me like the motivation is that I want to support this and I honestly,
I don't really care if framework wins.
If anything, I think it's a long shot.
I think as an upstart laptop maker going up against the Acer's and MSI's and gigabytes of the world by,
you know, contract manufacturing laptops through through Foxconn or whatever.
I think that's going to be a really tough business. And if I had thought there was a ton of money to be made in that business,
it's the kind of thing we could have hired engineers and done.
I don't think there's a ton of money to be made in that business,
but I would like to be wrong, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
You know, Floatplane has a lot of thoughts, you know,
Vitito says if given the choice between Linus invested in the company lived or Linus did not invest,
and the company went out of business, I think we can all say it's better the company stays alive.
I don't think I'll be the difference between staying alive and not staying alive though.
So for me, it comes down to just that I want to vote with my dollars.
I want to I want to back things that I believe in.
Happy Roll Cake says I changed my mind.
I don't care about the conflict of interest having you as a spokesperson for this is important.
That is a thought that I had had like does me throwing my weight behind this
help it in any meaningful way besides the money because you know,
honestly speaking it's not like I'm going to put millions of dollars into it.
Like it's you know,
the kind of contribution I'd be making would basically be,
you know, prepayment for some laptops that they need to manufacture to ship to,
you know, like it's not yeah,
it's not like I'm going to be single-handedly angel investing,
you know, backing this company, right?
But can I contribute anything by being a voice sort of beating the drum saying hey,
what these guys are doing is important. Another thing is if I'm an investor,
does that give me influence? Does that give me sway?
Can I help keep them on the right track if they start making what I think is a bad decision?
Possibly. And this would be an opportunity that I've never had before.
Like it's easy for me to sit here on the sidelines
and yell Apple shouldn't do this and Dell shouldn't do that.
But I'm not a stakeholder. I have no skin in the game.
They don't actually care what I think. They have to respond to what I think,
or at least Dell seems to feel like they have to, Apple doesn't,
but they have to, maybe not I, but the media.
They have to respond to what the media thinks because it could color the public's perception.
But at the end of the day, the people running these companies,
they're doing math, right? They're doing math.
How many units can we sell? How much margin is there?
How will the shareholders react? How does that affect our credit as a company?
These are the actual important questions from their standpoint.
Boy, is there ever a lot of comments about this.
Is there other ways to do it outside of investment?
Like could you do, there's been some posts in FlowPlane that are talking about
like LTT branded something.
Like you do like an LTT edition framework laptop.
I don't think it's any different. Partnering with them in some way,
or like cutting them a discount on advertisement or something like that.
If anything, I see, okay, cutting them a discount on advertising,
that would be one thing. I don't think that,
I don't think doing like a partnered product would be really any different than investing in the company though.
If anything, it's kind of worse because how do we review a laptop
if we sell a laptop versus if I review a laptop as a shareholder in framework,
I could disclose that I am a framework shareholder.
And the reason that I invested is that I value these fundamental principles that framework
builds their products with and my intention is to hold others to the same standard.
Another question that Jayden brought up is if their business practices changed,
would you sell your stocks?
I would have to divest. Yeah.
So that's one of those things where that obviously I'd have no way of putting that in a contract with framework
because it's too vague. You can't put things like if I disagree with your business principles,
I will sell or something like that.
But that's the kind of thing that I make a verbal contract with you guys.
And I basically say, look, if these guys do not, I lay out, okay, look,
these are the principles, repairability, upgradeability, and openness.
If they deviate to a standard that we, the LTT community, are not satisfied with,
I will divest regardless of what the value of those shares are.
I think that's something that is absolutely necessary.
Yeah. People in full-plane chat are saying, oh, that would just be the same as the fans.
No, because as far as my knowledge goes,
LTT doesn't make exactly a lot of dedicated videos reviewing fans.
And LTT stopped making dedicated videos about fans when we released the first one.
Also, the LTT edition fan was not an LMG product.
We never sold it. Noctua sold it.
So, oh wait, no, I think the first round we did. The heat sinks they sold.
Either way, we stopped making videos about fans.
And we fully disclosed the entire business arrangement there.
We told you guys exactly how it worked.
And we told you guys that the reason we're doing an LTT branded product is because we trust Noctua.
And so the fact that we trusted Noctua after that shouldn't have been any kind of surprise for you guys.
All right. So here's what we're basically going to do.
This is an interesting take. Citrus Notes says find a company that does something you're passionate about outside of the tech industry and invest there.
Truthfully, I'm not I'm not looking for investment opportunities.
That's not that's not what I was after. That's not why this conversation got started.
It got started because tech is something I'm passionate about.
And this aspect of tech is something that I am passionate about.
That's the whole reason that we're even having this conversation.
So that's it. I've I've laid out what I think are the problems.
I've laid out what I think are the good reasons for it.
And I'm just going to make it as simple as I'm straw pulling you the audience.
You guys are going to make the decision. That's it.
I'm still stuck on like is there just something else? Because like especially if you're saying you don't think it's going to make or break it.
It's like what's what's the what's the point? Like if they do well, you make money.
If you do well, your shares increase in value. Yes, obviously.
But then like, is that really helping them? So the benefit is that they're at a stage right now where they need a cash infusion to grow.
That's the benefit for them. And in the long term, the benefit for the investor,
it's just like any investor company relationship, the benefit for the investors that the shares should grow in value.
Now, I want those shares to grow in value because I want this business model to be seen as something that's viable.
I want this company to not just succeed in the sense that they sell some laptops.
I want them to succeed in the sense that they shake up this trend that the industry has been moving toward for so freaking long.
That's the kind of success I want.
OK. All right, I'm creating the poll and I'm going to hit float plane with it first here, ladies and gentlemen.
So I want you guys to make the decision for me because this is the kind of thing that without the support of the LTT community,
I I cannot do. It's that simple.
All right. So someone says invest an equal amount in Dell and Asus.
But I don't want that. That's not what I'm trying to support.
Come on, guys. Come on, guys. All right.
So let's let's bring up the results. You guys are going to find out same time as me.
And to be clear, I'm going to use your your response to guide my decision.
I'm not necessarily just going to go with a straight majority rules vote here.
It's not that simple. All right.
I'm hitting up Twitch. Here you go, Twitch. You guys are up.
All right. Here we go. And finally, I'm dropping it in the YouTube chat.
People are leaving comments, guys. There's no point reading a comment, leaving a comment about this in the YouTube chat.
In fact, I'm just going to go ahead and pop it into slow mode here or you know what?
I'm going to go even farther than that. Where's the chat thing?
Customization. Here we go. We're going to put it in members only.
There's like hardly any members. So we just basically turned off the YouTube chat so that everyone can find the link to the straw poll.
There we go. All right. Well, we apparently do have a handful of members.
Fascinating. All right.
Cool. There we go. All right.
You guys are going to see the results same time as me.
I guess you were watching me do all that. That's fascinating.
And let's refresh it. Got 2000 votes with 80 percent of you saying yes.
And 20 percent of you giving it a no.
So I would like to hear I actually need to hear some more.
Some more arguments for and against Luke. Have you seen anything particularly interesting?
The Dell and Alienware one definitely wasn't particularly interesting.
Hit me with something better than that. I haven't seen.
I don't know. I've seen a lot of people.
I think there's a decent amount that are kind of sitting in the same spot that I am,
but that might be confirmation bias or that might just be float plane echoing what I've been saying, right?
Float plane does love you. So that can that can be a thing.
Yeah. And I've just been reading the full plane chat, so I don't know.
But I haven't seen a lot of of both ways.
There's been a lot of they're not arguments. They're just statements like invest.
Do it. Don't invest. Don't do it.
But not a lot of like, you know, reason behind it.
I definitely have a lot to lose. I think this comment from Snow Skeleton puts it pretty well.
I believe in this company as well, and I support you supporting them.
But if I stopped supporting them and you were still backing them,
I would stop supporting you. So here I am hitching my cart to this horse,
where if framework screws it up, then I lose.
Yeah, right. It doesn't. I don't know.
I think the investment kind of comes off weird because there's there's a lot of personal gain based around that.
So it's like, oh, I want to support this company by making money off this company is kind of odd.
And then there's also like like you don't really know these guys.
And it being a public figure, you being a public figure and it being something that is in your space,
it's going to come across as a like incredibly informed move.
Yeah. And like, I mean, it might be.
But I kind of doubt you're that close with these dudes.
No, I'm not these people. All I know, all I've seen so far is the product. Yeah, it.
Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's a big that's a big.
It's a big, big step. All right.
Unfortunately, I don't know why this happened, but I lost all the viewer activity on YouTube again.
This is extremely frustrating. YouTube, if anyone's watching, you guys got to fix this.
Like, look at this. That's it.
So this hundred dollar super chat from Apollo is just gone when I try to go back and see it.
Fortunately, I was able to get it by scrolling here because I remembered I saw a red one come in.
I wanted to make sure I got to that.
This is really, really this is a terrible experience for users, guys,
when I cannot respond to a super chat because it just goes away from the viewer activity tab.
So I want to catch Apollo's before it goes away here.
Any thoughts on what tech enthusiasts and gamers can realistically do to help combat climate change?
I've been real depressed lately due to the state of our planet. I'd love for you to talk about it a bit.
Thank you. I mean, really, it's the basics.
Turn off your stuff when you're not using it. Make sure that you choose.
I mean, not just choose more efficient components, but upgrade less.
Like, make sure that you're not just consuming stuff for the sake of consuming.
That's pretty much the biggest difference that you can make.
Get involved with an organization like Free Geek that takes old hardware that would otherwise be destined for the recycler
and put it in the hands of people. Reduce, reuse, recycle in that order is really the biggest key.
All right. Oops. Oh, shoot. No, I don't want to vote.
I want just the results. There's 4000 votes and it has stayed absolutely deadlocked at 80% to 20%.
I've seen some I've seen some interesting ideas like invest in it and then donate any gains to charity.
The problem for me is that as a business owner, if I lose, then what does a charity compensate me?
I guess not. But then at least I tried to make a difference. So I have like kind of the good guy feels from that.
From a from a cash flow standpoint, that would be irresponsible, kind of like buying at the wall.
If it was about the investment, I should just make a real investment that I that I think is a good idea instead of something where I'm committing to say,
OK, no, whatever I gain, it's about it's about this is something you taught me, though, right?
It's about optics. It's not about what it actually means for you.
And that's why it's really complicated is because people are going to see this that don't know you.
Jayden said the whole problem. Jayden had a really good comment and said,
if you believe in their vision, maybe it's more important for you to stay financially impartial and just support them vocally.
Yeah. You know what? That's kind of the vibe that I'm currently on as well.
Yep. I think that's a solid argument. Bring it up in other reviews of other laptops as a downside because it is now.
If a competing laptop is not upgradable, that is now a downside of that laptop.
Right. And now you can say that impartially because you're not investing.
Brooks Freeze says, let's remember that the stock market was not supposed to be about making money.
It was supposed to help good companies with good ideas get funding.
So that is the intention here. But then maybe there maybe there would be other ways to tackle it.
But I can't read this person's name because it appears to be in Chinese characters.
There's never been a laptop company that's backed by strong YouTube marketing.
They wouldn't survive on their own. But if they have your blessing,
I think they would have a much stronger business model opinion from an S.I. owner here in Hong Kong.
Interesting. OK. Yeah, I don't I I get where your heart's at and I support it.
I'm just very concerned about optics and I think there's a lot of problems with the optics.
I there's a bunch of just to address some of this stuff because like someone in full plane was like,
what we've been saying. So one of their things was like, why don't you invest in it personally?
And they just have other people at LMG cover laptops. That's not how like any of this works.
He owns the company. It can be. You still have just disclosed that the owner of the company.
I'm pretty sure you still have to disclose that the owner of the company.
So it depends. If I have no writing credit on the piece whatsoever or editing credit,
like if I actually properly recuse myself from the creation of laptop content entirely,
then no, we wouldn't have to disclose anything.
I'm allowed to have personal investments that are that are not disclosed
when a writer voices their own opinion because they don't have any financial skin in the game.
So that's how those disclosures need to work.
I like that you're switching to it because you and I have disagreed on laptops
since I believe literally the first month that we started working together
and I'm happy you're getting away from ultra-thin, ultra-performance.
This is ultra-thin, ultra-performance.
But hopefully this one won't die in a fire as hard as all the other laptops that you seem to like.
Or if it does, hopefully you can up repair it.
Justin Donnarumma says, a thought on your investment to framework.
It'll be far more than your monetary investment.
Your financial investment will actually likely be a small portion of the full value.
The gain you may or may not receive later is irrelevant to the initial risk
you take by providing a boost to their ability to grow.
Also, because of the value of your knowledge and experience as well as following,
you could negotiate for a board seat, which could give you a modicum of control.
That sounds like it would be helpful in terms of affecting the change that I want to see,
but not helpful in terms of reducing the conflict of interest.
NH4X4 tracker says, do consulting work. That is equally a conflict of interest.
In that case, they're just paying me directly instead of me standing to gain from their success.
So...
Yeah, there's just... it's a bit of a minefield. That's the problem.
MadowTech says, why not let your wife invest personally so you can still review
or would that be the same thing as you doing it?
For all intents and purposes, my wife and I are one person financially
and whatever other measures you might have.
Yeah, we are not different people at this stage in the game.
Infinity Puddle says, I don't think there's any way to have no conflicts and invest.
And that's correct. I agree a hundred percent.
So I'm going to do one more poll.
Now that we've talked about some of the really solid arguments against
and some of the I'd say good arguments for.
There's good arguments for it. Like supporting the company sounds great.
This... I have been not interested in laptops at all for a long time.
This thing is very interesting to me.
I wish to support this is why I obviously can't in the same way that Linus is talking about.
But like I'm going to try to push this to anyone that's looking for laptops
because this is just a fantastic concept.
Yeah, everything's great. I love it.
There's just so many problems.
Oh, yeah, go ahead.
But yeah, like being able to support them would be fantastic.
And I'm sure Linus being able to have some influence there would be very helpful.
And using his money to grow would be great and all that kind of stuff.
It's just a minefield. JR6955 says spin up a subsidiary and use that to invest.
I mean, I couldn't do that. If I was just trying to make money,
I could have done that and I could have not talked to you guys, right?
Like this is not about whether or not I could find a way to invest in the company.
This is about me making you guys part of this process
because disclosure is a key part of me being comfortable doing this.
You guys have to know and be on board with what I'm doing.
This is not about whether I could find a loophole.
Absolutely, I could find a loophole.
Anthony has some comments.
I think we should do it because this is the behavior we've been asking for
and the player is small enough that it's not a threat to the mainstream market yet.
However, I didn't know about investment slash control.
I saw one comment saying that a loan would be a no strings attached sort of deal.
High risk, but could be an ROI for you in exchange for the cash infusion.
Could give them generous terms. Maybe we could buy frameworks with modules
as workstation notebooks for everyone in the office.
They're modular, easy to repair, logistically simple with interchangeable parts,
show a real world reason for why it makes sense.
And he reminds me that YouTube chat is still members only.
Yeah, that's fine because I'm going to post a final answer now here.
Here we go, ladies and gentlemen.
I like the idea of of like workstation laptops.
I think that's really cool. Even showing like,
oh, if there's a part that tends to fail like having it on hand
so you don't have to ship out your your workers laptops all the times.
Like that's a really cool benefit. People are saying give them a loan.
Yeah, the loan honestly has the same kind of conflict of interest as investing in it.
It's not really any different. And even if by law,
you don't technically have to disclose that arrangement.
It's still there's there's lawful and then there's ethical right lawful.
Maybe I don't have to disclose it, but ethically I have to disclose it.
I have to I have to disclose that relationship whatever it happens to be,
even if they're the ones that owe me something rather than me,
showing them something and being a public person and a reviewer and also the kind of things trust
and ethics is extremely important.
Absolutely. So it looks like the community is far from unanimous,
but with 1600 votes in this is split enough
that it doesn't seem like it's the kind of thing that I could safely do.
So I'll give you guys a little bit more time to vote.
Please guys do make your voice heard because what you guys are doing is going to affect the decision.
Yeah. Yeah, Jaden's comment here is good.
Here's the thing. I personally am confident it wouldn't color his coverage,
but others won't and that would undermine the whole thing and that's a really good point.
But then here's my argument Jaden to kind of to push back against that is I don't want it to not color my coverage.
That's not actually my intention here.
It should color my coverage.
I should be happy to disclose this at every possible opportunity so that I can say,
hey, this is what it looks like when a company does something that I actually am on board with,
that I actually think is pro-consumer and is okay.
If you want to fight that battle, I think that makes it significantly more okay.
It's also a big risk for framework because if they f*** up I can assure you I promise you
and I'm saying this publicly before entering into any kind of arrangement with them.
I promise it'll be a super public breakup.
Yeah, it'll be messy.
I mean you have an extremely long track record of not but if you screw up it's also bad for them.
That's true.
Because you guys this is this is more than just a financial investment, right?
Yeah, like this is a partnering of public image.
This is definitely a huge step someone says in Fluke legit.
Yeah, if you if you want to fight that fight,
I think that makes it significantly okay.
You just have to be ready to fight it all the time,
right and people are going to try to take advantage of that at every single moment they possibly can
and that's yeah,
I don't know that sounds really annoying.
This is a really good comment from Muppet House not great username to make,
you know, thoughtful comments like this,
but whatever ask your team at LMG first IMO,
you know, maybe that's what this comes down to then.
It's like hey guys, should we should we do this?
Happy roll cake says LMG makes a lot of money from laptop sponsors,
right? Is this okay for LMG?
Yeah, that's a really good point.
That's somewhere where we are probably going to end up eating it
because I would have to disclose my framework state
that I own in any sponsored laptop review,
which it would almost definitely cost us laptop sponsors.
Yeah. So while I would stand to make money this absolutely could cost the company money.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah a hundred percent.
Man, we're all why are all these good comments calling out of the woodwork.
Now that I've asked people to give their final answers.
It keeps coming back to this though infinity puddle says I think you can support them without investing
and I think that is super true.
I think you avoid a massive amount of problems
and I think you can make a monumental impact without investing in that way.
You could do the office thing if you wanted you don't have to
but you can keep bringing it up in reviews.
There is now a competitor that is DIY configurable to the end
all from the beginning to the end you can do everything right
and that is now a criticism of every single other thing that competes with this laptop
and that can be brought up every single time and your reach is astronomical.
So like that will create a huge impact probably more than any form of investment could
and they can probably find that money to grow from somewhere else,
especially with your vocal support not being an investor.
So that's my current stance on it,
but I think you can make this win in both ways.
I think you can make it a win if you invest.
I think you can make it a win if you don't invest so yeah.
All right, let's have a look at the final results.
Shall we ladies and gentlemen?
Refresh 61% yes and 39% say no that's that's that's it.
So I'm going to I'm going to hold on to that.
You could call that a win but that to me looks pretty split.
I think I'll take this to the LMG team
and that's it looks to me like enough people would be upset by it that it is just not worth it
and we're going to have to find another way to support them though.
It did lean again right like our initial commentary was quite positive
and the poll was quite positive
and then we went quite negative right before the final answer.
Yep, and then it became much more negative
and then we got a lot more positive during the final answer
and then the final answer shifted more positive.
So yeah.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
Let's have a look and see if there's any other topics that we want to cover.
That looks kind of boring.
That looks boring.
All right, neat.
I guess not.
So that wraps it up for the WAN show today.
Oh, yeah, we should do at least do the super chats that we can.
Isaac trucking broad says Louis Rossman has mentioned them in several videos about right to repair.
Maybe collaborations with other tech youtubers would go a long way to support them more so than investments.
Yep, that's fair.
Michael says talk to Daktronics about the LED wall may not happen,
but they do a lot of different stuff.
I don't know if they do anything as dense as like the micro LEDs that Samsung does.
You know what? I'm not going to respond to ones that are about the the framework topic that have kind of already been covered.
Abdullah says have you considered going in with other creators like Louis Rossman?
I don't think it would be necessary like it's if they want to do their own thing,
then they should just do their own thing would be would be sort of what I have to say about that.
Michael Taylor just advises against investing just separate from the ethics just says don't invest with your feelings.
There's a reason the modular companies never took off,
but that's why I'm trying to support it.
Okay. Yeah.
Elizabeth says potentially create an investment fund that could be done blindly that supports the things you want including the framework laptop.
Now that is a possibility.
So you give a financial advisor or whatever that role would be you give them these guidelines
and you say look this company is an example of what I'm talking about.
But these are my principles invest based on these and then you actually don't know whether they did or didn't.
That's a really interesting way of doing it. That is pretty interesting for sure.
But what that does it removes. Yeah. Yeah that removes a lot of the benefit I think of having me as a backer
where if they could say Linus Sebastian was is a backer and it was more of like a partnership.
That's a whole that's a whole other.
That's a whole other thing.
Jonathan Linford just sent the most genius super chat that we have ever received in the history of this show.
Instead of reading super chats at the end.
You should allow a wan show message box on LTC store purchases while the show is live and read those.
So instead of people sending money, I thought about YouTube today actually,
they should send money to LTT store and we read comments from there.
That is so much smarter and a much better use of your funds.
We could totally do it. I'm rather certain we could do it.
Let's get that on the roadmap. Thank you Jonathan Linford.
So wait, do you want it to be let's have a product meeting in the middle of land show.
Do you want to be or maybe this ends up being both both would be possible as well.
I believe what do you want it to be where they purchase a product
and there's a note section while the wan show is running
or you want to be a note they purchase on the store.
Oh, they should buy a product. They should get something.
I believe people should get something for their money.
Yeah. No, I don't I don't believe in digital notice me senpai attentions for money.
Okay, so you like work for Linford here, but I don't know whatever and also I'm really glad Jonathan.
I'm glad you sent that because that is a brilliant idea.
I should send you a super chat. Seriously though.
I will refund your super chat
and then some if you get in touch with the business team through the public facing email.
That is my personal Tech Tips guarantee.
It's a great idea. All right,
Brock says buying them for the office or giveaways outfitting a local school.
That would be huge advertisements. It would but that's a weird relationship.
If I have no skin in the game. I don't think I can justify that from a business standpoint.
Like I have I have made Linus media group what it is by doing the responsible thing at every stage.
So the only reason that I would be able to invest in this is if it's responsible from multiple angles.
Responsible promoting this for the good of consumers
and the earth and responsible from a business standpoint as well.
I do need something out of it. If we're going to dump a bunch of money into this company.
Now man on the internet seems to misunderstand.
What bias is man on the internet says you're already heavily biased toward repairable laptops.
Investing wouldn't really change your bias much.
That's not what a bias is. You can have an opinion about something that is well-reasoned and fact-based.
That is not bias. Bias is an unconscious leaning one way or the other and it's not fact-based.
It's not driven by data. Data is the opposite of bias.
So what I like about framework or what I like about repairable laptops
is that they are better for consumers and better for the environment.
I was going to say and the world. Those are just facts.
That's not bias. Those are facts.
So what people are talking about when they talk about bias is that I would have a financial incentive.
That has the potential to introduce bias. That is a conflict of interest and needs to be disclosed.
The fact that I can tell that up is up and down is down and I know a fact from a fabrication
and I believe in repairable devices. That is not bias.
That's just having two functioning eyes and a brain stem.
That's it.
Brock says you could sell like accessories for it on LTT store and offer to do it for other OEMs
if they have swappable parts. Yeah, that's interesting.
Accessories for a product like this are not a high enough volume game though,
typically that you can actually get your return on the tooling costs of creating them.
So it would be pretty tough.
Robert mail says shut up and take my LTT store.com. Yeah.
Yeah, hopefully that'll be a thing soon.
All right. I think I think that's pretty much it for the show today.
Luke. Was there anything else that you wanted to add on that topic?
Any other interesting comments you've seen in the meantime?
No, not majorly. Okay.
I think I think that's pretty much it. All right.
Well, I've heard from the community.
The last group I need to hear from is LMG employees.
And after that I will take that feedback and I will make a final decision.
This is not a democracy. If it was then yes would have won already,
but there's more to consider than just majority rules in this case.
And you'd probably still make motherboard videos.
I'm sorry. Motherboard videos.
Yeah, I was saying if it was a democracy, you'd probably still make mother.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would probably be a thing.
All right. Thanks for watching guys. We'll see you again next week.
Same bad time. Same bad channel.
And yes, float plane staff. You guys will be weighing into although you've kind of already gotten a chance now.
Did they ask about that? No, but just they were providing their opinions.
I just I want to make sure they know they have a voice too.
Yeah creator warehouse too.